Leadership can be defined as a process of social influence that helps to maximize the efforts of others to reach the target. The element of leadership is achieved from social interactions, experience, knowledge gaining and sharing, and creating innovative ideas that can benefit the sections and culture of the society. Leadership in Business is very important as it creates value and also helps in establishing healthy communications and employee engagement (Clark and Harrison, 2018). Leadership can be of various styles concerning keeping the workplace alive and running the organisations effectively. The transactional leadership style is mainly compromised of two dimensions, assisting others for their efforts and expressing satisfaction when the workers meet the expectations of the organisation. On the other hand, transformational leadership deals with five dimensions comprising high moral value and standards, influencing others to create change, going beyond self-interest for providing support to groups, and showing a sense of power and confidence (Guzmán et al., 2020). The following essay will analyse the Leadership of BlackBerry (RIM) and the current problem the organisation is facing and will provide the recommended solution with the use of relevant theories and justification.
BlackBerry in its early days was known for its product innovation and system that has bought disruption in the smartphone and carrier market. Focusing on providing clients with security features and developing its messaging application called BlackBerry Messenger the company had started the new era of smartphones development. The decline of the company started in 2012 when the company failed to compete with the other competitors, especially Android and iPhone. The company’s main core problem in failing sustainability in the smartphone market regarding leadership is an inappropriate decision-making process, lack of communication between employees, managers, and CEOs, and failure to measure the needs of the customer due to changing generation and rapid growth of innovation. The critical decision patterns of the company were never been established properly and the top management had a lack of vision as everyone was sitting in different boats having different views and perceptions and different strategies. BlackBerry Leadership started from innovation and management but failed to cope with the changes in the smartphone market regarding marketing and change in business styles (Manika, Papagiannidis and Bourlakis, 2015).
According to Lussier (2015), Behavioral Leadership can be defined as a set of behaviours shown by the leaders which impact their style and also made them successful in engaging with the workplace. This theory indicates that leaders are made through their actions and behaviours and are not born. The theory also promotes that all leaders are capable of enhancing their skills and knowledge through learning and development and can adopt these beneficial behaviours to perform it in the workplace for bringing stability and performance between every group (Lussier and Achua, 2015). Identifying the theory and attaching it with the BlackBerry issue the company had a culture of loosely planned engagement between employees and CEOs Balsillie and Lazaridis. Both the CEOs had different approaches towards strategic plans and behaviours. The company later bought strict discipline and order so that rules can adhere which bought a conflict between employees’ motivation and engagement. The employees of Blackberry started to feel that change in behaviour of management in bringing new rules has brought separability between teams coordination and lack of innovative ideas that used to be the core competency of the firm (Koši?iarová, Kádeková and Štarcho?, 2021).
According to Erdogan (2015), Leader-Member Exchange Theory can be defined as a relationship-based theory between leaders and followers. The theory describes the importance of the exchange of information between leaders and followers. The theory resembles that high-quality trust can be integrated into Leadership through liking, trust and mutual respect. The nature of the relation quality implements the effectiveness of employees regarding job and workplace culture. The model assumes that leadership consists of a two-way relationship that eventually connects the leaders with members. The theory prioritizes the value of the relationship that helps in developing the responsibility, decision making, performance of subordinates and accessing of resources. Role Taking and Role Making are the important processes of the theory (Erdogan and Bauer, 2015). Analysing the theory linking it with BlackBerry Case the company employees were dissatisfied with the strategic decisions of the company and the company was losing the mutual understanding and trust of the employees. The employees were demotivated and they had issues in contributing their part for the performance of the company. the company mostly focused on working long hours rather than making critical decisions regarding innovation and overconfidence in solving technical issues rather than focusing on changing buyer behaviours towards new smartphones has cost BlackBerry is losing its value and position in the market. the employee complained about the lack of role-taking employees and lack of communication in teams regarding new solutions has cost the company in bringing new products in the market (Moussi and van Amsterdam, 2017).
According to Matthews (2018), the trait approach to leadership solely focused on the leader itself. It also identifies the personal traits of the leaders that include personality characteristics and assumes that their traits related to behaviours remain consistent across situations. The trait approach of leadership has aspects that describe the special skills and abilities of particular leaders and also identify various trait properties of leaders regarding temperament and intellectual ability. The list of traits included is of various characteristics such as creativity, motivation, emotional stability, perseverance, and many more. Recent studies of the trait approach have linked the leader’s attributes to organisational performance (Matthews, 2018). The researchers have also started to highlight the patterns of relationship between traits and performance. Applying the theory to BlackBerry Case both the leaders named Balsillie and Lazaridis had different traits and abilities, for example, Balsillie has marketing abilities and on the other hand, Lazaridis is typically innovative. Balsillie was considered short temper and had a behaviour of intolerance towards individuals who all are not prepared. Both strong communications have raised BlackBerry to great success but things worsened with different approaches and mentality afterward. In 2007, BlackBerry caught up in a scandal that affect the reputation of CEOs, and the relationship between Lazaridis and Balsillie started to degrade. The betrayal feeling of the partner has put great stress on the technical part and BlackBerry started to move back from a competition in innovation and technology. Later on, to bring new strategy different approaches were taken but had created misunderstanding between both the founders in accepting each other strategy and different perceptions. The proper decision-making process has never been the strong point for BlackBerry after its sales drop and mutual coordination and lack of understanding of each other decisions have put the company’s future mission for the long run in the marketplace at great risk (Moussi and van Amsterdam, 2017).
According to the Skills theory of Leadership indicates certain skills and abilities can be learned and or developed by the leader to enhance their leadership. The three main skills that are needed for leadership are human, technical skills and conceptual skills. These three have been used by leaders in different levels and different situations. New skills have to be adopted by the leaders through experience to create a great impact in future perspectives. Skills theory helps to identify the abilities of a leader and provides appropriate methods to adopt new varieties of skills in this rapidly changing environment where dynamic abilities are required (Mulyadi, 2017). BlackBerry has gained a competitive advantage due to the inheritance of new skills in creating products that are unique and had no rivals at that time to compete with the brand. Innovation was the major factor that set BlackBerry as a global brand. BlackBerry unique position in the market started to fall when new competitors with new skills regarding product development and featuring problem-solving products for customers started to emerge. BlackBerry has changed its business model and adopted new skills instead keep on sticking old model of abilities due to overconfidence of its brand value. The leadership in BlackBerry started to fall as an old strategy was consistently followed by the brand to establish its markets where innovation and strategies were brought up by competitors. Resulting in discontinuing its classic old smartphones running in its old operative system (Odor, 2018).
The first solution for BlackBerry would be to change its organisation culture. Transformational Leadership style must be followed and employees should be properly communicated with the company’s mission and vision and should set targets and goals. BlackBerry requires the coordination of employees through employee engagement. rather than focusing on rules and disciplines company should focus on enhancing employees’ abilities and problem-solving skills through constant communication and better team management coordination (Megheirkouni, Amaugo and Jallo, 2018). A leader should focus on transforming its strategy according to the changing drivers of business and mainly focus on fulfilling customer requirements and needs through innovation. Critical decisions should be made involving every stakeholder to bring the flow of transparency of providing information to the workplace. The roles and responsibilities of each individual should be properly demonstrated by the leader to bring performance enhancement. Regardless of focusing on overconfidence of brand value the leader should motivate workers to create new transformation in the field of technology implementing new strategies and creating a positive culture of sharing experiences to bring the brand into the former successful track (Moussi and van Amsterdam, 2017).
The second solution for BlackBerry is creating set targets and optimizing result-focused strategy. BlackBerry has always depended on its innovation and providing solutions to the customers. in the current rapid change of technology companies are mostly focused on implementing new strategies and leaders are focusing on developing the skills of employees providing proper resources and adopting employees’ views in making strategical decisions (Elsmore, 2017). BlackBerry has been consistently focused on its same routine operations and abilities to bring disruption in the market which caused a backslash for the company. BlackBerry should implement result-driven teams with shared priorities and exact missions to bring the company’s reputation back on track. The leaders have to be ambitious and should motivate and inspire stakeholders about straight -forward plans to gain trust. Reel-time feedback and guidance should be provided to employees to create a positive work culture. BlackBerry should focus on changing its decision-making process to a more flexible one where everyone is on board and create a culture of proper planning and executing of plans (Kargas and Varoutas, 2015).
The third solution for Blackberry is to change its traits and abilities to lead the organisation by accepting the responsibility. Calculated risks have to be taken by the leader to bring change to the company (Komives and Wagner, 2016). The most important factor in recent market conditions is the adaptability and flexibility to react to the changes that will make the organisation versatile in the marketplace. BlackBerry has never adapted to the change in technology and relied on its innovation which helped its competitors to build a position in the market. BlackBerry has always taken decisions internally from top management and employees in the later stage were just kept working without having any hand in taking decisions. Lack of acceptability in each other decisions have to be removed and a more structural leadership style has to be followed that can bring every individual to the table for proper processing of plans. BlackBerry should bring stability in workplace order through generating the development of skills and abilities of employees with proper training and motivating of leaders in bringing change in the operational performance of the company (Day and Dragoni, 2015).
Conclusion
BlackBerry has been a market leader in its forming stage bringing innovations and methods that met the quality standards of customer requirements at that time. BlackBerry was also a globally recognized brand that offered the world a new solution of messaging and interaction with mates and also brought enhancement in smartphone security service. The company’s poor management decisions and lack of changing capabilities according to change trends of technology have put the brand in a troublesome situation these days. BlackBerry should change its leadership strategies to be more goal-oriented and should bring every stakeholder a single vision to change the brand’s course of action.
References
Clark, C.M. and Harrison, C., 2018. Leadership: the complexities and state of the field. European Business Review.
Day, D.V. and Dragoni, L., 2015. Leadership development: An outcome-oriented review based on time and levels of analyses. Annu. Rev. Organ. Psychol. Organ. Behav., 2(1), pp.133-156.
Elsmore, P., 2017. Organisational Culture: Organisational Change?: Organisational Change?. Routledge.
Erdogan, B. and Bauer, T.N., 2015. Leader–member exchange theory. In The Oxford Handbook of Leader-Member Exchange.
Guzmán, V.E., Muschard, B., Gerolamo, M., Kohl, H. and Rozenfeld, H., 2020. Characteristics and Skills of Leadership in the Context of Industry 4.0. Procedia Manufacturing, 43, pp.543-550.
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Megheirkouni, M., Amaugo, A. and Jallo, S., 2018. Transformational and transactional leadership and skills approach: Insights on stadium management. International Journal of Public Leadership.
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Mulyadi, M., 2017. Charismatic Leadership. IJER-INDONESIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, 4(2), pp.9-19.
Odor, H.O., 2018. Organisational culture and dynamics. Global Journal of Management and Business Research.
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