Leadership is the process of leading a group of people or leading the business organization to the success. Thus, it can be said that proper and effective leadership is needed for the success of the businesses (Kruse 2013). The main objective of this report is to analyze and evaluate various aspects of ethical leadership failure in the convenience store industry of Australia. In order to complete the report, 7-Eleven is taken into consideration. 7-Eleven is a chain of convenience stores in Australia. However, major ethical leadership issues can be seen in the business operations of 7-Eleven for more than six years. The major issue is that 7-Eleven has been underpaying their employees since 6 years. It has been observed that the employees of the company are forced to work in the company for long hours and after that, they are not paid with sufficient amount of salary or wages.
Many employees of 7-Eleven are international students and their visas do not allow them to work for more 20 hours per work. However, the company is forcing them to work for more than 20 hours per work and the company is blackmailing them by threatening them that their visas will be ceased in case they compliant about the company. The joint investigation of the ABC Four Corner and Fairfax discovers that the unethical leadership of 7-Eleven is majorly responsible for this total issue (Terry-Armstrong 2016). This report discusses the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma. The aim of this discussion is to implement the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma in the business operations of 7-Eleven so that the issues regarding unethical leadership in 7-Eleven can be solved. Based on the comparison between the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma, the suitable approaches will be adopted for the issues of 7-Eleven.
Leadership is considered as one of the major aspects for the business organization as the smooth running of the businesses depends on the leading of the leaders. Thus, it is expected that the leaders of the organizations will be effective (Ulrich and Smallwood 2012). Many effective leaders can be seen all over the world who have set example in the process of leadership. The names of two of such leaders are Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma. Both the leaders have played have played significant role in taking their business organizations in the sky high level. Ren Zhengfei has done it for Huawei and Jack Ma has done it for Alibaba. The leadership style of both these leaders have discussed below:
In the recent years, Huawei is considered as one of the major global corporations all over the world. As per most of the people all over the world, the blueprint of the success of Huawei is laid on the hand of Ren Zhengfei. The leadership style of Ren Zhengfei has some specific characteristics that separates him from the other leaders. There are seven major leadership aspects of Ren Zhengfei. They are purpose driven ambition, inspiration, adaptive version, winning by cooperating, power of learning, directive style and humble dedication (Zhang and Wu 2012).
Figure 1: Leadership Style of Ren Zhengfei
(Source: De Cremer and Zhang 2014)
Ren Zhengfei is always clear about the purpose of his leadership. In order to achieve the business objectives of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei uses to communicate the purpose of the company in the story forms among the employees with the help of effective communication. In the process of achieving the organizational objective, Ren Zhengfei has translated the purpose of the company into the vision and mission. Ren Zhengfei is always focused about the future of the company. As a leader, Ren Zhengfei considers the past lessons in order to make the future strategies. From this, it can be observed that Ren Zhengfei is someone who always looks for positive changes in the organization.
Another major factor of his leadership style is the inspiration and motivation for the employees. As per Ren Zhengfei, the organizational purpose is the major motivational factor for the employees of the company. In addition, Ren Zhengfei uses to tell various motivational stories in order to motivate and inspire the employees (Nolan 2014).
Ren Zhengfei is a humble leader and he is always dedicative towards the organization. One of the major characteristics of Ren Zhengfei is that he never presents himself as an ultimate know-all leader. Ren Zhengfei does not believe in the concept of controlling leadership; rather, he provide freedom to the employees to take their own decisions in some specific fields. In needs to be mentioned that in the process of giving freedom, Ren Zhengfei never loses control on the employees of the company (Zhang, Chen and Ang 2014). Cooperation is one of the major aspects of the leadership style of Ren Zhengfei. In Huawei, people from different cultural and regional backgrounds works together in harmony. It has been possible, as Ren Zhengfei has established the concept of cooperation among each other in the workplace. The target of Ren Zhengfei is making Huawei such an organization, where the mind of the people is considered as the main asset. As per the above discussion, the major aspects of the leadership style of Ren Zhengfei are effective leadership, leadership of change, motivation and inspiration and management of diversity and employee relation (Chakravarthy et al. 2017).
When talking about the successful leaders all over the world, Jack Ma is considered as the perfect example. The most important success factor of Alibaba is their leader, Jack Ma. The leadership style of Jack Ma has some specific traits that differentiate Jack Ma from the other leaders all over the world. According to Jack Ma, the vision of the leader is more crucial than the skills of the leaders. Jack Ma has developed a unique strategy of making a common goal of the organization by collection all the goals of the organizational people (Wu 2013). Jack Ma believes that acceptance and change is two of the most important factors for the organizational success. Jack Ma uses to hire the employees having higher level of skills and competencies. According to him, the success of the organization depends on the performance of the employees. Jack Ma is a charismatic and visionary person (Jung, Ugboma and Liow 2015).
As per the employees of Alibaba, Jack Ma is a trustworthy and intelligent person who always stays humble. Jack Ma has developed a mission for the organization that is considered as the heart of Alibaba. Jack Ma has been successful in inspiring and motivating the employees of the organizations. According to Jack Ma, failure is same as giving up (Zhen 2012). Thus, there is not any place for failure. According to the leadership style of Jack Ma, employees are the most important assets of the business organizations. For his reason, Jack Ma follows the Transformational Leadership style. Apart from this, in the process of achieving the goals of the organization, Jack Ma has adopted the strategy of empowering and motivating employees. Thus, from the above discussion, it can be said that the leadership style of Jack Ma includes various major aspects like team leadership, management of change, employee empowerment, employee motivation and inspiration and others (Kim, Zhang and Zhang 2016).
From the above discussion, it can be seen that both Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma have effective leadership qualities and they both have some leadership qualities in common that can be helpful for solving the leadership related problems in 7-Eleven. After his distillation process, there are some major qualities from both the leaders that can be applied in 7-Eleven. These leadership approaches are inclusion of inspiration and motivation of employees, empowerment of the employees, communication of the purpose and objectives of the organizations among the employees, fare right of the employees, change management and others. It is expected that the leadership related problems of 7-Eleven could be solved with the help of these leadership approaches.
The above discussion is about the analysis and evaluation of the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma. According to the above discussion, both the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma have some similarities and at the same time, they have some dissimilarities. However, it can be seen that the leadership approaches of both Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma have some unique and effective aspects. All these aspects are discussed below:
The most unique approach of the leadership of Ren Zhengfei is the development of purpose for the organization. There is a deep relation between the development of the purpose of the organization and the successful adoption of team leadership. As per the leadership approach of Ren Zhengfei, the objective or goal of the organization is the combination of the individual goal or objectives of the employees. Two of the unique factors in the team management of Ren Zhengfei are to be inspirational and humble dedication (Su and Chen 2014). The leadership approach of Ren Zhengfei puts great emphasis on providing inspiration and motivation to the employees. This can be done by fulfilling all the necessary and valid demands of the employees. Apart from this, the employees need to be dedicated towards achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. Another unique approach of the leadership of Ren Zhengfei is the management of change. Ren Zhengfei always looks forward to bring positive changes in the organization. The positive changes are highly helpful in the achievement of the organizational goals and objectives (Li et al. 2016). The above-discussed factors are the major unique approaches of the leadership of Ren Zhengfei.
Same as the other leaders all over the world, Jack Ma also has some unique approaches of leadership. As per the leadership approach of Jack Ma, the leaders must be visionary. Skills of the leaders are secondary as per Jack Ma. In this regard, vision of the organizations is the combination of the goals and objectives of the business. The unique approach of leadership of Jack Ma is the adoption of transformational leadership style (Hogg and Terry 2014). Transformational leadership is the kind of leadership approach where the leaders work with the subordinates and employees in order to identify the needed changes of the organization and to create vision for the organization. Jack Ma has also adopted the leadership approach to inspire and motivate the employees in order to achieve the organizational goals and objectives. This process has several benefits. This process is helpful for the development of a cordial relation among the employees. Jack Ma always encourages his employees to provide new and innovative business ideas. This is a unique approach of Jack Ma as this approach largely contributes towards the success of the organization. Hence, these are the unique approaches of the leadership style of Jack Ma (Phillips and Schmidt 2012). These approaches can be applied in the organizations to solve the leadership related issues.
It can be seen that 7-Eleven have been facing massive problem for six years in Australia. As per the investigation of ABC Four Corner and Fairfax, 7-Eleven has been found underpaying the employees and they use to force the employees to work for long hours without any payment. The workforce of 7-Eleven includes many international students who are threatened to cancel their visa. All these unethical practices have been happening for more than six years on the company. This is considered as unethical practice of leadership and the leaders of the company are held accountable for this failure. On an overall basis, it can be said that it is the failure of the leaders of 7-Eleven. In order to solve the leadership related issues is 7-Eleven, the earlier discussed distill leadership approaches of both Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma can be applied. There are some leadership areas of 7-Eleven where the mixed leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma can be applied. They are discussed as below:
Leadership of Change, Delegation, Empowerment and Motivation: The empowerment and motivational leadership approach of both Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma can be used in 7-Eleven. It can be seen that the employees of 7-Eleven lacks motivation. The reason is that they do not get enough payment for their work and the management cheats them on a continuous basis. As per the motivation approach of leadership of both Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma, the leaders of 7-Eleven needs to be ethical by paying the right amount of salary or wage to their employees (Tao, De Cremer and Chunbo 2016). As per the empowerment leadership approach of Jack Ma, the management of 7-Elevcen need to implement various strategies to empower the employees; like reward system, employee recognition process and others. According to Ren Zhengfei, the leaders of 7-Eleven need to clearly communicate the purpose, goals and objectives of the organizations so that they can participate in the process of achieving them. The employees of 7-Eleven will feel as the important part of the organization in case they are included in the decision-making process of the company. As per the leadership of change approach of Jack Ma, the leaders of 7-Eleven must try to bring positive change in the organizations. In order to bring positive changes in the company, the management of 7-Eleven needs to implement proper payment system for the employees. It needs to be done for the betterment of the company (Swaffield, Jull and Ampah-Mensah 2013).
Employee Relation: Unethical leadership of 7-Eleven has affected the employee relation the most. The leadership style of Jack Ma states that the employees of the organizations are the main mean to achieve the goals and objectives of the business (George 2015). Thus, it is necessary for the management of 7-Eleven to maintain a good and effective relation with their employees. Proper employee relation can be maintained by providing the employees with their proper payments for their jobs. As per the leadership style of Ren Zhengfei, 7-Eleven needs to provide their employee with opportunities for learning as this process helps to increase the efficiency of the whole organization (Petti 2012).
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it can be said that both the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma are unique in their own ways. Where Ren Zhengfei is discussing to have a common purpose in the businesses, Jack Ma is telling that the employees are the main assets of the businesses to achieve the business purpose. Thus, it can be seen that both the leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma are complementing each other in a perfect way. For this reason, the hybrid leadership approach of Ren Zhengfei and Jack Ma is needed to solve the unethical leadership problems of 7-Eleven. As per the leadership approach of Ren Zhengfei, good employee relation can be established by providing the employee with proper wages and salaries. On the other hand, as per the leadership approach of Jack Ma, positive change needs to be brought in order to ensure the success of the business.
References
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