CEO Leadership Styles And Implementation System

Key factors for the changing trends

Discuss about the CEO Leadership Styles and Implementation System.

In today’s world of changing organizations diversification of managerial trends have taken a different turn. An organization is a system with its own perspective and logic with its own weight of tradition and inertia. The deck is fully loaded with adopted and proven means of strategies and modules that are known to accomplish its own purpose of achieving goals against all odds and risks that can be fundamental in reaching out as well as unraveling out new directions (Benn,  Dunphy and Griffiths 2014).

Every organization has its own managerial tools to excavate new ways and means of achieving its goals. The workforce is one of the key elements of an organization that is instrumental in helping it achieve its objective. This report deals with the managers and the tools that they adopt while dealing with the various risks and challenges that that come along with the changing trends in an organization. This report further deals and advocated regarding the impact of the values, ethics and diversity on the work culture of an organization. It further investigates the role, behavior and the performance of the managers within an organization. To help in better understanding a case study regarding an organization has been cited for easier understanding and analysis.

The purpose of this report is to learn, understand and analyze the effective role of a manager as well as the challenges and the risks that they have to address to in these changing trends in an organization as well as the impact of values, ethics and diversity on an organization. This report further helps understand the role, behavior and the performance of a manager.

With the progress in the generations and trends, the workplace also has also evolved in its own terms. The workplaces in the earlier times were not as competitive and agile as it is now. The change in the organization involves the changed structure, content and the progress or process (Cameron and Green 2015). The reason to embrace such a change is due to the fact that workplaces are now more perceptively complicated, more team based and collaborative, more dependable in the social skill sets, technologically dependent, time bound and high mobility with less dependency in the demographics (Sjostrand 2016).

The current scenario depicts the workplace to be more lean and agile, more focused in the customer value perspectives, better tuned competitive dynamics and strategies, lesser hierarchy and authority decision making, continues evolution the re organization and achieving competitive advantages.

Financial or Resource Management

Every manager in their respective organization faces certain challenges that should be attained in time to reduce or manage the risk that might arise from it. These challenges are primarily the risks that the organization faces, which its managers in turn manage. The challenges and risk that are faced have been discussed below.

Earlier organizations did not face any crucial moral challenge that the current organizations face now a days. With the higher competition and augmented global economy every individual is now in a struggle to meet up with the economic and social security that can only be attained with better earnings estimate. To meet the temptations of achieving better standard of living, individuals strife to do anything and by any means necessary, even at the cost of cutting the moral integrity. Within a time, employees start to adopt unfair or immoral means to achieve their targets with a perspective that immorality is an important part of business without with a successful business cannot be sustained. This would eventually lead to the erosion of the trust between the employees and the employer, the business partners, management and the shareholders of the organization. The failure to comply with the fact that lack of trust can eventually ruin a business is one of the major pitfalls of an organization (Jensen 2014).

Finance and revenue is one of the primary foundations of any organization or business. A healthy return in the revenue is mostly anticipated by every organization. The major failure for an organization is the mismanagement of the flow of cash within an organization (Brigham and Houston 2012). In case the capital expenditure or receivable collectables is the primary cause of unnecessary draining of cash, the sustenance of the business would not last for long, since revenue management is the utmost important part of business that mostly survives in the well revenue management of an organization. The mismanagement of revenue and the lack of focus on the cash flow could be fatal for any midsized or small term business organization (Brigham and Ehrhardt 2013).

With the progress in generation and the global marketing system, setting up a business has become even easier with trouble-free purchasing of online domain and website for the setting up of a business on the go. However, the continuation of business is more challenging and complicated, than it was earlier. Previously hiring of business experts was expensive that has now become even easier and more available as well as cost effective (Cheng, Man and Yi 2013). Findings of different organizations engaged in competition for the same kind of product is crucial to understand the challenges in the global market regarding the successful establishment of the new organization as a flourishing one.

Case Study: Beech Nut Nutrition Corporation

Within the same line of business, increased selection and competition is a challenge in the market regarding the gathering of potential customers and the retention of the existing customers (Kirzner 2015). Identification of the appropriate customer and the business channel is crucial in the determination of the business and organizational prospects in the market. Identification of the customer’s needs and wants is helpful in the customer loyalty and retention (Setó-Pamies 2012).

In terms of running a successful business, one of the major challenges is to find the right staff for the organization. Recruiting the right employee and their retention and injecting them with the business prospects and ideologies is one of the crucial management strategies to ensure the operations of the organization to be productive (Farr and Tippins 2017).

The case study adopted is regarding Beech Nut Nutrition Corporation that supplies 100% pure apple juice for babies and infants (Boyd 2012). As per the case, Beech Nut Nutrition was alleged to supply adulterated apple juice to its customers mostly that are meant for the infants and babies. Two years after the joining of the CEO, he found evidence regarding the fact that apple juice concentrate that was supplied by the vendors for the purpose of making the Beech Nut apple juice contained nothing but sugar, water and chemicals as the primary ingredients. The inventories could have been eliminated by the management which was supposedly useless as well as the existing products could have been removed from the stores. Instead, the product continued to be distributed with the hope of turning the business around with the paying of the promised amount to its parent company, Nestle. A large number of employees in the organization suspected about the authenticity of the products even before the arrival of the CEO, but he chose to ignore the fact due to the 25% advantage that was provided by the suppliers enforced the employees to continue with the production of the adulterated product. Unable to bear with the unethical business, one of the employees protested of about the concern and in return he was branded as a non team player. He was reviewed with naïve and impractical comments by the supervisor who was in charge. In this manner, the protest was suppressed and by no means was the consequence of the actions justified, putting the company and its management at the risk of illegal accountability. Later on, an FDA investigation was executed that taught Beech Nut a lesson in a hard way. The company was held guilty of selling adulterated juice to its consumers, risking their lives as well as the trust and compliance of millions of customers who relied on Beech Nut Nutrition in terms of their children’s nutritional supply. Finally, after the trial and judgment, the company was made to pay a compensation of $ 25 million that included the fines, legal expenditures and the misplaced sales. After the legal proceedings of Beech Nuts, the company struggled hard for a long period to regain back its consumer trust and market share. As a result, the managers have become more cautious about the organizational ethics and incorporation of rules and regulations to identify and prevent the breach of laws. Impositions of fines and probation for organizations have also been implemented to prevent further wrong doings and malpractices.

With the help of this case study, justification can be made about the business rationale, the proper utilization of research methodology and organizational theories. As per the theories, if Beech Nut incorporated the methods of identifying and focusing on the business rationale that included the integrity, financial management, ethics, competitive advantages, the customer loyalty and staff selection then perhaps the company would not have to undergo such consequence.

In case, Beech Nut chose to focus on the better cash flow and the quality of the products then perhaps it could have been successful in generating more consumers and retaining its existing customers as well as successfully turning the business around that having to sell of the company.

The staffs that were recruited in the company were loyal but they were unethical who participated and encouraged the continued fraudulent malpractice of producing adulterated juice. The unethical behavior of the CEO of Beech Nut who was only motivated to meet up with the target and overlooking about the reputation of the organization that it was going to lose in the run (Ng and Sears 2012). Although one of the employees had the conscience to protest against the wrong, his voice was suppressed, that usually has a negative impact on the work culture since this encourages other employees to adopt unfair means. This in turn corrupts the entire work culture rendering it venerable to legal intervention (Theodosiou,  Kehagias and Katsikea 2012).

The supervisor chose to ignore and suppress the fact that one of the employees protested about the crisis of the adulterated production. The supervisor could have taken effective measures to encourage and rectify the crisis instead of suppressing them, resulting in the huge financial and reputation loss ((Theodosiou,  Kehagias and Katsikea 2012).).

Proper research about the flow of cash and improvised strategy in the financial module regarding the sales and marketing of pure apple juice could have initially affect the revenue generation creating a little over load in the financial structure of the company but eventually the setbacks could have been averted and impart a new direction in the business cycle. Since Beech Nut was an old reputated company with a loyal set of dependable consumers, it would have been able to unload the pressure in a lesser span of time (Higgins 2012).

The mismanagement of not regulating the quality was one of the fatal mistakes that was committed with the purpose of generating easy and fast revenue that was eventually caught red handed and intervened. The managers could have replaced the disloyal vendors with honest ones instead of continuing business with the disloyal ones and jeopardizing the consumer health and its reputation as well.

The scope of achieving competitive advantages were higher since Beech Nut had a loyal set of customers who relied on their products. Only a few notable management strategies would have been a game changer for the company (Wagner and Hollenbeck 2014).

After suffering legal setbacks, the company had a tough time to regain back the trust of its loyal customers and the market values and the organization decided to formulate its major strategies in terms of focusing in the quality of the product. The influence that the organization had on behalf of political and social interface is due to introduction of penalties and compensation for adulteration and producing inferior quality goods by the legislature and legal practitioners as well as the recognition, acceptance or rejection by the consumers upon whom the survival or the decline of an organization completely depends.

The key decisions that were taken by the management to effective handle the crisis, was paying of a compensation for the charge as well as calling back the products that were considered as adulterated from the market.

Newer strategies have been formulated that meet the ethical principles to gain back the trust and the confidence of the consumers that was predominantly the biggest strength of any organization.

The implementation of new policies that met the parameters of the health regulations by the government. This was done to focus on the quality of the products to regain its competitive advantages over the other products as well as avoid further legal setbacks

As the outcome, the company gradually regained its customer’s trust and established its lost reputation as one of the major baby food producers. The recalling of the adulterated juice was one of the methods that was beneficial is explaining the customers about the company’s concern related to the consumer health. The improvised policies related to the organizational management in terms of ethical practices were influential in creating a diverse and work environment.

Conclusion

With the help of this report, it can be justified that an organization faces several challenges and risks in the changing trends of the newly emerging economic market. The challenges come on basis of managing the integrity, financial flow, creating identity of newly emerged organizations, selection and retention of new customers as well as recruiting of staff. With the help of the case study that has been provide the fundamental of business rationale and the ethics in the workplace has been explained as well as its validity has been justified. The case of Beech Nut Apple Juice has been cited to explain and understand the key factors of business rationale and ethics in the workplace as well as the circumstances that resulted in its downfall. The political factors that influence the legitimacy of the management strategies include the legal provisions that have been incorporated in order to prevent unethical use of business strategies. The social factors involves the customer appraisal and rejection in terms of the authenticity of the product, since customers are the main factors that influence the success and the failure of an organization in the global market.

References

Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.

Boyd, C., 2012. The Nestlé infant formula controversy and a strange web of subsequent business scandals. Journal of business ethics, 106(3), pp.283-293.

Brigham, E.F. and Ehrhardt, M.C., 2013. Financial management: Theory & practice. Cengage Learning.

Brigham, E.F. and Houston, J.F., 2012. Fundamentals of financial management. Cengage Learning.

Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Cheng, P., Man, P. and Yi, C.H., 2013. The impact of product market competition on earnings quality. Accounting & Finance, 53(1), pp.137-162.

Farr, J.L. and Tippins, N.T. eds., 2017. Handbook of employee selection. Taylor & Francis.

Higgins, R.C., 2012. Analysis for financial management. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Jensen, M.C., 2014. Integrity: Without it nothing works.

Kirzner, I.M., 2015. Competition and entrepreneurship. University of Chicago press.

Ng, E.S. and Sears, G.J., 2012. CEO leadership styles and the implementation of organizational diversity practices: Moderating effects of social values and age. Journal of Business Ethics, 105(1), pp.41-52.

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Theodosiou, M., Kehagias, J. and Katsikea, E., 2012. Strategic orientations, marketing capabilities and firm performance: An empirical investigation in the context of frontline managers in service organizations. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(7), pp.1058-1070.

Wagner III, J.A. and Hollenbeck, J.R., 2014. Organizational behavior: Securing competitive advantage. Routledge.

www.beechnut.com (2017). beech-nut baby food—real food with simple ingredients. [online] Beechnut. Available at: https://www.beechnut.com/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].

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