Developing the Leadership and Management Approach in an Organisation

Developing the Leadership and Management Approach in an Organisation

a) Intended Learning Outcomes

1. Critically appraise the different approaches to, and the possible styles of, leadership.

2. Evaluate and appraise the importance of basic leadership principles

3. Appreciate the priority of creating an open, honest and challenging work environment.

This Assignment assesses your ability to carry out needs assessment in the area of leadership and management practice, draw appropriate conclusions and recommendations and consider related development issues.

b) Description of Assignment

You should highlight the ways in which your chosen organisation’s environment affects its culture. This can be based upon the Interim Assignment – Preliminary Analysis. You should then discuss how environmental and cultural issues drive the organisation’s approach to leadership and management. Findings should be presented in the form of an outline report consisting of analysis, conclusions and key recommendations. The conclusions should focus on the appropriateness of leadership and management practices, whilst the recommendations should consider possible improvements, implementation considerations and development issues. There should be no more than four Recommendations and they should be listed and prioritized according to their relative importance.

The Outline Report must integrate course theory with your knowledge of the aforementioned organisation. It is essential that the recommendations are designed according to the specific needs of the selected organisation and this should be evident in the analysis and conclusions.

c) Format and Timing

The Report length will be between 2,250 and 2,750 words excluding tables, graphs, charts, and Appendices. Reports must be uploaded to system.
The weighting for the Assignment is as follows:

1) Analysis (50%)

2) Conclusions (30%)

3) Recommendations (20%)

Outline Reports must comply with regulations on Referencing and Plagiarism. In particular, the following conditions are applied on this module:

i. At least 50% of your references[1] must be drawn from the module reading materials

ii. The source of your references must be indicated, including online links to texts, films and other materials. When texts are drawn from libraries it should also be stated.

iii. The presence of ’fake’ references – meaning a reference that does not actually state what you, the writer, claims it does – may be enough for a paper to be disqualified and rejected. In cases where such a practice is clearly employed to deceive the reader, this may be considered a form of plagiarism and it will be referred to the system Academic Conduct Officer.

The Assignment Word Count must be indicated on the cover page of the Report.

At all times, your paper should be written in your own words and style, unless you are quoting another author.

Appendix 1

Helpful Questions

Societal Issues

To what extent is technology shaping the environment in which the organisation operates?

In what ways is globalization affecting the organisation?

Are there any labour force trends that affect the company and the way it operates?

Can you identify any specific economic developments and trends that are influencing the organisation?

Are there any other issues which are impacting on the way the company operates?

What impact do any of the above issues have/potentially have on the leadership and management approach and practices in the organisation?

Are there issues that the organisation faces, or is likely to face in the near future, in which it may be hindered by its existing culture?

Organisational Culture Issues

Applying Schein’s approach and model, what can you say about the culture of the organisation?

What are the important shared tacit assumptions that the organisation has learned in order to cope with external tasks and deal with internal relationships?

What do the organisation’s artifacts reveal about the organisation and its culture?

Are you able to highlight specific behaviours or rituals that reveal something about the organisation (and culture) you researched?

What, if anything, do the espoused values reveal about the organisation and its culture?

What were you able to ascertain about the deeper underlying assumptions that prevail in the organisation? What do those assumptions reveal about the culture as it is versus the way it is portrayed?

Organisation Development Issues

What is the structure of the organisation and to what extent is it appropriate for addressing current and future challenges? Did you perceive any of the parts of the organisation, or its culture, to be dysfunctional?

In which areas, and in relation to which issues, does the organisation need to develop to succeed in its primary task(s)?

In what ways does the culture of the organisation influence its mission, strategy, means used, measurement systems, correction systems, language, group norms of inclusion and exclusion, status and reward systems, and concepts of time, space, work and human nature?

Did you detect survival anxiety in the organisation arising from failure to meet important goals? Was there any concern about the ability of the organisation to achieve future goals?

Based on past and existing organisation development initiatives, has the organisation, and its members, effectively dealt with any learning anxiety that was experienced? Were planned changes and developments successful?

Human Resource Management and Development Issues

To what extent is the HR/HRD function involved in strategic decision-making, considered to be a value-adding and deemed to be a business partner?

How would you describe focus of the HR/HRD function in respect of external and internal issues? Is it primarily focused on one or the other or is there an appropriate balance?

To what degree does the HR/HRD function engage with line management regarding HR and HRD issues? Does line management share responsibility for those issues?

How would you describe the shape of HR in the organisation? For more information about this, please refer to Rees & French (2013: pp. 26-31).

To what extent does HR retain a transactional role in the management of people?

Do you detect any need to adapt the shape and role of HR in the organisation?

Is the HR/HRD function in the organisation primarily reactive or proactive?

Leadership and Management Issues

To what extent is a distinction between Leadership and Management apparent in the organisation? Is there awareness of this distinction and to what degree is it reflected in the Leadership and Management roles?

Does the organisation follow some basic competency model for Leadership and Management and if so what is that model?

How would you describe the leadership approach that is practised in the organisation? For more information about this, please refer to Rees & French (2013: pp. 85-94). To what extent is the approach appropriate?

Change Management Issues

What types of change does the organization appear to be experiencing?

What appears to be the organization’s favoured mode of change intervention? Which models of change management does it use?

How much use does the organization make of Organization Development (OD) strategies and practices?

To what extent is the management of the organization familiar with the various tools that can be used in the management of change?

To what degree is the response to the organization’s environment addressed through the organization, team and individual development? In this respect, are these similarities with Schein’s work on organization culture?

Employee Development Issues

How mature and developed are the organization’s HRD strategies and practices? What scope exists for developing these further?

Does HRD support the organizations response to its changing environment? In what ways might it improve in this sense?

Is learning viewed as an individual imperative, or is it clearly a team and organizational focus? How would the organization benefit for adopting practices that are evident in best practice learning organizations?

Appendix 2

Helpful advice for students completing the LMP assignments

The Structure and Components of Outline Report

You are asked to provide an Outline Report with the following elements:

1. Analysis 50%

2. Conclusions 30%

3. Recommendations 20%

When writing your Recommendations, please comment on any important development considerations and how you might plan to address them when implementing the Recommendations.

Please use the above information and other suggestions in this briefing note as a checklist, ticking off each point to confirm that you have addressed all the relevant issues before submitting the Report.

Take care to place the components in the correct order. The Recommendations are based on, and therefore follow, your Conclusions. Your Conclusions are derived from your Analysis. Conclusions are not a summary of what you have written but they answer the question, “what can we conclude from the Analysis, what does it all mean?”

Content and Key Theories

The assignment is intended to assess your knowledge and understanding of the Module. Therefore you must demonstrate that knowledge and an ability to apply important Module theories. Even if you fail to complete various homework tasks or complete readings during the Module, at this point you must use the Module texts. It is unlikely that you will Pass this Assignment without meeting this criteria. To remind you, some of the key texts covered are as follows:

Seminar

Key and Useful Readings

1. Organizations and their Environments

2. Organization Culture

3. Organization Development

4. Leadership and Management Development

5. Change Management

6. Employee Development

Castellano , Laloux & Scholtes

Schein, Scholtes

Wilber, McLuhan, Wolfe

Hersey & Blanchard, Scholtes

Lewin, Kotter

Mabey & Mayrhofer, Scholtes

The relevant chapters of Rees and French are required reading for every seminar and details can be found on the Moodle site. Numerous additional readings that may be useful for referencing purposes are also provided under each Seminar tab on Moodle and under the tab, Further Reading.

What is Analysis?

There can be many different answers to this question. However, for us, Analysis is the application of critical and appreciative thinking to defined issues or problems. The broad issue defined by this Assignment is:

the environment and culture of an organisation and the impact this has on approaches to leadership and management.

Whilst we broadly expect you to conduct your Analysis by progressing through the six seminar topics, we are perfectly well aware, as you should be, that there is no way you can cover all of those topics in depth. Therefore, you must prioritize, highlighting issues that are of particular importance to the organization you are considering.

In conducting your Analysis, we expect that you will demonstrate the extent to which the organization operates consistently with the ‘best practices’ suggested by the theories. To do this effectively, we strongly advise you to employ examples, such as those discussed in the relevant texts, as a means of benchmarking, comparing and contrasting. A failure to do this will result in a Report that is both abstract and devoid of the means to gauge and support any conclusions that you draw. So, for example, one might say something like:

“we know that company we have been analysing is Green on Laloux’s scale of evolution because whilst it doesn’t have the self-managing structures of a Teal organization (ABC), it does rely more strongly on culture as a driver of productive behaviour than the Amber public service organization XYZ, whose leaders are much more autocratic in style.”

Alternatively, should you be discussing Schein and different artifacts, espoused values, prevailing leadership styles, and other organizational phenomena you must back up your analysis with specific examples. Your Report must be clearly connected to the organization that you have chosen and not be so vague that it could apply to any number of organizations.

Please remember, when you are writing your Analysis, you are effectively laying the foundation an argument. You are trying to convince the reader of the virtues of the case that you are making. This is not a neutral and passive process but an active and engaging one. Your words must carry a sense of how much you care and how strongly you believe in what you are saying. Bland and uncommitted writing may alienate the reader and deflect from the case you are making.