Executive Summary
This report evaluates the leadership and management challenges and their solutions. The report is
centred on two case studies of Starbucks and Toyota. This report finds that employee motivation
and satisfaction are critical concerns in contemporary organisations. This challenge is
significantly related to the demographic changes from the socio-cultural dimensions of the
PESTEL analysis. Several issues are associated with employee motivation and satisfaction,
including the working environment, sufficient rewards, and people practices. Drawing from the
Toyota case, this report reveals that people practices, including performance management are
essential in promoting employee motivation, satisfaction, and retention. Another challenge is
leading change. Leaders, therefore, have to apply an effective change management model, such
as Kotter that involves the workforce in the decision-making process. From the analysis, four
recommendations in relation to the two challenges include investing in communication,
leadership and management and development, continuous environmental scanning, and
stakeholder involvement in the decision-making process.
Management and Organisational Behaviour 4
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Management and Organisational Behaviour 5
1.0 Introduction 5
1.1 Purpose of the Report 5
2.0 Leadership and Management Challenges Within the Current Business Environment 5
2.1 Demographic Dynamics: Employee Satisfaction and Motivation 6
2.2 Change Management: Leading Change 8
3.0 Case Study Analysis 10
3.1 Demographic Dynamics 10
3.2 Change Management 12
Conclusion 13
Recommendations 13
References 15
Management and Organisational Behaviour 5
Management and Organisational Behaviour
1.0 Introduction
Profound leadership and management is central in a company’s performance. As described by
Shah (2018), there are four tenets of effective leadership, which include behaviour,
communication style, leadership model, and ethics. Behaviour focuses on the values, culture, and
norms advocated while the leadership style entails a selection of the suitable approach according
to the firm’s needs and structure. Leadership models in this regard include transformational,
autocratic, and democratic, which are distinguished by the relationship between the leaders and
their employees and autonomy. Leadership ethics comprise of the fairness, power sharing,
integrity, and sustainability concerns, which are also related to the firm’s culture.
Leadership is also significantly related to the firm’s behaviour, describing how employees
conduct themselves. The firm’s behaviour is centred on several elements. As noted by Huang
(2021), these aspects include employee satisfaction, motivation, commitment, and relationship
between various stakeholders. This introduces the importance of organisational strategies to
develop and promote the workforce satisfaction, which is also related to other concepts,
including retention and performance. The role of the leadership and management team is to
evaluate these factors and how they can be managed. Some of the strategies as outlined by
Sonmez Cakir and Adiguzel (2020) include learning and development, performance
management, informed decision-making, and organisational development, which are associated
with the employees and organisational performance. These areas reflect on the role of people
practices in the company’s behaviour.
1.1 Purpose of the Report
Leadership and management faces several challenges stemming from the internal and external
factors impacting the company. This report evaluates two of these challenges, including the
demographic issues and leading change. Also included in the discussion is how to address the
issues and case analysis. The discussion draws from various models and theories including
leadership, organisational development, and design.
2.0 Leadership and Management Challenges Within the Current Business Environment
Strategic leadership and management is centred on promoting the sustainable performance of the
organisation. According to O’Shannassy (2021), strategic leaders are essential in delivering the
sustainable social, economic, and environmental outcomes. This relates to the Tripple Bottom
Line (TBL) model. As described by Birkel and Muller (2021), the TBL framework transcends
the company’s focus on profit. The model can be distinguished into 3Ps, including the people,
planet, and profit. Drawing from the TBL model, the leadership approach is also faced with
several challenges in line with the three Ps. For instance, besides the issues that strategic leaders
face in meeting the financial key performance indicators, there are also impediments in meeting
the employees’ needs. The sustainable-related issues are based on the broad strategic planning to
ensure the company achieves the sustainability goals. This also involves the company ensuring
that the goals and objectives are aligned with the environmental sustainability laws and
regulations.
Leadership and management challenges can be profoundly described by the internal and external
factors. This introduces the importance of environmental scanning concept. As espoused by
Hayati (2021), the importance of an environmental scan is to determine the events and trends
impacting the company. These include talent shortage, the rising number of expatriate workers,
and the employees age profile. Conducting an environmental scan involves the application of
various tools and models, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)
and PESTEL (political, economic, socio-cultural, technology, environmental, and legal). The
importance of these tools is to evaluate the specific factors that impact the company and how
they can be strategically addressed. For instance, the current trends in organisations is the
application of information and communication technology (ICT) in all activities, including
people practices. The technology dimension of the PESTEL analysis evaluates these trends,
including robotics, artificial intelligence, data management, and automation and how the
company can invest in ensuring availability of these skills for sustainable competitive advantage.
2.1 Demographic Dynamics: Employee Satisfaction and Motivation
The socio-cultural dimension of PESTEL analysis focuses on aspects such as demographics,
customer needs and preferences, purchasing trends and patterns, employment patterns, and
population change. As described by Abdullah et al. (2022), the social element of the PESTEL
analysis focuses on the cultural diversity of various stakeholders. The role of strategic leadership
is to ensure that all stakeholders, regardless of their diversity, such as age, gender, race, and
ethnicity have their needs adequately addressed. Among the key stakeholders is the employees,
who are central to the achievement of the organisational goals and objectives. Effective
leadership, therefore, is centred on ensuring that all the employees’ needs and preferences are
met. Throughout the employee lifecycle, all the people practices should be aimed at sufficing the
employees’ preferences.
Demographic changes, however, reflect on the changing employee profile in terms of age,
gender, race, and ethnicity. Globalisation has increased the number of expatriates in various
organisations (Hayati, 2021). The leadership and management challenge from the demographic
changes is ensuring that the employees are motivated and satisfied. In the contemporary
organisations, the demographic changes are mainly reflected in the increasing millennials and
generation Z in the workplace. As described by Wood (2019), the increase in the number of
millennials at the workplace present new dynamics that leaders and managers have to contend
with. The influence of technology among this generation characterises the millennials and
generation Z as technology natives, craving for work-life balance, interested in collaboration,
preference for being involved in the decision-making process, the need to keep learning, and
fickle loyalty. Unlike the leadership and management for the baby boomers, the leaders for the
current workforce has to ensure that the employees are satisfied and motivated, a significant
challenge considering the diverse needs and preferences.
There are several factors associated with employee motivation and satisfaction at the workplace.
According to Paais and Pattiruhu (2020), the quality of human management resources plays a
vital role in ensuring that all employees’ needs have been met. The leader’s role is to ensure that
the company equates the employees’ perspectives, value, and expectations, which are aligned
with reward management and relationship with the leadership and management. Meeting the
employees’ needs and preferences is can be described using the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
theory. According to Fallatah and Syed (2018), Maslow hierarchy of needs espouses that the
individual’s motivation is centred on various needs. The needs are classified in a pyramid and
comprise of physiological, safety, love and belongingness, esteem, and self-actualisation. The
organisational leadership and management challenge, therefore, is to ensure that the employees’
needs are achieved. For instance, security needs are met through a safe working environment and
Management and Organisational Behaviour 8
job security. Among the primary concerns for leaders and managers is to determine the
employees’ needs from various dynamics and develop strategic plans on how they can be
achieved.
Employee satisfaction and motivation is anchored on various aspects, including the culture and
system. Potential solutions to promoting motivation and satisfaction among the employees, in
relation to leadership are based on the model. In the transformational leadership theory, for
instance, Kotamena et al. (2020) notes that the leaders and managers drive transparency,
communication, and autonomy for the employees. Autonomy involves allowing the employees
to make their decisions and avoiding micro-management. Another leadership model related to
employee motivation and satisfaction is democratic, which focuses on involving the employees
in the decision making process. This increases their confidence and commitment, which are
related to motivation, satisfaction, and commitment. Another potential approach is learning and
development, which is related to performance management. This allows the leadership and
management to evaluate the employees’ strengths and weaknesses and provide insights on the
learning and development strategies. Performance management is also related to strategic and
total rewards, which are also related to employee motivation and satisfaction.
2.2 Change Management: Leading Change
Please click the icon believe to receive this assessment in full