Company XYZ
Company XYZ is a privately-owned equity firm that has specialized in dealing with investments across several sectors. It has interests in the banking and financial sector, it is engaged in hotel and hotel management, it has investments in real estate and information technology, it has strategic investments in the entertainment sector, it has ventures in supermarkets and upscale fashion retailing. Company XYZ has also invested heavily in media, telecommunications, healthcare, and also in the industrial sector. Company XYZ has major investments in Saudi Arabia and other developing markets particularly in Africa and in the Middle East, besides other international investments. Company XYZ was founded in the 1980s and is headquartered in Saudi Arabia.
What is leadership?
As already mentioned, there are many definitions of leadership. The definition that one picks on is very important because it shows how one views leadership. In this case, I will use the definition given by one author called Yukl because it brings out leadership as a process. It also tackles the issues that I think are important to those leaders who want to fulfil their leadership responsibilities. This author defined leadership as “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives” (Yukl, 2010 p. 8).
To clearly understand leadership in Company XYZ, I will employ the use of theory because theories show how leadership works and its implications in an organization. The theories I believe will address fully this subject are, Fiedler’s contingency theory, Transformational theory of leadership, authentic leadership theory and the trait and behaviour theories of leadership.
Fiedler’s Contingency Model
This model was developed by Fiedler’s a scholar dealing with organizational behaviour. It is mainly a situational model of leadership, the first one that tried to explain how leaders develop. In this model, Fiedler assumes two things, first, that a leader’s performance depends on “the degree to which the situation gives him control and influence—that is, the likelihood that he can successfully accomplish the job” (Fiedler, 1977, p. 29), and second that the leader’s performance depends on “the leader’s basic motivation—that is, whether the leader’s self-esteem depends primarily on accomplishing the task or on having close supportive relations with others” (Fiedler, 1977, p. 29).
In this model, Fiedler believes that leaders are task or relationship motivated. This two combine to produce a leadership style that can withstand change. He strongly believes that for any leader to be effective, he or she should learn how to adapt leadership situations so that they match with the leadership style and the degree of control wielded.
Fiedler used what he called the Least Preferred Coworker scale (LPC) to assess leadership styles whereby leaders are asked to select among their workers, a worker whom he can not work well with. This worker is then rated using opposing viewpoints. Critical leaders about the worker will receive a low LPC score while those who cared more about the work will get high LPC score. In this model, three aspects are identified as determinants of situational control.
These are the leader-member relation approach, which depends on the measure of confidence, trust and respect that subordinates accord their leader, the task-structure approach, which depends on the extent to which tasks are structured or not structured, and the position-power approach, which shows the extent to which the power held by a leader influences issues like hiring and firing subordinates (Gitman and McDaniel, 2008, p.1).
Relating this theory to this case, I see that Mr Faisal matched his leadership style with appropriate situations. This helped him improve the performance of Company XYZ. He learned how to avoid any situation that he suspected might bring him a failure and only went for those situations that brought success to his Company. This is suggested by Fiedler on p. 176. Fiedler’s leader situation match approach was effectively used by Mr Faisal and this was seen in the way his leadership improved worker behaviour on the job as it was seen in the improved worker performance. This theory has enjoyed a lot of support from many people researching on leadership; however, it also has some important concerns that should be addressed.
Many flaws can be found in this theory. Many studies do not appreciate the way the LPC score is interpreted specifically when differentiating task orientation and relationship orientation. Fiedler himself acknowledged the flaws
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