KFC Leadership Style | Analysis

Employees never work along in the organizations, there must be some kind of teamwork involve in the working process, both formal and informal. Leadership acts as an important factor that strongly influences employee’s performance, motivation and attitude. It has been argued that differences between success and failure, whether in business, war or football, leadership is largely attributable to success.

1.1 Definition Of Literature Review

A literature review is defined as target to show important facts regarding approaches on a topic in the methodological method. It also means they are not primary sources because it is not original or new work.

1.2 Definition Of Leadership

Leadership is become very much on every manager’s mind today in organizations. Originations are struggling due to the increasingly dynamic environment. As the challenges of leading and managing increase, leaders of organizations need to understand process, skills and knowledge to perform leader functions effectively.

1.3 Definition Of Motivation

Motivation is “the willingness to exert high levels of effort to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the effort’s ability to satisfy some individual need” (Belasen & Frank, 2008). Motivating employees are one of the continual challenges of managerial behaviour, that are also managers’ fundamental reasons for engaging in various activities and work.

1.4 Introduction Of KFC

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), as we all know – is one of the popular fast food outlets worldwide with the theme “It’s finger lickin’ good”. The first KFC outlet in Malaysia was opened on 1st January 1973 at Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur. Today there are more than 390 KFC outlets nationwide and are still counting. Great tasting chicken has become synonymous with KFC and has been enjoyed by Malaysians ever since. The KFC we will be talking about is in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan.

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Defining Leadership

Leadership can be defined as “the process whereby one individual influence other group members towards attaining defined group or organizational goals” (Orlando, 2008). More important, successful organizations need effective leadership, who are capable of increasing an organization’s employee motivation; in turn improve the overall performance and organizational productivity (Richard, 2007).

In addition, Drucker in his “The Leader of the Future” sums up leadership as “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” It is said that many of the world’s best leaders do not have the integrity as well as certain values which won’t be discussed in the modern days.

In my opinion, leadership is different from management. Managers have subordinates which are below them while leaders have people who follow them. Managers will normally utilize their position of power in order to do things. In the process of work, managers orders his or her employees while they will follow because of the reward given which is the minimum of their salary. Looking at the other way round, leaders gives up their authoritarian control, due to their followers which follows them in a voluntary way.

2.2 Leadership Theories

Terry (2000) has highlighted that “leadership is an influence relationship between leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes.” Block (2002) has noted that as a process, leadership is, ideally the use of non-coercive influence to shape the group’s or organization’s goals, motivate behavior towards the achievement of those goals and help define group or organizational culture.

• Effective Leadership

Russell, (2000) defined effective leader as those leaders who are able to improve organization productivities, in turn develop distinctive competitive advantages for organizations. In other words, effective leaders usually have an inspiring vision; they will try to form a group of people to work as a team, making them into a powerful team which utilizes as a competitive advantage. Effective leaders know how to make people function according to what they are good at, and how to motivate them to excel their performance. Leaders need to understand the balance technique in any individual team member’s quest with the objective of creating synergy. Leaders need his or her members in their team to forego the goal for the individual best coherent with the effort of the whole team.

2.3 Leadership Style

• Autocratic vs. Democratic vs. Laissez-faire leadership style

Taggart (1989) defined that, broad classification of leadership style consists of authoritarian (or autocratic) style, democratic style and laissez-faire (genuine) style. The definition of autocratic style is:

It is where the focus of power is with the manager, and all interactions within the group move towards the manager. The manager alone exercises decision-making and authority for determining policy, procedures for achieving goals. Work tasks and relationships, control of rewards or punishments.

Kotter (1990) expressed Democratic leadership style takes wishes and suggestions of employees into consideration. It is more a human relations approach, in which all members of the group are seen as equal, and they are all important contributors to the final decision.

Laissez-faire leadership style involves limited control or influence of leaders over his or her group members. A member is given a goal and mostly left alone to decide how to achieve it. The leaders function as one of the group member, and he only provide direction and suggestions when necessary.

• Task Orientation and People Oriented Leader Behavior

Another way of looking at different leadership styles is in terms of dimension of leader behavior. As early as 1950s, a large body of research at University of Michigan and Ohio State University suggested that leaders differ greatly along the dimensions; at the high end of two dimensions is task orientation versus people orientation.

Task Orientation leader behavior is more concern about the production and primarily focus on getting the job done. Whereas the People Orientation leader behavior reflects how much a leader is concerned for the people around him, providing support and encouragement for them. There is no hundred percent right or wrong in using which leader behavior, it depends on the situation and organization’s nature business.

2.4 Situational Factors

• Path-goal Theory

Different organization has different business environment, we must take the situational factors into the consideration to analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the leadership. Bartram & Casimir (2007) cited in House’s path-goal theory argued that the primary function of a leader’s job is to coach and guide workers to choose the best path for reaching their goals, in the mean time to make valued rewards available in the work place. In short, the leader should clearly know the paths to achieve goals.

As showed in the path-goal framework, the path-goal theory contends that employees tend to listen to leaders who are play an helping role in their works, in other words, effective leaders clarifying what employees need to do to get to where they should be, and they help the employees to do so. Moreover, Stone & Russell (2004) argued that the theory suggests job satisfaction, motivation, and actual performance are enhanced.

In addition, path-goal theory also states four types of leadership behaviors to help their employees accomplishing tasks. (1) Directive leadership, which is an approach focused on providing specific guide and on planning work rules and schedules. (2) The supportive leadership mainly focuses on build good relations with employees and fulfills their needs and wants. (3) The participative leadership, whereby the leader allow employees to get involved in the decision making process. (4) The achievement oriented leadership is talking about the company leader who sets challenges and expects employees improve performances.

Furthermore, the environmental characteristics include three factors like task structure, authority system and work group. Directive leadership style does not match with high task structure. It is not necessarily for leaders to repeatedly tell employees the requirement of some routine works. The authority system is another important characteristic that will affect the leadership styles. The higher degree of formality the less effective of employees’ performances will show.

Source: House, R.J. & Mitchell, T.R. 1994, ‘Path-goal theory of leadership’, Journal of Contemporary Business, vol. 3, pp. 21-36.

3.0 Conclusion and Recommendation

In sum, developing an effective leadership in organizations is the most essential, yet the most difficult tasks for organization management. Great leadership is the combinations of individual traits, leading skills and of course the situational contexts. As we have discussed above, effective leadership is require both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. The intrapersonal skills are of paramount important, as it is logical and obvious that success or great leader all start from within. Only with personal inside strong desire to excel, passion, enthusiasm, determination, commitment, faith and effective personal values can a person become a true leader for others. A great leader among the people always starts as a great leader of his own. Then, interpersonal skills come into place, where the ability and skills to network, communicate and interact with the other people come into place. The effective leaders can guide companies through many different channels. Because of this, it is important to know which leadership qualities motivate employees the best. Throughout the analysis and evaluation, there have been many leadership style theories identified. As we have found that, the autocratic leadership style has gone out of fashion in recent years, though certain situations, such as emergencies situations.

Therefore, effective leaders must adjust the leadership style to various situations. In that sense, there is no one leadership style is appropriate for every occasion or situation. The most effective style to use depends upon the situation and whether the group members are willing and able to take on the responsibility. To be effective as a leader, it’s important to know your group in terms of knowledge, ability, desire and willingness, and be ready to adapt your style to suit the dynamic environment. An important task in the coming years will be the training and testing of future leaders.

Further more, organizations have to have a bigger picture of long term success, that is strengthening leadership competencies will improve organizational effectiveness. When subordinates trusted their leaders’ leadership, and they deem it is equitable for them to obtain satisfactory rewards and outcomes when they made the greatest efforts. Therefore, effective leadership leads to a positive motivation and motivated employees will satisfy the customers of the organizations. In a long-term, it will help organization creating or maintaining a sustainable organizational competitive advantage.

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