Leadership Styles Of Laissez Faire

Tata Steel completed its £6.2 billion (US$12 billion) acquisition of Corus Group at a price of 608 pence per ordinary share in cash on 2 April 2007.The first set of financial results for Corus since becoming a subsidiary of Tata Steel were for the 15 months ending 31st March 2008.

Consolidated Financial Highlights 2007-08*

(1) How would you describe the Leadership and the leadership style of the company and its relationship with the leadership theories that you are familiar with.

Leadership

Every company has president, board chairman or leader. For the most ways we agree that someone individually needs to head our businesses and social institutions. The leader of any organization expectedly completes his role which is given by communicating the values of the organization he or she represents. Simply we can define leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.

Laissez-faire

Laissez-Faire Leadership style is known “hands – off” style where managers provides a very little or no directions and maximum freedom is given to staff. All authority given to the staff and they determine goals, resolve problems also makes decisions on their own. The effective use of this style is when staff is highly skilled experienced and educated. Staff have capacity to the work done successfully by their own and also when the staff is trustworthy and fully competent to perform tasks. This style should not be used in the absence of manager when staff feels insecurity, also managers unable to thank staff for their good work which has been done by team members. This approach of Leadership is being used in Corus Company.

In Corus since 1950s lots of manufacturing techniques on quality based has been developed. “Kaizen” is one of those and its Japanese for continues improvement. The main focus of Kaizen is to make continues improvement and CI takes any company towards lean production system. In lean Production system Waste is minimized, flow of work is smooth and total focus of business is on customer needs. Lean system is basically less recourses used efficiently. Where increase in production makes organization profitable. By Continuous Improvement system Corus helps to eliminate waste in various key areas. One aspect is Lean Production which helps to save costs of stock which is the Just in Time (JIT) principle. Just in time means supply of the good at the same time when these are needed. With the help of JIT a minimum stock is kept and maximum finished products to meet demand of customer. It requires well organized system. This system carries risks as well if suppliers fail to supply then organization less able to meet the requirements of customer. Continuous improvement influences the whole employee’s effectiveness towards the customer needs. By this way employees need to adopt the continuous improvement principal which starts with senior management. Under the leadership of senior management CI works through the whole organization. In this system strong communication skills are important among the departments. Corus carries out regular presentations to let the employees know that how CI is improving business. CI also uses written communication. Everyone is the part to play with continuous improvement. Corus employees contribute ideas for improving their working practices under the supervision of various CI groups. And every person knows very well how to make improvements. Empowerment is given to employees and manager’s help towards employees gives them the job satisfaction. Corus enjoys the benefits of becoming more profitable organization by reducing the cost, and securing high value orders and time saving operations. Continuous Improvement not only makes Corus more efficient but also provides many benefits to its external stakeholders.

(2) In evaluating organisation culture, how would you describe the cultural philosophy of the organisation, its implication on the workforce and the organisation performances?

Organizational culture refers to the underlining values, believes and principles, that serve as a foundation for the management system, management practices, and their behavior (Brown, 1995). Organizational culture deeply rooted into the structure and members of the organization. We can say organizational culture (generally) provides a framework or track for the organization to run smoothly to success and, if effective, provides its employees an opportunity to develop themselves, depending on the employee’s personal ambitions.

Culture is the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs, and attitudes that constitutes a pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation.

Culture could also be defined as the collective self-image and styles of an organisation; its shared values and beliefs, norms and symbols (“The way we do things around here”)

The impact of organizational culture on workforce and organizational performance varied depends upon whether the organization has a culture strong or weak but there are some general things that apply on it many of the workers are spending more and more time at workplace which totally depends on the job. It is a common phenomenon that a happy worker is pretty productive and this is one of the good impacts on the organization’s performance. A strong organization always focuses on the environment it creates should be encourage able, efficient and productive for employees which shows importance of the employees in the organization. Such things generally have best response from its employees and also good for them to achieve goals. “We aim to balance the needs of our stakeholders by incorporating the principles of sustainability into all aspects of our business”. Performance culture of Corus is based on four pillars and the aim of Corus is about the work of employees together for achieving the business goals. The responsibility of each and every employee is corporate by giving the full support from bottom to top in accordance with the performance culture. Aspirational targets are where Corus challenges to understand the boundaries, set ambitions, and value added growth to delight customers by giving them maximum value together and to set the benchmark for the best performance. Corus keeps in mind safe workplace high ethical standards, communities, prevent harmful injuries and respects environment culture for the safety and social responsibility. Continuous improvement system is the uniformity of employees management system towards the best performance through teamwork to make organization profitable. Its motivation, coaching individual, develop talent and empowering the employees. Openness and transparency is about trust, spirit and cooperation throughout teamwork at all levels in any group of organization. This encourages database communication respect decisions and each other and inspires peace, passion and pride among the employees.