ORGANISATIONAL MANAGEMENT MAN 340 Adnan Hadziibrahimovic, International University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo March 28, 2012

1. Take an organization with which you are familiar and show how the leader has influenced the organization. To what extent is the leader reflecting the wishes of the members? And to what extent is the leader attempting to move the organization into new areas that will stretch the people in the organization? Does an organization need to balance these two aspects of leadership? If so, how? The company that I chose was Netflix. Reed Hastings the influence this leader had was he took a video store which by mail physically mailed DVDs to consumers in the early 21st century and transformed it into a business known as Netflix which allows consumers to stream new releases over the internet. This leader faced fierce competition from Blockbuster because Blockbuster had numerous stores in which consumers could rent video games or movies. He decided to first create storage areas where they would be dispersed for sending and receiving mail orders concerning video games and DVDs. He moved the organization into a new era by using the internet service and streaming as a way of offering service and exploiting the market. It helped reduce his costs tremendously. The leader is making the work easy and more profitable by using the internet instead of physical labor. The leader also needs to express dominance and by being dominant it will influence the people to stretch just as Henry Ford did with the assembly line. The organization needs to balance this but dominance from the leader is necessary.

2. Analyze the leadership of the Daimler Company from the perspective of contingency theory. Does such a theory provide an adequate explanation for the major changes in strategy described in the case? From the Daimler Company perspective the contingency theory worked best for their actions because as each leader decided to experiment another one followed to pick up the company from the downfall. Edzard Reuter when he was the leader he invested in many options but he also invested in military defenses. It proved to be a failure because the Cold War ended and it resulted in unproductively producing military weapons which werent going to be used. Under Jurgen Schremp was the result of branching out and focusing on multi markets which resulted in failure also until Dieter Zetsche came and 1

focused on the car and automotive companies by primarily focusing on German operations he in return made the company profitable again.

3. How does organizational culture link with the leadership of an organization? Give examples to support your view? Organizational culture is the set of beliefs values and learned ways of managing of an organization. The culture derives from the past present and current status also regarding technology and physical resources from the aims objectives and values who work in an organization. The example that I will give from the book is The Ford Motor Company still recalled the battles that they had which influenced in becoming the story of Ford.

4. Using the evidence from the Xerox case, identify the leadership style of Anne Mulcahy. Use this analysis to explore how she went on to alter the culture of the company. Leadership style of Anne Mulachy used was shared vision approach. She was fortunate that she knew her colleagues at Xerox well and she wanted to promote from within where possible. She said that I want to make sure someone feels ownership for every change initiative we have in place. She also said that we had a lot of smart articulate people-good presenters and good team players. The whole organization was involved in developing the purpose and strategy.

5. Using the Ford Motor Company as an example, explain how each of the three main leaders Alex Trotman, Jacques Nasser and Bill Ford influenced the strategic direction of the company. To what extent did they also influence the organizational culture of the company? Or did it stay much the same over the whole period? When it came to direction of the Ford Company Alex Trotman wanted to unify Ford and create major economies of scale and he turened to globalisation as a source of income by negotiating car components which would have an impact on cost savings. He wanted to develop Ford 2000 which was a fully integrated global company. His mission was to cut costs and increase savings. Jacques Nasser came with a proposition of increasing the supply of different vehicles as well as acquisition of the other motor companies such as Jauguar, Volvo and the development of Lincoln. Time was waster more and a lot of money was lost in the development of new cars, SUVs for these brands which backfired for the leader at that time. Sir Nick Scheele and Bill Ford were responsible for cutting 2

down factory plants and cutting employees. Their man intention was to reduce costs even further and they had problems regarding the different lawsuits that they faced but their strategy was to cut costs. The problem that these leaders had regarding Ford was a lack of a solid management infrastructure. The problem also that Ford faced after acquiring the different automotive brands was international problems and increase in costs which they had to always reduce. Ford wanted to change the organizational culture and it did but it faced consequences such as the two year loss (2002, 2001) and the main one of losing the first position of the largest car company to Toyota. The person who made significant changes was Jacques Nasser.