Discussion Board Five

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 Part I

Nike is among the leading athletic footwear, apparel and equipment industry in the world.

Nike Inc. corporate structure supports and facilitates regionalization of business strategies. As a

result of its unique corporate structure, Nike enjoys the flexibility to engage customers and

address their unique preferences in regional markets. Nike utilizes the company owned

NikeTown stores to address its varying customer’s preferences. The company’s structural and

strategic alignment has seen Nike easily penetrate regional markets across the globe. Over the

years, Nike has used its unique organizational structure and culture to combat competition from

Puma, Adidas and Under Armour among other organizations. Nike’s corporate structure would

benefit from a thought leadership strategy because of its compatibility with this particular

leadership strategy. Thought leadership strategy is one in which leaders are determined to earn

attention buy publicly displaying useful knowledge (Merrilees et al, 2013). This leadership

strategy is often characterized by proactive outreach and public relations, local involvement,

speaking engagements, content creation and a high social media influence. Unlike other

organizations, Nike’s structural features such as the regional approach and NikeTown stores

make it possible to incorporate though leadership strategy. Also, Nike’s strong social media

influence makes it compatible with thought leadership strategy. Though leadership entails

creating new content, an aspect that has stopped Nike from undertaking this approach. As an

apparel and footwear company, constantly creating new content would be challenge. Also,

considering the scale of the company and the customer base, it would be absurd to pursue

thought leadership.
 Part II

An organization or corporate structure is a crucial aspect in determining the failure or

success of a company. In this connection, incorporating the right mix of organizational culture is

critical towards supporting the development of thought leadership. As depicted earlier, Nike is

among one of the organizations that could enormously benefit from its corporate structure due to

its unique features such as its regional approach and NikeTown stores among others. However,

the company has not been in a position to pursue this approach due to various reasons such as the

pressure of constantly creating new content and the scale of its operations. In this connection,

Nike can utilize different leadership models to align the organization culture thus making it

possible to adopt and incorporate thought leadership.

Great leadership is characterized by the ability to inspire and influence others towards

meeting a common goal. Leaders in an organization should drive employees towards greater

performances. To get the culture headed in the right direction, Nike should introduce training

session for its employees. Training indicates that leaders are concerned about their employees to

want to include them in. Through inclusion and training employees will learn fundamental

aspects regarding though leadership, its role and how it can be successfully incorporated into the

organization. Guay (2013), denotes that training and inclusion are key in introducing a new

strategy in an organization. This is so because employees are naturally resistant to change. For

that reason, when employees feel they have not be included, they are most likely to be against

the proposed change. However, where employees are included and trained they often feel

recognized and are less likely to resist. As such, leaders at Nike Inc. should consider training

their employees on thought leadership strategy.

 References

Guay, R. P. (2013). The relationship between leader fit and transformational leadership. Journal

of Managerial Psychology.

Merrilees, B., Wallace, E., Buil, I., de Chernatony, L., & Guest, D. (2013). Introduction: thought

leadership in brand management.