INTRODUCTION TO ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR (MGT430)

CHAPTER REVIEW

CHAPTER 8: POWER AND LEADERSHIP

PREPARED BY:

FACULTY & PROGRAMME : FACULTY OF ACCOUNTANCY & BACHELOR OF

ACCOUNTANCY

SEMESTER :5

GROUP :A

GROUP MEMBERS :

NAME STUDENT ID

NUR MALIATUL ZAHIRA BINTI MULIADI 2020960385

NURSYAMEERA BINTI ABDULLAH 2020974233

JASMEEN AIMI SYAZWANI BINTI ZALANI 2020982631

NUR KHAIRUNNISA BINTI MOHAMAD ISMAIL 2020984833

DATE OF SUBMISSION
16th JULY 2021
PREPARED FOR:
MADAM NURUL LIZZAN BINTI KAMARUDIN
 TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0 Background of COVID-19 3

2.0 Introduction of Organization 4
3.0 Chapter 8 Subtopic: Power and Influence 5
4.0 Discussion 7
5.0 Conclusion 9
References 10

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1.0 Background of COVID-19

COVID-19 is a kind of disease caused by a new strain of coronavirus. Based on the

scientific consensus, it is from bats or another closely-related mammal. On 9th of January
2020, World Health Organization (WHO) announced that there is a mysterious coronavirus-
related pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Since then, COVID-19 has been spreading out globally. At
first, this disease was referred to as the 2019 novel coronavirus and formerly named “2019-
nCoV”. Subsequently, the virus was called “COVID-19 virus”. This virus will lead to illness to the
human body as well as in animals ranging from cold to horrible diseases that can cause death.
In March 2020, the number of cases started to rapidly increase inside and outside of China
resulting in the outbreak could be characterized as a pandemic. There were at least 118,000
cases reported in 114 countries and 4291 deaths had been reported by those countries.

The symptoms of COVID-19 are similar to the flu. The most common symptoms are
fever and dry cough. Other than that, one will get fatigue, nasal congestion, aches and pains.
The person who is infected by the new coronavirus will also lose sense of smell and taste. The
elderly and people with underlying medical conditions are likely to get easily infected by the
virus. Based on the statistics by some countries, older adults that are more than 55 years old
are more likely to get severely ill from COVID-19 and deaths occur in people over that age.
Young people who have no medical issues can still develop serious infection and need to be
hospitalized. According to WHO, the virus is spread from one person to another through tiny
liquid particles when they speak near each other that is within one meter. There is also evidence
indicating that the virus can last on surfaces at least three days.

To reduce the cases of COVID-19, people are encouraged to wash their hands
frequently especially when they are in public, bring hand sanitizer everywhere they go, wear a
face mask and avoid crowded places. As we are in the state of getting vaccinated, people
should be taking this into serious consideration. Vaccination is safe and effective to prevent
disease hence it could save lives. It reduces the risks of getting infected by working with the
body's natural defenses to build protection. Vaccine is very important as it trains the immune
system to create antibodies and it can kill or weaken the forms of germs like viruses and
bacteria. Thus, everyone should be vaccinated.

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2.0 Introduction of Organization

TOP GLOVE Corporation Bhd

TOP Glove Corporation Bhd is the world's largest gloves manufacturer. It was
established in 1991 and the headquarters is located in Malaysia. Top Glove is a one-stop glove
sourcing center, producing consistently high quality gloves at an efficient, low cost. Tan Sri Dr
Lim Wee Chai, the Executive Chairman and the founder of TOP Glove started as a local
business with one factory and one glove production line with her wife. But today, they have
manufacturing operations in a few countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and China
and recorded 26% of world market share for rubber gloves. Not only that, other than these
countries, their marketing offices are also located in the USA, Germany and Brazil. TOP Glove
has grown steadily for the past 20 years with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.1%
for revenue and 28.2% for profit after tax and it is listed on Malaysian Bourse (2001) and
Mainboard of Singapore exchange (2016).

Now, there are 50 factories, 812 production lines, 195 countries of export, 2000
customers, and the production capacity has reached 100 billion gloves per annum. Market
capitalization of TOP Glove as at 9 July 2021 is RM30.58 billion, the shareholder fund as at 31
May 2021 is RM8.2 billion and the revenue as at 31 May 2021 is RM4.2 billion. Their complete
range of quality gloves enable them to meet the needs of the company’s ever-expanding
customer base. Their glove products cater to the medical profession, surgeons, cleanrooms,
and industrial usage, as well as the food and beauty industry. Top Glove’s products are an
essential item in the healthcare industry, ensuring human safety and helping to save lives. They
are committed to continuous improvement, and are constantly looking for ways to improve their
products and keep them cost effective.

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3.0 Chapter 8 Subtopic: Power and Influence

Leadership is the act of motivating, influencing and enabling others to contribute towards
the effectiveness and success of the organization of which they are members. There are two
components in the stated definition which is that leaders motivate others through persuasion
and
other influence tactics. Next, leaders act as enablers. They allocate resources, adjust work
relationships, reduce external disruptions and change the work environment to ease the
employees to achieve the organization's vision and mission. Most leadership concepts can be
classified into four perspectives which are transformational, managerial, implicit and personal
attributes. Transformational leadership is viewed as a change agent. They move the
organization or work unit in a new direction that will provide better opportunities and alignment
with the external environment.

Transformational leaders create, communicate and model a shared vision to the team or
organization. They encourage experimentation so employees find a better path to the future.
Leaders also engage in managerial leadership, which involves daily activities that support and
guide the performance and well-being of individual employees and the work unit toward current
objectives and practices. There are two types of cluster of leadership behaviour. The first cluster
is called task-oriented leadership which includes behaviours such as assigning employees to
specific tasks, setting goals and deadlines, and clarifying work duties and procedures. The other
clusters represent people-oriented leadership which includes behaviours such as listening to
employees’ ideas, creating a physical work environment, showing interest in staff and
appreciating employees for their contributions. When leaders apply a high level of people-
oriented leadership behaviour, their employees tend to have more positive attitudes. When
leaders apply task-oriented leadership behaviours, their employees tend to have higher job
performance.

Next, implicit leadership theory explains that followers’ perceptions also play a role in a
leader’s effectiveness. The implicit leadership perspective has two components which includes
leader prototypes and the romance of leadership. Lastly, the main leadership attributes in
personal attributes perspectives are personality, self-concept, leadership motivation, drive,
integrity, knowledge of the business, cognitive and practical intelligence and emotional
intelligence. These leaders gain their power from various bases which may come from their
position or informal role and may also come from their own characteristics.

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 The bases are legitimate power, coercive power, reward power, expert power, and
referent power. Legitimate power is one of the powers that come from someone’s position. It is
when an organization appoints an authority to make decisions on behalf of the organization. For
example, a manager has the power to reward or punish an employee because he has the
legitimate right to do so as it is part of his job description. Another power is reward power which
refers to the ability of a person to control the rewards for employees like wages, bonuses,
vacation leaves, and work assignments. However, employees also have reward power on their
bosses because they are able to give feedback and ratings to them and unfavourable feedback
may jeopardize the boss’s power and position. Next is coercive power where it is the opposite of
reward power. While reward power gives bosses the right to control rewards, coercive power
gives bosses the ability to apply punishment.

The punishments are meant to control employee’s behaviour and performance in order
to set them straight and according to the company's policy and goals. On the other hand is
expert power which is one of the powers earned from a person’s characteristics. Expert power
exists when someone’s knowledge or skills become so valuable that they are able to exert
influence on others. In simpler words, expert power is when someone is viewed as a genius for
their incredible knowledge or skills and people will follow them because they just assume that
geniuses are the best at what they do. Other than that, referent power is also another type of
power that comes from someone’s characteristics. This power depends on someone’s
interpersonal skills as they become in power by charming others around them.

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4.0 Discussion

Effective leaders do not just view themselves as leaders but they also motivate others.
Before the pandemic the production capacity of top gloves was about 85% only but due to high
demand during this pandemic their production capacity has increased to 100%. Therefore, in
order to ensure the smoothness of the production, the action from the leader is very essential to
encourage the employees to achieve the current organizational goal. In this matter
transformational leadership is applied to reflect the current situation in our country. The leader is
responsible to communicate the vision to the employees and the effectiveness of the strategic
vision depends on how they convey it.

A good leader understands that change is not possible through the work of just one
individual but it needs the cooperation from all the team as well which include ideas, innovation
and perceptions. Although this type of leadership is valuable, it has a few flaws. For instance,
some transformational leadership models and measures suffer from circular logic. They define
and measure it by its effects on employees and then classify that effect as an outcome of
leadership. We can relate it with the case of Top Glove management, in order for the company
to achieve the 100% production capacity, they need the employees to work for a long time.In
the end, the employees will be tired and dissatisfied because they will feel that they are taken
advantage of by the company for the purpose of achieving the company’s goal.

As we can see in Top Glove management, they are using coercive power to handle their
employees. Coercive power is the ability of the manager to force an employee to follow an order
by threatening them with punishment which include threats of write-ups, demotions, pay cuts,
layoffs, and terminations if employees do not follow orders. Top Glove has been accused of
mistreating their employees, allegedly subjecting migrant workers to forced labour, forced
overtime, debt bondage, withheld wages and passport confiscation. The actions taken by the
company on the issue are Top Glove has implemented a zero cost recruitment policy and
making remediation payment to its migrant workers, after the completion of verification by an
international independent consultant.

Besides, in the month of November 2020, Senior Minister of Security Ismail Sabri
Yaakob has announced that Top Glove is the biggest contributor to the country’s COVID-19
cases with a total of 2684 cases latest on 25 November 2020. In March 2021, the cases among
factory workers which are linked to Top Glove had risen to 7198. It is known as Teratai cluster in

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Selangor. The government has put in place a strict movement controls and ordered Top Glove,
to shut their factories in stages after most of the employees tested positive for Covid-19.Datuk
Seri Ismail Sabri announced that this action to allow factory workers to undergo screening and
mandatory quarantine in an effort to contain the spread of the virus among the employees. Top
Glove in a statement said they will fully cooperate with the authorities from the Ministry of Health
to carry out temporarily stopped production in 16 facilities in Meru while the remaining 12
facilities are operating at much reduced capacities. As Warren Bennis said “ managers are
people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right things.” A successful leader
not only concerned with the organization but also the society. The actions taken to temporarily
stop their production are good in order to reduce the spread of the virus among the workers and
the society. The management is implementing a critical thinking action, as they want to take
care of employees' health and safety. Plus, it is the way to stop the chains of the virus of
COVID-19 as well. Thus, this indicates a meaning that the more the company repeats a real
initiative, the more logical it becomes, but if the management never begins, it will never become
a habit.

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5.0 Conclusion

In conclusion, it is really important for each and every company, especially Top Glove, to
take proactive action in solving the issues or problems such as resistance to change and
temporary stoppage in their company. It is crucial to understand that change and success is a
continuous thing. The company cannot just do one thing, make one effort to try, and call it a
day. New moves that initially require a lot of effort will eventually turn into the usual behavioural
patterns. The hardest part of taking action to change is actually getting started.

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References

1. Tyler Sturdivant, DNP (2021). How transformational leaders address fear amid COVID-
19.https://www.myamericannurse.com/covid-19-leadership-transformational-leadership/
2. Daisy Mui Hung Kee, Jia Yee Lee, Yue Si Lee, Poh Lian Lim, Yi Min Loh, Yhixuan Hoe
(2021). How Top Glove Becomes the Largest Glove Producer.
http://www.ejournal.aibpm.org/index.php/JCDA/article/view/1077

3. Justin Lim ( 2020).Top Glove chairman on strategy and tackling challenges as company
post record profit. https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/top-glove-chairman-strategy-
tackling-challenges-company-post-record-profit
4. Julie Zaugg ( 2020). The world's top suppliers of disposable gloves are thriving because
of the pandemic. Their workers aren't.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/11/business/malaysia-top-glove-forced-labor-dst-intl-
hnk/index.html
5. Anu Raghunathan (2021). Malaysia’s Rubber Glove Tycoons Ride Skyrocketing Demand
For Protective Gear.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anuraghunathan/2021/06/02/malaysias-rubber-glove-
tycoons-ride-skyrocketing-demand-for-protective-gear/?sh=3bf85583411e

6. https://www.topglove.com/corporate-profile/

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