Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Course Work on
HR MANAGEMENT
CONTENTS
1.INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................3 2.TRAITS OF EFFECTIVE LEADERS:.................................................................................4 2.1 Dominance...................................................................................................................4 2.2 High Energy ................................................................................................................5 2.3 Self Confidence............................................................................................................5 2.4 Stability........................................................................................................................5 2.5 Intelligence...................................................................................................................5 3.LEADERSHIP STYLES........................................................................................................6 3.1 Aversive leadership .....................................................................................................6 3.2 Directive leadership .....................................................................................................6 3.3 Transactional leadership...............................................................................................6 3.4 Transformational leadership.........................................................................................7 3.5 Empowering Leadership...............................................................................................7 4.LEADERSHIP STYLES- OTHERS......................................................................................8 4.1 Autocratic Leadership..................................................................................................8 4.2 Bureaucratic Leadership...............................................................................................8 4.3 Democratic leadership..................................................................................................9 5.TBD1( find heading for this ??).............................................................................................9 6.INTERNAL & EXTERNAL FACTORS............................................................................10 7.CONCLUSION & RECOMMENDATIONS......................................................................13 8.BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................14
1.
INTRODUCTION
The case study explores the growth and expansion of News Corporation Limited (News Corp.) under Rupert Murdoch. This case talks about how Murdoch, who is famous as the Media King, expanded his business through a series of acquisitions. Beginning from 1952 when he inherited Adelaide News in Australia, till 2003 he had fully established himself in technology, entertainment, publishing and newspaper industries. News Corp. has operations spread across United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Asia and Pacific Basin (Subhadra, Bhatia & Dutta, 2004). The company became leaders in the newspaper in Britain, New Zealand and Australia by publishing around 40 million papers a week. It owned around 175 newspaper titles in 3 continents. (Subhadra, Bhatia & Dutta, 2004). But that is not all for News Corporation; by 2002, Murdoch had established an empire that is well accepted in the media industry and covering 52 countries with 780 businesses. A lot has been written and analyzed on how Rupert Murdoch managed to create such an empire. Many experts criticize his actions to acquire businesses, his ability to be able to catch opportunities and his matchless speed to make change and adapt it. Critics examine his management abilities and question whether he made a good leader or not. This paper aims at defining leadership and exploring various styles of leadership. It deals with HR concepts of managing people and applying them onto the case study in order to chalk out a detailed analysis of the management approach taken within the company. Also a thorough application of leadership concepts to the case study will help in understanding Murdochs leadership style in Murdoch group. There are many definitions on leadership as it is impossible to pin the concept of leadership to one single universal definition. This is mainly because leadership is a complex subject and because leadership is studied in different ways that requires different definitions. (Lussier and Achua, 2007) The well known management guru, Peter Drucker, emphasizes the importance of the leadership by saying that above everything else, the performance of the managerial leadership determines the success and failure of an organization (Zahra 2003). Poor leadership leads to failure while good leadership leads towards success (Zahra 2003).
Leadership has also been defined as the influencing process of leaders to achieve organizational objectives through change (Lussier and Achua, 2007). A lot has also been argued on whether leaders are made or born. It is a debate equal to the chicken and egg debate. Who came first, chicken or the egg? Bottom line is, there is no final solution to such arguments. Effective leaders not entirely born or made, they are born with leadership qualities that are further developed. Renowned football coach Vince Lombardi was quoted to have said, Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born, leaders are made, and they are made with the effort and hard work (Conger, 2004). While Murdoch had an advantage of a personality that possessed many leadership qualities, his skills developed by learning from the mistakes that he made. He learnt from his bad experiences and made himself into a better leader. Many experts have made an attempt to list down the characteristics and personality traits that make leaders. However, it is impossible to confirm the traits in definitive measure and expect all the leaders to have the same traits. Hence, while it cant be said that leaders have certain personality traits, experts can say that certain personality traits are most like to be found in the leaders. While researchers do not agree on only one list of traits to effective leaders, they do believe that trait theory has some universality to it (Seo, Barrett & Bartunek, 2004).
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2.4 Stability
Researchers show that influential leaders have a good understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses. They work towards their self improvement rather than acting self defensive (Ashkanasy & Duas, 2002). According to the case study, analysts had attributed Rupert Murdochs success to his ability to learn from his mistakes. The fact that he could learn from his mistakes and not be defensive shows stability in his personality.
2.5 Intelligence
Last but not the least is intelligence that influential leaders demonstrate. By intelligence, researchers refer to the ability to be able to think clear, be a problem solver and a decision maker (Lussier & Achua, 2007). People who do not make good leaders do not think clear, sway their decisions due to doubts and like to resolve problems through other people. If referred from the case, many times Rupert Murdoch made took up opportunities that people would not have yet recognized and his speed to innovate and grow was much more than average leaders which made it impossible for them to match. One of the many reasons for Murdoch to be an effective leader was his intelligence.
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3.
LEADERSHIP STYLES
Many researchers have come up with different theories on leadership styles. Pearce took up this gigantic work and analyzed the works and narrowed down five leadership styles. His work was also influenced by Bass, 1987 and Yukl, 1987.
A leader cannot be said to adopt only one kind of leadership style. Different situations require different set of approaches in order to gain the maximum out of any such situation. This is called situational leadership by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey. For effective leadership, analyzing the situation and then adopting the leadership style accordingly is situational leadership. Murdochs style of leadership changed depending on the situations and environment of the organization. The environment is specifically mentioned keeping in minds that while acquiring companies in a new country would still have traces of its own organizational culture.
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Rupert Murdoch was quick at bringing a change and innovating. He believed in seizing opportunities and making quick decisions. Murdoch was not the man to wait and ask his followers the opinion before introducing a decision within the organization. Murdoch didnt use empowering approach but has mostly been Directive leader. Others are autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic styles of leadership.
4.
in something new is less or not there within the bureaucratic leadership style. Murdoch does not fall under the category of bureaucratic leadership as he didnt work by set of rules rather innovation was his key success. The workers under such leaders are usually bored as it is not challenging, tends to be repetitive and chances to innovate and bring in new this is less or not there as that would require changing the established way of carrying out tasks.
5.
strategic tool and can help in the development of the sustainable competitive advantage . Various studies have concluded that an organizations human resource- that is its peoplecan be a significant source of competitive advantage. Studies have looked at the link between HRM policies and practices and organizational performance have found that certain HRM policies and practices have a positive impact on performance. One of the studies has reported that if an average company implemented these work practices, it was estimated to expect annually (per employee) $27044 more in sales, $3814 more in profits and $8641 in market value (Huselid, 1995). High performance work practices within an organization leads to both, high individual and high organizational performances.
6.
In 1984, five Harvard students developed an analytical map of Human Resources Management that was referred in the latter years as the The Harvard Map. This theory was coined so to comprehensively explain the relationship between organizational performance and human resource policies. According to the Harvard Map, human resources can be influenced by two major factors which are the stake holders interests and situational factors. Stakeholders interests include the shareholders, management, employee groups, government, unions and the community. Situational factors can be both, internal and external. These external factors can influence the choices of human resource policy and stakeholder interests. Management, business strategy, business conditions, unions, labour markets, technology, laws, and societal values are all such factors (Beer et al, 1984)
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Based on this, Harvard Map concludes that an organization will make HR policy decisions on the extent of the employee influence. It is meant whether the employees have a participative or autocratic decision making style (Beer et al. 1984). The HR of an organization will also make policy decisions, keeping in mind the retention and turnover rate of the employees and also keeping in view the reward system. If, with these factors in view, the HR policies are made, the outcome would be that the degree of commitment shown by the employees will increase, the overall competence of the employees will rise, the difference between the goals of the employees and the goals of the organization would diminish and the gap would bridge. Hence, the Harvard Map helps in providing an analytical framework to consider multiple interacting factors. This model reminds how bringing a change in one can lead to alterations in the other factors of the framework (Bartol et al. 1984). Situational factors, both internal and external to the organization, can influence choices about human resource policy and stakeholder interests. There can be many factors such as the characteristics of the workforce, business strategies, business conditions, management philosophy, the labor market, labor unions, technology, laws and societal values (Bartol et al 2005). A labor union is a representative of the workers that works for the interests of the workers through collective bargaining. Within the union dominated organizations, many key personnel decisions such as hiring criteria, promotions, terminations, etc. It is important for the managers to keep a good labor-management relationship in organizations with dominant labor union (Robbins & Coulter, 2006). Another most vital external influence whose impact is negligible is the governmental laws. Rupert Murdoch was quick at adapting laws of different foreign countries that he ventured into as he was wise enough to anticipate that by doing so can lead to a negative impact on his business. He even accepted short term losses to ensure market safety and to remain on the governments good books. In human resources management, the employees which are sent from the head office to work in another branch in a foreign country are known as the expatriates (Lussier & Achua, 2007). Rupert Murdoch had the strategy to buy new companies and employ his own managers from the News Corporation. However, these managers when sent as expatriates need help in adjusting within the new culture, new environment and new people. Related
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HR policies to facilitate the expats and to safeguard their rights should be implemented. The case gives out no information on such policies. For an organization as diverse and vast as News Corporation, thorough human resources management is required which keeps the business around the world in sync. Vast and clear communication between all the offices and the main HR department needs to take place in order to create harmony amongst the organization. Rupert Murdoch would have to change his authoritative and aversive style of leadership and take a softer approach so that the employees are given the rights to exercise simple decision making. This would help in boosting up their morale and will increase loyalty towards the organization. This will help him in retaining his employees and reduce the turnover rate. Also, a happy workforce would mean better reputation of News Corporation. One thing that the case study constantly emphasize on is that change is one of the key ingredients, that has resulted in the success of News Corp. Rupert believes in innovating constantly within the company. Murdoch possesses the style of acquiring companies and then changing them to sync with the organizational culture of News Corp. Change is not easy to implement. When companies are taken over, there is a lot of
uncertainty that spreads amongst the employees of the company. Workers become apprehensive. Will I be terminated? Will my JD change? Will my authorities be limited now? In order to eliminate all such doubts from the minds of the employees and in order to help them mold in the new organizational culture there is essential need of trainings. Hr trainings are meant to help mold the minds of the employees by helping them remove any doubts and helping them to adjust. Trainings are also useful from the managements point of view as it is easy to measure employees performances and determine the mindsets. Not all employees are able to accept change. Some would keep their minds block towards anything that they are not comfortable to adopt. Such people need harder work to be done on them and in extreme cases, terminated. (Bartol et al. 2005). However, leaders or CEOs find the concept of the link between business performance and trainings a difficult thing to grasp (Caudron, 2000). The rationale behind trainings can be summed up in three approaches as Proactive, Reactive and Enhancement approach. Proactive approach is used when trainings are done keeping in mind the long term goals of the company. Reactive approach is used when there is a need to
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address certain issues within a company and if not acted upon can negatively affect performance (Clarke, 1992). The third approach is used to help enhance employee motivation, employee commitment and employee retention (Clarke, 1992). These three approaches can be used easily within the News Corporation.
7.
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8.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) Bartol, K, Tein, M, Matthews, G & Martin, D (2003) Management: A Pacific Rim
Focus,
2) Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence P.R., Quinn-Mills, D. And Walton, R.G. (1984),
Pearson/Prentice Hall.
8)
Hatch, M. J. & Cunliffe, A. L. (2006) Organization theory. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
9) Huselid, M.A., Beatty, R.W., & Becker, B.E. (2005) "A Players" or "A Positions"? The
Strategic Logic of Workforce Management (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition). Harvard Business Review. 10) Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created "social climates." Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 271-299.
11) Lussier, R & Achua, C (2007) Effective Leadership, 3rd edn, Cengage Learning, New
Delhi.
12) Manz, C. C. & Sims, H. P. j. (2001) The New SuperLeadership. San Francisco: Berrett-
Koehler.
13) Pearce, C. L., Sims, H. P. & Smith, A. K. (2003) Transactors, transformers and beyond:
A multi-method development of a theoretical typology of leadership, Journal of Management Development, 22 (4), pp. 273-307.
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Human Resource Management 14) Robbins, S & Coulter S (2003) Management, Prentice Hall Company, NJ 15) Robbins, S. P. (2005) Organizational behavior 11th edn. Prentice Hall Company, NJ
16) Weber, Max (1905). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings. New York: Penguin Group
17) Yukl, G. (2010) Leadership in organizations 7th edn. New Jersey: Pearson Education. 18) Zahra, S (2003) The Practice of Management: Reflections on Peter Druckers Landmark Book, Academy of Management Executive 13: 29-36.
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