By: Ryan Christophe Babida, Pranay Kejriwal, Jay Miyazato, and Shelly
Zeng
At the head of any
business or corporation, the executive(s) must guide his or her workers for the
future scope for that corporation. Efficiency and profit maximization can be
achieved depending on how these executives lead their employees. Thus, we can
safely say that leadership is a very important aspect when it comes to a
company’s success. We will analyze and compare two different types of
leadership: directive and participative leadership. Directive leadership
involves a hierarchical approach, where the chief executive has the most
control over his subordinates. This form of leadership is great for workers who
are inexperienced, as the higher ups of a business will be more knowledgeable.
Participative leadership on the other hand features a more collaborative
approach, where bottom-ups may present input to the executives.
Jeff Bezos, the leader,
founder, and CEO of Amazon, seems to be following a rather directive approach
when it comes to leadership and decision-making. Bezos seems to be the one
issuing the orders for various departments. He has a high-level of involvement
with his employees. Not everything is left to the experts. Be it a marketing
strategy, a new product design or acquiring a new company, Bezos seems to be
spearheading it all. [i]
This may eventually make him fall prey to the so called “leadership traps” of
control, consistency and competence but seems to be working just fine at the
moment. Amazon is showing steady growth. His leadership style can be
characterized as shrewd yet effective.
McDonald’s
is one of world‘s largest chain of fast food restaurants. McDonald’s is run by
participative leadership, in which all members of a team work together to
achieve a common goal. In this case, the leaders and CEO of McDonald’s make
decisions as a whole to make the corporation bigger and better. The corporation
has remained one of the highest ranked in the fast food industry by
implementing programs and strategies for human resources and leadership. In the
article, the author talks about how McDonald’s makes strong corporate efforts
in developing leaders within the corporation. [ii]
McDonald’s gives many job and training opportunities for employees to develop
their leadership skills and apply it in their job position. With this we can
conclude that McDonald’s is a successful corporation because of its focus on
participative leadership.
Apple
also uses participative leadership by approaching innovation with a
collaborative philosophy. The shift from Steve Jobs to the new CEO Tim Cook was
rough for many Apple fans because their different philosophies regarding
leadership. [iii]
According to the article, “Tim Cook's Leadership
Determines Whether Apple Hits $100 or $1,000 Next”, Arora explains that Apple
may drift to a more participative, decision-by-committee environment. With Steve Jobs, Apple
had a more authoritative, direct leadership. With the current CEO, Tim Cook,
Apple uses a much more participative, collaborative approach. Managers within
Apple would rely on shared decision making and use different branches of the
companies in charge of a part of a large-scaled project. An example is with the
new iPhone as Apple makes different departments of the company fully in charge
of the new iOS7 and another department fully responsible for the design of the
product. [iv]Although
changes with leadership style within a small period of time can bring failure,
Apple is still able to innovate with new products and is more importantly,
still a successful “tech-giant” that many companies hope to follow.
Given these two methods of
leadership, we conclude with our findings that neither method is particularly
more superior than the other. Instead, the success of a business seems highly
dependent on the innovative quality of its ideas rather than how the business
is led. Both methods are not perfect by any means, but they both have their own
unique strengths.
[i] An example of Directive Leadership. Amazon's Jeff Bezos: The ultimate disrupter, by Adam Lashinsky I 5:00 November 16, 2012
[ii]
Observation of
Leadership and Organizational Behavior at McDonald’s, by Eric Goldman, Tiago
Santos and Sara Tully l 9:00 November 09, 2008,
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