In today’s business world, whether the leadership styles are appropriate to the company or not will directly influence staff’s working passion and efficiency. The investigation shows that the major reason of 20% staff’s demission is that they think their leaders have a negative effect on their career. As a MBA student, it is very important for to understand the connotation of leadership theories and management approach, so I gathered some information about this field. The most impressive model for me are transactional and transformational leadership, so I want to take these theories from Mullins and Christy (2014) as an example in this blog.  

According to Yukl (2008), the excellent leaders should know how to encourage their staff. They can understand their responsibility of inspiring their employees. Likewise, except for encouraging their employees, leaders should care about staff’s difficulties and demands and give them some support when they are in trouble. In daily life, the leader has multiple identities, such as a boss, superior, manager, colleague, friend, even the family member to his or her employees. Moreover, as a leading role, leaders may guide employees’ thoughts and behaviors, therefore they should keep a elegant manner to be a moral model for their employees. (Rubin, 2013). 

When it comes to encourage employees, Transactional leadership occurs in my mind. transactional leadership can be usually understood as a process of trading or exchanging costs to profits in many previous studies. In some specific situation, the leader will clarify working roles, missions and requirements to employees and award their achievement in order to guide and motivate subordinates to achieve the goals, which is a process of mutual satisfaction. It can be characterized by the following three points. (1) It means leaders tell their subordinates what they want and what they hope from their subordinates. If the subordinates can meet the demands of their leaders, they can get relative rewards in return. (2) It is based on the authority and legitimacy of the organizational management and completely depends on the organizational rewards to affect subordinates’ performance. (3) It emphasizes working standards, task assignment and task-oriented goals and is inclined to attach importance to task fulfillment and subordinates’ compliance. It can be inferred that transformational is superior to transactional leadership according to the characteristics of transactionalleadership. The behavior of transformational leaders is a process of delivering thoughts and moral values to their and subordinatesmotivating them. The leaders pay attention to the interests and development of each subordinate. They help their subordinates deal with old problems from a new perspective and change the subordinates’ understanding of existing problems. It can motivate and encourage their followers to make more efforts to achieve collective goals.  

Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, is a typical transformational leader who have a global awareness and a long-term version. He regard staff welfare as the most important matter. He provided autonomy and the rights of making decision for his employees during their working time. His leadership style focuses on a long-term objective and encourages his employees to use and create their new competence, which can change or adjust the whole organizational system and create a better atmosphere for achieving expected goals.

Speaking of my leadership brand, it can be defined as a democratic leader who focuses on not only the development of the company, but also employee’s requirements. He has the authority to directly order his or her subordinates and also give them space to express their ideas and innovate new plans.   

It was a great experience and pleasure for me to be selected as a team leader for twice during studying in a Coventry University London Campus. Our lecturer organized several surveys to analyzing personal strengths and areas which should be developed. I invited three participants to evaluate my performance of being a leader in our team. In summary, three participants have expressed that I can be a good cooperator who is punctual, creative and thoughtful. The evaluations from my partner are listed as follows: 

Team member 1 (Crystal): Crystal thinks that I’m a punctual and very organized person. For instance, I was the first one to attend the class in the first class activity which indicates that I have a good skill of managing time. In addition, Crystal thinks that I should have more communication to our tutor.

Team member 2 (Andrea): Andrea described that he appreciate my creativity. I created a WhatsApp  chat group which is conducive for the member to communicate in a rapid way.

Team member 3 (Kalvin): Kalvin likes my thoughtfulness because I can care about every partner’s character then make plans.  

In the future, I will pay attention to improve my communicative skills because sometime I may be shy. But as a good leader, this skill is an essential part in management. Besides, I will give more encouragement to my partners to motive them and build a harmonious atmosphere for creating new ideas. I know there’s a long way for me to promote myself, and many shortcomings are waiting for me to overcome. I will make more efforts for being a better manager and transformational leader in the future.

Reference 

• Mullins, L & Christy, G 2010, Management and organizational behavior Financial Times Prentice Hall, Harlow, Essex.
• Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. Leadership Quarterly, 18 (4), 298–318. 
• Yukl, G., Seifert, C., & Chavez, C. (2008). Validation of the extended Influence Behavior Questionnaire. Leadership Quarterly, 19 (5), 609–621. 

During several months of infighting, Britain’s historic Brexit has aroused people’s concerns for the future of Britain and the change of world economy. British and multinational industries in UK have worried about the impact of Brexit on the situation of domestic economy, which also aroused attention of people of all cites of life(Armstrong 2016). Thousands of businesses and jobs are under pressure and at risk because of the move of Brexit, they are not sure about the future tariffs and investment. Most economists predicted that the Brexit probably brings a long-term economic damage to the UK, even possible recession.

There is no doubt that Brexit has great impact on British banking industry mainly because UK’s passporting rights was remained, which means if banks want to keep cross-border operations in European economic area, they have to registered in the European framework(ECB 2015). In order to keep operations in the EU, banks need to think about the content of framework. They can make use of the subsidiaries in other European countries to achieve the passporting rights of cross-border operations. Except for these strict operational conditions, U.K. banks are facing at a complicated process of licensing by governments, which would result in a heavy costs and time consuming delays due to many firms or institution would apply for the licenses at the same time. In addition, the adjustment of operations between British and continent of Europe would result in the difficulty in complete matching between employees and operating posts in a short time. Thousand of talents have to make tough option to follow their company working outside the continent of Europe or quit their jobs and find a new one in the local area. 

The blog takes HSBC as an example. It was founded in 1865 whose headquarter is in London. As one of the world largest banks and financial institutions, HSBC has about 9,500 subsidiaries in 76 countries and areas all over the world. It has 200,000 stockholders distributing in more than 100 countries and regions and more than 228,000 employees. It also possesses 0.11 billion clients globally.

The original headquarter of HSBC was built in Hong Kong and moved to the U.K. in 1993. Under the help of passporting rights, HSBC set up many subsidiaries in the EU for the purposes of regulatory and tax. After the historic moment of leaving the EU, these subsidiaries out of the EU can still take advantage of passporting rights to support the cross-border operations.

HSBC is obviously entering a period of recession because of Brexit, not only having difficulty on economic risks, but also the political and geopolitical events. The primary mission is to support the colleagues who was sent to outside the U.K. and positively touch their clients. In addition, facing the shock brought by Brexit, HSBC needs to adjust its operations in Europe to improve its competitiveness including its international network and professional management. It can make use established subsidiaries to promote cross-border cash management and the solutions of trading. So, HSBC has the opportunities to sell other products and services, which can add clients’ conversion cost and make them become the long-term clients. With the increasing administrative costs, HSBC can sell a large amount of products which have a lower price to the clients in order to accumulate the profits to meet the demand of operating the bank. 

The stable development can be maintained by HSBC after Brexit, because HSBC has a large number of floating capital and its senior management has accumulated rich experience of dealing with major stressful events. Most investors have the confidence to HSBC believing it can tide over the financial crisis(Danielsson 2016).

The banking services of HSBC can be classified as global banking, market banking and merchant banking. Most of the large transnational corporations which have complex global trade and financing needs were served by global banks and market departments. Small and medium enterprises are often covered by merchant banks. HSBC adjusts these operation lines and promote resource sharing in order to rise the success rate of its conversion strategy and provide a better service for new clients of merchant banks with offering cross-border professional knowledge and service which were only traditionally given to large transnational corporations. The change of management strategy will cater to the new cross-border demands. Although the passporting rights no longer exists, HSBC can provides a better service for its clients by virtue of its core competence. Lase but not least, HSBC can increase investment in inventing such apps as retail banking, financial management and merchant banking and use financial technology to protect the network safety and prevent financial crimes. 

In a sum, the management in a certain industry should be constantly adjusted according to the economic and financial situation and international affairs. Changing management can be an important approach for a business to tide over the crises.

Reference 

• Armstrong, A. (2016), ‘EU membership, financial services and stability’, National Institute Economic Review 236, 31-38. 
• Danielsson, Macrae, and Zigrand (2016), ‘On the financial market consequences of Brexit’, Voxeu, 7 June. 
• ECB (2015), EU Structural Financial Indicators 2014, Frankfurt. 

With the development of society, leadership behavior has become a hot issue in the research field of management. Over the past years, leadership theories have experienced a long history spanning more than a century, many scholars and researchers have paid attention to this point. Many leadership paid attention to the individuals and their roles in the process of leading, which is person-oriented leadership. Weibler (2012) put forward that these approaches can be defined as  person-oriented approaches from their common perspective of individual. It can be divided into leader-oriented and follower-oriented leadership. For instance, Bass (1990) proposed that trait theory, one of the leader-oriented approaches, has been proved that it can foster leaders’ personality. Besides, Lussier & Achua (2009) hold the view that if the situation can fit a leader’s leadership style, the leader can be most effective one. The other types of leadership theories is interaction-oriented leadership, such as Leader-Member Exchange Theory, presented by George Graeo and Uhl-Bien in 1976. It pointed that due to the pressure of time, the leader only builds a special relationship with a minority of people who can become the member inside the circle and gain more trust, care and privilege from the leader. The last one is the team leadership theory. According to the studies, team approach to leadership can improve the effectiveness of team work.

The leadership theories has experienced a long way in the industrial era. But now we enter the knowledge era, so the leaders face a lot of challenges. Researchers have found that many factors make leader’s environment more complicated so that the management can be more hard. Firstly, interaction are becoming more important in an industry which is nonlinear and interdepend in system elements. Secondly, the era of Big Data not only brings the opportunities for the business but also the challenges. With the increasing data arises, information overload has become one of the challenges for business. Although there are more options for leaders to choose, it would leads leaders to be hesitate, to put off or make second-best choice. Thirdly, new technologies would change the old work pattern. The business need more talents in the field of data analysis. Fourthly, new generations start their career in the workplace with their new values and expectations to the job. Last but not least, globalization needs more cross-cultural communication among the countries and people. Therefore, the leaders of firms must to make changes. 

Let me show you a successful example of changing the leadership. The oil crisis in 2004 had a negative effect on Shell’s share price, Jeroen Van Der Veer, the CEO of the Shell claimed that structural transformations should been carried out for the sake of the company. His idea was a risk for the company because it included 80 operating units operating units and covered the company as a whole. The change required leader had solid determination and made sure every part in company would stayed on track. He built a nominated team including many professionals and experts, such as senior leaders, executive consultants and several experts, which play an important role in creating new leadership pattern.

The development of the leadership theory will be a long-term process. Transformations are probably to begin with small pockets of leaderships in organizations, who can realize the change is inevitable. These leaderships need make a good preparation to the unknown results and to find the experts who can provide new frameworks to break the boundaries of the existing practices.

Leadership can be realized by the interaction of administrative, adaptive and enabling leadership (Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey, 2007). The administrative leadership needs to manage the formal activities in organization, such as coordinating and planing missions. The adaptive leadership is informal, urgent, complex and dynamic, which would appear when the interaction between agencies comes out conflicts so that agencies can realize creativity and learning action in the interaction of complex adaptive system. At last, the enabling leadership will be a coordination between the above two systems. 

In a conclusion, leadership theories mainly focused on individual and environment in the past years, the new environment is under the big pressure of competition, which is characterized by increasing complexity and interconnectedness. Therefore, the effective leading becomes more essential to organizations. The leaders should improve themselves to make effective decisions and put their sight on the globe. In stead of being forced to change the leadership approaches, they should good at observing the situation and making adjustments. Besides, in the future, the leadership theories can be developed from the perspectives of biology, anthropology and other field, which can provide new angles for scholars and become the important method of innovating the leadership theories.

Reference 

• Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass & Stogdill’s handbook of leadership-theory, research and managerial applications. New York, NY: Free Press. 
• Lussier, R. N., Achua, C. F. (2009). Leadership: Theory, application, and skill development. Mason, OH: South-Western.
• Uhl-Bien，M.，R. Marion，and B.McKelvey. Complexity Leadership Theory：Shifting Leadership from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Era.[J]. The Leadership Quarterly, 2007(18).

At present, organizational culture has become a meaningful and important research point in the field of organizational analysis. Organizational culture essentially means the business’s mind and the connotation of organizational culture belonging to the business which equals to the economic organization. Peters and Waterman (1982) pointed that a rich organizational culture symbolize an outstanding management. But there is still a doubt about if the cultures in organization can be managed. Therefore, this question about whether the culture in organization can be managed or not attracts more and more researchers to study.   

Culture is formed by the unspoken rules which can influence people’s behavior when nobody watching them in particular. For example, if a group of people starts a kind of behavior together and make it a reasonable and success behavior, they would do it again and again. So, this repetition of behavior can become a kind of culture. 

As I know, some people held the view that organizational culture cannot be managed, whose point is logically contradictory and empirically defective. Bate (1994) noted that the basic method of managing culture could be divided into two types: conform (maintain the current order) and transform (change the current pattern). In spite of some changes carried out by the organizations turned into changing behaviors and hence were not enough to change the cultures, which merely shows the methods of managing cultures are not working, it cannot be inferred that the cultures cannot be managed. In addition, many studies can show that organizational culture can be changed in a successful way. According to Ogbonna (1993), it can be inferred that if the employees’ behaviors or awareness are not suitable, the manager must change them by implicating the factors identified. It can be shown that culture changing is a feasible way. 

Organizational culture can be the essential factor for a business to be successful to a great extent. A good organizational cultures brings following advantages which is helpful for organization build a good image, promote its development, create a harmony working atmosphere and encourage its staff to make progresses. In contrast, culture also becomes the key element in destroying the company somewhile. The strategy of racial anti-bias educating for Starbucks is a typical example. On 12 April 2018, the employer from the Starbucks in Philadelphia called the police and claimed that two young African-American man, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, broke in the Starbucks and refused to leave. According to police, two man were just waiting for their friends and wanted to use the toilet, but the employer claimed that if the clients wants to use the toilet, they must pay for something in Starbucks. At last, the police released them 8 hours later without accusing them. The event aroused may protesters gathered in front of the gate of the Starbucks in Philadelphia to protest racial discrimination. Later, Starbucks announced that they will close more than 8000 cafe shops temporarily on 29^thmarch in order to educate their employee to build the awareness of being racial anti-bias and broadcast the organizational culture of anti-discrimination. So, this the power of organizational culture which is enough to ruin a business. And it can be shown that the cultures in organization can be managed.

After discussing the cultures can be managed within organizations, it should explore how to manage the cultures and what elements can influence the cultures within organizations. Firstly, the corporation needs to focus on the current cultures and to analyze whether the current culture is suitable for the development of itself. If not, the managers should take measure to change the culture or manipulate secretly. But in many cases, the staffs may not understand and don not support the leaders, the cultures within organizations can not be managed easily, it may experience a hard, long and even tough process (Park et al, 2004). Therefore, it can be an effective way to take advantage of knowledge management system which is conducive to manage the cultures.

Besides, the success relies on the leaders’ abilities and behaviors. The leaders should make correct decisions according to the situation. Their understanding about the cultures within organizations is the key factor affect the success of culture management. First, the leaders should not seek quick success and instant benefits. A good organizational culture should cater to the reality just like ”When water flows, a channel is formed”. Secondly, the leaders should have right orientations. Sometimes, because of the lack of professionals’ guide, some wrong orientations may arise, which may wastes resources and time. Although, the way to manage the cultures within organizations is not easy, it is a feasible process.

Reference 

• Bate, S. 1994, Strategies for Cultural Change, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford. 
• Ogbonna, E. (1993) ‘Managing Organizational Culture: Fantasy or Reality?’, Human Resource Management Journal, 3(2): 42–54.
• Park JE, et al. (2004) Novel functional dissection of the localization-specific roles of budding yeast polo kinase Cdc5p. Mol Cell Biol 24(22):9873-86
• Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. New York Harper & Row.