Leadership and Organisational Strategy of Thorntons Chocolate - Case Study Example

? Module A301IAE Table of Contents Introduction Defining the entrepreneurial organisation Why Thornton’s is entrepreneurial Personal entrepreneurial skills The benefits of entrepreneurial employees Summary and recommendations References Your Name Here Address Address Postal Code Mr. Mike R. Davies Chief Executive Thornton’s Chocolate Derbyshire, England Date 1 April 2013 Dear Mr. Stevenson Please find enclosed my application for your perusal and consideration for the position of Marketing Director with Thornton’s Chocolate. Your advertisement for this position forwarded by the Institute of Applied Entrepreneurship has significantly caught my attention. I would like to personally thank you for reviewing my letter of employment and genuinely hope you will find my entrepreneurial competencies to be a valuable fit for your grand organisation with a rich history in the United Kingdom. 1. Introduction Thornton’s Chocolate was founded in 1911 by Joseph William Thornton, establishing a very recognisable brand in the United Kingdom ever since. Now that Cadbury has been taken over by Kraft company, Thornton’s is now considered the largest independent chocolatier and confectionary business in the UK. Through decades of brand-building activities and increases in sales revenues, Thornton’s now boasts 360 different shops and a variety of franchises across the United Kingdom supported by 2011 revenues of ?218 million (Thornton’s 2012). Thornton’s has, however, experienced problems with maintaining market share among major competitors and the business is losing sales revenues, especially in the High Street stores that sell Thornton’s products. Thornton’s has always maintained a premium positioning strategy, justifying a higher-priced model associated with legitimate and consumer-perceived brand quality. Because of this, the business is seeking a revitalisation and restorative business strategy designed to give the business a more contemporary brand image with important target markets. This letter of employment is to illustrate entrepreneurial characteristics both internally and as related to the employment candidate to illustrate how the candidate’s competencies can benefit the new positioning of Thornton’s for sustainable success and profitability. 2. Defining the entrepreneurial organisation An entrepreneurial organisation is one that is willing to absorb risks, as being able to compete against well-established competitors, such as Cadbury, requires making decisions that are innovative and do not have a precedent established. This is necessary to achieve unique competitive advantage and differentiate one business from another that offers similar products with like characteristics and benefits. It is the risk-taking prowess of important organisational leaders that establish the foundation for an entrepreneurial organisation (Covin and Miles 1999). Once this entrepreneurial spirit has been established, the entrepreneurial organisation becomes one that is equipped to develop new products and services. A corporate entrepreneur focuses on establishing efficiencies and productive structures that can assist the organisation in aligning strategic intentions with external market conditions (Dess, Lumpkin and McKee 1999). Outside of basic managerial or executive-level decision-making such as budgeting and cost control, the entrepreneurial organisation recognises opportunities to make positive changes and then aligns the internal operational and staffing models to achieve strategic goals related to the opportunity. The entrepreneurial organisation maintains staff and managers that are able to juggle innovative ideas in their imaginations that translate into creative work to better position the business competitively. This type of organisation looks toward people and product as tools for achieving profit growth (Gaglio and Katz 2001). Innovations should occur in human resources policies and procedures as well as related to the actual product or service in order to be considered entrepreneurial. Establishing a vision and mission in order to gain dedicated employee followership is another characteristic of a strongly entrepreneurial organisation. 3. Why Thornton’s is entrepreneurial Thornton’s is entrepreneurial due to the fact that the business realises that it must break away from its traditionalist strategic policy and focus on evolution and change. This is, of course, a risk since the business had, until recently, achieved considerable profitability through traditionalist marketing strategies that focused on its rich history within the United Kingdom market. Making a powerful brand change that moves from conventionalism to contemporary innovation requires a dramatic restructuring and adoption of considerable risk. Repositioning a brand with a very long history with certain niche markets in order to gain new market attention is not a simplistic task and requires significant creativity to achieve positive end results. Thornton’s is entrepreneurial because the business understands how to create a wholly new value proposition by devoting labour and financial resources to achieve sustainable rewards. This type of organisation recognises the social risks and psychic dangers to perform something no other rival has accomplished despite the short-term burdens on the business model. Personal satisfaction and independence are often outcomes of the entrepreneurial business through these efforts (Hisrich and Peters 2002). Thornton’s realises that the business must adjust not only operational strategies, but also change the internal culture to focus on a more contemporary image of service and product excellence. This investment and devotion represents the entrepreneurial spirit within the corporation. 4.1 Personal entrepreneurial skills As candidate for Marketing Director, I maintain many entrepreneurial characteristics and skills that will benefit Thornton’s in its current repositioning strategy. One aspect that builds success and competitive advantage is utilising all existing resources to ensure proper alignment toward a common mission goal. Though autonomy is often characteristic of a successful entrepreneur (Ireland, Covin and Kuratko 2009), where working independently is a major strength, there is a need to maintain team-focused ideology to gain total organisational commitment (Hayton 2005). I understand the fundamentals of transformational leadership, a model of leadership in which an individual coaches, mentors, trains and supports workers in order to satisfy their psycho-social needs (Fairholm 2009). A corporate entrepreneur understands how to build a mission and vision and also gain commitment and avoid resistance to change. Realising that human capital is just as critical to gaining advantage over competition and being able to organise the entire business to contribute to supporting a new objective is representative of the entrepreneur. As a leader that knows how to blend charismatic attitudes, role model desired behaviours, and ensure proper resource allocation, I have the ability to bring much value to internal restructuring necessary to support the new branding concept. This is something that is lacking under the conservative, traditionalist product and service philosophies with the Thornton’s model. My personal entrepreneurial qualities also include the ability to identify opportunities in the external market and seize them without putting significant strain on the business and its finances. It is about finding new approaches to solve recognised external market challenges (Sharma and Chrisman 1999). A successful entrepreneur maintains the ability to not only seize prospects for improving business position, but also works with human-centric strategies to ensure that others accept and adopt the mission or vision associated with the new plan. They are able to develop methods of fostering a sense of social belonging for all team-focused employees and managers and then establishing a lingering culture of dedication and harmony necessary to achieve long-run goals. I carry these talents and competencies in abundance. A successful entrepreneur is also willing to take accountability for making mistakes (Maier and Zenovia 2011). Mistakes are inevitable when an entrepreneur is making risky decisions, however so long as they learn from these errors and improve, they are making significant strides in improving a business and the self in the process. Thornton’s will likely meet with barriers in its effort to revolutionise the brand reputation from conservative branding to contemporary market positioning, and Thornton’s requires an individual that will accept all responsibility when such errors occur. A genuine entrepreneur knows that role modelling desired behaviours and setting a mission and vision are critical habits and behaviours. When workers and managers witness public accountability for errors, it is likely they will mould these same behaviours, injecting ethics and trust into the business model. This is something that Thornton’s requires in order to respond to external market threats and continue to build a cohesive organisational culture absolutely devoted to providing excellence in product and service. Customers demand this ethical and moral behaviour when dealing with businesses, thus my entrepreneurial skills will dramatically assist in providing the business with a better public image and reputation. Companies that provide products and service into a market as a late mover, not an innovator, are often judged negatively by customers who like to compare the late mover to the original pioneer (Kalyanaram and Gurumurthy 2008). Thornton’s cannot afford to be a late mover in any new venture into the market, as there are substantial risks that other companies offering a new innovation will gain more favour with desired target markets. This is where my personal entrepreneurial spirit and competencies will benefit Thornton’s Chocolate. I understand that in order to be successful, I must devote the time and resources to conducting competitor and market research to find out real-time consumer sentiment about rivals and the Thornton’s brand in its current position. As a go-getter entrepreneur, I would be taking on the task of allocating people and resources into the research effort, thereby translating findings into new business practices that will position Thornton’s as a first-to-market rival. I would be recruiting internal staff experts with disparate knowledge and then bringing these minds together in a communal, communities of practice environment to build better knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. If the business is to create innovative products and services as a first mover, all tacit and explicit knowledge holders in the organisation must communicate and provide new ideas based on market research findings. I would like, in the role of Marketing Director, to illustrate to Thornton’s what a self-starter I am and how I believe my charismatic leadership style will gain commitment each and every time a new innovation idea has been launched or proposed. 4.2 The benefits of entrepreneurial employees Outside of building a more dedicated and harmonious organisational culture, another benefit of having entrepreneurial employees is cost savings. An individual that is dedicated to a business understands how to utilise limited resources in order to achieve maximum results. Strong leadership and role modelling of behaviours serves as a foundation for avoiding change resistance, a phenomenon often associated with psychological dissatisfaction with a change practice. When resistance occurs, employees can slow progress toward achievement of strategic goal or impose costs on the business for training and reprimand. An entrepreneur knows how to act as a confident change agent, drawing on their personality and experiences to ensure all employees and managers are on-board with a new vision. By putting employees in the proper roles that are aligned with their skill-sets and needs, it produces efficiencies in the business model so that costs can be reduced in staffing and even productivity improvement. Clearly, the benefit of an entrepreneurial employee is related to cost improvement by simply aligning personal talents with internal organisational structure to maximise productive output and even product yields to service more markets. 5. Summary and recommendations Having identified the benefits and characteristics of entrepreneurial behaviours and attitudes, and linking these to Thornton’s new marketing strategies, I believe I am the most capable candidate for the role of Marketing Director. Thornton’s genuinely needs an internal restructuring and more knowledge of the external market in order to properly position the business as a leader in chocolate products and associated service offerings. I would therefore recommend that Thornton’s seriously consider selecting a candidate with entrepreneurial spirit and drive, especially in a sales environment that is consistently declining. I would like to further recommend that since entrepreneurs are willing to not only accept risk, but also accountability, that Thornton’s consider my ethical personality characteristics that could significantly translate into more effective public relations so that customers trust Thornton’s to be their primary and most valued provider of chocolate products in the UK. Seeing that I understand the internal dynamics that lead to unity and inter-connectedness, I would seriously be delighted if Thornton’s would consider the Marketing Director role to be one of a dedicated and voluntary change agent that will assist the business in achieving its long-run goals for capturing new market attention whilst paying attention to cost reduction. Your consideration of my application for employment is appreciated. 6. References Dess, G., Lumpkin, G. and McKee, J. (1999). Linking corporate entrepreneurship to strategy, structure and process: suggested research directions, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, 23(3). Fairholm, M. (2009). Leadership and organisational strategy, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 14(1), pp.26-27. Gaglio, C.M. and Katz, J.A. (2001). The psychological basis of opportunity identification: entrepreneurial alertness, Small Business Economics, 16(2), pp.96-110. Hayton, J.C. (2005). Promoting corporate entrepreneurship through human resource management practices: a review of empirical research, Human Resource Management Review, 15(3), pp.21-41. Hisrich, R.D. and Peters, M.P. (2002). Entrepreneurship. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Ireland, R.D., Covin, J.G. and Kuratko, D.F. (2009). Conceptualising corporate entrepreneurship strategy, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 33(1), pp.19-45. Kalyanaram, G. and Gurumurthy, R. (2008). Market entry strategies: pioneers versus late arrivals, Wright University. [online] Available at: http://www.wright.edu/~tdung/entry.pdf (accessed 25 March 2013). Maier, V. And Zenovia, C.P. (2011). Entrepreneurship versus intrapreneurship, Review of International Comparative Management, 12(5), pp.971-976. Sharma, D. and Chrisman, J.J. (1999). Towards a reconciliation of the definitional issues in the field of corporate entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 23(3), pp.11-27. Thornton’s. (2012). Rebalance, revitalise, restore – Annual Report and Accounts 2012. Read More