Organisational Leadership and Performance - Qantas - Case Study Example

ORGANISATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE Name: Institution: Organisational Leadership and Performance Introduction Organisation culture is defined by Willson (2006) as the behaviours and values that lead to the unique psychological and social setting of an organization. Basically, organisational culture entails the anticipations, values, philosophy, and experiences of an organisation that tie it together, and as mentioned by Smith (2003) it is articulated in its inner workings, self-image, as well as future hopes. Furthermore, culture is rooted in shared customs, beliefs, attitudes, in addition to rules (either written or unwritten), which have been created and are well thought-out to be suitable. Successful organisations always stick with in their cultural values even if such values hold back the organisation from becoming accustomed to a business setting that is already changing. Such cultures as written by Smith (2003) are repeatedly autocratic, bureaucratic, and inward-looking. Leaders can lose track of the organisational desires, and they can as well be unsuccessful to support the efforts of change driven by other managers; thus, frustrating efforts of change (Yazici, 2009). On the other hand, leaders who support change endeavours could be unsuccessful to communicate and develop a convincing desire for the change. The paper critically discusses how culture is expressed in Qantas and how this expression helps or hinders the organisation’s effectiveness. Qantas Overview The paper will concentrate mainly on Australian-based airliner known as Qantas. The airliner was founded back in 1920 in the Queensland, and since then Qantas has fully-grown to become Australia's biggest local as well as international airline. Originally, Qantas was registered as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited (QANTAS) (Qantas, 2013). These days, Qantas is broadly considered the world's top airline for long distance as well as Australia’s strongest brands. Qantas has developed a reputation for customer service, operational reliability, distinction in safety, and maintenance as well as engineering. The main business of the Qantas Group is offering transport services to its customers through two airline brands: Jetstar and Qantas. Additionally, Qantas as well run subsidiary businesses, which include Q Catering and also owns shares in other airlines. Currently, Qantas airline brands operate international, domestic and regional services. Importantly, Qantas has employed more than 33,000 workers with 93% of them living in Australia (Qantas, 2013). Qantas Culture Having to change from a government-run organisation to a corporate organisation that is strategic and high-performing, Qantas needed hard-line structural changes. In 1993, under James Strong leadership, Qantas wanted to build a productive partnership between management and workers with a general comprehension to improve the profitability of Qantas, and so the company espoused profit-driven business strategies by cutting down expenses and developing a focus on customer service. This has been an ongoing process with a number of fronts still continuing until now. According to Dunphy, Griffiths, and Benn (2003), under the strategy of Broad Differentiation, the new-fangled organisation culture become more oriented towards customers and emphasised customer services as its essential elements of policy goals in Qantas. The policy was understandable and impressively backed by the company’s leadership given that Geoff Dixon the then CEO was the one leading the way. This vision was successfully communicated to the employees by means of internal marketing to strengthen the significance of rewarding clients with a better travel experience. What’s more, HR-based interventions were utilised to institutionalise the novel organisational model as well as to improve performance (Thomas, 2013). In this regard, the fundamental initiatives entailed the work teams’ development, introduction of far-reaching training programs, and involving workers through a share ownership plan. Importantly, the change process pursed by Qantas follows Kotter’s model. Kotter (1996) explains the eight-stage process in creating long-term changes. Valuable changes as mentioned by Kotter are likely to be related to a multistep process that generates enough motivation as well as power to overpower all inertia sources (Spencer & Winn, 2005). Below is a brief discussion of Kotter’s eight-Stage process used by Qantas to create major change. Step one involved creating a sense of urgency, whereby Qantas had to analyze the certainties, identify and talk about crises, looming crises, and future noteworthy opportunities. Step two involved the creation of guiding coalition, and it entailed composing a group with sufficient authority to front the change. Therefore, Qantas leadership was tasked with getting the composed group to collaborate and work like a team. Step three involved developing an organizational strategy and vision. In this step Qantas CEO and other leaders were required to develop as vision that will assist in leading the change effort, and also creating strategies for realizing that vision. Step four involved communicating the change vision: Here Qantas utilised all channels possible to continuously communicate the new-fangled vision as well as strategies to employees. Step five involved empowering workers for broad-based action: so Qantas had to eliminate barriers by changing structures or systems discouraging the vision of change and also encouraging workers to be risk takers. Step six concerned creating temporary ‘wins’ by strategizing for noticeable performance enhancements and also generating those ‘wins’. In this regard, Qantas has to clearly acknowledge and reward workers who had made and continue making the ‘wins’ achievable. Step seven involved consolidating gains as well as generating additional change: Qantas at this stage utilised heightened credibility to transform all policies, structures, as well as systems that failed to interconnect and did not fit in the change vision. For this reason, the company hired developed, and promoted workers who can put the transformation vision into practice, and also bolstering the change process with innovative projects as well as with agents of change. The final step was anchoring the new-fangled approaches into the existing organization culture: Qantas improved its organisational performance through productivity- and customer-oriented activities. Therefore, the company needed a more effective leadership who could understand the existing connections between organizational success and new behavior; thus, creating means of ensuring succession as well as leadership development (Spencer & Winn, 2005). Sustained development as per Smith (2003) is anchored in comprehending and using the multistage process as well as more leadership. Changing an organization's culture In various respects, culture management is strangely vulnerable to being offered as an organisation invention. Whereas other initiatives of management try to encourage positive attitudes by heightening workers’ responsibility are by means of empowerment, Evans (2001) posits that cultural change directly aims worker attitudes and intends to secure dedication instead of behavioural fulfilment that is resigned with every worker sharing general vision. Therefore, the leadership task turns out to be one that is involved in setting up control over the work meaning. According to Smith (2003), when the leadership duty is to motivate and show enthusiasm, so therefore, if leadership academics are leadership’s apologists and advocates, their duty is to offer celebrations, exemplars as well as prescriptions. These accounts subsist to aggravate a poignant reaction and offer an urge to action and, so as to accomplish such functions, Qantas had to essentially espouse industrious interventions. Therefore, culture is not just a topic likely to be characterized as fiction, but as well leadership writers could view their position as fundamentally special. In order comprehend the manner Qantas function so as to develop change, the leadership had to weigh up the effects of interventions on workers, and also considered how strategic as well as structural factors merge. Leadership and Culture Leadership as per Glisson (2007) could lose confidence prematurely during the process of change, especially when organisation outcomes are unacceptable. An additional setback is the duration to achieve cultural change given that the cultural change duration in Qantas averaged seven years. According to Evans (2001), when the process of change takes long, the chance of doing things erroneously is high. Besides that, successful cultural changes can wear away eventually for the reason that the organisational strategy is not successfully conveyed to new leaders. For instance, US is a country established in revolution, occupied by new frontiers’ seekers as well as immigrants, stimulated by a deep-rooted belief in individual potential as well as collective advancement. This viewpoint as per Evans (2001) has led to adoration of innovation as well as of more creative life. Therefore, the idea that those organisations have to prepare themselves as well as their workers for even bigger rates of culture change is extensively and tightly founded; that is why Qantas had to create a learning organisation able to improve continuously. Change as mentioned by Evans (2001) more or less brings about resistance as well as ambivalence. Qantas understands that change is foreseeable and no organisation ever steps in the similar problem twice. Therefore the culture change driven by Qantas leadership was intended to improve the organisation productivity, improve the lives and knowledge of organisation employees as well as leaders. Some employees normally resist change when it takes place, particularly when added additional responsibility by their seniors. This conservatism is not opinionated but an unfathomable desire to protect familiarity as well as continuity in life. In the book “Loss and Change” a convincing argument is made by Peter Marris, where he posits that life relies on stability and so in almost all important change of any sort, adjustment as well as acceptance become more complicated as compared to the anticipation of all concerned entities. Therefore, whether the culture change is intended or unintended, professional or personal, desired or undesirable; whether organisation takes the reformers point of view the virtually common outcome is resistance. Leadership, Culture and Performance As once stated by Martin Luther King, the moment had come to lift America from the quicksand of ethnic discrimination to the firm foundation of brotherhood. Martin Luther King had foreseen a disaster for America if the then government ignored the necessity of the moment and also to underrate the willpower of the black people (Martin Luther King, 2013). Based on Martin Luther King speech, it is evident that many organisations underestimate the willpower of employees, who can derail the endeavours for cultural change if they feel their interests is ignore. Corporate culture in Qantas has been expressed in the mission statement of the company. Qantas understand that becoming triumphant in business these days is harder than ever before, and so the leadership of the company is working hard to maintain a culture of effectiveness. Without doubt, change is progressing so rapidly and infuriated in all global society systems; thus, has left heads of organisation leaders circling with alternatives, confusion, and uncertainty. The outcome of change is that the majority of workplaces endure an extraordinary state of being exhausted and stress amongst their workers.  Whereas organisation culture is not the supernatural bullet, the accelerated pace of change has time and again not been escorted by deep-seated changes in the organisation culture. Culture as mentioned by Yazici (2009) is the foundation of an organization’s capacity to embrace the in progress change.  As the case in Qantas, if an organisation desire to innovate, become accustomed, and progress more rapidly, then the environment through which change take place must be optimised so as to avert any possible resistance to change.   Culture of high performance as seen in Qantas relies on dedication of the company leadership not just to set it the change in motion but as well to keep the energy that results in high performance. Willson (2006) maintains that leaders must work hard to develop the fundamental mindsets amongst the employees that strengthen this performance framework. The literature from Willson (2006) and Glisson (2007) indicate that organisational culture as well as leadership has some connection to organisational performance. Awan and Mahmood (2010) analysed the connection between performance as well as leadership styles, and as well between performance as well as organizational culture. They concluded that leadership, organisational culture and performance have a strong connection. Therefore, leaders certain forms of culture bearing in mind that organisation culture are different in each organisation. Similarly, literature based on leadership recommends that the capability to comprehend and function within an organisation culture is a must to effectiveness of leadership. Still, in spite of the explicit and implicit connection of culture as well as leadership in diverse parts of organization theory, small concentration has been dedicated to comprehending the connections between leadership and culture in addition to the effect that this connection will have on the performance of the company. The lack of adequate research examining the performance significances of the connections between organisational leadership as well as culture is shocking taking into account the many literatures talking about the significance of the these concepts in organizations’ functioning. Whereas the proof of a performance and leadership connection is mostly unreliable, significantly more studies has empirically analysed the relationship between performance and organisational culture. These studies have proved that an effective culture spearheaded by a connector (leader) results in increased motivation among the workers, which as a result leads to improved performance. Qantas Organisation Effectiveness Qantas culture has defined the manner in which its workers interact amongst themselves and how they complete tasks. The company’s cultural model consists of diverse symbols, rituals, values and beliefs that administer the style of employees operation in the company. Culture has also brought the employees together and continues offering guidance for Qantas. During the time of change, Qantas experienced the prime challenge when changing its culture, as some of the workers had already adapted a particular way of performing things. According to Evans (2001), the governing culture in any company relies on the setting wherein the organisation operates, the goals of the organization, the workers belief system as well as the leadership style of the organisation. Qantas is a well-structured and highly bureaucratic organization, and so it follows an organisation culture with wide-ranging controls. In this regard, workers are required to strictly follow standard procedures by adhering to clear individual as well as hierarchy roles and responsibilities. For the sales department, workers do not follow strict hierarchies; instead they follow a competitive culture wherein they concentrate on keeping a well-built connection with Qantas external parties. Therefore, Qantas strategy is to achieve a competitive advantages over other airliners in Australia and internationally. Qantas strong corporate cultures signify that workers are in accord and embrace similar ethical values as well as beliefs. When such ethical values as well as beliefs focus on organisational goals and objectives, Smith (2003) posits that building effective teams becomes easier since trust and understanding rapidly follows. Therefore, the bonds that Qantas teams developed have assisted them to steer clear of conflicts and concentrate on completion of tasks. Summary In summary, strong cultures enables workers to understand what is needed of them and how the company management examines their performance as well as what types of rewards are presented. From Qantas case, it is evident that cultures can have differing impacts on worker motivation as well as performance levels. From time to time, workers work determinedly to reach the set organizational goals, but that is only if they believe they are part of the organisation culture. Being successful company, Qantas possesses a comprehensible sense of leadership, which has enabled it to integrate organisational culture with organisational goals and strategies. References Awan, M. R., & Mahmood, K. (2010). Relationship among leadership style, organizational culture and employee commitment in university libraries. Library Management, 31(4/5), 253 - 266. Dunphy, D. C., Griffiths, A., & Benn, S. (2003). Organizational Change for Corporate Sustainability: A Guide for Leaders and Change Agents of the Future. New York: Psychology Press. Evans, R. (2001). The culture of resistance. In R. Evans, The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real-Life Problems of Innovation (pp. 40-51). San Francisco, California : Wiley. Glisson, C. (2007). Assessing and Changing Organizational Culture and Climate for Effective Services. Research on Social Work Practice, 17(6), 736-747. Martin Luther King, J. (2013, August 27). Martin Luther King's Speech: 'I Have a Dream' - The Full Text. Retrieved from ABC Newa: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/martin-luther-kings-speech-dream-full-text/story?id=14358231#.T-_Ob46r-0s Qantas. (2013). Our Company. Retrieved from Qantas Airways Limited: http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/company/global/en Smith, M. (2003). Changing an organization's culture: Correlates of success and failure. The leadership and organization development journal, 24(5), 249-261. Spencer, M. H., & Winn, B. A. (2005). Evaluating the Success of Strategic Change against Kotter's Eight Steps. Planning for Higher Education, 33(2), 15-22. Thomas, G. (2013, December 13). What is wrong with Qantas - and Australia? Retrieved from Airline Ratings: http://www.airlineratings.com/news/184/what-is-wrong-with-qantas-and-australia Willson, R. (2006). The Dynamics of Organizational Culture and Academic Planning. Planning for Higher Education, 34(3), 5-17. Yazici, H. J. (2009). The Role of Project Management Maturity and Organizational Culture in Perceived Performance. Project Management Journal, 40(3), 14-33. Read More