To prevent an organization from engaging in obsolete, we require strong leaders who spearhead and encourage change. Leadership, a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of people towards a common goal. It enlists the aid and support of others towards the accomplishment of a common task. It differs from management, which is the act of bringing people together to satisfy desired targets and objectives using the resources available. A change is to conform from a previous ideology to a new one. Organization change management is multidisciplinary and requires making a systematic diagnosis of the current situation in order to determine the need and the capability for change. Management behavior in change requires dynamism.
Change management processes include such areas as creative marketing to enable communication between change audience’s also deep social understanding of leadership styles and group dynamics. Change management perceives the need for dynamism and designs appropriate strategies. Knowledge management refers to any product that a vendor wants to sell more copies. Managed knowledge encompasses management strategies, methods and technologies for leveraging intellectual capital to achieve output in performance and competitiveness.
Management behaviors in areas of leadership, change and managed knowledge are thus crucial in the development of an organization. In the modern world business survival is through adaptation. Resistance to change signifies ineffectively. With the rapidly increasing change in customer demand resistance to change gives competitors the opportunity to overpower others.Tata is India’s second largest and longest established conglomerate with wide consumer coverage in India and other Asian countries with Ratan Tata acting like the chairman.
Based on the above knowledge of leadership there is a need to critique Tata leadership style, which comes out as the director type, rather than the coaching or delegating approach. He is somewhat authoritarian since he has a specific goal in mid and directs the organization according to his plan of action. He identifies the requirements of the situation and formulates his own plan on how to handle it. He is entirely in charge, and the article mentions no part where he asks for suggestions from a team of staff; advisors, financiers and subordinates. Tata mentions no inclusion of subordinate staff in his vision of making the new car model a reality within his remaining five years as chairman.
Leadership entails delegation and cooperation in order to be effective he needs a team to work with him. Tata has set a measurable goal, and in order to work towards accomplishing he needs to acknowledge the necessity of a team of subordinates. He needs to share the power; as such a goal requires integration of joint efforts. According their leadership style theory (Vroom and Yetton model 4 1973, p.102) there are different ways a leader can make decisions and determine the extent to which subordinates can participate in decision making. This theory broadly captures the importance of delegation which has not come out in Tata’s leadership style. Another theory, the path goal theory, states that the best leaders are the ones that increase subordinate participation by charting out paths to higher performance.
In the article, Tata has also come out as resistant to change. He mentions that his company will model cars that would revolutionize transport in India and Asia, which subjectively is his area of coverage. The vision portrayed by Tata lacks dynamism as he is conforming to consumer financial capabilities rather than updating on new technologies and modernized vehicles. He mentions that the vehicle might not be acceptable to western customers but would not necessarily be a lower standard substitute for a vehicle signifying that the output model would be cheap and non-upgraded. Tata has not embraced the concept of change.
Tata marketing strategy is also subject to criticism. The company has awarded MG Rover the power to form its own distribution company (phoenix distribution) for the Tata brand of cars. This company will handle distribution of safari sports utility cars and loadbeta pickups, which will retain the Tata brand. Thus, any negative attribution that might arise in this setup the link will be to the Tata Company. Although Tata principally states that its goal is to become the principal partner of MG Rover, senior executives from MG Rover refuse to comment on a full strategic partnership. This is in retrospect to Tata handing over non-exclusive rights to MG Rover based only on mutual agreement.
In his leadership style, Tata comes out as a manager rather than a leader. There are many crucial things he could do to improve his leadership style since he still holds the position for five more years. Tata can explore on change and leadership goals, embracing the delegating type of approach. This will enable him to lead and build the change so that others want to be part of it. Sharing the power would create usefulness and enthusiasm when partnering with other companies. This is crucial as it would enable him to focus on challenges that arise and how to overcome them.
Tata also needs to embrace charismatic leadership that builds resonance. A strong leader inspires vision, motivates, has initiative, delegates, and ultimately enlists a supportive team. An outstanding leader also accepts change and transformation. By doing so, Tata will follow the concept brought out in the situational theory of leadership by Fiedler (Robbins 2009, p.297) which explains that a triad of situational dimensions that assume to influence a leader effectiveness. These are leader member relations which explain leader and subordinate interactions, task structure and thirdly position power which explains the power inherent in the leadership position.
