Authentic Leadership's Effect On Employee: Rolex Canada Case Study.

Strategic Marketing and Situational Analysis at Rolex Canada

Discuss about the Effect of Authentic Leadership on Employee.

The report is prepared to analyze the different concepts of leadership in business and how it is related to the strategic marketing and corporate social responsibilities. The topic is prepared with focus on the Zander and Zander principles on the art of possibility. It is based on how to transform the personal and professional lives of people and create a better place for them to live in. The business organization that will be considered here, as the case study is Rolex in Canada. The leadership in business can influence the strategic management process by determining the vision and mission of the organization and at the same time implement effective strategies for the success of business (Goleman, 2017). The main purpose of preparing this report will be to check the role of leadership in the formulation and implementation of strategies, furthermore evaluate the efficiency of the business processes and identifying the drawbacks too. Leaders play major roles in strategic management and can break the hierarchy of the organization to formulate the vision and clarify the strategies that shall be implemented. Leadership will also affect the culture of the organization, ensure better management of values and ethics and increase the morale of employees, furthermore enhance the learning procedures at Rolex. This can not only facilitate innovation and creativity within the organization, but will also make leaders encourage the organizational members to perform effectively and become socially responsible too (rolex.com, 2018).

Strategic Marketing is an effective concept of marketing where leadership plays a vital role in differentiating itself from the competitors in business through capitalization of the company strengths. It would include both present and potential strengths that the company do possesses to provide better value to its customers than the competitors in the market. Rolex, Canada is one of the major luxury watchmakers that manufactures, distributes and sells service wristwatches under the brands of Tudor and Rolex. The company is known for its watches delivered that have exceptional qualities in terms of performance and reliability to fulfill the needs and requirements of the customers. Rolex delivers the best quality luxury watches, but it is also important to note that the prices of the products are quite high that only the luxury segment customers are capable of purchasing (Y?ld?z, Ba?türk & Boz, 2014). The present GenY customers are more accustomed with the use of cell phones, where they can check the time and so they prefer checking time on their mobile phones rather than the luxury watches.

Leadership's Role in Strategic Management

The company’s marketing activities include use of social media and managing an online website to promote and spread messages and information about the products for the customers. It is an effective way to attract the new customers and retain the existing ones, so that they could be informed about the value of watches and make purchases later in their lives.  To analyze the marketing scenario, the situational analysis was done to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strengths of Rolex include string band image and identity, global brand awareness, extremely good quality products and luxury, which could be the aspiration of many customers (Aziz, Mahmood & Abdullah, 2013). The weaknesses could be the high costs, due to which customers could switch on to some other brands, preference of time checking on mobile phones rather than the watches for the young generation customers and lack of individuality in certain cases. Still, there are multiple opportunities achieved through the development of social media campaigns and online website along with designing and production of limited edition watches that are both reliable in terms of quality and longevity. The threats that might be faced were recession in the market, high competition, cell phones usage and low-end watches were not much effective as the high priced products, which could reduce the sales revenue for Rolex (Heath et al., 2013).

Leadership in business is an important aspect that can evaluate the systems and strategies at various levels of work and change the culture accordingly to improve the strategic management process. This will also provide a proper vision, think and plan strategically, furthermore administer the operational activities with ease and effectiveness. The leadership concept will also direct the subordinates to carry out their tasks properly and at the same time, keep them motivated and encouraged to work as an unit, in coordination, considering the mission and vision of Rolex, Canada. The leadership skills could allow for setting goals and objectives, design the strategies, execute those and finally measure the performances to ensure steady progress and successful outcomes in business. Based on the various aspects of marketing, the leaders could also determine the feasibility of strategies before implementing and position the products and services properly in the market too (Y?ld?r?m & Birinci, 2013). This would also make the company remain competitive globally as well as achieve heights of success quite effectively. With the formulation of marketing strategies, the leaders should also be involved in considering the perfect time when these strategies could be implemented and make sure to improve the business performance.

Leadership Impact on the Strategic Management

Rolex manages the changing lifestyle and purchasing behaviors of the customers along with increased disposable income and purchasing power through the right marketing strategies. The company aims to provide more value for money products to keep the customers happy and make them purchase the products and services consistently. The luxury goods industry have been growing quite fast and in a developing nation like Canada, it would be beneficial for conducting the market analysis and ensure implementing the right marketing strategies to sustain in the future (Lindgren & Abdullah, 2013).  There is a huge gap between the strategic marketing objectives that are presently implemented and that will be required in the preferred future. It is important for the leaders to manage proper level of motivation and encouragement of the employees to ensure that the strategies are properly implemented to obtain positive business outcomes with ease. The major gap between the current and future state could be the pricing problems, due to which the company still might face difficulties in attracting customers from every market segments of Canada. The prices of products are quite high, because of which, those are targeted to the luxury segments of customers and the normal market segment customers face difficulty in purchasing those sometimes (Crossan et al., 2013). Thus, leaders should encompass using various pricing strategies to keep the products under budget and ensure that the customers could easily purchase those. By setting the right prices, it would be easy to overcome this gap between the current and preferred state in the future and ensure successful accessibility by the customers. Previously, Rolex was more focused on satisfying the customers from the luxury market segments and now even the strategies are implemented to target the luxury customers and did not follow much appreciable sustainable or socially responsible methods to benefit the society. The company preferred to contribute largely to the society in the future not only to create a positive mindset among the customers but also to enhance the efficiency of sustainability measures implemented to bring changes and improvements (Parris & Peachey 2013).

The proper leadership skills present within the leader could help him to provide direction to the employees about their performance as well as make them set certain plans to accomplish the business goals and objectives with ease. The leaders associated with the organization could provide an accurate vision as well as set plans and measure the functions undertaken that should suit the organizational needs. This would further assist in distributing the strategies at various levels accurately to boost the performances of the employees and lift their morale to perform to their potential. The leader would not only motivate and encourage the staffs but also could also change the ways the staffs think about the tasks, furthermore identify the strategy gaps just it had been seen then (Klettner, Clarke & Boersma, 2014). A positive culture would be created that could integrate both the strategic and operational activities and at the same time, which could make the formulation and implementation of strategies successful and noteworthy. The leaders would introduce an environment where changes should be evitable and then the vision and organizational strategy might be developed to focus on setting the right prices so that every customer segments could access the products and services and even get value for money items, thereby resulting in loyal customers. Thus, the leadership in business could identify gaps between the current and preferred state of business in the future. Then the products should be marketed through the proper implementation of strategies for deriving the best outcomes that had been expected (Chang, Chen & Chiou, 2015).

Conclusion and Recommendations

The financial business performance is often related to the strategic management at Rolex and due to the changes in demographics, social, political and economic factors, the business performance deteriorates. Leadership is important to keep the workforce motivated and encouraged to bring long-term benefits. The leadership skills present among the leader could help him to enable strategic alignment through transformation servant leadership. The transformational servant leadership could also influence the financial performance as well as management business functions properly to achieve the desired results and overcome the gaps experienced with convenience (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013). The transformational servant leadership should be responsible for produce change and movement, furthermore communicate the goals and objectives to the employees properly and influence them for accomplishing the purpose. The service and transformational leadership styles are considered as people oriented styles of leadership that can focus o the well being of the workers and increase the level of interest among the followers to work harder and committed (Wang & Hsieh, 2013). At Rolex, the transformational servant leadership should provide a certain level of freedom to the employees and make them engaged to support the organizational behavior. The servant leaders would obtain the ideas and opinions of every employee and then make a proper decision without any bias (rolex.com, 2018).

There are certain differences though between the transformation and servant leaders. The transformational leader manages idealized influence and motivates the employees to keep them inspired and focused on their individual tasks. On the other hand, the servant leaders could go beyond one’s self interest and enhance the level of autonomy and power, which could ensure sharing of messages and information along with facilitating the strong interpersonal relationships. The transformational servant leadership and strategic management are not interrelated with each other, but it has definitely created an impact on the formulation and management of strategies (Demirtas & Akdogan, 2015). The alignment of employees towards the organizational goals and objectives produces synergy and provides employees with a proper direction, which can also facilitate the strategic management. This would not only help in engaging with the task and organizational behaviors properly, but would also reduce the chances of conflicts and misunderstandings with much ease and effectiveness. The transformation servant leaders at Rolex could align the interests of the employees and reduce the conflicts furthermore to ensure proper management and utilization of resources too. The leaders who would not be concerned with the safety and well being of workers and disregarded the interests of the employees, then they would likely get less motivated and this might result in lack of communication too (Bolman & Deal, 2017).

The value-based leadership has influenced the formation of a good culture within the organization where people can work in coordination and as a unit to accomplish the business objectives efficiently. The success of the organization is dependent on the value-based leadership, which can allow for using the values and beliefs as a motivating factor to enhance the business processes’ efficiency. The value-based leaders could promote self-awareness among the employees and define the core values, based on which, a strong culture should be created (Peregrym & Wollf, 2013). The value-based leaders could also be responsible for making the organization transparent about the value system and establish a sense of trust, loyalty and confidence among the workers to achieve higher level of client satisfaction and increased financial value as well. It should also be a good approach undertaken by the value-based leaders to unite the employees and achieve a common purpose to maintain proper philosophy of business functioning (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014).

The leadership competencies mean the leadership skills and abilities possessed by the leaders to contribute to the enhanced business operations’ efficiency. By focusing on the leadership competencies, it would be easy to develop and enhance skills, furthermore promote better decision-making abilities and problem solving capabilities too. At Rolex, the individuals holding the leadership positions must hold skills to supervise the employees with proper management experience and should provide conflict resolution strategies to improve the business performance (Wheelen et al., 2017). The leaders must be able to motivate and guide the employees in the right direction and even delegate tasks properly to the concerned employees based on their skills and strengths to ensure better performance management and lesser numbers of risks experienced. He must be knowledgeable enough to build teams and possess enough expertise in interviewing the line managers, team leaders responsibility and check for improvements that could be associated with the strategic management at Rolex, Canada. As it could be seem from the above section that there were certain gaps such as inability to attract every market segments due to the inappropriate pricing decisions and strategies implemented along with lack of sustainable measures undertaken, which prevented the company to become socially responsible as well. This would not only make the leader guide own self but would also allow to lead others by establish good communication between the employees and valuing the diversity and team working too (Morschett, Schramm-Klein & Zentes, 2015).

Leadership has influenced the organization to become socially responsible to make the company contribute to the community as well as to the people living there. The corporate social responsibility could be developed through the transformational servant leadership at Rolex. There is significant increase in public awareness about the internal operations to manage corporate social responsibility and addressing the issues that may hamper the brand image. Rolex, being a reputed and established organization should maintain proper values and ethics and it should be possible with the management of proper leadership through servant leadership aspect (Hahn, 2013). There are various ways to achieve the standards that the organization expects, though sometimes the financial goals and objectives have been aligned with the corporate social responsibility whereas others have undertaken sustainable measures to create a sustainable environment. Rolex should overcome the barriers faced in business so as to create some fundamental changes considering the leadership philosophies and long term benefits in business. The economies in the marketplace are developing at a faster rate, which has placed increased importance on the potential harms that may be caused on the individuals, environment as well as on the communities and nations (Alkhafaji & Nelson, 2013). It is important to become socially responsible for reducing the potential harms and increase the growth in economy of the country too. The transformational servant leader could inform the employees about what should be done to manage the goals and values, furthermore ensure maintaining a balance between the fulfillment of stakeholders’ needs and maximization of profit.

To become socially responsible, it would be important for the leaders of Rolex to maintain proper business ethics as well as ensure legal compliance by making investments on the community and keeping the environment secure through the maintenance of environment friendly approaches.  Sustainability means fulfilling the needs and requirements of the present generation without compromising on the needs and requirements of the future generations. Until now, Rolex has helped changing the world in a variety of ways such as preserving the cultural heritage of many places and even investments done for providing health care services to many poor people all around the world (Choudhary, Akhtar & Zaheer, 2013). It has also assisted in the inventions made by an individual named Bah Abba. With the help of the watches, he managed to distribute more than 100000 pots that provide refrigerating benefits all across the sub Saharan Africa. Vultures were experiencing phases of extinction previously due to popular targets for hunters. Michael Terrasse, a Rolex Laureate managed to protect these birds through the applications of various laws in Europe and this resulted in more than 20,000 breeding pairs of vultures at present in the continent. At present, the increase in activism and augmentation of the consumers to take actions against the companies have created greater pressure on the watch companies to become more transparent and less harmful to the society (Van Dierendonck et al., 2014). Other than the establishment of a strong culture, setting proper pricing strategies and strategic management, leadership aspects should also be liable for managing corporate social responsibility measure properly to create lesser harmful impact on the environment and achieve sustainable competitive advantage in business too (Liden et al., 2014).

Conclusion

The report was focused on the leadership concept from the business perspective considering the business organization Rolex in Canada. Rolex had been a reputed organization with a strong brand name and image that focused on providing luxury watches for the customers. The company presently had been doing so and aimed to attract every market segments, both luxury and the regular customer segments in the preferred future. The company also wanted to follow sustainable approaches to create a better impact on the community and create lesser harmful impact on the environment, furthermore become socially responsible and accomplish the business aims and objectives with ease. The present marketing state of Rolex stated the ways managed by the company to distribute its product and services in the market, but only the luxury customer segments were interested in the products while the regular customers found it difficult to purchase due to the higher prices. Thus, it could be important to align the strategies with the organizational goals properly and that should be possible with the evolvement of transformational servant leadership at Rolex, Canada. The leadership competencies and skills possessed include ability to supervise, manage coordination and communication among the employees, ensuring proper teamwork and coordination and achieve sustainability. The leaders should also guide the members of the organization to follow certain rules, regulations and codes of conducts to become socially responsible and contribute largely to the environment.

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