Gina Rinehart: The Successful Entrepreneur And Queen Of Global Iron-Ore Trade

Question:

Discuss about the Institutional Perspectives on Entrepreneurial Behavior.

Gina Rinehart is an Australian entrepreneur, who was born in 1954 in Western Australia and she was the only child to her parents Hope Margaret Nicholas and Lang Hancock. She studied economics at the University of Sydney and when her father’s company get bankrupted, she took over his father’s company.  Today the company is included in the leading companies of Australia. In the year 1992, Rinehart was appointed to the position of Chairman of Hancock Pty Ltd. and of HPPL Group of Companies due to her father’s death. With her entrepreneurial skills, she has made joint ventures with various organization to reduce the debts of HPPL Pty Ltd. She is also known as the queen of global iron-ore trade. Along with Hancock enterprises, she owned oil and gas companies too. She finalized a deal of $7.2 billion from the global banks and credit agencies to establish developing an iron-ore mine named Roy Hill. It is regarded as the biggest mines across the globe (Ferguson, 2012).

• Gina Rinehart’s main feature is her self-confidence and on the basis of this quality, she could efficiently handle her father’s bankrupt company. Secondly, some useful joint-ventures in mine project helped her to amass great wealth and fame.
• Another important characteristic Gina Rinehart as an enterpreneur was that she was very determined individual who had the vision to safeguard her father’s legacy from precarious position . Inspiration and dedication are the some of the characteristics of an entrepreneurship that helps them to achieve their unsurmountable vision (Zolin & Schlosser, 2013). This is related to the achievement theory of McClelland which states that entrepreneurs try to do things in a new way and take major decisions under uncertainty (McClelland, 2015). Hence, this element of entrepreneurship is dependent on motivation and the feeling of getting things done.
• An entrepreneur is known for its unique ideas and for creativity and Gina Rinehart possessed these qualities too (Rozell, et. al., 2011). The key changes that an entrepreneur brings in business includes innovation in production and marketing and expansion of goods and products. This fact is supported by the Innovation theory of Schumpter which stated that entrepreneurs act as catalysts who activates new level of development by means of innovation O?ledzik, 2013). Hence, with  innovative approaches, Gina Rinehart kept  expanding her business operations.

Gina Rinehart took the challenge of rebuilding the image of HPPL Pty Ltd. and showed her skills which helped the organization to gain the effective position in Australia. Gina Rinehart’s entrepreneurship skills match with the accomplished entrepreneurs. Accomplished entrepreneurs are those who have gone through different stages of entreneurship and achieves success. They are individuals who have clear idea about things needed for success in business. They have achieved the competency needed to engage with consumers and overcome major business issues. Gina Rinehart also has such skills and influential in the role of reviving the mine industry. (Andersson, Curley & Formica, 2010).

Just like accomplished entrepreneur, Gina also witnessed challenging situations while setting up the business. Despite different issues in achieving her goal, she started learning from her own mistakes and started improving her skills to rebuild the image of HPPL Pty Ltd. in the market. Gina Rinehart was involved in number of industry and she was filled with skills to handle multiple tasks at one time and she uses her most time as the most powerful weapon and reaches to the position of most successful entrepreneurs in Australia. Rinehart’s strategies implemented to enhance the performance of her father’s organization’s as well as her iron-ore mines were so effective and efficient enough to cope up with the market conditions and consumer demand.

Entrepreneurial Skills and Success in Industries

Gina Rinehart is the most successful yet most controversial entrepreneur.  While considering positive aspects of her entrepreneurship skills, it can be said that she has the skills to foresee and evaluate conditions of market and adapt strategies as per the market conditions. This reflected her talent as an entrepreneur.  Due to this talent only, she managed to find an effective place in the iron-ore mines. With this skills only, she has been able to pull off the world’s biggest on-land mining project and this will make her company, Hancock the fourth largest exporter in Australia  (Tasker & Tasker, 2017). Due to the adaptation of a bankrupted organization, not a single existing employee was ready to work with Gina but she convinced some talented employees with her entrepreneurial skills. As she was known for her positive mind strategy, she used to believe in herself and due to this belief; she was able to achieve effective positions in various Australian industries (Stam, 2015).

There are many controversial aspects of Gina’s personality too. Very few staffs were responsive to her needs because she has a command and control type of leadership. Due to her demanding quality, her executive staffs working with her could not establish a long-term relationship. This is an example of micro-management approach of leadership and this is contrast with inspirational leadership style. Gina’s actions showed her insecurity as a rational for authoritative leadership style (Tasker & Tasker, 2017). 

Gina Rinehart never mixed her personal and professional life despite various instabilities in her personal life. She inherited her father's bankrupted business but with his positive attitude and confidence, she managed to rebuild the organization. She was an introvert human being but after entering into her father's organization, drastic change was recorded in her behaviour. She turned into an extrovert kind of person. It was noticed various times that Gina Rinehart's businesses were influenced by political policies but she tackled them adequately (Welter & Smallbone, 2011).

Entrepreneurial orientation is defined as the ability of entrepreneur to take the organization to the next level. Gina proves herself by achieving new milestones in the mine industries. Entrepreneurial orientation also describes that entrepreneur should be able to take risks, implements innovative ideas and creative thinking that will be used to enhance the performance of the organization (Covin & Wales, 2012).

Gina’s father gave her the first opportunity to prove herself as an entrepreneur and she did not fail. She used to manage tasks of her father and helped him to operate in HPPL Pty Ltd. and another group of companies. After her father’s death, she managed to reach to the next level using her innovative ideas, unique skills, and qualitative work. This was the best source of motivation and this turned as the inspiring or motivational factor in her life and later on, she got involved in certain other industries like iron-ore mines, etc. (Stefanovic, Prokic & Rankovi?, 2010). The best motivational factor for a human being is his/her success and many successful ventures instilled confidence in Gina Rinehart. A mixture of confidence, innovative skills, unique approaches and success were her motivational factors.

Positive and Controversial Aspects of Gina Rinehart's Personality

Entrepreneurs are known for their unique skills, innovative ideas and for risk taking behavior. In every situation, an entrepreneur has some unique ideas apart from other business operators to turn the things up in a positive manner for their organization or in other words, entrepreneurs are dynamic in nature, they change their strategies as per the business conditions.

She is an extrovert kind of person and her skills of performing the task involved the combination of self-confidence as well control over certain things. As she was involved in multiple industries, still she focused on every industry’s performance and their working procedures very adequately. This shows her positive attitude towards her professional life (Kautonen, Van Gelderen & Tornikoski, 2013).

Being an entrepreneur, there are a lot of contradictions and amongst them, some are studied and learned while being in such role practically. An entrepreneur needs to use their crucial weapon i.e. time in an adequate manner so that their professional and personal life does not get affected. Some of the contradictions are discussed below which has been identified while researching about Gina Rinehart:

• Future aspects are studied and while studying future aspects of the business environment, current aspects are ignored and implementation of strategies does not bring results as expected.
• Entrepreneurship is the process performed by single person hence, time consumption is much more and entrepreneurs fail to share his/her time with people around them
• Entrepreneur finds the way to remove their weaknesses rather than concentrating on improving their strengths.
• Building a market image and making a consistent image is not required because producing adequate quantity and quality is required. Hence, the market image will automatically develop and improved (Bjerregaard & Lauring, 2012).

• The entrepreneur does not give real importance to the location of business; they believe in their efforts and build the effective image of an organization through their hard works.
• An entrepreneur always has an inspirational approach. Gina Rinehart used to take inspiration from her father and one day she got the opportunity to prove herself in which she succeeded with merit marks (Naudé, 2010).
• Entrepreneurs have the ability to build their effective place in any business industry rather being specific and apart from that, they are determinant towards their work.
• Gina Rinehart had learnt various lessons regarding dynamic business environment from her father.
• Entrepreneurs are always ready to take risks for setting up an effective image in the business environment.
• Entrepreneurs believe in motivation and motivating its employees so that optimum results could be obtained as per the expectations.
• Gina Rinehart has a positive outlook towards her professional as well as towards her personal life. Her colleagues and the employees working under her control always love to work with her as she was known as the motivator.

Team work is very crucial in terms of every business enterprise because large number of activities cannot be performed and controlled by one person. Hence, team is required to perform the activities of a business organization. Gina Rinehart, an Australian entrepreneur also believed in teamwork. She came up as a leader with innovative skills and unique ideas to support the organization. If she would not work with existing experienced members of the organization, Gina would not have achieved the position she enjoys today. Therefore, it is a suitable and best example of teamwork as per this scenario and as per various business experts, an organization could be able to achieve its desired objectives only through teamwork (Hunziker, et. al., 2011).

Gina Rinehart did not faced huge hurdles in her professional life. There were certain challenges which were accepted by Gina and she performed against those challenges adequately and effectively. She becomes Chairman of HPPL Pty Ltd after his father’s death. Then she developed certain joint venture in mineral resources limited to promote her father’s organization and she also got involved in an iron-ore industry to build her own image. She succeeded their too and achieved high position in the iron-ore industry. She developed another joint venture with Rio Tinto which is known as the largest organization in terms of iron-ore mines. After achieving all these, she became the number one woman in terms of financial capital in Australia.

Motivational Factors in Gina Rinehart's Life

This term is used in legal terms for bankruptcy cases. Under this term, while the bank or any other financial institution acquires the property of debt taken to repay those debts. The owner of the property or any other on behalf of the owner could acquire some asset for their living. Acquired asset could be justified as used in the business purpose, and then it will be known as the tool of the trade. For instance, Gina Rinehart took over her father’s bankrupted firms by claiming one of the company’s properties for their living and there she started commencing business activities in relevance to mineral and exploration activities. Today this company is known as the leading company in Australia and this is due to the hardwork of  Gina Rinehart. Apart from the property of her father, she acquired some important assets such as mineral extraction machinery which is used for performing basic activities of the organization (Campa, 2015).

After reviewing the case study of Gina Rinehart, it can be said that entrepreneurship consists of various unique elements such as innovative skills, ideas, talent and effective approaches to build a unique image in the business environment. Entrepreneurs do not will to work under any pressure or control, in other words, they try to be their own boss rather working as an employee. Entrepreneur’s works with a view to setup business by using adequate strategies and maintain the image of an organization.

Traditionally, an entrepreneur was termed as a person who starts the business by himself and performs all the activities by himself only. Entrepreneur used to operate the small business due to lack of capital, lack of awareness of arranging capital resources, etc.  But, now this definition has changed and today effective entrepreneurs are engaging in various activities to sustain competitive advantage in business.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, and founder of Facebook, Steve Jobs, ex-CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc., are some of the huge personalities in the entrepreneurship world  and they have achieved various objectives. Common objectives between Zuckerberg and Jobs is they started their business with a view to change the world with their thinking and today Facebook is a social media software which is used in almost all parts of the globe and Apple’s products are effective enough to in showing the standard of its users and these are the phones which cannot be affected by virus.

Gina Rinehart also followed the same path of changing the world through her thinking and as a result, her father’s organization which was bankrupted at a certain time is now the leading company in Australia.. Along with this, she is the richest person in Australia.

References

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