Leadership And Motivational Theories: Essay On Simunovich Olive Estate's Applications And Recommendations.

1. a. Describe one motivation theory and discuss how this motivation theory could be applied in Simunovich Olive Estate.

b. Describe your alternative motivation theory chosen and discuss how this second motivation theory could be applied in Simunovich Olive Estate.

2. a.  Identify and apply the appropriate leadership style from theUniversity of Iowa Studies to a leader of your chosen company.

b. Discuss whether a leader from Simunovich Olive Estate might be termed a charismatic  leader”,  justify  your  answer  with  three  examples  from  the

organisation literature.

3. a. Select a situation where delegation could be applied in the above organisation. Recommend to their senior executive team how they should manage this by applying the process of effective delegation. (6 marks)

b. Apply Lewin’s three step change process, described in your text, to an area where change can be perceived to have occurred in the organisation. (8 marks)

c. Discuss how the “white waters” metaphor for change applies to the above

company.

d. Explain what external forces necessitated innovation and change to their business practices. Give examples of the innovations made.

e. Discuss TWO strategies managers at Simunovich Olive Estate could use in their role as change agents to overcome barriers to change.  Give an example of an action taken.

4. a. Identify an area where planning is necessary for The Simunovich Olive Estate. Use a planning processto demonstrate how the planning process could be

 applied in this area.

b  Discuss Operational and Strategic Planning in relation to Simunovich. Show and explain the differences between these types of plans and how they are applied at

the company.

c  Provide a brief summary of the strategic planning process and suggest how the Simunovich Olive Estate can use a SWOT analysis to aid this process.

Motivational theory

First selected motivation theory is “Maslow’s hierarchy of need” that can be applied to Simunovich Olive Estate limited, that is olive oil producing estate, which is not only producing extra virgin olive oil but also olive skincare range. Abraham Maslow propounded this theory in 1943. As per this theory, an individual has a hierarchy of needs, which can be full filled by the company to motivate employees (Miner, 2015). These need hierarchy are:

• Physiological needs- these are the basic needs of an individual like food, sex, and shelter, which are needed to survive. Simunovich Olive Estate limited, labor can be identified, and whose basic need can be provided to them to motivate them, like farmers, who are farming olives within the estate.
• Safety need - these are the needs that includes financial, and personal security and wellbeing and health. For this Simunovich Olive Estate limited can provide security of the job to the employees, and health insurance to the staff, especially who are working with machines in the process of production.
• Belonging or love needs- at this level, the need for care, friendship, family, relationships, and love is required by an individual to get motivated to work in that environment. This company can provide a healthy and friendly environment, and provide a feel like a family to motivate the employee to be loyal and work for the company.
• Esteem needs- this need arouses to make oneself feel confident and desire to receive respect from others. This company can fulfill this need of employees by giving rewards and recognition to employees with excellent work.
• Self-actualization needs- this is the desire to have possibly everything that a person can ever achieve. For fulfillment of this need, this company can provide promotions and transfers top motivate employees.

Another suitable motivation theory for Simunovich Olive Estate limited is Hertzberg’s two-factor theory. Frederick Herzberg propounds this theory, after analyzing more than 200 respondents that were engineers and accountants. According to this theory, two major factors that influence employee satisfaction and motivation:

• Motivating factors - these factors are required by the company to provide to motivate employees to perform better. For Simunovich Olive Estate limited these factors can be the reason for employee’s hard work, like providing rewards and incentives, incentives can be financial or non-financial. Providing recognition to the individual through their portal, or website, or in meeting
• Hygiene factors - these factors in an organization are necessities to work in an organization. The absence of these factors can lead to a high rate of turnover and complete loss of work. For Simunovich Olive Estate limited, the hygiene factors are company policies, salary, and manager’s relationship with employees with co-workers behavior. The basic health necessities like availability of first aid, clean place to sit, eat, and drinking water(Smith & Barrick, 2015).

Therefore, it can be said that the Simunovich Olive Estate limited need to maintain basic requirements that are the hygiene factors and provide some additional factors to motivate employees, to enhance the productivity of the organization.

The company chosen to discuss the leadership and its style is “2 degrees mobile limited.” It is full-service telecommunication Provider Company, based at New Zealand (2degreesmobile, 2018). Chief executive and chairman of the company is “Stewart Sherriff,” he is considered to be one of the successful leaders till now (2degreesmobile, 2degrees appoints new Chief Executive, 2018).  The leadership style followed by him is democratic leadership style. According to this type of leadership, leaders give due importance to all the employees while taking any decision for the company. He listens to the point of view of every employee, this will make every employee feel important, and all the changes are made with their consent. Through this, chances of resistance to change decrease to a large extent and people are motivated to work better for the company. This Leadership style is one of the major factors for better creativity and success of the company as a whole. The only disadvantages that the decision-making process becomes slow, as the procedure are long, that includes suggestions from other employees (tec.com, 2018).

Mr. Sherriff, being the very knowledgeable person in the telecom industry, plays a significant role through his leadership in the company. His leadership has ensured the momentum for the organization after Eric Hertz passed away. The decision power of Sherriff is very strong, as he does not take a decision by himself and give due importance to his team members while taking any important decision (2degreesmobile, 2degrees appoints new Chief Executive, 2018).

Simunovich Olive Estate leader, that is CEO of the company is “Donna Simunovich.” It can be said that the leadership style is “charismatic leadership” of Donna. The major characteristic of this leadership style include effective communication, maturity, sense of humanity, compassion, exist without substance, truly confident, positive body language, listening skills, self-improvement, and self-monitoring.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Donna charismatic leadership style can be justified with his work in the company with three examples:

• Crop monitoring team- a regular monitoring team were initiated for olives check and industry, keeping fungal diseases and humidity away from leaves
• Innovation- innovation has been implemented by him which includes premium quality olive oil and innovative skincare range from olives
• Potential maximization – through self-improvement, the potential of the estates has been maximized, which has resulted in the premium olive oil. Everything that is harvested in a year is used and sells effectively in form of various products. Moreover, the potential of the trees is maximized in estate climate(Renko & Carsrud, 2015).

Through delegation, it can be ensured that more task is performed in less span of time, and it is helpful in building team capacity. In the 2 degrees organization, the delegation can be executed by delegating authority to teams or departments by top-level management. The delegation can be done to designing team, the technical team for engineering task, the marketing team for creating promotional schemes moreover they can delegate to the sales team, for business development, and delegation to customer service team to handle customer issues (Brenner, 2015). The delegating process utilized by 2-degree management is in six steps:

• Prepare- development of delegating plan and map
• Assign – assign the planned delegation to potential employees or team leader
• Confirm understanding – ensure if responsibility and authority is understood by the delegated team
• Confirm commitment- ensure if the team is committed towards their work
• Avoid reverse delegating
• Ensure accountability – the need for two way communication is there, and the completion date is been found and ensure if the task is completed within time and satisfying(fastcompany, 2018)

 For 2-degree mobile limited, there have been many areas where change has brought, since it is a telecommunication company, the technology is changing very rapidly. One of such change example is an introduction to 4G network and shutting down of the 2G network to make space for a new one. This change can be understood through “Kurt Lewin’s Change Model” (Brfidgman & Brown, 2016).

Three steps in this change model are:

1. Unfreezing- before implementing any change to the organization that is a 4G network, an awareness regarding the change is understandable to the employees so that the change is not resisted by the employees.
2. Changing- next step is to implement change to the organization, for this 4G network and its service is initiated in this step. In this stage, people also learn new technology. In addition, how to provide them effectively to customers; moreover, the customer service team also needs to understand the change in this organization, because customer’s queries had to be answered by them(Ali & Hussain, 2016).
3. Refreezing- this is the last stage in the change process, as the executed change need to become permanent in nature, without any issue or resistance in the organization. At this stage, production or service of the 2G network is shut completely, and 4G was stabilized and solidified(2degreesmobile, Why the change to our network?, 2018).

Whitewater metaphor of change explains that the organization is viewed as a tiny raft that navigates a river ranging with never-ending whitewater. It can be said that change and managing it in an organization is a continuous process and managers face the predictability, stability, constant change, and bordering on chaos (Seatter & Lozano, 2015).

Considering this metaphor, 2-degree Company needs to handle dynamic change. In addition, this industry is moving very fast, there are changes in technology very fast; this leads to change in an organization, either in process or product or service development. That changes need to be identified and act as a coach, catalyst, chief change consultant, and cheerleader. The leaders may provide guidance for change ion technology, strategy, structure, or products that need to be implemented.

Need for innovation and change

The external forces that are responsible for innovation and organizational change are economic shocks, technological factors, competition, social trends.

Among these factors, the major forces that lead 2 degrees to enforce changes are technological factors and competition. To gain competitive advantage, the company needs to bring innovation to their products or services, or process. Moreover, technological factors are another major force. As already discussed, technology in this industry is changing rapidly, and the company either becomes the first mover to change the technology or adapt to the new technology. This is essential for the company to exist, as the degraded technology cannot work for a long time (Pyka, 2017).

Herzberg’s two-factor theory

Innovation and change brought by 2 degrees are launching 3G and 4G network service, these services can be purchased by companies or individual online through the website or mobile applications for Android and IOS (2degreesmobile, Why the change to our network?, 2018).

Simunovich Olive Estate, the major changes change in process and new product development. Innovation comes with utilizing olives for the production of different products. For example, skin care products using olive, hair care from olive oil, and purest form of extra virgin olive oil.

Two strategies that are followed by the company managers to overcome barriers to change are:

1. Propose incentive – the incentive is the best way to encourage employees and the employee’s chances of resistance to change are reduced. This strategy is helpful to apply by change agent for an increase in productivity. This strategy engages employees in work, and they work better for their incentive, which can be in form of monetary pay, Or non-financial incentives(Raban & Ritcher, 2015).

This scheme involved the employee recognition program, which will make an individual feel important and rewarded for the task the employee was performing. The employee who gained recognition will be motivated to work without resisting and seeing this, others will be motivated to have that recognition too.

2. Exercise authority- to decrease employee resistance and opposition, and make the employees accepted with new processes, cultural norms, and standards, quickly the organization choose to exercise authority. For example, a crop-monitoring programme initiated to exercise authority, which is the crop harvesting is running as per the new process and to the maximum potential.

This strategy is applied when the change is essential and instant change is required, there is no time for management to influence employees through incentives or any another change initiative. At such circumstances, change management with authority becomes essential (businessmapping, 2018).

An area where planning is needed in The Simunovich Olive Estate is the production of beauty and skincare products. The planning process has six steps, through which effective planning in this activity can be done as follows:

1. Identifying the need for action- the area is identified where the planning and course of action are required. In this case, the production of beauty and skincare products is the major area to focus
2. Setting objectives- the objectives are been set for the whole company, the objectives can be short term and long term. Here the objective is innovative products development in beauty range
3. Developing premises- this step includes premises that are the assumptions that can be responsible in the future, as climate change in this case
4. Identifying alternatives- all the alternative available to achieve the objectives, are identified at this stage
5. Examining alternatives course of action- the alternative identified are examined, which are complementing with organizational resources and are able to fulfill objectives
6. Selecting the alternative- the best alternative is selected
7. Formulating supporting plan
8. Implementing plan(Craig & Dibrell, 2014)

There are many types of plans, among which two important types are a strategic plan and operational plan for Simunovich.

The strategic plan is the top-level plan, where planning is done for the whole organization and initiated with the mission of the organization. Top management members, like presidents, and CEO, make these plans and provides a framework for middle and lower level employees. For Simunovich, the strategic plan is to produce premium quality olives, for which lower and middle-level managers work  (Kerzner, 2017).

Whereas

Organizational plans are those, which are framed by bottom-line managers in the organization or low-level managers. These plans focused on a particular procedure and process. Moreover, scheduling plans for completion of tasks are also part of these plans. For Simunovich, these plans include the harvesting procedure, and refining process to produce the purest form of olive oils  (Kerzner, 2017).

Strategic planning process:

1. Situation analysis
2. Direction
3. Alignment
4. Execution
5. Evaluation (Craig & Dibrell, 2014)

For this process, the Simunovich Olive Estate SWOT analysis can be used. this includes:

1. Strengths

• Quality management- the quality of olives are maintained to the maximum
• Suitable Climate – the climate is suitable for harvesting olives at Estate

2. Weakness

• Crop damage- due to fungus and humidity, the chances of damage or poor quality crop is high
• Long production cycle- the production cycle takes longer time, as it involves the olive production, then refining through machinery and creation of olive oil, and using them making other beauty products

3. Opportunities

• Product diversification- the company can invest in the production of new products
• Technological improvement- using better technology for the production of olive oil

4. Threats

• Fierce competition
• Demand reduction
• Climate change

Simunovich Olive Estate can use strengths to gain opportunity and reducing weakness and avoiding threats to execute the strategic plan  (Kerzner, 2017).

Leadership Style

The major area where the control is essential is crop monitoring. The chances of crop failure are very high due to climate change and crop damage, of infection in leaves can lead to low quality or damaged productivity of olives.

Control cycle steps:

1. Risk assessment- the risk is to be analyzed, that the risk of damaged crops is analyzed at this stage. In case any disease or infection is observed in any of the leaves, that seems to be an indication to take corrective steps
2. Implement and communicate- this step involves the effective implementation of risk assessment and needs to be communicated within the organization, especially with the respective team, that is harvesting team
3. Monitor – this step includes monitoring, this stage includes to ensure if risk assessment is done effectively, and not further risk is analyzed. Moreover, to ensure that the risk observed is a cure within time(Kerzner, 2017).

Control cycle is an ongoing process, as the environment is dynamic in nature, the risk can be analyzed at any time. For this, the company had a crop-monitoring programme

Feedforward control, this is one of the preventive control, the main objective is to prevent any deviations. Like in the case of Simunovich Olive Estate, use of fertilizer to control crop failure is feedforward control  (Kerzner, 2017).

Whereas

Another type of control is concurrent control; this includes ensuring performance standards, or desired results. In case of Simunovich Olive Estate, the quality check is one of the concurrent control, where it is been check if the quality is as per standards and requirement  (Kerzner, 2017)

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/lewins-3-stage-model-of-change-unfreezing-changing-refreezing.html

2degreesmobile. (2018). 2degrees appoints new Chief Executive. Retrieved from 2degreesmobile: https://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/company/news-and-media-releases/2degrees-appoints-new-chief-executive/

2degreesmobile. (2018). A little about us. Retrieved from 2degreesmobile: https://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/company/

2degreesmobile. (2018). Why the change to our network? Retrieved from 2degreesmobile: https://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/2g/

Ali, M., & Hussain, S. (2016). Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 1.

Brenner, S. (2015). Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 2-16.

Brfidgman, T., & Brown, K. (2016). Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. human relations, 33.

businessmapping. (2018). 5 Effective Change Management Strategies. Retrieved from businessmapping: https://www.businessmapping.com/blog/5-effective-change-management-strategies/

Craig, J., & Dibrell, C. (2014). Linking the formal strategic planning process, planning flexibility, and innovativeness to firm performance. Journal of Business Research, 2000.

fastcompany. (2018). 6 Steps For More Effective Delegation. Retrieved from fastcompany: https://www.fastcompany.com/3006643/6-steps-more-effective-delegation

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Miner, J. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. London: Routledge.

Pyka, A. (2017). Innovation, structural change and demand evolution: does demand saturate? . Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 337.

Raban, D., & Ritcher, G. (2015). Studying gamification: the effect of rewards and incentives on motivation. In Gamification in education and business, 21.

Renko, M., & Carsrud, A. (2015). Understanding and measuring entrepreneurial leadership style. Journal of Small Business Management, 54.

Seatter, C., & Lozano, R. (2015). Teaching organisational change management for sustainability: designing and delivering a course at the University of Leeds to better prepare future sustainability change agents. Journal of Cleaner Production, 205.

Smith, T., & Barrick, M. (2015). Collective organizational engagement: Linking motivational antecedents, strategic implementation, and firm performance. Academy of Management journal, 111.

tec.com. (2018). 9 common leadership styles: Which type of leader are you? Retrieved from tec.com: https://tec.com.au/resource/9-common-leadership-styles-which-type-of-leader-are-you/