Introduction
The report reflects on the leadership practices and management practices in Vodafone operating in New Zealand. These forms the key practices of an organization as it benefits in setting a clear vision and attaining organizational objectives. Every organization differs in its leadership and management practices. These practices shape the way an organization operates in an environment. The effective leadership practices help the organization in raising competitive workforce, higher productivity, better working environment, higher profits. Thus, it directly benefits in gaining an effective market position and gaining competitive advantage.
Vodafone is a recognized business enterprise. It is a multinational business enterprise providing communication services to the customers (Britannica, 2019). It serves its customers in 24 countries including New Zealand, Austria, Bulgaria and India (Trenholm , 2017). Ernest Harrison founded in the year 1982 in Newbury, United Kingdom. In New Zealand, its key competitors are 2degrees and Vocus. It is a successful business organization as it is availing high profits (Keall, 2019). It attains high goodwill and reputation in the New Zealand. Emphasizing on the report structure, the initial section of the report includes the critical evaluation of the impact of leadership on organizational behaviour, culture and vision in Vodafone. The next section focuses on the role of entrepreneurial thinking and creativity in identifying trends, needs and recognizing opportunities in the company. The succeeding part lays emphasizes on the role of innovation and knowledge management in raising organizational effectiveness and competitiveness. Lastly, it includes a reasonable conclusion and practical recommendations based on the discussion.
Discussion 1
Impact on organization behaviour
Leadership has a great impact on the organizational behaviour. It focuses on the activities and performance of the organizational and individual. It lays attention on the individual behaviour in the working environment (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, & Gellatly). The leaders of Vodafone New Zealand provide higher support to its working staff. Their positive and motivating behaviour has helped the company in gaining a higher position in the area of telecommunication network in New Zealand. Its effective leadership style has helped the organization in raising satisfied workforce. Additionally, it also provides benefits package to its employees. By focusing on its employee reviews, it is assessed that they are highly satisfied with the organization. According to their reviews, they claim that Vodafone New Zealand provides supportive leaders as they help the employees and understand their needs, wants and grievances. Additionally, it has benefitted the organization in raising positive employee’s reviews on the digital platform. It will assist the company in gaining competitive advantage based on its effective organizational culture. Its low employee turnover rate clearly depicts that it has supportive leaders. Moreover, it has not faced any major issue based on employee behaviour (Indeed, 2019). Thus, effective leadership style of Vodafone is proved highly essential in giving rise to positive organizational behaviour.
Impact on organization culture
Organizational culture is a set of rules and standards that its human resource should follow. It reflects the psychological environment of an organization. The behaviour of a leader forms the shape of organizational culture. It is considered as a foundation of a culture (Alvesson, 2012). A leadership style can gave rise to positive or negative working environment in an organization. Likewise, in Vodafone business enterprise, the higher authority (organizational leader) laid prior attention towards the well-being of their employees. It is assessed that employees are satisfied with the organization culture of Vodafone. It lays prior attention in developing practices for its human resources. It provides flexible working hours, free breakfast, and work from home facility. It also delivers a friendly working environment. It also focuses on providing multiple growth opportunities. Besides that, it also provides managerial support to its employees (Glassdoor, 2019). It focuses on providing helpful management team, helpful team leaders and developing teamwork. A higher emphasizes is also laid in providing structured training programs. Other than these, it also provides weekly rewards to its employees for their outstanding performance. It also offers a friendly, positive working environment. Thus, Vodafone management leaders lay attention over motivating its human resource (Glassdoor, 2019). From the employee reviews, it is assessed that they benefit from constructive and supportive managers. Thus, it clearly depicts that the leaders of Vodafone New Zealand organization provides a clan organizational culture. Additionally, its leaders have a positive impact on organization culture as it has received a rating of 3.8 for organizational culture (Glassdoor, 2019).
Figure 1: Vodafone (New Zealand) employee reviews
Source: (Indeed, 2019)
Impact on organization vision
It specifies the objectives of an organization. It is developed by integrating the organization structure with its key resources. A vision provides a direction to the leaders. It assist in determines what the organization is trying to achieve within the near future. It forms the result of strategic planning process (Kantabutra, 2010). The leader helps the organization in achieving its long-term objectives and key goals. The leader of Vodafone New Zealand, conduct multiple activities to achieve the organization vision. They frame short-term goals for each team of human resource department. Besides developing targets, they also check whether the human resource have achieved the target or not. They develop effective plans to help the employees in meeting their targets (Indeed, 2019). Besides these, they resolve the conflicts emerged between the human resources in an organization. They develop positive working environment to assist the employees in laying full concentration over their work. They conduct activities to boost the employee morale, as it will benefit in gaining better productivity from them. All these activities of Vodafone leaders (high authorities) have helped the company in gaining its vision (high profit).
Participative leadership
Based on the Vodafone New Zealand organizational behaviour, culture and vision, it is recognized that it participative leadership style is followed in the company. A participative leader is a tem builder and depicts an empowering personality. He motivates his subordinates. He also rewards its followers for their effective contribution (Bryman, Collinson, Grint, Jackson, & Uhl-Bien, 2011). He eliminates the use of punishment and threat to gain better outcome. A participative leader advices and develops activities that will benefit in gaining quality performance from its followers (Huang, Iun, Liu, & Gong, 2010). Similarly, in Vodafone New Zealand, the leader rewards the employees for their brilliant performance (Vodafone Career, 2019). To motivate its employees, the leader has provided efficient workplace (IQPC, 2019). From the above discussion, it is evident that Vodafone leaders rely on the participative leadership style. Thus, Participative leadership style is helping the company in fulfilling short-term goals of the company.
Discussion 2
Role of entrepreneurial thinking
Attaining entrepreneurial thinking and creativity directly gave rise to number of opportunities. It helps in developing a new, innovative and creative idea. Attaining creativity is not enough, entrepreneurial skills must be necessary to develop those creativity ideas in a business setting. Attaining entrepreneurial thinking itself develops the ability of easily identifying the trends prevailing in the environment. It can be done by recruiting an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur attains entrepreneurial thinking (Bryman, Collinson, Grint, Jackson, & Uhl-Bien, 2011). He deals with multiple parties and he has the skills to develop an effective communication with the second party. Through his communication, he can easily gain an understanding of people key needs from the business organization. After gaining knowledge about the possible needs of the customers, he can easily recognize options that will generate opportunities for the company. It assists the organization in gaining competitive advantage (Bryman, Collinson, Grint, Jackson, & Uhl-Bien, 2011). Vodafone applies the use of entrepreneurial thinking and creativity to identify trends that are prevailing in the market, to identify the needs of its customers and human resource. Additionally, to recognize the possible opportunities that can help the Vodafone in gaining more customers and achieving better business position in New Zealand. Additionally, it is laying attention to recruit an entrepreneur, as he will help the company in easily identifying trends, needs and recognizing opportunities from the external environment (Singlepoint, 2019). This is because it will be best suitable for Vodafone as it an economical approach and it will delivers multiple benefits to the Vodafone in New Zealand.
Role of creativity
Creativity is one of the key to attain success and recognized market position. It differentiates an organization from its competitors and helps in gaining competitive advantage. Creativity is highly helpful in identifying trends (Alvesson, 2012). It can be used to determine the needs of the customers as well as management staff. Through creative activities, a company can gain effective knowledge based on the needs, wants and wishes of the key stakeholders. Through gaining information based on the needs of the stakeholders, it generates multiple chances for a business enterprise (Colquitt, Lepine, Wesson, & Gellatly). This is because individual’s shares multiple ideas based on their needs. Unfulfilled needs of the customers act as opportunities for the company. Focusing on Vodafone, it adopts creativeness in the brand marketing. It launched creativeness advertisement. It has identified the market trend. It has recognized the need of high-speed internet among the customers. It has developed an opportunity for the Vodafone. It has launched a campaigned for its 3G network named ‘Speed is good’. It has taken a creative approach as it has adopted the use of ‘Farewell’ and ‘Haircut’ to demonstrate its 3G connection. Both these advertisement were interesting as ‘Farewell’ was emotional whereas ‘haircut’ was funny. To depict the strong network, it has claimed that to offer 22% faster download, 44% faster upload and 22% faster browsing experiencing to its users (Neogy, 2015). The creativity adopted by Vodafone in its marketing has allowed the customers to connect emotionally to Vodafone network. It was a creative approach that has taken by Vodafone in the New Zealand market. Through this, it has developed the opportunity of raising customer engagement rate. This will directly develop the chance of gaining more potential customers in New Zealand.
Discussion 3
Role of knowledge management
Knowledge management is creating, sharing, using and managing the information of an organization. It benefits in availing the more efficient and effective use of human resource (Dalkir, 2013). It is highly beneficial aspect that provides multiple benefits to the organization as well as to its human resource. Through its activities, Vodafone tries to gain possible understanding of its human resource. With knowledge management, it has taken initiatives that will help the company in building effective workforce that will benefit in meeting its strategic requirements. It provides multiple benefits to its employees based on health and life insurance, paid parental leave, paid volunteering, discounts, health and well-being. Beside these, it also provides learning opportunity to its employees (Vodafone , 2019). It has assisted the Vodafone in raising satisfied workforce and gaining positive employee reviews.
Figure 2: Vodafone New Zealand employee’s positive response
Source: (Glassdoor, 2019)
Besides raising productive workforce, it will benefit the company in easily recruiting more personnel. This is because, positive employee response over digital media will help in gaining the attention of wide population of New Zealand. It has helped the company in taking better and faster decision for overall business organization. It has also benefitted in quickly solving the problems of down network and poor customer response in Vodafone New Zealand (Downdetactor , 2019). To provide its customer with best communication network, it has adopted the use of knowledge management and acquired a telecommunication company named ‘TelstraClear’ (Vodafone, 2019). It has helped the company in aligning with the changing needs of business environment and its customers. Effective use of knowledge management assisted the company in improving over mobile services, broadband services and cloud based services. It has directly enhanced the Vodafone effectiveness in the New Zealand.
Role of innovation
Vodafone foundation has laid multiple innovative projects emphasizing on Youth focused community project in Aotearoa New Zealand. From the year 2002, it has given around $25million in such projects (Vodafone Foundation , 2019). However, it has continued its focus towards developing innovative projects and has committed to spend $20 million. Besides that, it has developed current grant programmes as well. Innovation fund forms the part of this program. It allows individuals to apply for funding opportunities. Previously, it has developed immense programmes named as ‘The World of Difference Programme’, ‘Extension Partnership Fellowship’, ‘Extension Partnership Programme’ and Alumni Grants (Vodafone Foundation , 2019). The company’s role towards the innovative programs will help in raising the customer’s attention towards the brand. This in turn leads to higher customer engagement towards Vodafone. Additionally, it will enhance its goodwill and brand reputation in the New Zealand market. It will assist the Vodafone in gaining more potential customers. Vodafone New Zealand has taken an innovative approach. The ‘Vodafone new Zealand Foundation’ has taken a step transform the lives of 210000 young people. In order to build success in its approach, it has relied on $20 million. At present, it is working on a social project named ‘Weaving Hope’. It focuses on a tragedy that took place on 15 March 2019 in Christchurch (Vodafone Foundation , 2019). These activities depicts that it also lays prior attention in other social activities as well. This will directly benefit the company in enhancing its goodwill in the competitive business environment of New Zealand. Besides these, it is also planning to develop digital workplace. It lays prior attention towards its employees. This lead to rise of satisfied workforce in Vodafone. This will help the company in gaining better performance from its human resource. Besides that, it will assist in gaining future human resource requirement. Additionally, it has also won an award for its innovative step (Doherty , 2019). Thus, its innovative approaches will help the Vodafone in building competitive advantage against its competitors (2degrees and Vocus). The Vodafone has successfully adopted the use of innovation and knowledge management in its business practices. This has benefitted the Vodafone in emerging as a top telecommunication service based company in New Zealand. Thus, it clearly states that knowledge management and innovation attains a great role in offering organizational effectiveness and building competitiveness in the business environment.
Conclusion
The report summarizes the leadership and management practices in a recognized business enterprise named ‘Vodafone’. It is assessed that Vodafone is a reputable business organization with a significant presence in New Zealand. It offers telecommunication services to the customers. Based on the concept of organization behaviour, it is analyzed that it is a key management concept. Effective leadership of Vodafone has helped the company in achieving satisfied workforce. It has also benefitted in attaining positive employee reviews. It is analyzed that Vodafone is a creative organization as it has taken various approaches. It has successfully identified the trends and needs of its human resources. These have benefitted in recognizing opportunities prevailing in the macro and micro business environment. It is realized that through the efficient use of knowledge management, Vodafone has successfully attained organization effectiveness and lowered its competition in the telecommunication sector. It has taken several innovative steps that has helped the company in raising its brand recognition resulting in higher organizational effectiveness. Hence, it concludes that effective leadership has a high impact over the successful of Vodafone. Additionally, it’s effective application of knowledge management and innovation also forms the key part of its overall success in New Zealand.
Recommendations
Based on the above discussion, these are the possible suggestions that will benefit the Vodafone (New Zealand):
- It is recommended that Vodafone should focus on improving its organization culture. It is done by enhancing transparency, developing strong relations with employees and inspiring the human resource department. This will benefit the company in improving its rating over digital sites. This will help in improving company reputation in the country. Additionally, it will help in gaining more employees through its fine ratings.
- Vodafone Company should enhance its entrepreneurial creativity through its activities. It will benefit in building competitive advantage. It will help the company in raising its customers. Additionally, it will assist in giving rise to ne pattern of working and conducting activities in Vodafone. This will provide a chance to the company in attaining significant position in the telecommunication industry.
- In order to avail the high benefit of knowledge management, it is suggested that Vodafone should avail the use of knowledge management techniques like Mentoring and Documentation (Hanton & Grassi, 2017). Based on innovation, it is suggested that Vodafone should lay prior attention in providing high-speed internet to its customer. This can be done by offering fifth generation of cellular network (5G) in New Zealand. This will enable the company to be innovative and gaining better customer experience (Biztechmagazine, 2019).
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