MD4042 Leading , Managing and Developing People Assignment Sample 2024
1. Introduction
A good and successful organization is the culmination of a few things, such as an amiable organizational culture, strong leadership and a significant leadership style that may help the organization to reach the pinnacle of success effectively. In this essay, the organizational culture of Yamaha, its leaders and respective leadership styles will be discussed critically to comprehend the factors that pushed the company towards exceptional success throughout the years.
2. Organization and background
Yamaha is known worldwide as a motorcycle manufacturing company and the organization was first started in Japan, however, initially the company did not use to make motorcycles and instead started the business making Western musical instruments. The brand gets its name from its founder Torakusu Yamaha and Torasusku was that individual who started the production of such musical instruments in Japan (Yamaha.com. 2021).
Although the company started by making musical instruments, it gradually shifted its business into making motorcycles and the brand is best known for that till date. The first Yamaha vehicle Yamaha had launched was in 1955 and it was named The Red Dragonfly and the vehicle was sold and manufactured in Japan only (Yamaha.com. 2021).
On the other hand, the company had collaborated with the car manufacturing company Toyota in the year 1963 and developed the Toyota 2000GT sports car (Yamaha.com. 2021).
The company had first established its subsidiary overseas in Mexico in 1958 and later that year the company also started to produce equipment related to sports and electronic organs as well. Along with that, the organization has produced many products that fall under different genres and also expanded the business on an international level, resulting in the company becoming a household name today.
The company has been able to maintain a culture of extreme professionalism across all its business ventures and therefore, Yamaha has efficiently succeeded in becoming a household name today. It needs to be mentioned that Yamaha has been able to hire the most suitable leaders in the position of authority and the individuals have taken the brand’s success to a greater level and made it one of the most successful brands over the world.
However, despite its world-renowned success, the brand has also been exposed to the negative side of the business market as well. On a broader note, it has come to light that Yamaha has faced significant challenges in sustaining in the ever growing market in today’s age.
The reason for the brand facing significant challenges to generate a significant amount of revenue is that the competition has increased and multiple brands have now entered the market, causing challenges for brands, such as Yamaha. It has already been established that Yamaha is most known as a motorcycle manufacturing brand and there are multiple brands now that sell the same in different countries.
Apart from selling vehicles, the brand is also struggling to sell its instruments as well and more specifically in the developing countries, such as India. It may be stated that the prices of Yamaha products are on the costlier side and therefore, the majority of the people face challenges to afford the products. Along with Yamaha, many foreign corporations have found it difficult to make money by selling products in India, despite the economic growth of the country (Saranga et al., 2017).
3. The leaders of Yamaha
The leaders of Yamaha have conducted an exceptional job over the years and are still continuing to do so for the purpose of keeping the brand name alive and significant in the minds of consumers. Takuyu Nakata and Satoshi Yamahata are the current board of directors of the company and Yoshihiro Hidaka, Mikio Fujitsuka, Paul Candland, Himorichi Shinohara and more are currently appointed as the outside directors of Yamaha.
It needs to be mentioned that these leaders of Yamaha are the reason behind the brand’s continuous success even in today’s age, when there are so many competitors selling the same products in various different markets. Yamaha as an organization has always been committed to making a great company culture and always giving value to the employees and making each individual feel included and a part of the company.
Therefore, the leaders of Yamaha chose the most suitable leadership styles that compliment the philosophy of the company and that has resulted in Yamaha having such a huge loyal and extravagant employee base all over the world. According to research, leadership style is considered to be one of the most crucial and major factors that have the potential to impact the performance of employees in an organization (Razak et al, 2018).
In addition to that, the leaders have contributed to a great extent in managing all the overseas business ventures of the brand and all the departments that sell different products manufactured by the brand. On a specific note, the company has different executives who oversee the several departments, such as motorcycles, musical instruments of the brand, which further helps Yamaha to run the business in the most efficient manner possible.
However, it needs to be mentioned that the leaders of the company need to give a little more focus on increasing the sale of the company within the extremely competitive business market of today’s age. Yamaha may be considered as a pioneering firm of motorcycles and thus, the company may have some competitive advantage, since first mover advantage is known to provide pioneering firms significant dominance on a market (Robertson, 2021).
Another aspect that the leaders need to focus on is that the company is mostly known for its vehicles and musical instruments and hence, the other products sold by the brand get overshadowed. Thereafter, it is imperative for the brand and its management to give similar importance to these products as well and simultaneously enhance the sale as well.
4. Types of leadership style
The employees in Yamaha have ample amount of time to maintain their personal life that also becomes helpful for them for the enhancement of their creativity. Democratic leadership may be considered as a favourable leadership behaviour and is highly suitable in Yamaha as the company aims for a global market leader position in the automobile market.
Moreover, the democratic leadership in Yamaha may deliver the desired results from the employees for a protracted amount of time as the mental wellbeing of the employees also becomes a concerning matter for the executives of the company.
On a contradictory note, there are some negative aspects of the democratic leadership also such as the over availability of different views makes the decision making process hectic and time consuming affecting the behaviour of the leaders in the Yamaha’s management. However, the democratic leadership is more positively impactful towards the operation of a company where decision is taken by a small group of people and may be recommended for its operation (Khaje, 2018).
On the other hand, it may be considered one of the employee centric leadership that enables an equal participation that demands a responsible mindset from everyone to ensure the smooth business of the organization. The leadership’s credibility and behaviour depends upon two major components such as equally qualified fellow workers and a same type of mindset to achieve Yamaha’s corporate mission and vision.
Yamaha strives to achieve the mission of meeting the global customer’s expectation while adding value to its products and establishing self-esteem along with fulfilling social responsibilities accordingly (Refer to Appendix 2). Additionally, Yamaha has a vision of implementing strategic and operational innovations to enrich the lives of global consumers and this vision may be achieved by positive leadership behaviour of the top management (Yamaha.com. 2021).
Apart from this, above mentioned leadership styles, there are other some modified approaches of leadership such as bureaucratic and charismatic leadership. In this particular process the leader used to make policies and goals as per the requirement of the organizational operation, along with it a protocol to reach the goal.
The main negative aspect of this leadership is that unlike transformational leadership the leaders are less acquainted with the employees so that a communication gap often takes place. On the other hand, the charismatic approach of leadership enables a leader with an heroic and celebrity-like character who mesmerized the subordinates through the dashing personality.
It may be argued that this approach of leadership only increases the followers rather than truly leading at the same time this is the most efficient leadership style to enhance creativity of the workers.
Another bone of contention is once the charismatic personality left organization becomes non operative the entire organization transforms into an aimless ship without any motivation. On the contrary, transformational leadership denotes the transformation of the employees for the sake of the benefit of the organization, the process includes the overall up gradation of an employee.
The management focuses on the intellectual, idealized and individual upliftment of an employee, every aspect is scrutinized and the workers are motivated to establish a harmonious relationship among them and think beyond individual wellbeing. In order to smooth functioning, a leader with a charismatic figure is needed and the most positive aspect of this leadership is that a weak employee also gets the same kind of attention that inspires them to provide a good result.
5. Research on leadership style
One of the main issues regarding the leadership in Yamaha is the lack of innovative ideas at par with market expectations and a mindset to take chances against the new challenges as the more predictable approach towards a problem makes a craving of doing something new among the employees. Moreover, this lack of leadership requires a constant flow of motivation to the workers and to add with that the employees sometimes suffer as the bulk amount of assigned work.
Furthermore, it may be argued that this kind of leadership functions as an inseparable one in which failure of any of the group members becomes disastrous for the entire working body. Moreover, as every member is equally responsible for governing the company, decision making is done by voting, which often results in a chaotic and time-consuming process to take any governing steps. Though it is a highly recommended process to enhance the creativity of the workers, a lot of problems arise due to lack of actual authoritative figures that also causes long term waiting for a simple change (Deters, 2017).
On the contrary the diverse kind of opinion results in split among the group members and that results in hampered operation of the company. In spite of the problems the leadership style offers an opportunity to work as a team to reach the common goal (Robert and Vandenberg, 2020). However, at the same time as the leaders are benevolent enough a healthy relationship is built among them and the whole working atmosphere remains familiar to each and everyone.
In addition to that, a transformational leader’s main motive is to motivate, inspire the fellow employees to get the absolute result and even sometimes beyond it (Bastari et al., 2020). Democratic leadership is totally opposite of the autocratic leadership as in the case of Yamaha the employees have the opportunity to share their views about the operation of an organization. However, it may be argued that at this point the executives are open minded and discuss various situations with the top level leadership which enhances the effectiveness.
6. Link to organization culture
It has been stated that, organizational culture immensely populated the business outcome to serve the consumer expectation and being competitive in the market operation. It defines a particular way of communication and behavioural aspects within the organization with leadership intervention through shared values and beliefs moderating employee understandings and perception aligned with business objectives.
The business management of Yamaha group is defined with the philosophical framework of Yamaha philosophy to think and analyse customer viewpoint with quality and way of leading to provide high quality products and services. Yamaha quality and Yamaha way are structuring the employee dedication and cooperation to achieve excellence in manufacturing for quality and services on a daily basis.
Yamaha way describes the employee mindset to put forward the corporate philosophy in the daily activities to adopt and integrate with an attitude of humility for better craftsmanship and service quality.
Further, it is focused upon actively participating in innovations and taking challenges with meeting the commitment. The leadership provides the vision of organizational activity to influence the employee to embrace excellence, authenticity and innovation as the core principle of service. Other than that, sharing passion and performance promote cultural inspiration throughout the employee and outer world.
The branding of the employer is the key aspect of Yamaha to make employees feel comfortable and valued within the environment which creates organizational trust. Furthermore, it helps to find the best resource and retain the existing employee more often which significantly motivates the employee permanence (Ekhsan and Saroh, 2021).
Yamaha supports workplace diversity with individual differences and promotes active participation of women in leadership as well as motivating the person with disabilities with enhancing the employee engagement. Yamaha supports a healthy work-life balance and work hours with mutual consideration of employee and the company as in leaves for child care, family illness, work time flexibility, teleworking and many more (Refer to Appendix- 3).
Yamaha motor has established fair understanding and good faith with the labour union on the prospective business operation where leadership effectively engages with the labour for motivation on personal and professional growth with managing several aid compensation and insurance and pension fund to address the employee issues.
Specifically, leadership style influences employee productivity significantly where Yamaha leadership focuses upon building trust, credibility and quick adaptability to change with the banner theme Yamaha DNA to comparatively achieve success in the automotive industry.
On the other hand, the respect, openness and continuity of leadership practices will be helpful to revaluate and recognize the Human resources. It influences the engagement with work opportunity, fair income, workplace security and social protection with equality of opportunity and treatment (Prins, 2019).
Leadership attitude and discipline with openness will help to increase the psychological safety of subordinates and influence innovation and productivity. It has been stated that, leadership behaviour will establish relationships with the employees and make flexibility to leadership commitment and changes for better perspective of business mission.
Organizational success depends upon the leadership approach and engagement with the employee which provide sustainability strategically for operational activity and process modification.
7. Conclusion
Finally, it may be concluded that organizational culture and leadership styles are one of the most crucial things that have a significant correlation with the success and growth of an organization.
References
Al Khajeh, E.H., 2018. Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018, pp.1-10.
Bastari, A., Eliyana, A. and Wijayanti, T., 2020. Effects of transformational leadership styles on job performance with job motivation as mediation: A study in a state-owned enterprise. Management Science Letters, 10(12), pp.2883-2888.
De Prins, P., 2019. Bridging sustainable HRM theory and practice: The Respect, openness and continuity model. Sustainable Human Resource Management: Strategies, Practices and Challenges, p.188.
Deters, J., 2017. Global leadership talent management: Successful selection of global leadership talents as an integrated process. Emerald Group Publishing.
Ekhsan, M. and Saroh, T., 2021. The Role of Organizational Trust on the Influence of Employer Branding on Employee Performance. International Journal of Management Science and Information Technology, 1(2), pp.31-35.
Razak, A., Sarpan, S. and Ramlan, R., 2018. Effect of leadership style, motivation and work discipline on employee performance in PT. ABC Makassar. International Review of Management and Marketing, 8(6), p.67.
Robert, V. and Vandenberghe, C., 2021. Laissez-faire leadership and affective commitment: The roles of leader-member exchange and subordinate relational self-concept. Journal of Business and Psychology, 36(4), pp.533-551.
Robertson, J.A., 2021. Pioneering success: The benefits of being a first-mover in gaining competitive advantage. Strategic Direction.
Saranga, H., Mudambi, R. and Schotter, A.P., 2017. Mastering the make-in-India challenge. MIT Sloan Management Review, 58(4), p.59.
Yamaha.com. 2021. Origins of the Yamaha Brand – About Us – Yamaha Corporation. [online] Available at: <https://www.yamaha.com/en/about/history/brand/> [Accessed 9 November 2021].
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