Due date 17May,2010

“Leadership Style in Practice”
Ali Ahmed is a long term employee of the HyperOrg Pvt. Ltd., and for the last several years he has been a supervisor in the financial section of the firm. He is very loyal to HyperOrg and works hard to follow the company polices and procedures and the order of the managers above him. In fact, upper-level management thinks very highly of him; they can always count on Ali to meet any sort of demand that the company places on him. He is valued and well liked by all the top managers. His employees in the financial section have the opposite opinion of Ali. They feel that he is too concerned with pleasing the upper-level management and not nearly concerned enough with the needs and concerns of the employees in his department. For example, they feel that Ali never really pushes hard enough for a more substantial slice of the budget, relative to other departments in the company. Also, whenever one of them goes to Ali with a new idea or suggestion for improvement, he always seems to have five reasons why it can’t be done and he instructed employees to focus on current tasks. He always considers himself important in his section. There is considerable dissatisfaction among the department and everyone thinks that Ali is just a puppet of management. Performance has begun to suffer because of his style and leadership. Upper-level management seems to be unaware of the situation in the finance section.

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Q1) How would you explain Ali’s leadership style in terms of one or more approaches discussed in the course? 15 Marks

Answer : With the discussion above its seems that Mr. Ali is applying Theory X, according to that the employees dislike work, are lazy, seek to avoid responsibility, and must be pressurized to perform . Mr. Ali thinks that workers need to be closely supervised. A hierarchical structure is needed with narrow span of control at each and every level.

Mr. Ali belief that the employees can even give a required out put without any incentive program. This approach belief on threat and coercion to gain their employee's compliance. The employees should be happy with the salaries what they are having at the month end.

Q2) What advice would you give Ali to improve his approach to leadership? 5 Marks
Answer : Mr. Ali is need to adopt Theory “Y”, to respect employees ambitious and been allowed to exercise self-control. Further the employees will allow to learn to seek out and to accept responsibility and to exercise self-control and to be self-guide in accomplishing objectives to which they are committed.