An Investigation of the Impact of Leadership Styles into Business Growth; a Case Study of John Lewis

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Why it is an issue for John Lewis?

Without HRM this isn’t conceivable to run the organisation successfully and ultimately the growth of business. John Lewis has a large number of permanent staff, so researcher find this topic very emerging. Every individual is unique so it is hard to find out the best leadership style to satisfy them. John Lewis is successful example for retaining the staffs so this research will studied on how they have practiced leadership style.

Why it is an issue now for John Lewis?

To reduce Employee turnover which is very expensive, up-to-date with current market positioning and to speed up the growth of business this research on leadership style is conducted. Managing huge number of staff along with partnership (John Lewis and Waitrose) it is necessary to set the research.

What could this research shed light on?

Plenty of previous researches have identified the impact of leadership style in organisation but few studies have been conducted on successful business like John Lewis. The researcher will evaluate the leadership style, strategy and procedures in John Lewis in order to create conceptual frame work and will also shed light on how company should treat employees to get the best out of them. It will present specific data to improve the leadership knowledge and skills of organisation’s present and future leaders. It will focus on finding the fact whether the effectiveness of leadership style as a key contributor is playing decisive role in John Lewis growth. Furthermore the role of leadership and its effective style(s) in John Lewis for functional effectiveness will also be discussed and reviewed.

1.5 John Lewis

John Lewis is a prestige name of UK retail market which has a history of over 80 years. The business started in with an ambitious vision of ‘employee-owned’ UK business that operates John Lewis & Waitrose stores and supermarkets, online and catalogue based retail services. Nearly 93,800 partners owned 43 John Lewis stores, approximately 300 Waitrose supermarkets, an online and catalogue business–johnlewis.com. The business possessed by trust on behalf of its staff –Partners– who have strong influence in business decision making and receive profit sharing on top of their salaries. Sunday Times ranked it 3rd UK’s largest business in 2010 and one of the prime retailers with busiest high street website operator. The company proudly broadened its range to its buyers, with the offering of ‘Essential’ and ‘Value’ ranges, and business expansion.

Source: http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about

CHAPTER – 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Role of leadership in effective decision making, organizational performance and growth

Decisions and their significance cannot be denied in business world. Every success/growth, every mishap/blow, every prospect/opportunity availed/seized or even missed is the outcome of a decision taken or failed to take by someone responsible in the business. In many businesses, decisions customarily get stuck/delayed/hindered inside the company which cost in terms of low performance, no/less growth, dissatisfaction and declining morale (Rogers & Blenko, 2014). He also added usually the leadership has strong hold in terms of striking the effective decision for attaining the desired performance levels in the business. It is because leaders use their broader vision to anticipate and grasp the potential opportunities, develop consensus, involve their followers and strike the best decision in the favour of business. Failing to do so may sink the morale of employees, performance levels which ultimately lead to declining organizational productivity. Indeed, taking the collective decision in favour of organization through taking everyone on board and most importantly making that decision happen quickly is an art of effective leadership which considered as an esteemed hallmark of a high performing business (Rogers & Blenko, 2014). He argued one of the most important arguments in this regard is even in reputed businesses, there could be an indistinctness/doubt over the issue who is actually responsible/accountable/answerable for which decision and this may stall the entire decision making process in business. Harris (2011) added the authority of decision making must come with accountability and every leader (who believes in empowerment) must link the accountability for desired output/results/performance.

The historical investigations are evident that leadership and its impact on organizational performance broadly can be divided into variety of significant stages. Early researches on leadership (‘usually known as trait studies’) pondered on determining the leader personality traits that typified him as a thriving leader (Ullah, 2013). Mainly trait theories presume that leaders born with particular inherent qualities, traits and characteristics that distinguish them from non-leaders. Fielder (2006) criticised the theories with the view that complexity in classifying and corroborating these traits lead to pervasive disapproval of this approach, which further signalled the surfacing of behavioural and style based leadership approaches. Behavioural and style based leadership approaches, discourage the significance of link between leadership and inborn traits leaders, signify the strong link between performance and leadership behaviour and style (Ullah, 2013). He added the prime output of these investigations emerge to be that leaders with participative or democratic styles are more popular, successful and productive for businesses. Rogers & Blenko (2014) mentions the weaknesses of behavioural and style is that they disregard the significant role which situational conditions/factors/contributors play in identifying the success/effectiveness/value of leaders. Due to this strong limitation, the emergence of contingency and situational leadership theories had happened (Harris, 2011). They added situational and contingency theories alter the focus away from ‘the one best way to lead/command’ to scenario/context/situation-sensitive leadership style. Although every approach focuses the significance of various factors, the common principle of contingency and situational approach is that leader effectiveness/success is strongly depended upon the understanding and diagnosis of situational factors along with embracement of suitable leadership style to tackle with every circumstance/situation (Fielder, 2006).

In an obvious response to the outlook of ‘one best way of leadership’,