Management and Organisational Change

The Assignment Brief

Part One:

Mr Simon has spent 12 years continuous service as a line manager in a retail organisation. In the past three years he has twice been considered for promotion via a formal interview process and was unsuccessful. On each occasion the successful candidate had better formal qualifications than Mr Simon, although he had more experience.

He has very recently been rejected for promotion for a third time and is thought to be becoming disillusioned as a result of this. On passing him in the corridor you (team leader) overhear him saying to a colleague, ‘I can see there is absolutely no possibility of advancement in this organisation for me, it's time I moved on.'

Mr Simon is a very hard working and diligent worker and is highly regarded by your team members and replacing his skills and abilities will be extremely difficult.

You are currently studying attitudes, teams and motivation theories as part of a management qualification. Explain why the topics you are studying may be useful in analysing this particular situation and what positive measures could be implemented to attempt to re-motivate this employee?

Part Two:

According to Rollinson (2010) a working definition of leadership can be defined as "a process in which leader and followers interact in a way that enables the leader to influence the actions of the followers in a non-coercive way, towards the achievement of certain aims or objectives".

With this in mind, critically evaluate how the leadership style adopted by a manager may either facilitate or hinder change in organisations.

Considerations: you should follow these guidelines to help you plan your answer

- Definitions, examples and theories surrounding motivation, management and leadership, from a range of academic sources.

- Consider the full range of OB topics from an organisational perspective.

- An analysis of how these theories might work. You should explore the advantages and disadvantages of the theories presented.

- It is important to draw a parallel between the theory and practice and use references for the facts given.

- The leaflet ‘information skills: Bibliographies and References' can be found on the following link: www.napier.ac.uk/inform

Essay format, not exceeding 4000 words.

The essay structure is important and you should follow the pattern of an introduction, the main theme and end with a conclusion.