Adidas Inc.
Adidas Inc. is a well-known sportswear and sports equipment manufacturer and merchandiser headquartered in the USA. Its management is structured in a hierarchical format whereby there are several senior-most positions followed by mid-level executives and then junior executives at the bottom of the management hierarchy (Ejimabo, 2015, p. 70). A hierarchical management structure ensures that every aspect of the company’s affairs is covered by a member of the management team. All the company’s roles and responsibilities are adequately divided and distributed.
A company with a dynamic nature of its operations like Adidas calls for teams from different departments to collaborate with each other, an attribute that is difficulty to execute in a hierarchical structure. To limit these weaknesses brought about by the company’s management structure, the company needs to restructure its management levels to adopt a structure that is more horizontal (with few top-level managers and more supervisors) than vertical (Dreyfuss and Young, 2015, p. 60). This way it can encourage teamwork, dynamism, and innovation in its ranks.
Task 1 – Differences between a leader and a manager.
A leader is a person who inspires other people by sharing his/her vision with them, motivating them to act on that vision and encouraging them to work through hurdles to pursue and accomplish that vison. On the other hand, a manager is a person who makes plans, organizes and coordinates the operations of an organization (Beh and Imran, 2016, p. 100). While a leader’s primary aim is to elicit inspiration to the people under him so as to drive them into achieving his/her vision, a manager will organize, coordinate set rules in order to get the people under him to accomplish tasks and duties.
A leader will allow the people under him to make a contribution in deciding how to perform their tasks and duties. He includes them in making various decisions about the operations of the company. This makes them feel like they are part of the company and inspires them to work harder to achieve the company’s goals. A manager will set rules and procedures that his/her juniors are supposed to follow. He/she then makes sure the employees understand the rules and puts deterrence in the form of warnings, salary cuts and others to whoever fails to follow the set rules (SULSELBAR, 2015, p. 160).
A leader will create a level of trust and honesty with those under him so as to inspire them to work with little or no supervision and still achieve set targets. By breeding confidence and a sense of assurance to his employees, a leader will leave the employee to push him/herself towards a set goal while a manager will always point to the rule-book and threaten employees with penalties and other consequences as a way of pushing them to reach set targets.
A leader takes pride in coming down from his/her position and joining the junior employees once in a while in performing a task (Ejimabo, 2015, p. 70). By bringing themselves to the employee’s level, a leader shows them that he values what they do and their contribution to the company.
Task 2
In the case of Adidas, its leadership levels and formations need to be restructured to adopt a more horizontal structure of management. This will ensure that the top most management positions are few, with more supervisory positions. This cuts down the number of bosses whom staff can report to and reduces the level of bureaucracy in the company hence enhancing service delivery. Here is how the different styles of leadership can fair at an organization like Adidas.
Situational Leadership – A situational style of leadership calls for the management to adapt to a style of leadership according to the demands of the situation (Mahdi et al.,2015, p. 45). In the case of Adidas where the hierarchical management structure means many executives, a situational style of leadership will call for the management to adapt their leadership qualities to the level of understanding and commitment of the employees. At Adidas where the employee rank is properly trained and skilled in their roles, the manager will have to choose supporting and delegating styles of leadership which gives more leeway and space to employees to perform their tasks.
A situation style of management is more suited for leadership than management. it is therefore not very suitable in a company like Adidas where there are many layers of management executives.
System leadership – system leadership calls for the different management executives in a company to apply their skills beyond their area of management into the rest of the organization. This is achieved through teamwork, collaborations and building consensus. System oriented leaders look at the bigger picture, outside their area of jurisdiction into the whole system. To get the whole organization’s system to work as a cohesive unit, the various leaders in that organization have to sit down, make strategies, plans, designs and processes together and endeavor to build teamwork as one unit (Birch, 2019, p. 213).
In a company like Adidas, system style of leadership would work very well for its management structure which is comprised of many executives. When all the managers are included in the company’s decision-making process, they feel motivated to effectively roll out the decisions to the betterment of the company.
Contingency Leadership – Contingency leadership is best suited for companies which have weak systems of operation because it calls for leaders to be ready adopt different styles of management which are contingent on the situation (Vielmetter and Sell, 2014, p. 175). This means a leader can change his/her style of leadership if the contingencies change the situation. Such a style calls for leaders who are able to quickly adapt to different situations.
In the case of Adidas, contingency leadership would not be easily applicable because the company has an existing strong system that has been followed from the company’s inception. The management do-not therefore need to have a contingent leadership in place incase the system changes.
Task 3 – Operations department and its significance in the management structure.
Operations management deals with managing the company’s processes of creating goods and services. It is a very vital component of the company’s structure which involves planning, organizing and control of all resources that from ingredients of the company’s products.
Operations management is the backbone of the company’s activities since this is the department where products which the company has to sell to obtain revenue are produced.
At Adidas, the Operations management team is responsible for mass producing the prototypes of shoes and other products it receives from the designing department (Kempf and Franklin , 2016, p. 150). Such a department is very key to an organization like adidas whose selling point is quality, endurance and style. The company’s management should therefore be structured in such a way that the efforts of the entire management team revolves around ensuring that the operations department is operating robustly so as to create products that will maintain the company’s image of good quality and sustain the brand name.
Task 4 The services, design, finance and other departments should always ensure the operations department has all the materials it needs to keep its functioning rolling smoothly (Ejimabo, 2015, p. 63). They should liaise with the management of operations and work as a team to solve any arising issues, plan on volumes to be produced, set up production of a new product and other functions.
Factors that impact on the business environment and the operational management and the decisions made by leaders
Human resources –this is especially more applicable in the service industry since a service-based company needs an adequate number of quality trained staff. The human resource factor calls for a company’s management to apply leadership traits in handling the employees since it is an industry that requires more employees to interact fully with clients (Prajogo, 2016, p. 40). They therefore need to be fully motivated and made aware of the company’s vision and goals and on how to handle clients as they offer the service to them.
Company’s corporate objectives – The overall objectives of the company should never be in conflicts with the objectives of the operations department (Eruemegbe, 2015, p. 130). The operations management should always make consultations with the company’s management whenever it needs to change its operational objectives so as to ensure a cohesive drive towards achieving the objectives.
Company’s finances – the strength of the company’s finances determines how the operations of the company will be carried out. Since operations take up the biggest chunk of company’s finances, the availability of finances will determine how smooth the functions of operations department will be (Saleem, 2017, p. 230). A good leader will therefore make sure that money for operations is always available so that the departments activities are not disrupted.
Marketing strategies – The strategy employed to market the product determines how fast the product will be sold which in turn determines how many volumes of the product is to be manufactured (Rouhani, 2016, p. 110). A good leader will therefore endeavor to have robust marketing and sales team that can push sales up and in turn also push production levels up.
References
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