Corporate Strategy Assignment: Leadership Vs. Management

Question

Task: Prepare a corporate strategy assignment distinguishing Leadership from Management to achieve Corporate Strategies in retail industry.

Answer

Introduction
Introduction to the research topic of leadership assignment
Differences and similarities between the role and responsibilities of management and leadership in corporate strategies have been a long-established argument. The presence of both an effective manager and a strong leader is required in order to maintain a successful business operation. It is evident from various research studies that management and leadership are completely two different activities and functions which are based on entirely different outcomes, functions and philosophies. Similarly, managers and leaders are also not the same people. Both of the job roles require different approaches and conceptualizations of work, assume separate functions, display different behaviors due to different extrinsic and intrinsic motivations and practice different problem-solving methods (Malik, Javed and Hassan, 2017). However, in the real corporate scenario, the terms 'leaders' and 'managers' are often used interchangeably. The current study will address this problem in the context of achieving corporate strategies in the retail industry. It has been argued in various studies that organizations are required to produce leaders who have enough managerial capabilities and knowledge. At the same time, effective managers are also required to be developed by organizations that possess the leadership skills for better functioning as well as effective decision-making procedures of the team.

Industry overview
This study will highlight the difference between management and leadership in the retail industry. Two crucial factors will be considered in the discussion of leadership and managerial style in the retail environment which are people management and task direction. Cultural risk is one of the significant issues in this context which plays a critical role. Managers and leaders of the retail industry are required to develop a proper balance between the above-mentioned factors in order to maintain the performance level and communications. Task - orientation includes the ability to react, focus on the customer specific issues and take quick decisions in operational dilemmas. On the other hand, retail management and leadership must implement the relationship ability in their job role (Islam et al., 2018). The main objective of this factor is to create a well-functioning retail environment that helps the employees to serve the customers according to the requirement. Appropriate understanding of the retail industry-specific protocols, etiquette, language skills, cultures is crucial for both the manager and leaders for the purpose of efficient and effective business dealings. Responsibility, managing and visions are immensely crucial factors to develop effective interactions between the situation and decision-making process. This study will scrutinize the role of the relationship-oriented and task-oriented style of store managers and store leaders in the development of corporate strategies in the retail industry.

Research aim
The current study will attempt to highlight the difference between management and leadership in the context of the strategic decision-making process of the retail industry. Discussion of the issue will be undertaken under different broad contexts of functional divergence, conceptual distinctions, behavioral differences and contextual differences between the terms 'management and 'leadership'.

Objectives

• To identify the difference between leadership and management in the retail industry.
• To outline the viewpoint of practicing managers and leaders of the retail industry regarding the job role difference of management and leadership
• To determine a constructive way of combining both the managerial and leadership traits to produce better outcomes in the retail industry.

Research questions

• What is the difference between leadership and management in the retail industry?
• How do practicing managers and leaders of the retail industry perceive the differences between management and leadership?
• How can managerial and leadership traits can be combined constructively to produce better outcomes in the retail industry?

Literature Review
Different scholars have contributed to the research of long-established debate of similarities and differences between the role of managers and leaders till date. However, pragmatic evidences have not been observed in this context. It is also difficult to find any study with empirical findings regarding the differences of leadership and management. The researcher will attempt to cover this research gap in the current study.

The difference in the roles of leadership and management in the retail industry
According to Liphadzi, Aigbavboa and Thwala(2017), though there is a difference between the management and leadership in a retail industry but both have their importance in the industry. Leadership controls the social influence in the industry, it concerns achieving the mission and vision of the industry. The leadership has the power to influence the other individual and motivate them so that the industry could achieve the desired success. Management in an industry aims to satisfy the organization's goal. Management leads the project of the industry from its starting till the execution of the project. Management generally focuses on the structure, controlling and solving the problems of the industry. According to Ha, Younand Moon (2020) they have studied that leadership is more effective in the retail industry as the leaders motivate the employees of the organization to perform well. As in the retail industry, the leaders and the employee work together so they build trust against one another. In this situation, it is easy for the leader to motivate and encourage them to achieve the goal of the industry. The managers do not have any regular contact with the employee so leaders plan a crucial role to engage the employee in work.

From the study ofBhusan and Sar(2020), it has been described that to grow retail industry management is an essential section. The focus had been given to human resource management because to continue organization recruitment of proper employees is important. Employees of the industry will help to achieve success and the goal of the organization. Improvement in the workforce will increase the organization's production rate. Strategic human resource management helps the industry to satisfy the needs and the requirements of the industry to achieve success. It also helps the industry to compete with other companies in the market. According to Samosudova(2017), the effectiveness of leadership is more than management. The leadership has to be strong in the industry so that it can achieve success. The leaders create a good environment in the workplace they build social transparency, optimism and mutual trust. They have strong integrity and responsibility as they have to achieve the goal of the organization and have to fulfill the customer's or client's demands. There are four types of leadership styles such as a) Directive leadership style, b) Supportive leadership style, c) Participative leadership style and d) Achievement-oriented leadership style. The different types of styles are applied in respect of the scenario of the industry. According to Mayr et al. (2018), lean management is needed to improve the development of the industry. The industry needs to show its transparency to its customers so the industry should use the digital platform. The industry must have an effective management strategy that will lead to gradual success. Lean management can be incorporated in the industry with the help of five principles that identify value, value system mapping, establishing a pull system, creating a continuous workflow and continuous improvements.

Behavioral differences in management and leadership
As opined by Vogeland Kroll(2019), managerial culture focuses on control and rationality whereas the leadership culture prioritizes the participative, communicative, frank and open characteristics. This managerial culture makes the managers focus more on problem-solving instincts and spend the energies more on the resolution process related to people, structure, resources and goals of the organization. Contrary to the leaders, managers are more planned and conscious in the problem-solving approach, more scientific and structured in nature. Moreover, managers are more stable and authoritative in behavior and tough-minded and persistent in following the schedule. Thus, this mindset of managers motivates the implementation and development of new issue-resolving ideas in the retail sector. Leaders, on the other hand, consider the problems as the new scope and opportunities and seek fresh and new options to innovatively resolve the issues. Leaders are found to be more rebellious in comparison with the managers. Managers prefer to adhere to the organizational hierarchy, norms, rules and regulations more. Thus, it can be said from this argument that the managers tend to accept the organizational status quo whereas leaders prefer to challenge the organizational status quo.

However, this study also proposes that self-overestimation of managerial or leadership skills can worsen the organizational operation and may require coercion in the behavioral pattern (Vogel and Kroll, 2019). Else the team members and the operation will be suffered due to the inadequacy of managerial efficiency and leadership skill. It has been argued in the article (Bandiera et al., 2020) that the contribution of behavior to the production of an organization is organization specific. Also, specific traits of personality of the leadership such as vision or charisma affect the behavior. If leaders do not hold the required qualities then the overall performance of the firm can deteriorate. It has also been stated in this article that excellent leaders clearly understand the purpose of leadership, demonstrate the optimum level of self-discipline, retain and establish connected relationships with team members and strictly adhere to the personal level value set. Prime characteristics of leaders include high concerns regarding the follower's development, society's wellbeing and welfare of the organization. Contrary to the above statement, according to Neffe, Wilderomand Lattuch (2020)relationships of the leaders are mostly one-to-one and intensive. On the other hand, managers develop various distributed networks and attachments. The role of the leaders is completely different as an influencer which has a positive impact on the achievement of objectives and future goals of the organization. Leaders are generally innovation-oriented, suspicious of different traditional activities and question assumptions. The behavior of the leaders is usually directed by the inspirations of future vision and inner values. However, the behaviors of managers are directed by the pre-decided targets and motivated by the rules and regulations set by the others.

Combination of leadership and managerial traits in the strategic decision-making process
As opined by Azad et al. (2017), leading and managing both terms together develop the framework of abilities and skills which are highly necessary for the success of the team. The concept of management and leadership are transportable in demonstrating the effectiveness of performance in the organizations. The functional flow of management and leadership are not different in many situations. This article also implies that leaders demonstrate the quality of a person while the manager can be described as the skill-based individual whose behavior implies the competency form. Leadership development can be considered as the internal self-reflection process. Contrary development of managerial skill is oversimplified and focuses on optimum resource utilization.

Image 1: Continuum of management and leadership
Source: (Azad et al., 2017)

According to Bowers, Hall and Srinivasan (2017), depending only on the leaders in order to effectively manage the crisis will bring disastrous outcomes to the organizations. Organizational cultural elements, leadership style and individual managerial trait must be combined according to the structure of the organization to develop an effective crisis management strategy.

Research Process
Research philosophy
The researcher will select the positivism research philosophy as this philosophy will help the researcher to gain factual knowledge based on the observations. The researcher can obtain quantifiable and observable research findings by utilizing the positivist philosophy. Moreover, as this philosophy restricts the role of the researcher in data interpretation and data collection, the study will be independent of human interests (Zangirolami-Raimundo et al., 2018). The researcher will continue the current study based on the five primary principles of positivism philosophy which are explained below.

• No difference is there among the inquiry logic of sciences.
• Predication and explanation must be the prime objective of the research.
• Research findings must be based on the empirical observations obtained through the human senses.
• Common sense is not similar to science and common sense must be utilized in such a manner so that it could not produce bias in the findings of the current research.
• Logic must be the primary base of judgment and science should be value-free.

Research approaches
Deductive research approaches will be chosen by the researcher in the current study as these approaches will help the researcher to deduce the causal relationship between variables and concepts. It will also assist the researcher to quantitatively conceptualize the study measures and generalize the findings of the research to a certain limit. The researcher will follow the below stages to conduct deductive research.

• Hypothesis deduction from the theory.
• Hypothesis formulation in terms of specific operations and identify relationships between different variables.
• The utilization of relevant methods in hypothesis testing which includes different quantitative methods.
• Scrutinization of test outcome to reject or confirm the theory. In this stage, the researcher will compare the findings of the literature review with the generated research findings.
• Theory modification if the hypothesis is not validated.

Image 2: Stages of deductive reasoning
Source: (Zangirolami-Raimundo et al., 2018)

Research design
The researcher will adopt an exploratory research design as it will help the researcher to explore in-depth the research objectives. The researcher will adopt this research design as this design is highly adaptable and flexible and will lead to a broader scope of future exploration. Exploratory design reduces the level of resources and time utilization as it determines the research type in the earlier stages of the research.

Research Method: Quantitative
The researcher will select quantitative research methodology in the current study. This strategy will help the researcher to reject or support the hypotheses through the implementation of critical and rational thinking. Statistical software will be utilized by the researcher in the data analysis process in order to determine and examine the data trends.

Methods of primary data collection
Interviews and surveys will be selected as the methods of primary data collection. Retail industry-based leaders and managers will be interviewed on the basis of structured interview patterns. Structured interviews will consist of a few pre-determined questions in the same order. This will help the researcher to generate a comparative study of the answers provided by the research participants of the same set of questions (Mohajan, 2018). This method will also provide the researcher the direct control on the process flow and can interact during the process if any issues require more clarifications. Surveys will also be conducted among the customers regarding which includes the computer questionnaires. This will provide an inexpensive and cost-effective way of data collection to the researcher.

Population and sampling methods
The population of the study includes 5 managers and prominent leaders of retail stores for interviews and 100 retail industry-based customers for the purpose of the survey.

The researcher will choose the simple random sampling method as the sampling strategy of the current study (Ørngreen and Levinsen, 2017). This sampling method will help to prevent the sampling bias in the study and will ensure the presentation of all the research representatives.

Ethical considerations
The researcher will follow all the principles related to ethical considerations of the project. The researcher will ensure the voluntary participation of the respondents and will ensure that research participants will not be harmed. The researcher will prioritize the dignity of the participants and will acquire consent in a written manner (Ngozwana, 2018). Adequate levels of privacy protection and confidentiality will be initiated from the end of the researcher. The research will be done with transparency and honesty and any kind of misleading information or misrepresentation will not be provided at any stage of the research. Moreover, the researcher will maintain a high objectivity level in the analysis and discussions across the research process.

Reliability
In order to maintain the reliability of the research findings, the researcher will judge the consistency of the research outcomes across different stages of the study, different observers and across different periods (Rose and Johnson, 2020).

Validity measures
The researcher will be highly focused on avoiding the interviewer bias in the process of primary data collection process which can hamper the validity of the research findings. In order to maintain the research validity, the researcher will introduce face validity in the questionnaire design process of the interview (Mohajan, 2017). The researcher will focus both on the external and internal validity of the project to match the research outcomes with the reality as well as with the external environment. Face validity will judge the specific and relevant aspects of each interview question.

Resources Access for Primary and Secondary Data
Resource access
Primary and secondary data sources will be accessed by the researcher in this study.

Arrangements to access primary and secondary data
A pilot survey will be arranged to ensure the appropriate access to secondary data. The researcher will utilize this strategy to test the pre-decided question set of surveys. 10% of the research respondents who are retail industry-based customers will be selected to arrange the pilot survey. Thus, the researcher will include 10 participants in the pilot process. These will help the researcher to determine the appropriateness of the survey questions in terms of the target population of the retail stores. The pilot survey will also come up with the test of the correctness of the mentioned instructions in the survey form which implies whether the respondents are able to follow the instructions of the process or not. The effectiveness of the survey also can be determined through this process in terms of the research purpose (Hasim, Jabar and Murad, 2019). This will save the financial resources of the research process as the errors of the survey questionnaires can be determined in this earlier stage which decreases the scope of unreliable production of research outcomes.

This pilot survey will be conducted in two phases and it will be based on the participation of respondents. Undeclared pilot survey options will be selected in the first phase by the researcher in this scenario which includes 10% of respondents of the original research respondents. The researcher will conduct the survey pretending to be a full scale and real survey to the respondents. Participants will not be informed about the pre-test characteristics of the survey. The researcher will observe the reactions of the participants in this phase.

In the next phase of the pilot survey, the researcher will administer a participatory pilot survey in which the researcher will inform the participants regarding the pre-test phase of the pilot study. The researcher will ask the participants about the suggestions, comments and reactions regarding the questionnaires set. According to the feedback of the two stages of the pilot survey, the researcher will modify both the questionnaire set of interviews and the survey. Based on the results of the pilot survey, technical, logistical and other issues can also be resolved. The researcher can alter the format of the interview or survey based on the situational context and feedback (In, 2017). On the basis of the level of success, the researcher can also opt for a second pilot survey in the retail industry in order to identify whether the issues and errors are effectively resolved or not. If minor problems are found then the researcher will initiate the large-scale interview and the survey. Apart from that, arrangements of secondary data including records of different retail organizations, websites, newspapers, journals, books and many more will be taken into consideration.

Research plan and timelines of thesis submission

Reference List
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