Analysis Of Leadership And Change Management At MySpace

Question

Task: You must produce a portfolio which is appropriately presented and includes the following activities. Tables, diagrams and headings are excluded from the word count.
1 Portfolio Content
Activity 1: You are required to research and write up ONE short practical case scenario drawn from sources such as journal articles, newspapers, and/or the internet which illustrate a range of information, systems, and supporting technologies relating to companies of your choice. This case study must still contain academic theory and models
The case should be around 1000 words. The case should introduce a company using information drawn from a number of sources and provide a short analysis of how they relate to areas of module content. You will need to:

• analyse and evaluate information from numerous sources to create a case study relating to information and knowledge management practices within the company.
• apply information and knowledge management models/frameworks in an analysis of the approach within and outside the company and make justified recommendations for improvement.

Activity 2: Critically reflect on the key communication challenges being faced by your organisation or an organisation with which you are very familiar. 

Your analysis should include:

• Critical appraisal of the organisational approach to communication using theory and models to further your critique
• evaluation of current communication practice required to operate in a diverse global environment, drawing on cross-cultural communication
• provide justified recommendations of how the communication could be improved within the organisation

Activity 3:  Critically reflect on your own learning in this module, evaluating how the theories and concepts on knowledge management and communications interlink and also influence your role as a leader and manager and exploring the potential impact on your future practice. As a result, please identify any effects on your personal and professional development, citing actions which you now need to take and any potential barriers. (Use Example Gibbs reflective model or Kolb reflective model)

Answer

Introduction
The leadership and change management are the most important aspects for any organization. The organisation is the social unit of people who manages and structure the business to meet all the requirements or goals of the business organization. Every business organisation has a separate structure for management, which helps them to keep the bond between the members and tasks. The organisations consist of the authorities, responsibilities, roles and members for carrying out different type of tasks. One of the critical roles played by the organisation to reach out the desired goals is by following the leadership traits. Leadership and change management are the most essential trait present in the organisation where they need to respond or react to the changes like use of new technology, new trend or lifestyle of the consumers or change in market trend etc. For practical analysis using the models and theories, the portfolio will be going to study the failure behind the NewsCorp acquisition of Myspace where the top news company had sold the website for about 580 million dollars. The topic will be going to focus on the contribution factors like stakeholders, culture, change in organisation and culture.

Activity 1
NewsCorp acquisition of MySpace
MySpace is the world’s best internet firm who had sold the online advertisement for about 35 million dollars and had contributed a fraction of 100 million dollars to their parent company who were seeking to ail the social network channel. The leadership and change management has played a significant role in MySpace. The New Corporations had bought the social network Myspace for about 580 million dollars in the year 2005 (reuters.com, 2019). However, the year 2007, the organisation Google had accepted to sign a deal of 900 million dollars for selling different types of advertisement on MySpace with News Corporation. By the year 2007, it could be found total 300 million users had registered in MySpace which valued total 12 billion dollars.

 Nevertheless, the MySpace social network was being crushed by the social media application called Facebook, which was being launched a year when MySpace got popular among users. For this reason NewCorp had put up MySpace for sale by managing an investment bank called Allen&Co to find out a new buyer. However, Myspace is being expected to reduce more than 500 members or employees who are working for developing the social network website according to the given deal. The layoff follows a reduction of staff in April 2010 for about 30 percent, and by January 2011 the staff would be further reduced to 47 percent (Stelter, 2019). The social network Myspace had employed for more than 1,400 people. The social network Facebook had passed Myspace in terms of users because the number of users in Facebook was higher than Myspace. The marketer had estimated that the website wouls going to earn total 183 million dollars all around world by selling advertisements previously the total sale of advertisement was 605 million dollars.

What is the role of leadership and change management on new Corporations external environment and forces?
 Under new leadership and change management, the NewCorps must encompass the involvement of strategy and vision for acquiring the asset MySpace. The NewCorps had to understand the organisation capability and stakeholder behaviour to make the new business more successful. The NewsCorp's had to follow the acquisition life cycle by using a strategy that will help Newscorps can able to justify all the requirements to involve the change in management. The CEO of NewCorps is implementing the best strategy to expand their business by selling advertisements online apart from their newspapers (Rushe, 2019). This leadership and change management will be an excellent opportunity for NewCorps because the majority of the people are using internet technology and for this reason, using online advertisement will be a great source of income for the NewCorps. However, after the launch of new social media application called Facebook, the acquisition of MySpace was a total failure for NewCorps as the number of users were high in Facebook, and MySpace had secondary consideration and capacity where the stakeholders were not at all happy with the change they are facing (Amanchukwu, Stanley & Ololube, 2015).

Figure 1 : the Life cycle of NewsCorps
(Source: Amanchukwu, Stanley& Ololube,2015)

NewsCorps organisational change and Metaphor
The NewsCorp leadership and change management approach to the acquisition of MySpace was being made for Morgans’ method of organisation change. The metaphor of machine displays the leading role of the senior managers who define all the timescales and goals for the particular acquisition project. Each consultant who is involved in the acquisition were being invited to advise different techniques that could be applied to make the program more successful (McCaffery, 2018). For reducing all types of bad behaviours or problems every old employee must be provided training to get adapt to changes. However in case of NewCorps they not at all focused on their stakeholders and also did not looked after the emerged competitor like Facebook to make the acquisition process more successful (Hallinger et al., 2015). There is presence of culture individualism in NewCorps where they had to analyse the details of MySpace and their competitors before acquiring MySpace.

Stakeholder analysis
 The analysis of the stakeholders in the analysis and control of individuals who are present outside and inside the organisation environment. Every business leaders must look after both internal and external stakeholders to make sure the business process is running smoothly without any disturbance. The leaders always have to make the employees or other stakeholders provide all the positive views about the new changes and the benefits they will gain after the change in management (Hallinger & Chen, 2015). In order to implement an effective leadership and change management, every good leader must ignore any individual who is providing any negative views about the changes, which could lead to significant loss for the respective organisations. For the organisations, NewCorps main stakeholders are the writes, business organisations that provide advertisements and the readers. However, some of the stakeholders of NewCorps believe that the acquisition process could destroy the total value of the shareholders than creating a new shareholder after the acquisition process (Chin, 2015). The acquisition process between MySpace and NewCorps has nothing to do with the organisational strategy or capability, which can lead to significant change of stakeholders like employees or customers. In case of NewCorps the customers, writers and business organisation are the significant stakeholders who can use the social network to release their advertisement or news on the online website (Ejimabo,2015). For detailed analysis, a stakeholder matrix had been created to analyse NewCorps acquisition of MySpace.

Stakeholder Analysis Matrix model

Activity 2
Force Field to NewCorps acquisition of Myspace
 The Force Field model is being used for studying all the changes that are either driving or resisting the NewCorps acquisition of MySpace.

Figure 2 : NewsCorps and MySpace force for change
( Source : Ejimabo, 2015)

Figure 3 : NewsCorps and MySpace force against change
( Source : Ejimabo, 2015)

From overall picture provided in the study of leadership and change management it could be found out that the complete details how the acquisition between MySpace and NewCorp was a failure. The diagram shows both the summary of acquisitions where the stakeholders were supporting the process and another point where the stakeholders were against the acquisition process. The CEO of NewsCorp had to reveal the primary influence of the acquisition of MySpace by preventing any failure that could occur after buying the social network (Fischer et al., 2016). The NewsCorp, the American top newspaper company, had ignored the main principle, which governs this particular chosen theory which would have helped him to find out the main competitors like Facebook who are implementing the same technology like MySpace with more improved technology.

The cultural effect of changing
 In situation of the merger and acquisition, the effect of culture change cannot be estimated by the organisation NewsCorps. The organisation Newcorp must understand the cultural difference with MySpace, which would result in a successful blending of the employees and two companies more efficiently. Both the customer service and productivity must not be interrupted by the organisation NewCorps so that the deal does not become a failure (Donate & de Pablo, 2015). The case between the readers and NewCorps they must maintain a strong relationship with the publisher and readers when the content is being published in the newspaper. After the acquisition process, the Newcorps did not maintain a strong relationship with the employees of MySpace and the users, which had created an adverse effect on the NewsCorp reputation. The NewsCorp follows a caveat emptor type of culture, which helped a lot to NewsCorp employees but not for the employees who were working under MySpace (Kwamie, 2015). The NewsCorp was not aware of the use of online advertisement because they had neglected the views provided by the acquisition company MySpace. The culture of NewsCorp is much more traditional and conservative than MySPace who focused on open communication to share new ideas to gain more improvements in the company. Therefore, both the organizations followed distinct leadership and change management approach.

Culture of collectivism and individualism
 The culture of individualism will be studied between the organisation NewCorps and their readers or subscribers where the newspaper organisations always maintain a relationship with the readers and writers, which is not involved. The NewsCorp always follows a more distinctive culture where aggressive and tribal are being centred on the editors who were one of the best former employees (Van Hoorn, 2015). The culture of News Corp is very masculine where majority of the alpha male is being selected as editors and woman are being neglected. The NewsCorp culture is much more vindictive and bullying inside the working place where the employees have no rights to open up their voice or ideas while editing a report. Majority fo the mangers are trying their best to navigate and persevere the culture for producing excellent journalism. However in case of MysPace the scenario was opposite because the employees follow open communication system to share new ideas for positing advertisement online and the bullying activities were very less. The News corps has more strict politics and policy inside the working place than MySpace. MySPace.com is much more youth-oriented where the users are highly devoted to posting blogs, kinds of music, personal classified, chat rooms and video games (Gorodnichenko & Roland,2017). However, the NewsCorp after acquiring Myspace is looking for providing real-time news to the users than providing any kind of related events provided by the MySpace itself. The main aim of the leadership and change management followed by NewsCorp is to provide a rich experience for the present internet’s user by using all the existing online assets successfully.

Power Distance
 The power distance is the measurement of influence between the employees or managers and owner of the organisation. There was huge discussion among the people when NewsCorp had acquired MySpace.com. The NewsCorp was blind about authenticity because they opposed the views that were being followed by the MySpace owners Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson (Mulki, Caemmerer & Heggde, 2015). The power distance between the boss and employees mut be measure to ensure both company’s behaviours are similar because any difference in the mindset could fail the acquisition process. The NewsCorp editors and employees are not at all happy with new change when the owner had bought MySpace.com.

NewsCorp Leadership Style
 The leadership and change management plays the most critical role in providing guidance and direction to organisation foal. The owner of NewsCorp always sees that acquiring MysPace.com is an excellent opportunity for publishing all news and advertisement in the online profile. The News corporation persona interests for media assets, which include 20th-century fox and Fox TV, which are being operated n United States. After buying MySpace.com, the company News corporation is following Mr Murdoch’s for far-flung the Myspace.com for following high number of advertisers and audiences online (Rajala, Westerlund & Lampikoski, 2016). The leaders of News Corporations always facing a mixed experience for trying to extend the business online for companies like Yahoo and google who had attracted high stock market valuations.

Figure 4: Lewin Model
( Source : Rajala, Westerlund & Lampikoski, 2016)

 NewsCorp decision for selling MySpace.com is a very wrong decision because the number of users was high, and the demand for online promotion was rising drastically. This particular competition market was being acquired by the popular social media website or application called Facebook. The News corporation follows the transactional leadership and change management because the number of employees working in this company are high and using the chosen leadership style will be a great help for managing large number of employees. The transactional leaders always depend on the self-motive people who always work well in a well-structured workplace or policy (Zagenczyk et al., 2015). However the MysPace.com employees followed the transformational leadership where the leaders had to inspire and motivate the workers to influence employees to achieve the desired targets of the company. The transactional leaders always follow the outcome by conforming the existing structure of the organisation where the employees receive reward if they had achieved the task or punishment due to the failure.

Level of leadership and change management needed in NewsCorp situation
If I were the leader of the organisation NewsCorp I must promote open communication where the employees have the right provide their views about the selling of MySPace .com. being the leader, I had to fuse both the transformational and transactional leaders which will provide more flexibility to the workplace. Before selling MySpace.com I should gain feedback from the employees about the decision I was making a right or wrong. I must provide bonus or incentives to the employees who are working well in the workplace. The performance of the employee's needs to be checked every day to ensure which employees are not doing well in the workplace (Abbasi et al., 2015). Separate training must be provided to all the underperformed employees, so that provide outstanding performance in the workplace successfully. Adopting Lewin model will help me to make a more controlled process for the employees which involves three necessary processes called refreezing move and unfreezing. Unfreeze stage is one of the issues that was being ignored by the leaders of NewsCorp. I being the leader I need to increase the confidence of the employees when providing nay changes in the working place. Even the readers and editors play essential role for improvement of the business functions.

Conclusion
From overall analysis done on the study of leadership and change management it could be found that acquisition of the Myspace.com could have been successful for the News corporation but they had overlooked the lure of profit they could had gained from the online service. The acquisition must be seen as the opportunity for creating substantial shareholder value through the customers, and the analysis must be focused on the young users. Feedback needs to be gained from employees for implementing effective leadership and change management. Every leader needs to adapt the changes because traits of the people are changing with rise of effective leadership and change management in new technology all over the world. However, majority of the employees does not accept the new changes provided by the business organisation because they have to learn new things for getting adapted with the new type of management or technology. However, continuous change can be a significant problem if the execution is not well.

Activity 3
Introduction
The self-reflection plays essential role for effective learning process because I can able to share my knowledge or views about the assignments. For this particular reflection report I would be using Gibbs cycle to gain more detailed analysis. I will be only focusing on all the positive traits by portraying myself as one of the successful leaders. Practical examples will support all of my views. The self-reflection will improve my learning process to analyse my views and thoughts using Gibb’s reflective life cycle.

Figure 5: Gibb’s Life cycle

Description
 I had been a general manager for about three years in an entrepreneur organisation. During this particular time I was working employees who were from different cultures which were a great challenge for me. Majority of the staff's members who were working in a small company were older than me. Majority of the senior staffs were not at all collaborative with me. Not at all helping me when I am not able to cope with the tasks. For this reason, I had improved my own networking skills for analysing the colleagues so that I can able to make quick decisions to reduce the conflict.

Feeling
In the entrepreneur, I was being worked had given my best work and had gained exceptional results. I had successfully created follower because I had promoted open communication among the team members to make sure people from different culture makes strong relationship before they start the project to reduce conflict or racism.

Evaluation
Leadership and change management challenge was high in the small company being the general manager because the employees were not at all satisfied with their tasks due to lack of training (Pianpeng & Koraneekij, 2016). I was following transformational leadership style to make sure the employees or members can able to solve their issue by communicating with other team members efficiently.

Analysis
Development of best leadership is significant for all business leaders. I need to flexible my leadership role to make sure the work productivity among the team members increases. I need to provide a strong vision to the team members, which will help them to be motivated for completing the tasks according to the given time. Another most important thing I need to check is improvement of the communication model among the team members so that they can easily share ideas or media related to the work using email or social media application.

Conclusion
 From the overall analysis on leadership and change management I had found that I need to balance my present activities with the new activities which include engagement more strategic process to implement the best communication design. The transformational leadership and change management had provided significant help to me to control the communication and coordination among the team members.

Action Plan

Reference
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