Management & leadership

Statement 1: ‘According to Blake Mouton, a country club leader has a greater concern for production than a produce or perish leader.’

Statement 2: ‘According to Blake Mouton, a team leader has a greater concern for production than a middle of the road leader.’

Read statements 1 and 2 and select the correct option from the following:

Read the information below and then answer the questions that follow.

Homeworking

Homeworking (or teleworking) is the action of working from home, using the Internet, email and the telephone to link the employee and the business remotely.

The number of people working from home has been rising steadily for several years as communications technology has improved.

Some businesses now adopt homeworking as the normal practice. For example, several financial institutions have reduced the amount of office space they own or rent in city centres. The wider impact of the change has been seen through fewer commuting journeys.

There have been some concerns over increased homeworking due to a reduction in face-to-face communication between employees. There has also been a decline in sales for businesses, such as coffee shops, that rely on office staff as customers.

Some sectors, such as transportation and wholesale, provide few opportunities for people to work from home. Other sectors, such as IT, finance and insurance, provide more homeworking opportunities to staff.

Of people in employment, 36% worked at least partly from home in 2020.

Using Table 1, calculate the percentage change in the number of people working at least partly from home between 2019 and 2020.

Analyse one way the balance sheet of a business (its statement of financial position) might be affected if more of its employees work from home.

The role of a manager has different elements.

Analyse the impact of the increase in homeworking by office staff on the way that their managers fulfil their role.

Would increased homeworking improve the performance of businesses that use Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line to measure their success?

Justify your view.

Many businesses have a strategy of growth.

To what extent does the success of a growth strategy for any business depend mainly on its leadership?

AM plc has a ‘produce or perish’ style of management.

Analyse how this may have caused the performance data for its Chinese factory to differ from the average for similar factories in China, as shown in Appendix A.

The table below shows the two different management styles used by managers in four companies.

Which company is most likely to use a soft human resource management approach?

Whereas Martin delegated most decisions, Elaine will make decisions and then tell managers what they have to do.

To what extent is this change in leadership style likely to help the company achieve its objective of improving profitability?