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In Contrast To Eton, David Harrow Appears To Be A Strongly Democratic ...

In contrast to Eton, David Harrow appears to be a strongly democratic manager, who wants to engage all stakeholders and promote collaborative working practices across the organisation. He appears to be very knowledgeable about management theories such as stakeholder management and motivation (Mintzberg et al, 1998) and wants to apply these theories to all parts of the organisation. Indeed, he appears to want to be a transformational leader, assisting his subordinates to maximise their potential, communicating with them regularly, and leading by example (Adair, 1993). Whilst this approach is often viewed as the strongest form of leadership, enabling both leader and subordinates to improve their performance and develop themselves through shared goals and engagement, in this situation Harrow is experiencing several major issues.

These can largely be viewed as due to the situation rather than Harrow's leadership style: the company currently has a very autocratic culture, with Directors giving directives to managers and expecting them to be carried out without the need for consultation or query, and staff seeing their job purely as a task to be carried out, and not a way to develop themselves.

Whilst the culture can be blamed for several of the drawbacks Harrow has faced, there are also other issues he should consider to improve his style. Firstly, he claims he is unable to meet with all members of the workforce, and as a result he communicates via a bulletin board. Whilst it is important to keep staff informed as to progress, if this is done purely by an impersonal, remote method of communication, such as the bulletin board, staff will be less likely to respect the communication and Harrow as a manager than if Harrow took the time to speak personally to as many of them as possible (Thornely and Lees, 1993). Indeed, the fact that the bulletin board has been defaced on a number of occasions shows that it alone is not an effective way to communicate with staff, especially about the major changes taking place in the company. Instead, Harrow need to consider using his middle management and line managers as a more effective method of communicating with staff, passing updates onto them and then through to line employees, as well as meeting face to face with line employees as much as possible (Adair, 1993). Even walking through the factory floor for a few hours each week would ensure that staff saw his face and began to perceive him more as someone who is genuine and does have their best interests at heart.
Harrow's approach to training and development is also meeting resistance from employees for two reasons.

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