The Significance Of Autocratic And Democratic Leadership Style In Volkswagen Group

Organization and culture of Volkswagen Group

Discuss about the Leadership for Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence.

The primary and main motive of this paper is to explain the leadership style. Here is the discussion about the autocratic and democratic leadership style. Furthermore, Volkswagen Group has been chosen in the task to outline the significance of corporate culture and leadership style. It is one of largest and leading automotive vehicles companies in the world. Martin Winterkorn was the CEO of the company and he followed autocratic leadership style. Due to poor leadership style, Martin Winterkorn had to face plenty of issue such as emission and energy scandal. Along with this, the paper also explains the advantages and disadvantages of the democratic leadership style. The significance of the democratic leadership style also has been explained in the task. At the end, recommendation has been given to initiate the effective leadership style at the workplace.

Organization and culture: Volkswagen is a German multinational automotive manufacturing company that was originated in 28^th May 1937. The headquarter of the firm is located in Wolfsburg Lower Saxony Germany. The company provides various automotive vehicles to the customers across the world (Volkwagen, 2018). It has been found that Volkswagen group follows unique and effective organizational structure to attain desired goals and objectives. The best and effective organization structure that is followed by Volkswagen group is divisional organizational structure. The company has announced a new group structure in 2003. That group categorized in two parts financial services and automotive division. The divisional organizational structure permit to develop a corporate culture and spirit de corps that contributes to high morale and a better knowledge of the employees to gain competitive benefits.

It has been analyzed from the various analysis that the culture of Volkswagen group was not unique and effective. In 2015, various issues and challenges are faced by the organization due to emission scandals (Goleman, 2017). Due to this scandal, Martin Winterkorn who was the CEO of the company had to resign from his post (Davenport and Hakim, 2016). The new CEO Herbert Diess who appointed as a CEO of Volkswagen in 12^th April 2018 focuses on the corporate culture of the company. Customer oriented, together, courageous, efficient and mindful is included in the core values of the firm (Liu et al, 2013). The managers, management board and employees are creating a modern and forward looking corporate culture. In today’s era, the employees and top management are focusing on their responsibility and innovation to beat the competitors. In today’s modern world, the company is improving and enhancing its corporate culture to become a global leader in the automotive vehicles industry (Volkswagen, 2018). The effective corporate culture helps the company to stand out against the competitors in the international market (Men and Stacks, 2013).

Martin Winterkorn’s Autocratic Leadership Style

Individual culture: In individual culture, people are considered good and effective if they are strong, unique, assertive, independent and reliant. Let’s talk about the individual culture, I am from China and I have appointed as a director in Volkswagen group in German. If talk about the ethnicity, my culture and values are completely different from the company’s culture. I follow individualistic culture. Basically I belong to middle class family. My father has their own business and I have two brothers. Sinitic language is basically spoken by the people in China. I am 30 years of age and follow Buddhism religion. I have 5 years work experience in China national petroleum Company. Along with this, I had worked in industrial and commercial bank of China. I have done my education and got MBA degree from Ocean university of China.  I am inspired from Henry ford who was the founder of Ford motor company. He is my role model because he valued human capital. He was emotionally intelligent and believed in quality. He was hard worker, risk taker and charismatic leader. He was a fantastic and effective leader who motivated and encouraged the subordinates for performing roles and responsibilities effectively. When I was in China national petroleum Company then I had done work hard. Democratic leadership style was used by me. I focus on the performance and efficiency of the workers to motivate them effectively and efficiently. I used to encourage the employees to perform tasks and duties successfully during my employment. It motivated them to fulfill the goals and objectives of the organization (Antonakis and Day, 2017).

Leadership style : It has been found that Martin Winterkorn was the CEO of Volkswagen group followed autocratic leadership style. He did not involve the employees in decisions making process (Giltinane, 2013). Usually, he took decisions own self. In 2015, the company had to face great loss due to emission scandal. Therefore, Martin Winterkorn leadership style was failed to encourage the workers. The corporate culture of the company was also affected due to this emission scandal. If I were the CEO of Volkswagen group then I would have used democratic leadership style to meet the long term mission and vision. This leadership style could provide benefits to the employees at that time (Yukl, 2013). It has been analyzed that democratic leadership is one of the effective leadership style (Batool, 2013). It is also known as participative leadership. In this leadership style, leaders also include employees in the decision making process. The advantages of the democratic leadership style have been detailed below (Yahaya and Ebrahim, 2016).

Advantages and disadvantages of Democratic leadership style

• This leadership style help in delegation of authority. A leader can delegate roles and responsibilities’ among the members to facilitate the member participation in decision making process.
• This leadership style helps in encouraging the group members. Training and development coaching is provided by the leaders to the employees in order to inspire them.
• It is noted that democratic leaders are generally excellent and effective at resolving complex issues. They have ability to work collaboratively using effective strategies.
• Along with this, the leaders create a foster and strong corporate culture and working environment (Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, 2013).

This leadership style also entails some disadvantages that have been discussed below.

• This leadership style sometimes appears uncertain. It has been noted that democratic leadership style is not effective because it takes ample of time. Thus, it is time consuming process.
• Sometimes leaders become apologetic that could affect the progress and performance of the organization as well as employees (Puni and Bosco, 2016).

Another leadership style that used by me was transformational leadership style. The transformational leadership is a style of leadership where a leader works with co-workers to identify and analyze required change, creating a vision to guide and assist the change through motivation and initiating the change with committed members of a group. If was in Volkswagen group I was supposed to used transformational leadership style.

I have chosen democratic leadership styles because it is much impressive instead of autocratic leadership style. In autocratic leadership style, Martin Winterkorn did not provide growth opportunities to the workers as it hampered employee’s productivity. There was no liberty to speak out about the organizational activities and process and it also created ample of pressures on the workers. It is stated that Martin was very demanding boss but he was not aware about the failure in the life. All these things could affect the financial position of the company adversely. If I were appointed as a leader in Volkswagen Company then I would have preferred democratic leadership style.

A comparison between democratic and transformational leadership styles has been discussed below.

Democratic leadership	Transformational leadership
In this leadership style, managers can ask about the input from the subordinates.	In this leadership style, leaders motivate and inspire the workers by explaining how the changes benefit the company before transition starts.
This leadership style is used by the leader when the company has an experienced and skilled team.	Leader uses this leadership style when leader’s subordinates will benefit from the leader vision, passion and enthusiasm.

Conclusion

On the above mentioned analysis, it has been analyzed that Volkswagen company can use democratic leadership style to inspire and retain the workers efficiently. Furthermore, here is the discussion about the autocratic leadership that was used by Martin Winterkorn leader. It has been analyzed that Martin Winterkorn is not an effective leader because ample of issues were faced by the company during his leadership. He believed that he was not aware about the emission scandal. The paper also explains the corporate culture and values of Volkswagen Group. It tells that how the leader can use dynamic leadership to encourage the subordinates in a hassle free manner. The paper also discusses about the advantages and disadvantages of the democratic leadership style. Apart from this, individual culture also has been explained in the task. Here is the discussion about the Martin Winterkorn leadership style and on the other hand, it discussion how autocratic leadership style is not effective in today’s modern world. The paper explains that how democratic and transformational leadership styles could become effective and unique in Volkswagen Group. These leadership styles helped the company to stand out against the competitors in the international market.

Now it is recommended that the leaders should use democratic leadership style to stand out against the competitors. This leadership style is significant because a democratic leader brings together people from different level of the company to work together towards resolving the issues and problems. The democratic leadership is effective because the leader emphasizes and encourages a shared approach to decision making and will often seek results from everyone on a project team in order to reach a consensus. This leadership style also helps in creating job satisfaction and inspiring innovation. It also creates effective and unique solutions to resolve the issues and problems. In this way, democratic leadership style is also known as participative or shared leadership style. In this leadership style, the employees can share their ideas, opinion and thoughts with supervisors. Thus, leadership should this leadership style to get better results and outcomes. On the other hand, the company can also use transformational leadership style in the workplace. This leadership style helps in rendering ample of benefits to the leaders and subordinates as well. This leadership style in creating new and innovative ideas, thoughts and opinion within the organization. By using this leadership style, the managers and leaders cam retain the workers and customers as well. The transformational leader fully engages with subordinates and seeks to satisfy their demands, expectations and desires in the organization.

References

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