Leadership Style at Nike

Nike is one of the biggest footwear and apparel manufacturing companies in the word. The company came into existence in 1964 by Bill Boweman and Phil Knight and named it as the Blue Ribbon Sports. The company changed the name to Nike, which is Greek word meaning victory, in 1972 after producing a good brand of shoes that became popular among the athletes (NIKE, Inc., 2001). Since then, the company has been successful, dominating the world market of athletic shoes. The company’s products are sold in more than 170 countries across the world. The company also sponsors various sports events at national and international levels. The company slogan “just do it” is catchy and attract many people tom

d different leadership styles, such as: the trait approach to leadership the behavioural school (McGregor, Blake and Mouton) the contingency or situational school (Fielder, Hersey-Blanchard, Tannenbaum and Schmidt, Adair) leaders and followers (Servant Leadership, Team Leadership, Transactional and Transformational) dispersed leadership The key responsibilities of the leadership role in terms of: taking responsibility contributing to overall vision and goals setting and providing guidance on values setting direction for significant programmes or projects stimulating innovation and enterprise anticipating, planning for and leading change overcoming obstacles delegating setting objectives for teams and individuals communicating and motivating supporting and developing programmes, projects, teams and individuals modelling appropriate behaviour representing the team and feeding back its experiences and views protecting the team and its members Assessing the impact of different leadership styles Organisational values and acceptable standards of behaviour in the organisation Organisational values and organisational purpose, vision and mission Management Standards Centre (MSC)

A1. Leadership Style Upon conducting research, it is clear that the definition of “leadership” is not agreed upon. It is fluid, based upon many perceptions, situations, and surroundings. According to Robinson (2010), adopting a specific style of leadership is rather futile as it is, “contingent on the personal traits of the leader, the people being led, and the nature of the activity.” Tools are available to help guide potential leaders in determining a preferred style of leadership. For example, utilizing the “Leadership Self-Assessment

Innovation: In such a mature and competitive industry, continuous innovation is crucial to the success of the company as it gives a unique selling point that rivals do not have. Both product and process innovation are Nike’s

The factors that drive Nike’s decision to stick with its current organizational structure include its well-established brand name in the industry. The company positioned itself as a brand

The essay classifies leadership into four key approaches: (1) trait approach, (2) behaviour approach, (3) the

has, it is very clear that the company is focusing on Nike's future business needs, developing the "bench strength" of the company’s ability through intentional pioneer advancement. In the long process of choosing the suitable candidates who are capable to work in the company, Nike is concerned in their team building because of their well-known brand image. In doing so, Nike can look for suitable candidates that are capable of discriminating task arranging, supervisor responsibility for training and tutoring, and organized learning by means of individual- and group based classroom and learning new things from the web. Looking ahead, key regions of center for NIKE, Inc. incorporate helping workers and supervisors see how to fabricate effective vocations through formal and casual preparing and improvement, enhancing administration advancement, and inviting thoughts. The compulsory test for job seekers who are looking up for higher positions in Nike, candidates have to take is to understand how the company works and how well will the candidates cop in working with the company for Nike’s main focus is to enhance the potential of their employee and develop a leadership capability, this is done in organization and ability audits straightforwardly connected to the business vital needs. In Nike, high position leaders and managers are considered responsible for enhancing the execution, potential,

Phil Knight and his track-and-field coach Bill Bowerman found one of the world’s well-known sports brand, Nike in 1964. With the beginning of Nike first “office” being the laundry room of Knight’s family home it has now become the biggest sports and fitness company in the world with international recognition. The vision statement of Nike as an organization was to think ahead in the long term and not to simply focus and be content with the present as described by Tom Clarke, chief executive of Nike.

Nike is known as one of the most consistently innovative companies for its technologically advanced products. As Nike stated, Innovation is the company’s heart in its business growth strategy because it helps them to become more sustainable company and to keep up with the competition and customer demands (nikeandunderarmour.com, 2015). Therefore, Nike vision innovation is a key business success of the company. It invests

Reviewing this chapter as whole, I noticed that there is no fixed approach mentioned towards a leadership style, rather it suggests that range of different leadership style must be adapted based on the situation. Furthermore, I found out that this chapter lacked some useful information which should have been

The modern leadership theories (hereafter, theories) recognise the importance of followers in the leadership process. These theories view leadership as an interaction between leaders and follower. They focus on the relationship between a leader and follower and view this relationship as the core to the success of any organisation. Kirsty’s leadership may be seen as reflective of all the path-goal theory, leader-member exchange theory (hereafter, LMX theory) and the transformational leadership theory (hereafter, TLT). In this report a discussion will be provided of the ways in which Kirsty’s leadership may be seen as reflective of all these theories and approaches to leadership. A critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Kirsty’s leadership for the Sandwich Company’s (hereafter, company) will also be provided to highlight how these factors could interplay in the company’s continued success. The success of the company illustrates that Kirsty effectively uses the guidance provided by each theory to inform her leadership practice. However, the company’s internal and external environment is starting to change. Therefore, the potential weakness inherent in the theories associated with her leadership style could come to surface which may delimit the company’s continued success.

Nike soon realized even though they have attempted to make changes within their subcontracting companies it has not been enough. Nike realized they have an ongoing obligation to the workers, as well to the different cultures that are involved. Nike implemented a process called The Compliance Generation, which involves increasing their business value by establishing the function, fighting fires, building a global team, and establishing partners. Employee management interaction making the work more systematic, building excellence in management audits, building environment, safety, and health global process, creating transparency, and creating ratings. Nike wants to have a transformational focus on building excellence in factory remediation, developing a sustainable sourcing strategy, building business integration and accountability, increasing contract factory ownership of corporate responsibility, and building industry conditions (Nikebiz, 2010).

Nike’s organizational Form reflects a conglomeration of resources, processes and people around the activities most critical to their target customers in terms of its Value Proposition. It decided therefore to concentrate in depth on the critical activities and competencies rather than increasing the breadth of its

Nike‘s vertical structure includes CEO Mark Parker and a board of directors chaired by co-founder Phil Knight. Although Nike has functional divisions and divisions based on specific products it is not a matrix organization. In a matrix organization, employees report to a functional and divisional manage. At Nike, employees report to the divisional manager and the president of each division reports directly to the CEO. Nike’s continued product innovation and successful marketing are due to the combination of functional and divisional organization using an operations department to insure communication between divisions. There is division of labor but it is not clearly identified. With a more pronounced division of labor and levels of direct supervision Nike can improve its

The important part of the success was due to the far-sight of Nike's management team. Nike's CEO, who was a marathoner and knew what runners wanted for their shoes, had made a very basic strategy work; "make the products that fit their consumers' needs". Examples of great decision making are: