Understanding The Blake And Moulton’s Managerial Grid Model And Its Impact On Productivity

Blake and Mouton managerial Grid

Increasing the productivity level is among the crucial goals of any organization. However, this activity is only accepted by the HR managers as a justifiable approach. While most of the HR managers accept that their job is to establish the policies, processes and programmes that assist in managing the people, very few attempts are taken to align these objectives to increase the output of the employees (Clarke 2013).

No one style of leadership is perfect for all the circumstances, however, it is very much crucial to understand the natural strategies of an individual, so that, the required skill can be developed that were missing. Using two different approaches will give the average results about the performance of the team as the requirements of the people as well as inspiration for exception al performance both are not met.  In this report the Blake Mouton managerial Grid will be discussed (DeLeon 2014).

The idea was generated from the research activities of the researchers from Ohio State University and the Michigan University. Jane Mouton and Robert Blake suggested a graphical presentation for the styles of leadership through the grid of management. The grid represents two sides of the behaviour of the leaders, interest for the people on the y-axis and the interest for production on the x-axis. Each of the dimensions are ranged from low (1) to high (9) (Einarsen,  Aasland and Skogstad 2016).

“Concern for people” is the level to which the leader determines the requirement of the employees while taking decisions about the completion of any job or task. These can be professional or personal development. On the other hand, “concern for production” is the level to which the leader considers productivity and objectives while taking decisions about the completion of job. These may be performance standards, policies or rules (Gregoire and Arendt 2014).

Five leadership styles:

The grid is segregated into five different styles of leadership as follows:

• Country club leader: These leaders are the most concerned for the people. This kind of leaders presumes that if the employees are happy, they will be willing to work harder. Their high interest in employee’s requirement and their feelings has a impact on the productivity of the employees. Giving more importance in the comfortable level of employees, these kind of leaders find it very tough to punish the employees. due to this, the relationship among the leaders and the employees is very informal or like friends (Price, Schneider and Quick 2016).
• Impoverished leader: They are the least concerned for the production and the people. They do not implement any system for getting the work done by the people, nor the working atmosphere motivates or satisfies the employees. This leader’s lower concern for working atmosphere and the work leads to unsystematic work and unsatisfied employees with lack of synchronization (Covey and Ewell 2015).
• Middle-of-the-road leader: They have a balanced interest for both people as well as production. They are happy if the employees give average performance. Their balanced concern results in average level of employee’s satisfaction and average level of production (Gilvania et al. 2014).
• Team leader: The team leaders focus on the satisfaction of employees and high level of production equally. They focus on the high production from the employees and have a certainty that the employees who are highly satisfied are more likely to be committed towards high production. High level of trust from leaders as well as the employees results in high level of production from employees and their level of satisfaction (Thomas 2016).
• Produce-or-Perish management: Under this, the leaders completely focus on the production and not concerned about the satisfaction of the people. As the main focus is on the production, the well-being and satisfaction level of the employees are neglected. This type of leaders is of authoritative type and pressurises on maintenance of disciplines. They require the maximum output from the employees and impose penalties when the employees are not able to meet the requirements (Koc, Kiliclar and Yazicioglu 2013).

The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid is basically depended on the two behavioural approaches:

• Concern for people: This is the level to which the leader judges the requirements of the team members, their interests and the areas for their personal level of development while deciding about completion of a task
• Concern for production: This is the level to which the leader highlights the strong objectives, high productivity and organizational efficiencies while deciding about completion of any task (Yiu and Cheung 2015).

In the above graph, the leadership style of country club is plotted in the top-left corner of grid and demonstrates the most apprehension for the people but the least apprehension for the production. The leadership style of impoverished leader is plotted in the bottom-left corner of grid and demonstrates the least apprehension for the people as well as the production. The leadership style of Middle-of-the-road leader is plotted in the centre of grid and demonstrates balanced interest for the people as well as the production. The leadership style of team leader is plotted in the top-right corner of grid and demonstrates balanced interest for the people as well as the production. The leadership style of produce-or-perish management is plotted in the bottom-right corner of grid and demonstrates interest only for the production while interest of people is not taken into consideration (Sneed and Fairhurst 2016).

The above graph shows the leadership styles as follows:

• Impoverished management (1,1): The leaders with this strategy have low interest for production as well as people.
• Produce-or-Perish management (9,1): Under this, the leaders completely focus on the production and not concerned about the satisfaction of the people
• Middle-of-the-road (5,5): They have a balanced interest for both people as well as production.
• Country club (1,9): These leaders are the most concerned for the people and are least interested about the production.
• Team leader (9,9): The team leaders focus on the satisfaction of employees and high level of production equally (Gallo, Tausova and Gonos 2016).

The Blake Mouton managerial Grid assists in considering about the leadership style and its impact on the motivation and productivity of the team. Through plotting the “concern for production” against the “concern for the people” the grid emphasizes on how putting too much importance on any one particular area at the expenditures of other gives poor results. Moreover, it disheartens an unclear middle-of-the road negotiation. This model suggests that, when the interest for production as well as people both is at a high level, the productivity and the engagement of people will be high. The grid did not clarifies the complexity about the best style of leadership, however, it offers exceptional point of beginning to think about the own performance of the leaders and the skills regarding the general leadership (Jansen 2015).  

• It assists in evaluating a manager with regard to the relationship skills like handling with the initiatives, critiques, resolution of conflict, decision-making, expressing any ideas or opinions, inquiring about information and reacting to failures or problems (Re 2014).
• Using this model enables various styles of leadership to be measured to a certain level and supports greater than two contending options, that is, X-axis versus Y-axis. As the propensity of the manager is exaggeration and deception, an exact measurement is very crucial. 80% of the managers rate themselves in the range of (9,9). However, after evaluation through the grid only it revealed that the actual number is approximately 20% (Cummings and Worley 2014).
• Through the model, it is easier to discuss about the behaviour and the actions related to improvements.
• Through administration of the questionnaire the managers are able to recognize their place at where they stand regarding their interest for people and production. The main aim of the training is to assist the leaders in reaching the range of (9,9) focussing on both production as well as the satisfaction of people (Landis, Hill and Harvey 2014).  

Five leadership styles

Conclusion:

Through interpretation of the leadership approach, a new concept for the leadership arises, that is, as an influence for management procedure. It offers a model that is aligned with new concepts.  in the present scenario of “continuous improvement of quality”, “learning organizations” and “cross-functional teams” the grid is appraised by the practitioners and researchers. It is suggested that the research emphasizes on analysing and segregating the basic five cultures of grid leadership and then implementing the leadership culture that reveals the best way to establishing teamwork (9,9), that is high level of interest for production as well as people’s satisfaction.

Recommendation:

• The Blake Moulton managerial grid approach takes into account only five dimensions of leadership. However, there are various other dimensions that are relevant to the leadership approaches, which must be taken into consideration.
• The model neglects the importance of external and internal obligations, situations, circumstances and context, which must be taken into consideration.

To be a part of an organization that offers opportunities for handling challenging jobs in the field of finance and accounts while utilizing my work experience and qualification that I have gained through the career progression and personal development.

Professional career summary:

• Work experience of assistant manager in OCS Group, UK from 1^stJune 2012 to 30^th September 2014
• Work experience of assistant accountant in Travelex, UK from 1^stDecember 2014 to 31^st August 2016
• Working experience as Junior accountant in Northern & Shell Media Group, UK from 1^stSeptember 2016 to 28^th February 2017.

 Major responsibilities:

• Assisting in preparation of management accounts and year-end reporting.
• Preparation of sales and purchase receipt
• Preparation of receipt and payment vouchers
• Preparation of bank reconciliation statement
• Assist the senior account manager in preparing the cash flow statement, revenue statement and balance sheet statement
• Preparation of stock reports after taking the physical stock
• Preparation of forecasts and budgets.

 Professional skills:

• Knowledge of internet, MS Excel and MS-Office
• Knowledge of ERP Software and Tally 9.0
• Knowledge of accounting standards, UK GAAP and basic principles of accountin

Academic profile:

I hereby declare that all the information included above is fair and true to the best of my belief and knowledge

I am submitting my application for the post of Junior accountant, with respect to the advertisement published in the London Evening Standard, dated 10^th March, 2017 under the classifieds section. I am a master in commerce with a bachelor’s degree of commerce from a reputed university.

I have an experience of more than 4 years in the field of accounts related job. During the tenure of my job, I have achieved some awards and managed to reduce the cost of management expenses that benefitted the organization to earn more profit. I would like to work for your organization as the organization is one of the most reputed organizations of UK. As the job profile is similar to my previous job, I feel myself to be eligible for the post.

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References

Clarke, S., 2013. Safety leadership: A meta?analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 86(1), pp.22-49.

Covey, S. and Ewell, P.L., 2015. The relationship between managerial orientation and productivity: an examination of captains from Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 80(3), p.57.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

DeLeon, P.A., 2014. A descriptive study of the leadership styles of elementary principals whose schools have exited Program Improvement in Riverside, San Bernardino, and Orange Counties (Doctoral dissertation, University of La Verne).

Einarsen, S., Aasland, M.S. and Skogstad, A., 2016. the nature and outcomes of destructive leadership behavior in Organizations. Risky Business: Psychological, Physical and Financial Costs of High Risk Behavior in Organizations, p.323.

Gallo, P., Tausova, M. and Gonos, J., 2016. Leadership style model based on managerial grid. Aktual’ni Problemy Ekonomiky= Actual Problems in Economics, (178), p.246.

Gilvania, F.R., Montazeri, R., Habibi, M. and Kazemian, M., 2014. Designing a model to Iranian Prosperous Organization Managerial Grid. Kuwait Chapter of the Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 4(1), p.125.

Gregoire, M.B. and Arendt, S.W., 2014. Leadership: Reflections over the past 100 years. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 114(5), pp.S10-S19.

Jansen, A., 2015. Implicit leadership theories, leader-member exchange and its workplace outcomes: a case of South African call centre agents (Doctoral dissertation).

Koc, H., Kiliclar, A. and Yazicioglu, I., 2013. The Analyzing Leader Ship Styles of Turkish Managers in the Scope of the Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(11).

Landis, E.A., Hill, D. and Harvey, M.R., 2014. A synthesis of leadership theories and styles. Journal of Management Policy and Practice, 15(2), p.97.

Price, P.D., Schneider, D.K. and Quick, L.A., 2016. Financial challenges in higher education: community college leadership style and ranking. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 40(6), pp.508-522.

Re, M.L.L., 2014. Balancing Management and Leadership. The Resource Handbook for Academic Deans, p.61.

Sneed, C.T. and Fairhurst, A.E., 2016. From the Boardroom to the Farm Stand: Applying Principles of Retail Strategy to Facilitate Farmers’ Market Sustainability. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 1(1), pp.149-159.

Thomas, M., 2016. Entrepreneurial Orientation and the Management Grid: A roadmap for the entrepreneurial journey. Asian Journal of Management, 7(4), pp.292-295.

Yiu, T.W. and Cheung, S.O., 2015. 8 Behaviour transition in construction contracting. The Soft Power of Construction Contracting Organisations, p.145.

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