The paper attempts to analyze the fundamental principles of decision making process and their applications in the real world setting. The essay seeks to analyze the style of leadership of the famous entrepreneur in relation to his company, organizational culture and practices and policies in the management structure of his company. Moreover, there is focus some of the initiatives that have been successful and those that failed and applicability of the leadership style of the entrepreneur. Although the participative leadership had a positive input in Richard Branson’s Company, there are other salient features that the company can adapt to ensure a progressive success such as selecting overall decision makers to evaluate different ideas contributed by all members of the company (Nelson &Quick, 2012).

Leadership Background and Credentials of Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson started his life at middle age when his dyslexia condition led him to get poor grades in school. He could not follow what the teachings in class, and that made him find lessons, not as interesting and distracting. His teachers thought he was lazy since no one new about the dyslexia condition and his headmaster predicted that he would one day end up in prison, or he would become a millionaire. Disappointed by his poor grades, he decided to start a business of publication of magazines while still at the age of sixteen. While other people thought that he had a disability that lowered his grades, Richard Branson had a knack about grasping the bigger picture and excelling at detecting patterns in his first business venture. His family supported him in his business, and he set out the ad magazine with a motivation that no business could start without frustrations. The volume sales of magazines enabled him to start a mail order company which was very successful. Over time, he opened Virgin Group Company, which consisted of many subsidiaries such as Virgin Trains, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Media, Virgin Health Bank and many others (Cohn & Moran, 2011).

Branson had a meticulous eye for details and was a risk taker. He employed participative style of leadership to make decisions in his company. According to the decision making theory, the success of an event or in achieving a result depends on the decisions made at the start and in the various stages of the implementation of an idea. Sir Branson invited investor to join hands with him and focus together to come up with the most effective style of advertising the magazines, and the move sufficed his first successful business venture. He used the democratic style of leadership to act as an inspiration to many people in his industry. For example, apart from listening to what other people had to say, and he carried a notebook in his pocket to write something interesting he heard from his staffs on any level of management. Whether he met a stranger, a rival, an employee, business partner, to him, he knew that good ideas came from anyone and anywhere (Cohn & Moran, 2011).

Leader Decision-Making Style

He applied the democratic skill to management planning, organizing leadership and control of his business associates. The entrepreneur applied the theory of decision making on the principle of selection of suitable course of action given many options. He instilled a culture of free flow of information and informality at all levels of management. He provided hospitality management by giving employees freedom. He believed in empowering the employees and involving them in decision making if he was to achieve his goals. For example, in year 2007 when the company was grappling with challenging situations after relaunching the NTL Company, the attendants were not dealing with customers’ complaints. He advised the employees to answers to customers’ demands, and they were reluctant that a customer would overstep his requests (Henry, 2011). Branson advised them to manage and learn on their own. To the company, the managerial position adopted ‘no rigid policy’ in order to give Virgin staffs an attitude to face tough decisions and win the faith of the customers (Henry, 2011). He wanted the company he started to continue on its own without him by letting the staffs build a strong team and solve complex problems. For example, when he won a lawsuit against British Airlines and got $ 500,000, he split the compensation among his employees (Andersen & Poulfelt, 2007). However, democratic leaders had some negative impact for the Virgins Company. The process of consultation was very time consuming and urgent issues were difficult to attend to within the normal timescales of a consultation process. Richard Branson would appear to be decisive or not willing to make decisions especially in times of crisis since there was hardly enough time to consult everyone concerned. The laxity of freedom had a negative impact to leaders involved in decision making process that would become apologetic in case the policies they implement are ambiguous. Consequently, participative leadership would lead to ineffective management, negative performance appraisals, stress, alienation, conflict and decreased morale (Henry, 2011).

Company’s practices and policies

The Virgin Group Company has an integral practice of management by use of team dynamics to solve the challenges in the global markets. The company developed effective mechanism of management whereby it focused on ultimate leadership at all levels. The expansion of the organization depended on the ability to reinforce the staff to work as a team. The practice of team dynamics improved the overall performance of the company such as increasing profits, enabling people to enjoy, maintaining company’s reputation and high staff retention rates. Virgin Group Company stipulated a key policy of “together we serve” to ensure the customer received the best services. According to the theory of organizational culture, there is an emphasis to consider human complex life that includes their behavior, activities, stories and interest in an organization. The diverse facets of the business industry rely on the practice of team dynamics and the policy to serve the customers with unity. As a result, the Virgin Group company currently dominates the British market and extends worldwide to regions such as North America, Africa, Australia and Asia with more than 300 companies and around 50,000 employees from 30 countries (Street, 2009).

Policies and practices related to planning of the organization’s framework

The company’s notable milestones mission statement; to be a shopper victor, provision of quality customer service by motivating employees and reviewing customer’s feedback to enhance customers’ experience. The company’s vision to emerge top in global travel, communication, and music and retailing depended on strategic planning and team work to develop all the company’s brands. Furthermore, members share the same belief of commitment to the customers in ensuring they get the correct information at any given time and place. Branson capacity building practice motivates people working in his company optimize they efforts in the delivery of services to customers. The model attains notable milestones by maintaining a culture of openly-ended relationships with the customers. The company involves all the sales representatives and staffs at all levels of management in designing a customer plan which translates to more revenues. The business continues to adjust it mission statement to illuminates it products in the global dynamic markets (Dearlove, 2007).

Policies and practices related to organizing

Richard Branson was keen to build an organization comprising people whose values and talent inflows matched his vision to ensure a long lasting service at the company. The entrepreneur made use of the theory of the organizational culture by caring for all the needs of the staffs to increase the Company’s output. He introduced a friendly climate by allowing people to practice a democratic leadership where every employee’s opinion counts and forms a crucial component of company’s social network. As a result, the staffs developed a culture of people with customer attractive attributes such as smiling, cheerful and pleased to help a passenger in the airline industry. The company continues to have a strong organization framework based on the cohesion of the team groups design in planning and to achieve its core objective of becoming the most profitable enterprise. One the company’s policy, “we are here to help,” has some effect on building a strong organization framework (Dearlove, 2007).

Policies and practices related to leading

The entrepreneur employed participative leadership style to take the company to the top of the leading shareholders in the global market. According to the decision making theory, the success of Virgin Group Company relied on Richard Branson’s abstract thinking by making decisions that he believed were most effective to achieve success. He brought people with the same talent and gave them the freedom to work together and produce something that could benefit the society. He had a welcome gesture to any person within the organization, and he encouraged people to communicate freely and share ideas. He did not have work ethics that dictated roles and responsibilities of each member. Instead, people’s ideas and interest cultivated Richard Branson to gather information and find how he could change them into innovations and creativity. As a result, his business dealings had a series of successful business ventures by providing career opportunities to his staffs. However, the use of bureaucratic, autocratic or task oriented leadership would have a negative impact on the quality of services given due to the demoralization of the employees (Dearlove, 2007).

Policies and practices related to controlling

The impact of leadership centred on employees on Virgin Group Company originates form the Branson’s ability to incorporate people into team groups and freedom to choose by themselves the best alternative decision. The move brought a revolutionary change in the organizational structure and human resources by showing trust, loyalty and respect to his followers and using his charismatic behavior and vision. The attributes laid foundation for the processes and practices of collective management. As a result, there were strong relationship ties among the staffs and overall improvement of the quality of services offered to the customers (Dearlove, 2007).

Aspects of Organizational Culture

The theory of organizational culture identifies several attributes of human interaction which include, principles, traditions, shared values that affect the way members of an organization act. The company built a strong organizational culture based on aspects such as attention to details, people’s orientation, orientation of the team, being aggressive, innovativeness and risk taking. However, Richard Branson invested in an opportunity or idea with little regard of the risk involved. The aspect of stability to that effect was a limiting factor in the organizational culture opportunities exploited without considering the risks involved (Dearlove, 2007).

Systems and processes

Sir Richard Branson has a strong foot in implementation the Eve Branson Foundation in Atlas Mountains of Morocco that gives young girls and women education, health care and business. The success of the foundation relied on innovation to expand markets and to create more job opportunities. However, the war on drugs initiative was not a success due to the controversial debate on legitimization process (Dearlove, 2007).

Applicability of participative leadership style

The democratic leaders can allow their subject to participate in decision making process although the final decision is to be made by the superiors. As such, the style of leadership can motivate workers to work hard and advance their skills leading to job satisfaction. The democratic leadership should allow the employees to feel they own the jobs and focus more on the financial rewards (Dearlove, 2007).

Application of participative leadership style

The use of teamwork proves to be an effective measure for achieving goals in my business. The outcome of capacity building from team groups especially on the quality of the services or products is of great importance. However, there can be delays when making decisions as the method will require consultations from members of my business (Dearlove, 2007).

Conclusion

Democratic leadership requires a bold individual and does not fit for managers who can feel frightened by the flexibility of the style and the commitment it needs. However, when organization implements democratic leadership style properly, the result can be a strong organizational culture with team players that ensure the company continues increasing its revenues (Bass & Bass, 2009).

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