Final Case Study Assignment British Petroleum

Résumé du document

What was BP's overall strategy with respect to organizational processes since Horton's appointment as CEO and through Simon's term? Did this strategy focus on people management and, if yes, in what ways? Was it successful or unsuccessful? How? Before Horton's arrival as CEO in 1990, British Petroleum had elaborated a strategy of diversification, in order to generate other sources of profits. BP has invested money generated by some high profit segments into new areas in order to develop new markets. However, this strategy of diversification had worked only for a small time before the oil industry started to decline. More than an economical problem, the company experienced important difficulties linked to People management. This caused a total disorganization within the company and had a negative impact on their productivity. In order to face those problems, Robert Horton was named CEO of BP. Horton, is a charismatic British leader who has the reputation of being feared, trusted and respected.

Extraits

[...] Simon knows that motivated people represent the best added value for the company. At the same time, we can see that Emma's priority was to focus on people and on their motivation. For Emma and Simon, the priority is to focus on people in order to build efficient teamwork and to set up trust between each collaborator. One other similarity between them is that they think and listen to employees. They know that if they want to take the right decisions, they need to understand what is wrong or not within there company. [...]

[...] Bearing in mind class discussions and readings, justify your answer. To understand the origin of Horton's and Simon's leadership style, it is important to define what leadership is for Management Gurus such as Peter Drucker. According to him, the only definition of a leader is someone who has followers." To gain followers requires influence but doesn't exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this. Indeed, it can be argued that several of the world's greatest leaders have lacked integrity and have adopted values that would not be shared by many people today. [...]

[...] He has fired an important number of employees. Horton's aim was to make BP the biggest company in the oil industry. But Horton didn't achieve on implementing his strategies and had in contrary totally deteriorated the motivation of his employees. This error in the Management style push him in 1992 to resigned from his position of Chairman and CEO and was replaced by Lord Ashburton as Chairman and David Simon as CEO. In 1992, David Simon succeeds to Horton as BP's CEO. [...]

[...] Both of these two Managers downsized considerably the Middle Management effective. They want their organization to be more flattened in order to benefit from initiative, creativity, and communication and get rid off power hoarding and an overall atmosphere of distrust. For them, this is really important that employees can express themselves in a team to make the company grow. This is why Horton decided to organize frequent meeting of senior managers that will propose and debate of changes and directions the company will have to take in consideration. [...]

[...] When analyzing your personal leadership style, who would you more easily identify with and why? Each of these leaders cited below have their unique style of leadership, although we can see numbers of similarities between each other. In these 4 leaders, we can identify 2 distinct groups that have a similar approach on the way they their company. Emma's and Simon‘s vision on leadership is very similar. Both of them had grown up in a multi cultural environment that pushes them to understand and listen to people before taking any action within the company. [...]