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Improving Leadership within MOHG

Introduction

This document presents to Board members of the MOHG a fully detailed plan for conducting
research that has been designed to improve leadership within the company in ways that will
not only lift employee performance and morale but will also contribute to our capacity to
expand our market share and increase our profitability.

The research topic and why it is important to this business

The research topic is ‘Improving Leadership within MOHG’ and that topic will be addressed
presenting this research plan that is designed to answer the following question: In what ways
could the current leadership practices within MOHG be improved to make a more effective
contribution to developing and implementing the MOHG business strategy and culture? This
is clearly an important topic for the business because without effective leadership
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Which of the 4 primary practices discussed in What Really Works this research project is
most closely relevant to, and why

Norhia et al in their 2003 Harvard Business Review article, “What Really Works” argue that
high performing organisations do a better job than their competitors with regard to four
primary and four secondary practices. The four primary factors are ………….. Effective
leadership has a positive impact on the strategy and the culture of a business organisation,
and in particular a luxury hotel chain such as ours, because
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Literature review

This literature review presents a concise summary of what best leadership practice involves
because having that summary will provide MOHG with a ‘best practice baseline’. Once we
have clearly identified best leadership practice, we can then conduct targeted research into
ways in which the reality of current leadership practices within MOHG are similar to - or
different from - the baseline ideal; and if there are major differences, we can also conduct
research into why those differences exist. The literature on best practice leadership can be
sorted into three types:
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1. Leadership styles which get the best from others

2. The most important leadership understandings of organisational functioning
3. How the best leaders use their time to achieve extraordinary results

Goleman, D. 2000, ‘Leadership that Gets Results’ Harvard Business Review, March-April,
pp78-90 has investigated the effectiveness of six leadership styles
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Methodology and why it was chosen

To discover the current nature of MOGH leadership and where there are gaps between what
should be happening and what is happening, a two-step research approach will be taken; the
first step would involve surveying 160 employees and 40 managers across four different
Mandarin Hotels operating in four different cultures: American, Thai, Chinese, and English.
By collecting responses from different cultures we will be able to discover if leadership
behaviours that are seen as effective in one culture are perhaps seen as ineffective in a
different culture – or if what works and what does not work is the same regardless of culture.

Using a survey questionnaire has been chosen for this first step of the research because
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Test items used in the questionnaire will fall into three types: items that will measure the
extent of employee satisfaction with the style of leadership used by their manager (for
instance “To what extent would you describe your manager’s leadership style as
democratic?’) ; items that will measure
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The second stage of the planned research will involve interviewing twenty employees (five
from each hotel) and four managers (one from each hotel). Employees will be asked
questions such as “can you tell me about a time when you felt most inspired by your manager
– what was happening, what was he or she doing and why did that matter to you?” Managers
will be asked questions such as “In your experience, what do you think has been the most
effective leadership decision or action you have made and why do you think that was good
for the company and for your employees?” Interviews have been chosen as a research method
for this part of the project because
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Please note, full details of the questionnaire items and the interview questions can be found in
Appendices One and Two.

Likely data that will be obtained and analysed

A large number of survey responses will be obtained from a significant sample size, and
those responses will be grouped into different categories corresponding to the three types of
questionnaire items that were used. As a consequence, it will be possible to see not only how
many ….. but also
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Interview answers will be transcribed which will result in up to four pages times twenty
employees and four pages times four managers – to make that much material manageable and
useful, common themes will be identified from within the group of employees and compared
and contrasted with themes identified within the managers’ answers. The value in that
analysis will be that
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Likely findings and their importance

It is expected that this research would find differences between the current MOHG leadership
practices and what has been previously identified as ideal practice. Most importantly, the
research would pinpoint exactly which practices are less than ideal, making it possible to then
make targeted recommendations for improvement ………………………………..

In addition, the understanding that will be gained from the interview transcripts will enable us
to uncover factors within the organisation that are helping and those which are …………

Estimated cost in terms of time and finances

Appendix with interview questions, or survey items, or case study protocols