Leadership Styles of Yahoo, Blackberry, and Google Research Paper

Abstract

Leadership plays the role of inspiring followers to work collectively to achieve specific goals. Leadership is an organizational practice that not only influences the followers (employees), but also leaders in a manner that ensures that organizational objectives are achieved through change.

The current research hypothesizes that leadership styles may influence performance levels for different organizations.

Since leadership occurs in the presence of followers and a leader, employees can experience and identify the type of leadership that an organization deploys through observation and participation in organizational processes when certain styles of leadership are evident in the organization.

This paper uses interviews and questionnaires to study Google, Yahoo, and Blackberry employee perceptions about various issues that are reflected in different leadership styles.

Using the identified characteristics of transactional and transformational leadership styles in the literature review, the paper attempts to specify the leadership styles that each of the three organizations deploys using the primary data from the interview and questionnaires.

It concludes that witnessed leadership styles in the organizations can reveal their differences in performance and competitive advantage.

Introduction

Yahoo, Blackberry, and Google operate in the telecommunication industry. The internet is one of the most important innovations in the communication technology. Compared to traditional media platforms such as print, audio, and audio-visual, the internet fosters two-way communication.

Search engines permit people to acquire information at a higher pace by eliminating the necessity of perusing pages as witnessed in the case of books. This advantage has seen the internet develop to an important media for distributing printed academic materials such as e-books and e-magazines among others.

The rapid deployment of the internet as the most preferred media for communication due to its advantages such as speed and its ability to foster two-way communications is akin to the development of the World Wide Web. At the infancy stage of the World Wide Web, Yahoo! search engine had already been developed.

Google Company emerged to take a market share in the web search. Google started by offering web search services. After its IPO, it then focused on developing Gmail, Google Maps, Docs, Check Out, Google Books, finance, and calendar among others.

This progress shows that the company not only endeavored to compete with web service organizations such as Yahoo.com and MSN, but also online sales organizations such as Amazon and eBay among others. The growth of the organization was also supported by products such as paid listings and advertisements.

Corporate values and governance have also been pivotal in supporting its business success. Indeed, Edenlman and Eisenmann (2011) report a high 2008 economic performance of the organization in comparison with its competitors.

This success attracted the attention of the Yahoo Company in 2012. It sought the help of Marissa Mayer, a former Google CEO, to bring her leadership expertise to the Yahoo Company in an attempt to rejuvenate its success in the telecommunications industry and in the web search subsector.

This observation suggests that leadership is critical for the success of any organization, irrespective of its industry of operation. Indeed, many of failures of Blackberry, a Smartphone manufacturer, may be attributed to the company’s inappropriate leadership styles.

This paper compares and analyses leadership styles for Google, Yahoo, and Blackberry companies.

Literature Review

Why Companies Perform better than Others

Leadership is critical to the success of any organization. It integrates and intertwines followers and leaders. It influences organizational objectives and missions and other organizational stakeholders (Sakiru & D’silva, 2013). While leading, followers must be involved.

This situation perhaps explains why there has been an immense scholarly interest on how leaders must relate with followers to ensure organizational success.

The role of leadership in enhancing organizational performance is highly studied in organizations. These study efforts have led to the emergence of a large scholarly body of knowledge that discusses the effectiveness of various leadership styles.

For Google and Blackberry, the cell phones unit has encountered rapid changes right from the development of better performing products to the incorporation of new features.

The companies have invested heavily in research and development to ensure that they remain competitive in comparison with other organizations that are designing and supplying cell phones to the global market.

Indeed, Blackberry does not sell one version of cell phones continuously without adding additional features consistently with changes that are made in the competing products in the market.

Consequently, there has been a major concern on how to lead product development teams to ensure that the organization remains profitable, amid the sporadic product changes from time to time.

Yahoo! Search engine was developed in 1995. It grew rapidly to become the most visited platform across the globe by 1998.Yahoo Stocks share prices had raised to US$125 in its exponential growth phase. However, due to reasons such as overspending and managerial mistakes, the stock prices dropped sharply to US$4 per share.

This situation served as a clear indication that Yahoo! had lost its glory. However, in 2014, Yahoo! Shares reached the heights of US$38 per share. This growth may be attributed to the shaking of the organizational corporate structure.

After realizing its mistakes, Yahoo! turned to Google Company for help through the appointment of Google’s Executive personnel, Marissa Mayer, in 2012 as the new Yahoo president and CEO. Mayer reported to work with a clear goal of transforming Yahoo! to restore its success glory of its foundational years.

The main interrogative that Mayer faced was whether this goal was achievable.

Yahoo! was puzzled with the question of whether one key hire could ultimately change the fate and direction of the entire company. However, later, the ability of a single hire to rejuvenate the fortunes of Yahoo serves as a clear indicator that leadership plays essential roles in driving organizational success.

Different organizational situations require the deployment of different leadership styles. Veysel (2014) identifies transactional and transformational leadership as important management styles for organizations that need to undergo a continuous change. Leaders act as vision carriers in an organization.

They also strategize on how to achieve visions through people. This claim implies that some organizations perform better than others depending on their capacity to adopt leadership that meets the demands of the emerging situations, especially during change.

Kouzes (2007) and Lewis (2007) assert that the ability to lead can be achieved through experience and the sharing of knowledge. The case of Yahoo evidences this assertion since Mayer has been able to deploy her long-term experience while working for Google and elsewhere to rejuvenate the past glory of the Yahoo Company.

This observation opposes the sentiments that are developed by the trait leadership theory that leaders are born, but not created. Ng, Ang, and Chan (2008) reckon that the trait leadership theory suffers from reliability and validity since not all people who possess the qualities of an effective leader as identified by the theory make great leaders.

This criticism raises the question on whether there is evidence of the capacity of the trait leadership theory to provide a reliable explanation of leadership roles in the telecommunication industry.

Ng et al. (2008) assert that many people who possess personality traits that are described in the trait leadership theory as constituting essential requirements for effective leaders do not necessarily depict the essential traits of great leaders. People’s personality can be explained from their traits.

Therefore, different people possess different capabilities to lead an organization to perform differently.

Effective leadership in an organization is also seen in a company’s ability to attract and retain the best talent in the industry. When employees feel safe and certain that their future lies in the organization, they contribute a lot and share the business vision.

The adoption of such a management strategy is what has kept Google successful for over the years. Google’s management has been keen on creating an environment where only the best talent is recruited and retained. Google has a policy of recruiting only class-A employees.

Other companies might find it cost saving to hire class-B individuals. However, such a practice can push them into mediocrity. Aspects such as the academic background of the starters of the company and their culture of independent thinking and constant research have been a positive contribution to Google’s success.

Strategies such as allowing employees to be independent and instilling confidence in them so that they can perform their duties with minimal supervision are quite encouraging.

In a company such as Google, there exist a 70-20-10 type of schedule whereby 70 percent of the workforce time is put into the company’s core business, that is, advertising and providing search services. 20 percent goes to off-budget projects that usually contribute to the core business.

The other 10 percent of the employees’ time is usually utilized in providing ideas based on their interest and competencies. New services such as Gmail and Google hangouts were born from this share.

Yahoo had noticed the skills of Google employees and their effective management styles. Hence, in 2012, it hired Mayer to help in reinventing the then flopping advertisement and search services. Based on her leaders, employee motivation style and the company’s reward system proved essential in boosting workers’ self-esteem.

Blackberry and Google have generous rewards and awards that are offered for any effective implementation of new ideas.

Such a reward system that recognizes talent is an investment for the companies’ future because it makes ambitious individuals put their innovative ideas into the organization, rather than running away and building new ventures that will bring competition to their parent companies.

An excellent employee recognition strategy is an effective way of managing knowledge in a company and maximizing on the potential of companies. Leadership should empower and make employees feel valuable. It should not threaten the lower and middle-level management into subconsciously accepting ideas from the top management.

In companies where the labor force is well empowered, ideas are challenged and implemented on merit. Many good products from Google and Yahoo entered the market through such a process.

Effective communication of the vision of a company and the provision of a chance for employees to put it into practice are part of Google’s people management system. Effective leadership has to communicate a company’s strategies along with how they are going to be achieved.

A labor force that does not understand the company’s working plan is likely to face resistance in terms of strategy implementation. Companies such as Yahoo and Blackberry have had visions that could not be implemented due to employee resistance to change.

Therefore, effective communication of organizational agenda becomes an integral part of leadership in big companies. A company cannot be led by a single individual such as a CEO. It needs a team that has enormous strategic and management strength.

Blackberry decided to change its entire management team in 2013 in a move to save the company from collapsing. Corporations that still believe in the idea of a single CEO heading a vast global business have stayed outdated and inefficient.

Deployment of the trait leadership school of thought had many shortcomings with reference to its failure to explain organizational leadership procedures. Such challenges led to the emergence of other leadership schools of thought such as situational and contingency leadership theories.

Contingency leadership theories focus on particular factors that define an environment to aid in determining an effective leadership style. Peretomode (2012) provides examples of contingency theories of leadership such as the theory of effective leadership as advanced by Fielder, strategic contingency theory, and cognitive resource theory.

Fielder’s contingency theory holds that a leadership style, which yields success in an organization that operates in one environment, does not necessarily work in another environment. It considers various elements, which determine the ability of a leader to take control of a given situation.

Such elements encompass task control, the capacity to improve team work, and the possession of a positioning power.

The ability to control different tasks while leading product development teams within the acceptable time constraints is immensely important in ensuring that Blackberry, Yahoo, and Google remain competitive in their operational industry.

Effective leading of an organization requires task oriented leadership. Contingency theory holds that leaders can be broadly classified based on whether they are task or relationship-oriented.

Task-oriented leaders perform better in work environments that are characterized by well-structured surroundings and good relationships between members and leaders. The leader also works to realize results in settings where a he or she has a strong power of positioning decisions (Peretomode, 2012).

In the event of poor motivation of work team members, the contingency leadership theory can help in influencing the motivational skills of a leader at an organization by providing explanations on how leaders can analyze various situations, which result in low motivation and work commitment.

Situational leadership theories hold that leaders determine the most appropriate mechanisms for conducting leadership roles based on variables that comprise the current situation.

The school of thought finds application at Google, Yahoo, and Blackberry where leadership situations keep on changing depending on the emerging technological developments.

In both Google and Blackberry, situational leaders can help to resolve the challenges of incidents of changing goals and processes while developing new cell phones product lines as technological requirements of new cell phone emerges.

The contribution of situational leadership theory in explaining the role of leadership in enhancing the performance of Blackberry, Yahoo, and Google is evident upon appreciating that specific scenarios that require decision-making call for the deployment of different forms of leadership styles.

For example, when leaders possess a high experience and knowledge on the most effective ways of driving organizational success, authoritarian leadership style is the most preferred (Higgs, 2003).

However, where employees in the case of Google and Yahoo possess high skill levels on their areas of specialization, utilization of the democratic style of leadership is the most appropriate. Democratic leadership gives employees an opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.

This style motivates them to the extent of leading to high productivity that is witnessed from their improved performance.

The effectiveness of leadership styles depends of the individual leader’s abilities. Goleman (1995) introduces emotional intelligence as an important ability of an effective leader. Schaubroeck, Lam, and Cha (2007) also discuss emotional intelligence as an important success factor for effective leadership.

This school of thought describes four main theoretical constructs that make an emotionally intelligent leader. They include, “self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management” (Schaubroeck et al., 2007, p.1025).

Kerr (2006) finds a positive correlation between these four traits and leaders’ emotional intelligence. They also relate positively with the success of an organization.

The emotional intelligence school of thought suggests that emotional intelligence skills can be learnt, observed, and/or developed by various leaders who want to resolve various problems in an organization (Cote, Lopes, Salovey, & Miners, 2010).

Therefore, based on their different exposure to resolving organizational problems, leaders can develop different success strategies that make some organizations perform better than others.

Transformational and transactional leadership styles are important in an organization under different circumstances. Transformational leaders can set visions and inspirations that are necessary for their followers.

Such leaders assess the situation of their organizations to facilitate the formulation of strategies for growth and/or overcoming various environmental challenges (Sakiru & D’silva, 2013). Transformational leaders have skills for adequate and effective communication of success strategies and visions to all employees.

Communication is essential in the endeavor to create good relationships. Indeed, resolving operational challenges such as employee turnover demands the ability to conduct a good vertical and horizontal communication (Basri, Rusdi & Sulaeman, 2014).

Transactional leadership emphasizes the deployment of incentives to induce higher employee performance. It focuses on exchanging different relationships between leaders and employees. Transactional leaders build organizational success by optimizing employee abilities through motivation (Veysel, 2014).

Yahoo, Google, and Blackberry are highly cognizant of circumstances that contribute to employee ineffectiveness. Transactional leaders possess the capability to identify circumstances and develop appropriate motivational models that can ensure high retention of innovative and creative employees.

In fact, at Google Company, employee innovation and creativity are critical in driving organizational competitive advantage through the creation of new products and services. Thus, the skills for transactional leaders are important in guaranteeing the retention of such employees.

Transactional leaders lead and influence followers with an objective of making tradeoffs. Ensuring fairness in reward systems requires commitment of more financial resources to induce employee motivation. This introduces a tradeoff between the allocation of more resources to keep talented and experienced employees.

Coming up with the appropriate tradeoff decisions requires the input of transactional leaders (Veysel, 2014). In leadership, the capability to communicate effectively is essential in ensuring that organizational vision and goals are well articulated to the employees.

Indeed, a leadership model that is based on effective communication augments the organizational market share by increasing employee commitment to their work.

From this line of thought and in the context of different leadership styles that have been discussed in this section, the next section presents a research methodology for studying different leadership styles that are deployed at Blackberry, Yahoo, and Google Companies.

Methodology

A research can be designed in different ways. It can adopt qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods (pragmatic), and emancipator or advocacy approaches.

This research deploys the pragmatic approach. Freshwater, Sherwood, and Drury (2006) reckon, “Pragmatic researchers grant themselves the freedom to use any of the methods, techniques, and procedures that are typically associated with quantitative or qualitative research” (p.295).

The freedom of choice of the method depends on the researchers’ recognition and evaluation of different methods to determine the one that best fits the research at hand. The best choice is the one that utilizes methodologies that complement one another.

This aspect forms the basic logic for designing this research to use the pragmatic approach that deploys aspects of both quantitative and qualitative researches. Questionnaire and direct interviews are deployed as the primary tools for data collection.

Sample Size and Sample Selection

When conducting a quantitative research, the first step entails selecting the requisite sample size. The specific sample size depends on the anticipated statistical confidence. In this research, arriving at statistically significant deductions requires a reliable sample size.

When selecting a sample size, it is important to identify certain parameters. These parameters include confidence interval or error margin, the size of the studied population, the expected confidence level, and the Standard Deviation (SD) (Saunders, Thornhill, & Lewis, 2009).

In the current research, the total number of employees in each organization may be important. Despite the fact that it is possible to interview all employees after knowing their number from the respective organizations’ HR departments, it is common for a quantitative research to have unknown population (Saunders et al., 2009).

Research samples are not perfect. This claim underlines the significance of determining the limits of acceptable confidence levels. Scott (2011) asserts “confidence level determines how much higher or lower (than the population) those researchers are willing to let their sample mean to fall” (p.89).

This research deploys +/-5 error margin. The implication is that a 95% confidence level is used. SD implies the degree to which the responses of the interviewees need to vary. A 0.5 SD value is used in the current research. Different confidence levels yield different Z values.

A 95% confidence level has a Z-value of 1.96. With this value, it becomes possible to compute the corresponding sample size using the formula:-

After substituting the Z-value, SD and error margin, or the confidence level, the required sample size is 385 participants.

Research Procedure

128 questionnaires will be distributed to the Blackberry employees, 128 to Yahoo company employees, and 129 to Google Company employees. It is expected that no questionnaire will be discarded since all participants are expedited to fill them as expected.

All employees are guaranteed confidentiality of the provided information. They are required to maintain anonymity by not indicating their names on the questionnaire. Where necessary, pseudonyms will be used in the data interpretation and analysis process. The following questionnaires will be administered to employees.

Please indicate your gender

1. Male
2. Female
3. Transgender

Do leaders in your organization collect your opinions on important matters?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

Do the leaders communicate to you the formulated plans for the organization’s growth?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

Does your organization employ people from diverse backgrounds?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

Are you involved in the process of innovation and creation of new products?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

How do you view the process of change in your organization?

1. I do not like change
2. I like change

For your response to question 6, please explain why (not more than 150 words )

Have you ever been involved in conflicts with people from a different cultural, sexual, religious, and ethnic diversity in your organization?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

Does your organization review remuneration and reward schemes to reflect your increasing performance?

1. Always
2. No
3. Sometimes

Results

Questionnaires

Table 1 below shows the results for the questionnaire.

Since no employee gave a response of ‘Sometimes’ for questions 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9, the table captures options A and B only.

Results for Question 7

Although different people provided different explanations as to why they did not like change, 89% of Yahoo employees, 23% of Google workers, and 79% Blackberry employees believed that change was inappropriate since it introduced new ways of doing work.

Most of these employees claimed that change deteriorated and eroded their status quo. 6 % of Yahoo employees, 3% of Google personnel, and 11% Blackberry employees were dissatisfied with intensive bureaucracy that was common during change implementation process.

They claimed that they preferred being let alone in making appropriate decisions in their respective areas of work.

5% of Yahoo employees, 64% of Google workers, and 10% of Blackberry employees believed that change was appropriate since it led to the design of new products, which drove their organizations’ competitive advantage so that the organizations could have the capability to address their needs better.

However, they did not care about the change that their organizations attempted to implement. Their only desire was to see the change yielding positive results to them.

Summary of Interview with the CEOs

The CEOs of the three companies were put into task to explain their leadership strategies. Yahoo CEO believes that effective communication, emotional intelligence, and the ability to lead diverse workforce are important for turning around the fortunes of the company.

Before explaining his leadership approaches, Blackberry CEO first notes that past leaders have made mistakes by focusing on wrong product lines. They have failed to invest in more innovation and creativity.

He then states that he is committed to deploying all possible initiatives to motivate employees by ensuring that tradeoffs between the employee interests and the organization are observed so that they can become important success factors.

Google CEO identifies the need to effectively manage diverse workforce, review employee compensation, create programs for upward mobility, and/or encourage innovation and creativity as essential leadership approaches that have enabled Google to transform from an organization that offers only web search products to a business that offers multiple products such as Google Maps, Google+, and Smartphone among others.

Discussion and Analysis

Organizations are growing into immense complexities, which are constantly looking for mechanisms of becoming competitive.

One of the ways of gaining competitive advantage is by “discovering and implementing a communications strategy that supports company business objectives for its customers, workforce, and partners” (Perry & Bodkin, 2000, p.89). Good communication strategies have multiple benefits for an organization.

Such benefits range from enhancing workforce motivation to the creation of additional customers and retention of the existing ones.

Based on the results from the interview with Yahoo CEO, it is evident that she is one of the top CEOs who understand the value of effective communication in enhancing efforts to drive the success of an organization by ensuring that highly talented labor force delivers optimal productivity.

This position is also supported by the 100% of employees who responded YES to question 3. Google’s leadership is also significantly based on effective communication as indicated by the 91.5% of employees who responded YES to question 3.

Response of 77.3% for NO in question 3 in case of Blackberry indicated insignificant prioritization of communication in its leadership.

Focusing on the response to question 2, Google incredibly values the contribution of its employees in decision-making processes. The 50% response from employees who claimed that they had been involved in decision-making suggests the recognition of the need for employee empowerment.

In the case of Blackberry, employee empowerment is low. Only 28.9% of workers claim to have been involved in decision-making. Based on responses to question 5, all organizations significantly involve employees in the process of innovation and creativity.

However, Blackberry lags behind in adopting the practice considered an important strategy for employee empowerment (Basri, Rusdi & Sulaeman, 2014).

For all organizations, based on the responses to question 4, employees are confident that their organizations respect diversity rights. The ability of leaders to embrace diversity is critical in enhancing the performance of organizations that do business across the globe.

In the multicultural context, it is common to employ people from all backgrounds (Kouzes, 2007).

The capacity to manage diversity in all the three organization effectively is evidenced by the 25%, 0.07%, and 0% response from employees who report to have experienced conflicts with people from diverse background as indicated by responses for question 8.

Responses for question 1 also indicate a gender balance in employees who answered the questionnaires since the sample represented the population.

Employees at Google receive change positively. Although Yahoo Company employees embrace it, many of them (50%) do not like it. Change is more threatening to employees in case of Blackberry. This finding suggests different levels of leadership articulation with reference to the importance of change in the three companies.

Since Google and Yahoo effectively lead through change by ensuring that employees embrace it, the company leaders have good transformational and transactional leadership skills.

This observation is supported by the fact that the CEO contends that emotional intelligence skills are important facets of their leadership.

As evidenced by responses to question 9, although a review of employee performance through performance appraisals is less significant at Blackberry, remuneration of employees in the three companies is proportionate to their effort and hence a critical aspect of their leadership.

Blackberry became the first mobile technology to offer customers unique services such as e-mail and secure data networks on their phones. Such rare features made it a big hit in the mobile markets. Blackberry has remained desirable among its users over the years because of its exclusive features.

The previous leaders of the company did not foresee future needs of Blackberry customers. They failed to invest in user friendly innovations. The today’s technology market is more user-oriented. Inventions are meant to purely suit the needs of consumers.

Lack of correct consumer study and development research made the company’s services more monotonous with users. This failure in the reinvention of its products is what has been ailing Blackberry.

Other mobile technology giants such as Samsung and Apple have taken a large share of the market from Blackberry because of their introduction of comprehensible features. Technology companies face the threat of their market space from competitors.

They can easily be closed in situations where their main gadgets become outclassed, or even considered not fashionable anymore, by a superior competitor. Mobile users are more into trends and flexibility of use of modern technologies. Thus they easily get swayed by the new inventions in the mobile technology.

Lack of visionary leadership has been a great setback to Blackberry and hence the reason why it is currently facing difficulties in gaining the market it had before. The company started on an impressive trend when it introduced features such as touch screen models in the market.

Leaders got consumed by the witnessed success and failed to secure the future in comparison with Google and Apple brands that have always been rediscovering features that make them relevant in the market.

It is only through change that ideas and new methods are implemented. Therefore, employees should accept change if a company wants to grow. The research shows that a company such as Google where change is embraced positively by the workforce has remained paramount in providing quality services.

Employees’ manner of responding to change has a link with the style of management and their motivation. In companies such as Yahoo where there is low motivation of the employees from the management, change is not enthusiastically embraced because workers are not empowered.

They feel left out in the crucial decisions that lead to changes. In such environments, employees do not feel safe to embrace changes. Employees in Yahoo have a low morale towards new ideas. Hence, they prefer the status quo.

This observation kills the growth of the brand. Employees in Google are consulted and involved in decision-making processes. Therefore, the effecting of strategies has been easier in this company.

The findings of the study confirm the literature review that effective communication of leaders and employees is valuable to the success of any organization.

Where the labor force feels valued, it contributes more to the success of a corporation. This strategy is an integral aspect of motivation. Good remuneration is only a fraction of motivation. The accommodation of different ideas is equally motivating since it provides a feeling of acceptance within an organization.

Above all forms of motivation, employees prefer being accepted on a personal level for them to feel part of the company. Even employees in well-paying companies leave their jobs due to lack of motivation and appreciation at work. Poorly motivated employees do not grow as well-grounded professionals.

Hence, they find it difficult to invent new ideas. Poorly motivated employees feel less empowered, as witnessed in the case of Blackberry. With only 28.9 percent of their staff members claiming to have been consulted in decision-making processes, the management has not built trust with the employees.

Blackberry has been facing a downward trend in the market because of such management problems. When there is no trust between the management and the staff members, there lacks a substantial relation that can give birth to ideas. Blackberry team needs to involve the staff officials more on significant stages of their decisions.

All changes have to be done through the employees. The skills to execute plans and realize visions lies in the labor force. Hence, employees’ skills need to be upgraded continuously to meet the new changes in the current market.

Considering that Google, Blackberry, and Yahoo are technology companies, their workers need to possess the right skills to advance with the trend (Mitrabinda, Hii & Goo, 2012). A labor force that is trained with the right skills is more confident and motivated in embracing change.

Leaders should demonstrate the right skills before they can train the rest of their employees in times of difficulties. This plan instills the confidence of employees that their leaders have the know-how to effect ideas. If a company decides to go for a change, it will achieve its mission.

Blackberry Company lacks this rare combination of skills, motivation, and effective communication from the management and hence the reason why it seem unable to survive the competitive tech-industry.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Different organizations can experience different levels of performance due to their deployment of different leadership styles such as transactional and transformational leadership techniques.

Transactional leaders deploy motivation approaches to increase task accomplishment anticipations by emphasizing a specific performance on tasks that are allocated to them. Where poor performance is attributed to low rewards, transactional leaders use reward systems to encourage it.

Transactional leaders are smart enough to lead employees by deploying leadership behaviors such as leadership through exemption and/or contingent rewards. The contingent rewards encompass attempts to motivate organizational followers through clear and well-defined job tasks.

However, this technique has proved problematic for Blackberry since the definition of tasks reduces the level of innovation and creativity.

This observation perhaps reveals the reduced performance of the company in comparison with Yahoo, which increased its performance after it adopted transformational and transactional leadership styles from Google upon hiring Mayer.

Blackberry has been lagging behind in transformation through development of new products and employees empowerment to help build a competitive advantage.

Blackberry should benchmark from the leadership approaches of Google and Yahoo. Effective vertical and horizontal communication is incredibly important in delivering the organization’s visions to all employees to encourage a positive reception for change that is driven by innovation and the creation of new competitive products.

Emotional intelligence attributes of transformational leadership of Mayer, the CEO Yahoo and Former CEO of Google, are recommended as important leadership aspects for transforming Blackberry Company.

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