Strategic leadership

Strategic leadership in an organization is the process of transforming organizations from what they are to what the leader would have them become. The roles of a leader are determine the direction of the organization, design the organization to best fit the actions that he is wanting to take and nurture a culture dedicated to excellence and ethical behavior. In strategic leadership there will always be barriers to change, these are characteristic of individuals and organizations that prevent a leader from transforming an organization. There are many different barriers to change that a leader must overcome. One of those barriers is systematic barriers; these are barriers to change that stem from an organizational design that impedes the proper flow and evaluation of information. Another barrier is behavior barriers, these are barriers to change associated with the tendency for managers to look at issues from a biased or limited perspective based on their prior education and experience. The next barriers a leader might face is political barriers these are barriers to change related to conflicts arising from power relationships. There are many sources of power in an organization. Power is a leader’s ability to get things done in a way he or she wants them to be done. There is organizational power, which is power that stems from a leader’s holding a formal management position. There is also personal bases power; this is power that stems from a leader’s personality characteristics and behavior. There are also politics in an organization, these are power struggles from the head leaders to get what they want in the organization by trying to get people to back them more than the other leader so they can get things done in the way they want them done. The next section is the analysis of my company Honda motors and how these principals fit into their organization.

Organizational Structure

There are two types of organizational structures that an organization can have, they are either a vertical structure or a horizontal structure. A vertical structure is a hierarchically structured organization where all management activities are controlled by a centralized management staff. This traditional type of organization often develops strong bureaucratic control over all organizational activities. A horizontal structure is an organization with few or no intervening levels of management between the top executive and the workers. This means that managers are much closer to their employees in this flat type structure than in a tall vertical structure. This allows for much faster transition times between problems that organizations have. An organization can also be centralized in these structures, an organizations with a centralized structure has several layers of management that control the company by maintaining a high level of authority, which is the power to make decisions concerning business activities. With a centralized structure, line-and-staff employees have limited authority to carry something out without prior approval. This organizational structure tends to focus on top-down management, whereby executives at the top communicate by telling middle managers, who then tell first-level managers, who then tell the staff what to do and how to do it. An organization can also be formalized in these structures. This means the extent to which rules and procedures are written out and enforced, organizations with high formalization, like bureaucracies, have strict enforcement of many set written rules and regulations. The next section deals with the strategic leadership of organizations and how it affects them.

Strategic Control

There are two types of strategic control there is the traditional approach and the contemporary approach. The first approach I will define is the traditional approach, this is a sequential method of organizational control in which strategies are formulated and top management sets goals, strategies are implemented, and performance is measured against the predetermined goal set. The next approach is the contemporary approach, this follows the same guidelines but there are two distinct differences, informational control and behavioral control. Informational control details with the concern whether or not the organization is “Doing the right things”. Behavioral control on the other hand asks if the organization is “Doing things right” in the implementation strategy. Informational control is a method of organizational control in which a firm gathers and analyzes information from the internal and external environment in order to obtain the best fit between the organization’s goals and strategies and the strategic environment. Behavioral control is a method of organizational control in which a firm influences the actions of employees through culture, reward, and boundaries. Inside an organization there is also control systems, these are corporate culture and reward systems. Corporate culture is a system of shared values and beliefs that shape a company’s people, organizational structure and control systems to produce behavioral norms. Reward systems represent a powerful means of influencing an organization’s culture, focusing efforts on high-priority tasks, and motivating individuals and collective task performance. The next section deals with the organizational structure and how control is passed down from top management to the bottom of the ladder.

Corporate Governance

One aspect of corporate governance is agency relationship. This is the relationship between principals and their agents, with emphasis on two problems: the conflicting goals of principals and agents, along with the difficulty of principals to monitor the agents, and the different attitudes and preferences towards risk of principals and agents. Another aspect of corporate governance is managerial opportunism. This is where a manager is pursuing their own interest to the detriment of the corporation. Managers will spend corporate funds on expensive perquisites, devote time and resources to pet projects, engage in power struggles and negate attractive merger offers because they may result in increased employment risk. The next aspect of corporate governance is the corporate governance problem. This is where the relationship among various participants in determining the direction and performance of the corporation fail to align managerial motives with the best interest of the shareholders, elected representatives and the board of directors. There are also governance mechanisms; the first is the board of directors. They are a group that has a fiduciary duty to ensure the company is run consistently with the long-term interests of the owners, or shareholders, of a corporation and that acts as an intermediary between the shareholders and management. The next mechanism is executive compensation; this is the most critical roles of the board of directors is to create incentives that align the interest of the CEO and top executives with the interest of owners of the corporation. This is to adopt policies and strategies that maximize the value of the stockholders shares. The board can require CEOs to become substantial owners of company stock, base salaries and bonuses on performance and they can also enforce dismissal for poor performance. Another mechanism is threat of takeover; this is the risk to management of the firm being acquired by hostile raiders. The next section deals with strategic controls and how they are used within organizations.

The Neural Network

A neural network acquires knowledge through learning.
A neural network's knowledge is stored within inter-neuron connection strengths known as synaptic weights.

The true power and advantage of neural networks lies in their ability to represent both linear and non-linear relationships and in their ability to learn these relationships directly from the data being modeled. Traditional linear models are simply inadequate when it comes to modeling data that contains non-linear characteristics. Models can be made for anything that has historial data that can be backed up.

hondas problem/solution

Honda is a very image based company; they strive for excellence and do whatever it takes for customer satisfaction. Recently Honda has had a problem with their airbags overinflating. Honda says that their air bags might over inflate and burst spraying potentially deadly metal shards at their consumers if they are involved in a wreck. This will hurt the brand image of Honda which will be a drastic blow to the organization. This is because Honda is such an image based organization. Honda does a very good job of handling these situation and they fix these problems before they turn in potential treating situations.


There are many ways to solve the problems that Honda is having. Many of the resolutions that can fix the problem are not beneficial to the way that Honda does business but there is one solution that will fix the problem and have a positive outcome. The solution to the problem that Honda has is the focused differentiation strategy. This strategy will focus on the market segment of the special needs of the buyers. The consumers in America tend to have a higher crash ratio and this means that Honda needs to put more emphasis on air bag safety. This is how they will exploit the market, advertising that they have put much needed emphasis on the safety of the cars they produce. This will expand the market and reassure the consumers of Honda that they are making the best product possible and that their safety will be reassured when they purchase and drive a Honda vehicle or any other Honda product.

hondas international competetive strategy

Hondas international competitive strategy is multidemestic strategy. This is because Honda sells many products in many different regions that demand different aspects from relatively the same product. People in the USA want motorcycles from Honda to be sporty and powerful, while people in other countries use their motorcycle for everyday transportation and they need it to be gas friendly and almost maintenance free. This different aspect of the same product that Honda produces makes Honda have to follow multidemestic strategy. Honda does this with almost every product that it sells due to the variation of the products that they sell and the uses that they have all around the world.