Kraft Foods Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Kraft Foods - Essay Example The effectiveness of using this website as a marketing tool depends on the extent to which it achieves the desired goals and objectives set by the company. The ultimate objective of designing and hosting a website is to ensure that the company profile reaches out to as many people as possible. The fall of new and improved technologies has enhanced the company’s use of this website. The company reaches to its potential markets at the click of a button. This enhances consumer awareness, which is a fundamental aspect in marketing. The company acknowledges that markets within and without the United States are diverse and dynamic. In this respect, the Kraft Foods’ website offers a variety of product and service packages that suit specific markets in and out of the United States. Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States are some of the regions that enjoy customized product and service packages (http://www.kraft.com/). However, this does not imply that markets outside these regions are irrelevant to the company. The website is actually open to the global population, and most importantly the global market. An effective marketing tool has to account for the variations in buyer behavior, tastes, and preferences. Considering these aspects influences the performance of any given marketing tool. Kraft Foods’ website highlights the company’s product base and all the services factored in the company’s operations. This allows the consumers to enjoy a wide range of products and services that the company offers. On the same note, the website provides a platform where the user can directly engage and interact with the company, thereby allowing the company to foster functional relations with the target markets. A positive impact on the company’s marketing pursuit is realized in the process. Amid the effective use of the website by Kraft Foods, the customer service aspect could be done better. The direct interaction between

Performance of the Leader as Affected by Followers Essay

Performance of the Leader as Affected by Followers - Essay Example However, as observed, leadership does not necessarily imply laudable, good conduct as it is entirely possible to induce destructive behavior through crooked ways (Hock, 2001). In Hock's description, the true leaders are those who typify the general sense of the community, "enabling its conscious, shared values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted from generation to generation" (Hock, 2001). From here comes the belief that a community is eventually directed by the conscious, shared values and beliefs of the individuals of which it is composed (Hock, 2001). This may be exemplified by two leaders that had different types of followers: the non-violent Dr. Martin Luther King and the cruel Adolf Hitler (Warren, 2001). A much better way to understand leader performance as affected by the follower is Hollander's (1997) explanation about the dynamics of leadership. He said that the follower role is expected as one of low power and passive but this is misleading, he believed, because followership is an active accompaniment to leadership. Leaders may be more active, especially in directing, but followers can affect a leader as an "attentive strategic audience," he said. There exists in fact a two-way support and influence that are essential to the leader-follower bond (Hollander, 2007). Such are understood as credit that followers can accord or withhold from their leaders, reflecting their loyalty and trust (Hollander, 1997). This ties up with what Barbara Kellerman (2004) warned as bad followership existing in our systems. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led (Hock, 2001), affirming the belief that followers have a way of affecting leader performance. This line of reasoning is maintained throughout this paper. From definitions of leadership and how it occurs, to leadership characteristics, the discussion leads to the leader-follower relationship, also called Inclusive Leadership (CCL, 2007) and particularly describes the "Idiosyncrasy Credit" (IC) Model of Holland (1968) as a cogent explanation of the dynamics of this relationship. The discussion further delves into followership and goes finally to the topic of leadership performance. This is made distinct from optimum organizational performance where ideally the former is made subject to the latter. The paper includes specific examples of bad leaders and follower influence on the topic of idiosyncratic credits (IC) model propounded by Hollander (1964). It finally concludes with the recommendation that followership as a subject of research should be given importance. Leader-follower relationship How relationship develops. Leadership is a field of interaction or a relationship between leaders and followers (Warren, 2001). Such leader-follower relationship ideally evokes the essence of a clear, meaningful purpose and compelling ethical principles (Hock, 2001), where the relationship develops with the leader and the follower connecting to create one, undivided whole. This means there is no leader who can exist without gaining the support of others (Warren, 2001). Conflicts may come at times between leader and follower, partly on account of leaders and followers processing information from their own subjective, internal frame of reference (Warren, 2001). However, an alignment may come between the two when followers identify with a leader because the leader fits the followers' image of