Leadership at Facebook

During a contemporary management class, we were asked, what leadership style do you think would be most suitable for Facebook at this particular point in time?

   

When discussing leadership at Facebook; I tend to mostly consider founder Mark Zuckerburg as although there are four other founders, they are not currently involved in the enterprise. This would immediately indicate a high task structure and a low relationship orientation, throwing in a number of high profile (and extremely expensive) lawsuits into the mix to confirm the lack of relationship bias.

Zuckerburg, at a young age was a visionary leader providing drive and enthusiasm to a start-up organisation. Without such drive, Facebook could have easily been a great idea that ultimately failed. As Zuckerburg was a computer programmer studying at Harvard University, one would imagine he held a high level of technical skills; however, his technical capabilities would not be enough to sustain momentum to grow the organisation.

Other internet social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster pre-dated Facebook; however, these businesses were nowhere near as successful as Facebook – I believe this was a leadership issue. It would not appear that Zuckerburg was an autocratic leader as he successfully recruited Sean Parker as initial president and such a leader would not dilute their own position power, nor would it appear he was a laissez-faire leader as a great deal of direction was needed to launch such a successful enterprise.

It would be hard to believe a start-up internet business was successfully launched with a bureaucratic leadership style with rigid rules and procedures. Further supporting the recruitment of Parker, a democratic leadership style is the most likely classical management view in the growth phase of the enterprise.

Now Facebook has been listed as a public company, the organisation faces different competitive pressures. Facebook already has the dominant position in regards to market positioning, advertising revenues and social acceptance. However, as a publically listed corporation must report to the market showing revenue growth, this would likely be through advertising growth to drive share price growth.

This may be difficult as it is assumed that Facebook held a 95% market share in the United States and can now only contract in the future. Rivals such as Gree (Japanese), Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress, Twitter and collaborative sites such as Wikipedia & Wikispaces are making inroads into the social media segment. Due to the public nature of the business, it now has institutional style investors who seek a return on their investment.

A change leadership style from a start-up to a mature company is now required – the need to secure long term growth may require a somewhat more bureaucratic approach without impeding further innovation and future growth. The initial public offering is viewed as a failure, more so regarding the fines of banker, Morgan Stanley.

Breaking the major classical leadership styles further down into a contingency approach; the path-goal theory will benefit the organisation with a move away from the achievement orientated leadership approach to the more consultative participatory leadership approach with a concentrated emphasis on relationship orientation.