Effective Multi-Unit Leadership: Local Leadership in Multi-Site Situations

Effective Multi-Unit Leadership looks at that key managerial cohort in the retail, hospitality and service sectors operating between the centre and unit - the multi-unit manager (MUM). This is the district manager, area manager, or regional director who is tasked with maximising revenue and profit from a positional space that is both complex and ambiguous. These managers, sandwiched between the centre and unit, face the MUM paradox: How do they generate commitment from unit managers and team members whilst simultaneously fulfilling the Centre's control and change agenda? How do they deal with complexity that escalates according to the level of internal and external contextual turbulence, or the degree of institutional, economic, cultural, strategic and policy making 'noise'? There is a growing recognition of the increasing importance of multi-unit management given the threat to the high street due to the rise of the internet and deployment of smart technologies. High performance multi-unit management is more important than ever in this context. Multi-site organizations are economically significant but currently under-researched and not well understood. Based on extensive research within the UK's largest casual dining company (136 MUMs and 2,000 Unit Managers) and within at least two other major MUM organisations in building supplies retail and food convenience, Chris Edger offers an emergent MUM conceptual framework that cuts across sectors. This helps explain how the MUM must fulfil a number of sometimes competing and contradictory functions; how high performance MUMs manage this paradox and adjust to their roles and responsibilities; and how organisations accelerate their levels of effectiveness and achieve high performance multi-unit leadership. The ability of MUMs to motivate their direct reports and teams to deliver a high quality customer experience within the constraints of time, distance and space is not a trivial challenge. This book will appeal to high potential unit managers, existing multi-unit managers who want to increase their performance levels and retail/service directors wishing to train and coach their direct reports, and to business educators and those with an academic interest in organisational studies.