Alan Michael Sugar

Alan Michael Sugar is one of the most successful businessmen in Britain. He managed from a modest origin to establish a capital over 730 million. He was born in 1947. The nature of his success lies in his lack of fear. He built an empire through creative thinking and business vision. His achievement is due to a persistent personality and a natural instinct to obtain profits from new opportunities arising from flexible markets and customer needs. In addition his media involvement is notorious as well as his political interest. In 2009 he became part of the Lords Chamber.

At the age of 21 in 1968 he set up a company called Amstrad (acronym for Alan Michael Sugar Trading). The company started as a small bussines, but it soon became an international electronics and telecommunications group.

Amstrad was run through an autocrat management style, where decisions were taken almost exclusively by Sugar and very few decisions were taken collectively or in a committee. This style of leadership expects a strict authority over employees and to obtain outstanding performance from controlling rather than empowerment.

Although his model was highly criticized by his employees and the general public, working with less middle management layers helped the company to reduce costs undoubtedly and to improve the speed of the decision making process.

Autocratic leadership is proven to be beneficial in roles that require quick decisions or sections of organisations lacking direction; thus improving departments or companies were the job nature is fixed. Lack of change in job design can lead employees to lose motivation and task commitment, and overall effectiveness in their performance.

However, in most cases, nowadays it is seen as something that is undesirable for most of the economist. Autocratic leadership style leads to lack of internal communication