Task: Identify and research the key concepts, models or theories in the case study provided, and critically analyse(critical analysis) the case study to answer questions stated below:

Question 1: A. Based on your research and studies, is Rupert Murdoch best described as a manager or a leader? Give reasons for your answer.

B. Based on your research and studies, to what extent does Rupert Murdoch's leadership behaviour resemble a relations-oriented or a task-oriented leader? Explain with examples.

Case Study:

Rupert Keith Murdoch - Chairman, News Corporation Rupert Murdoch is arguably the most influential Australian business leader of all time. As Chairman and CEO of News Corporation (News Corp) and Executive Chairman at 211t Century Fox, Murdoch presides over a vast media empire with interests throughout Europe, the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. Murdoch's unique approach to business and to leadership has attracted significant attention internationally over the past five decades. A polarising figure, Murdoch has been variously described as a brilliant corporate strategist, an entrepreneurial leader with an acute understanding of markets, a manipulative demagogue, a highly directive and detail-oriented autocrat, an amoral opinion leader and even a libertarian (Wolff, 2010). Born in Melbourne in 1931, Murdoch was educated at Geelong Grammar and Worcester College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. At Oxford, Murdoch was never quite accepted by many of his wealthier peers due to his colonial roots, and felt ostracised at times. This was an experience that shaped his antiestablishment sentiments, and led him to support the Labour Party as well as running for secretary of the University's Labour Club. Following his father's death, Murdoch returned to Australia at the age of 21 to assume control of the family business, News Limited, which he successfully and aggressively expanded by progressively buying newspapers in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. In the 1960s, Murdoch began to turn his attention to international markets. In 1964, at the age of 32, Murdoch purchased The Dominion, a New Zealand daily newspaper. Later that year, he launched Australia's first national newspaper, The Australian, which quickly gained a wide readership and proved to be influential in shaping public opinion on political matters at the time. Murdoch's foray in the UK began in 1968 with his purchase of News of the World, a populist tabloid. The following year, he acquired The Sun, which he quickly converted into another low-brow newspaper in tabloid format. With these two acquisitions, Murdoch dramatically cut production costs by using the same printing facilities for both papers (Shawcross, 1992). The sensationalist nature of these two papers appealed to the masses, which boosted readership significantly. This popular commercialisation heralded a shift in the newspaper industry in the UK, which bore testimony to Murdoch's willingness to adopt an iconoclastic approach to product marketing. Since then, Murdoch has continued to build his media empire in Australia and the UK, while also expanding into the US. In 1973 he bought the San Antonio Express News and in 1976 he acquired the New York Post. In 1981 he acquired both The Times and The Sunday Times in Britain, and in 1984 he purchased a controlling interest in 20th Century Fox (Shawcross, 1992). In 1986, Murdoch began to roll out revolutionary electronic production technology throughout his printing presses in Australia, the UK and the US. The increased levels of automation enabled dramatic reductions in the number of employees required to operate the presses. In the UK, dismissals resulted in job losses for more than 6000 permanent fulltime employees and provoked street riots and demonstrations which drew the Thatcher government into a bitter face-off against the British Trade Union Movement (Wolff, 2010). The sacked employees eventually won 60 million in settlements, but the dispute deeply divided public opinion in Britain. Conservatives viewed the Murdoch sackings as a bold, courageous anti-union move, while labour supporters saw the whole affair as evidence of a ruthless foreign mogul costing honest people their jobs, and vilified Murdoch as a callous 'dirty digger'. Independent commentators at the time noted the opportunistic shift in political allegiance, pointing to Murdoch's strong allegiance to the labour movement as a student at Oxford. In the US, Murdoch launched Fox Broadcasting Company in 1986, an entity which found enormous commercial success with The Simpsons, The X-Files and Fox News. Fox News was launched as an antidote to the left-leaning bias Murdoch perceived in CNN and other commercial networks in the United States (Arsenault \& Castells, 2008). It quickly gained a strong and loyal audience for its right-of-centre political views. Over the years, Murdoch has never shied away from using his media interests to support particular politicians at both ends of the political spectrum (McKnight, 2012). In the UK his newspapers have been particularly supportive of prime ministers Margaret Thatcher (Conservative, 197990), Tony Blair (Labour, 1997-2007) and David Cameron (Conservative, 2010-16). If nothing else, Murdoch is certainly a highly determined and self-assured decision maker who operates effectively in extremely high-pressure situations. Throughout the late 1980 s, Murdoch continued to build his empire by borrowing heavily from no less than 146 banks across four continents. During the recession of the early 1990 s, Murdoch's highly leveraged News Corp became vulnerable, having accumulated over $7 billion in debt (Wolff, 2010). Several international creditors began hounding Murdoch - overextended financially, and with his British Satellite Broadcasting Company (BSB) experiencing enormous losses - to make good on overdue interest payments. By early 1991, News Corp was facing the prospect of bankruptcy. The corporation was unable to pay its $2.3 billion debt, and needed an immediate cash injection of $600 million to stay afloat. Through a series of quite harrowing and intense negotiations spanning several months, Murdoch held his nerve and persuaded his creditors to forestall his overdue payments and lend him the additional capital needed to keep News Corp viable (McKnight, 2012). Having made significant inroads into both the US and UK markets, Murdoch's next expansionary phase led him to focus some of his attention on the Asian region. In 1993, with the worst of the early 1990s downturn behind him, Murdoch acquired Star TV, a Hong Kong business entity founded by Richard Li. This has since provided a platform for News International to broadcast from Hong Kong to Japan, India, parts of China and more than 30 other countries in the region. In 2004, Murdoch shifted News Corp's headquarters from Adelaide, South Australia to the United States, effectively making the company a US-based firm, thus opening up share trading and investment opportunities for US-domiciled interests. In 2007, Murdoch bought Dow Jones \& Company, publishers of the Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion. In 2014, Murdoch's 21st Century Fox made a serious bid for the Time-Warner Corporation, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Today Murdoch's business empire includes over 170 newspapers around the globe, television stations on five continents, radio stations, magazines, book publishers, satellite television companies, sports teams, sporting arenas and movie studios. Admirers describe Murdoch's leadership as ambitious, engaged, decisive and opinionshaping. In November 2015, he received the Hudson Institute's Global Leadership Award. Never one to shy away from expressing his own view to an international audience, Murdoch referred to Britain's exit from the European Union in 2016 as 'wonderful', comparing the move to 'a prison break' (Martinson, 2016). As a leader, Murdoch has been intensely loyal to a small number of long-serving senior executives, while also creating perpetually high levels of executive turnover in many of his businesses. He describes his best decision as retaining control of News Corp through a network of family trusts, a move that has attracted significant criticism from those who see this approach as a purposeful attempt to diminish accountability from a corporate governance perspective. Ultimately, Murdoch's approach to leadership is at once directive, demanding and opportunistic. A prolific international networker, at 85 years of age Murdoch remains one of the most influential business leaders of our time. 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