Leadership and Management Issues - Assignment Example

Leadership and Management Issues Leadership is very important to everyone. All kinds of endeavors in life involve leadership whether it is for individual pursuit or for group interests. The world systems will not work without leadership. Bernard Bass defined leadership as “an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring or restructuring the situation and the perceptions and expectations of the members,” (Waite 2008). Leadership is very vital in an organization whether it is a formal or informal organization in pursuit of a certain goal. Many have defined the meaning of leadership and yet it is still one of the most confused subjects until now. Some famous quotations are even written about the meaning of leadership like Warren Bennis saying that “leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality,” (Corocran 2008, p. 3). The image is very important in leadership as it guides the core values of the leader and the activities and strategies to turn the vision or goal into reality (Anthonissen 2008, p. 48). Another way of defining leadership is according to Gardner that President Harry Truman defines leadership as to “get other people do what they don’t want to do and like it,” (Parker and Begnaud 2004, p. 3). It means that a good leader should be able to understand his members in the team or organization and he knows how to deal with them. If problems arise, he can think quickly of ways on hot to solve them. He really understands human motivation. It is defined by Hoy and Miskel as cited in Chelladurai (2006, p. 100) as the “activating forces […] within individuals” which consist of “memory, affective responses, and pleasure-seeking tendencies” as they affect human behaviors and actions with “a goal orientation.” It can be said that together with leadership and motivation comes management. Management is an old concept. It originated from the Latin word manus which means by hand or power. Management may also come from the Italian word mangeggiare pertaining to officers in charge of a certain production facility. It evolved then into the French manager and later on, it became the English term management. In the concept of English people, management pertains to business organizations with people working as guides and to supervise the performance of others (Witzel 2004, pp. 1-2). American Management Association in 1980 defined the concept of management and according to the group, “management is getting things done through other people,” (Montana and Charnov 2008, p. 2). It means the efforts of other people are involved and the management is just the supervision and guidance on the efficiency of the whole group. Currently, management can be defined as "working with and through other people to accomplish the objectives of both the organization and its members” (Montana and Charnov 2008, p. 2). According to Montana and Charnov (2008, p.2), there are three key differences between the two definitions: the employees play the great part in the organization, the focus is the result to be obtained and personal goals are aligned with the organizational goals. The practice of managing people in the organization is called the management process. The management process has six fundamental functions: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating and controlling. Planning is the most basic function of management. It is concerned with what, how and when the activities or performance be carried out by an organization. The course of actions is created in the process of planning. It involves the identification of long-term and short-term objectives, the creation of strategies and formation of policies and rules to be followed by the members of the organization. Usually, the top management creates the initial planning and identification of long-range objectives but the planning function is being done by all managers from all levels in an organization. The second function is organizing. It is concerned with the determination of the activities that can materialize the objectives set during the planning stage. The plans are carried out and works are categorized into jobs distributed to several subdivisions or departments of the organization. Also, the vertical and horizontal coordination of activities is important because the members of the organization responsible to carry out the specific actions must help one another to accomplish the given activities. To make things easier, there are five sub-functions of organizing: identification of activities, turning works into jobs, designating jobs to employees, the appointment of authority, and creation of working linkages. Staffing is the third function of management. It carefully searches for the proper people for certain specific jobs through the recruitment process that checks the capabilities of prospective employees. There are six sub-functions of staffing: manpower planning, recruiting, selecting the best people, placing and orienting the new employees, position changing, and training of employees. Manpower planning identifies the kind of individuals needed by the organization while recruitment is the actual process of attracting prospective individuals who can be part of the organization. Through the selection process, people for the right jobs with the matching qualifications will be chosen. Once they are admitted to the company, they must undergo orientation to familiarize themselves in the workplace. Position changing involves promotions, leaves, departmental changes, resignations, and layoff. It is needed in order to understand the current organizational structure and how it may affect the overall performance of the organization. Last part of the staffing is the training of employees. They must continuously learn and study to increase their efficiency that may become the basis for promotion. The fourth function of management is directing. It is the function involving leadership in the most part of it. It is about giving the goals and motivating the employees to be at the top level performance. Directing has three sub-functions: communication, motivation, and leadership. The fifth function is the coordinating which links and creates relationships among various departments of the organization and put together towards the achievement of the organizational goals. It puts together the efforts of the organization to materialize the objectives. The last function of management is controlling which is responsible for evaluating the performance of each department and if their activities are aligned with the organizational goals. The sub-functions of controlling are the measurement of performance based on standards, identification of wasted activities and efforts and solutions to the existing problems (Agarwal 1982, pp. 6-8). Management and leadership concepts presented would be used later in the situation of a company known as Vidsoft. VidSoft Technologies was an internet technology company located in Sunnyvale, California. VidSoft became famous for enterprise software to give solutions to the procurement needs of its clients. A wide variety of companies became clients of VidSoft like Telefonica Spain and Cisco Systems. The company grew when it opened its stocks to the public in 1999 and the revenue improved from $50M to more than $250M by 2000. The number of employees increased from 500 to more than 2000 employees around the world. The culture of VidSoft revolves around the concept of speaking the minds of its employees. Everyone is welcome to voice out his opinion for the betterment of him and the company itself. Employees work hard to satisfy the needs of the clients and bring success to the companies who afford their services. Teamwork was highly encouraged within the company and bonuses and schemes were devised to achieve teamwork and increase the overall efficiency. When it comes to efficiency it is not always about work because the employees at VidSoft can do what they want once they finish the assigned projects on time. Footballs and table tennis can be seen at the headquarters and during Friday afternoon employees gather and have the party filled with food and drinks. According to Keith Nash, CEO of VidSoft, managers should always develop leadership from within and it became a great motivation tool for the employees to do their best. Future managers must come from the employees of VidSoft and when the worst case comes that no employee is qualified for the position, better hire an external manager. The managers to be hired must be better than the currently employed managers. Smarter people are always hired to ensure nobody loses jobs. As the company grew more talents approached the company but few are very talented as individuals. The remaining individuals to work at the company are asking for higher compensation (Nakhwa 2004, p.2). The situation wherein management and leadership concepts would be applied are in the company of VidSoft. Each employee in the situation will be introduced first. Alhaji Babatunde, Alex Hsu, Jennah Li, and James White are the characters in the scenario. Alhaji Babatunde grew up in Nigeria but later on transferred to the United States of America to study computer science. When he went to California, he worked for high-technology corporations and afterward had his MBA. After his MBA he joined VidSoft and became a division manager of its Technical Support. As the company grew, his responsibilities also grew and he became a senior technical support manager. Later on, he had two product lines to manage. He started to have a micro style of leadership which means he checked all of the works of his subordinates closely but when he had eleven engineers under him, he cannot handle all of them when he checked the performance of all of them. He decided to have two product line teams and promoted one of the engineers to become a manager who went by the name of Jennah Li. The other team is still under his supervision directly since no other members are qualified to be promoted. Jennah Li was of a Chinese descent and studied environmental management at the University of Hong Kong. She was able to be part of VidSoft because she worked for several technology companies and Babatunde admired her ability to with customer relationship so she got hired. Li worked very hard and using her determination she was able to gain the respect of her colleagues. She was a team player and got some awards despite some hardships in English. Another employee under Babatunde is Alex Hsu. He also came from a Chinese family like Li but he grew up in the Bay area. He studied at the University of California with a degree in computer engineering and the first in his family to graduate with a science degree. He may have some problems with mathematics but his determination helped him to become an engineer and climb the corporate ladder. He joined VidSoft and got the responsibilities of debugging software codes and answer to the needs of the customers. He may not be a team player but because of his background and hard work he got admitted. This result may not be like that of a top performer but he performed above average. He also did not participate in bonding activities. The director of the technical support department is James White. He cared about his subordinates but he was not very hard to them. He was the one who hired Babatunde (Nakhwa 2004, pp. 3-5). Since Alex Hsu is not a team player and he does not believe in the leadership of Li, he wants to transfer to the other team and report directly to Babatunde. Babatunde considered the situation as a concern of Jennah Li, thus he called the two for a talk. Li also considered it as a problem because other members might lose their respect for her leadership if Hsu will transfer to the other team. As a solution, it can be compromised that Hsu will report to Babatunde without transferring to another team to protect the credibility of Li. As part of the management process is concerned, both Li and Hsu may get into a win-win situation through the help of White and Babatunde. Li must be motivated enough to accept it as part of the learning process and in developing her leadership abilities. Bibliography Anthonissen, P. F., 2008. Crisis communication: practical PR strategies for reputation management and company survival. India: Replika Press. Chelladurai, P., 2006. Human resource management in sport and recreation. USA: Human Kinetics. Corcoran, T., 2008. The leadership bus: how to be a truly effective and successful leader. United Kingdom: AuthorHouse. Montana, P. J. and Charnov, B. H., 2008. Management 4th ed. USA: Barron’s Educational Series. Nakhwa, R., 2004. The VidSoft triangle. Virginia: Darden Business Publishing. Parker, J. P. and Begnaud, L. G., 2004. Developing creative leadership. USA: Teachers Ideas Press. Waite, M.R., 2008. Fire service leadership: theories and practices. London: Jones and Bartlett. Witzel, M., 2004. Management: the basics. New York: Routledge.   Read More