Two Theories Concerning Cultural Earning and Cultural Change - Assignment Example

Define two аррrоасhеs to the рrасtiсе оf mоrаl lеаdеrshiр Name: Institution: Instructor: Date: Abstract The purpose of this essay is to analyse the two theories concerning cultural earning and cultural change. This is about quality leadership so that one can understand the difference between the two approaches to visionary leadership. Cultural change emphasizes that the leaders role is to articulate and personify the values and standards that the organization aspires to do and then to inspire and motivate employees to follow how they lead. Cultural learning on the on other side, emphasizes that the role of a leader is more important is terms of participation and empowerment in order to foster moral immigration and autonomy. Employees are thus encouraged to think independently, to make reasoned and responsive evaluations and choice for themselves. The essay then tries to critically analyse the issues surrounding each theory of leadership. Introduction Leadership is a very delicate issue to deal with in a situation where there are many people to supervise and lead. Leadership traits form one of the things that people find difficult to achieve. There are many characteristics that such a person should have in order to lead others in a way that shows success in the business venture (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). A leader is supposed to be emotionally intelligent, he is to have empathy, he is to be straightforward, and he is supposed to have social boldness and to have good decision-making skills indifferent situations. Leaders are supposed to depict many good characteristics that their followers can emulate. This is so because they are looked at as icons of the society from which much is expected. Leaders are supposed to be reforms oriented and are to show a good sense of direction and focus in whatever they do. All these traits help to build confidence of the people in their leader. Example of leaders In real life, there have been several great leaders that showed a good sense of leadership. Abraham Lincoln is one great man that showed bravery in leading his people of the United States of America. During the American Civil wars, he was very strong in keeping his people together such that they did not break up into smaller groups. He also was very strong and ended slavery in the USA by signing the emancipation proclamation (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). Lincoln depicts great leadership skills of determination in following up the issue of slavery. He also shows courage and persistence in dealing with most of the national wide issues. Another individual who has great history in leadership is Fidel Castro. Fidel leads the Cuban revolution with a lot of expertise and later becomes the prime Minister of Cuba. From his trait of persistence, Fidel become the president of Cuba for a very long time. He evaded many catastrophes aimed at him and continued prospering as the president of Cuba. He shows major traits of prosperous leaders, that is endurance, hard work, determination and courage. Leadership as a matter of fact involves many things (Conger, 1990). One needs to be able to monitor all the resources and human labour he is in charge of so that they can work hand in hand in achieving the set goals. A leader should also be aggressive (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). This will help him in achieving goals that look to be very distant and difficult to achieve. Achieving such goals will boost the teams’ morale and determination such that they will now be willing to tackle tasks that are even more difficult. A leader is also supposed to give direction and encouragement to his followers. No matter how the situation is, a leader is supposed to be focused always and to uphold all the integrity required as per the profession. A good leader is also supposed to be a risk taker. There are very many things that are not very certain in leadership and in large organizations. A leader is supposed to be very outgoing in learning new things and trying out new ideas. This can be very big point from which he can improve on his businesses or improve the outputs. According to the perspectives given above, leadership is seen to have different qualities. About cultural change, leaders are seen to be the main cause of success or failure in a business. They are the ones encouraged to start following all the rules and regulations before the rest of the workers of the company can follow them (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). In case the workers of a company are not well conversant with the rules, then the ones to blame are the leaders. This is because they are the ones bestowed with the responsibility to teach the others of the codes of conduct and the rules and regulations of the place (Conger, 1990). All the objectives and mission statements of a place are to be told by the leaders of the place. This therefore makes leaders to be on toes go make sure that all workers are up to date with all the requirements of the workplace. Cultural learning on the other side is concerned about participation of the leaders in the day-to-day work of the place (Seeger, Sellnow & Ulmer, 2003). This then creates a picture into the minds of other workers who then imitate the exact actions performed by the leaders. Here the leadership structure is supposed to trigger independent thinking among the workers (Conger, 1990). Workers are supposed to think and act on their own after the mental image has been created. They are given free will to choose from what is good and what is bad according to them. In the above approaches, there is use of emotional intelligence and moral imagination. These terms are used to give different meanings to the two approaches (Conger, 2009). Emotional intelligence is applied in the cultural learning strategy and focuses on the use of personal thinking capability so as to decide on what to do. It gives free will to an individual to decide what to do. It is a good practice as a worker can carry out tasks even when the leaders are not there. It also encourages innovation as workers are challenged to try new things. It also encourages improvement in the turnover (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). As workers try new things from their thinking, one can easily get to know how to run a process even faster compared to the normal ways of doing things. Looking at moral imagination, it is where workers are to follow exactly what their supervisor does or what he instructed them to do. Here workers are not given the will to decide on what to do (Conger, 2009). They are to follow on the daily routines used to do work. This scenario is not good as it discourages innovation and discovery of new talents. It also may cause boredom as one may be doing the same thing in the same manner for many years. Boredom generated may lead to laziness during work and can lead to low turnaround and poor outputs (Conger, 1990). To save on this situation, workers need to be left to have the free will to decide in what to do. Corporate social responsibility is a major issue in business marketing and social relations. It is the dealing of how a business relates to the workers, customers, the society, investors and suppliers. This is what maintains the health of a business. Poor social corporate responsibility means poor business health and relations to the public. When a business becomes socially responsible towards employees, it encourages them to work extra hard for their needs are being met. This will improve on the turnaround of the business hence good outputs (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). Poor social relations with workers encourage laziness and poor motivation at the work place hence poor outputs and profits. At the same time, good social responsibility towards customers will enable the business to maintain its customers and even attract other new customers (Conger, 2009). This is because customers want a business that minds of their wellbeing. Poor social relations drive away customers. This may leave a business without any customers and at the end cause collapsing of the business due to low sales and low profits (Conger, 1990). Good social responsibility of the business towards investors will help maintain the current investors and attract new ones whereas poor social responsibility will result into a low number of investors (Muhr, Sørensen & Vallentin, 2010). This can really affect a business as businesses run due to the presence of investors. Good social responsibility towards suppliers will allow more suppliers to come to the business and will also allow a business to maintain on the current ones. Poor social responsibility of the same will cause suppliers to deviate leaving the business with unreliable suppliers (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). This can cause many problems to a business and can lead to its collapse. Corporate social responsibility also improves the image and public opinion about the business. Once the image of a business is good to the outsiders, then the business is in a good position to attract most of the good things to its side (Conger, 2009). All society members will want to associate with it hence good sales and good profits. Business perception of the public is very important to any business. A business needs to have a positive perception of the public. This will help it to gain all favours from the public and from any other body influenced by the business. Poor public perception of the business will cause the business to be shown differently by the media. This will cause even more negative perception of the business from the public (Conger, 1990). This will start to reduce all the good things about the business. Its workers will begin to look for transfers and early retirement. Its customers will diminish in number and with time, the business may find that it has no customers (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). This may cause it to dwindle in sales and profits hence losses will set in. such a scenario will also discourage any investor from tying to invest with the business as they will be discouraged by the poor perception of the business to the public. The media will always discourage individuals from associating with a business having poor ethical perception. This will affect the business even more (Conger, 2009). To avoid this, a business is to try so much to be in line with all the ethical codes of businesses and to try to create a good perception of the public to the business. A moral person is likely to form a good moral leader because being morally upright is one of the characteristics of a leader. A morally upright leader forms a good example to the public and is set like a role model. This will encourage the society to be free to interact with him, as the society will not be afraid to contact him (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). A person who is not moral forms a poor leader. This is because he will set a poor example to the public hence bad morals in the public. A leader with poor morals will also interact with others poorly which will cause people to fear approaching him for any advice, hence poor leadership. The different approaches to business and leadership will actually have different effects to the public and all the people surrounding the area (Fama, 1983). Among those affected, more are the workers. This is because the different approaches motivate them differently. Using cultural change approach, employees will have to follow all that their leader does (Conger, 1990). This may be a big motivator to the workers as they will be challenged to do what their leader has done and this creates motivation. On the other hand, they may not be motivated much as such, because they are only repeating what has been done by others or maybe themselves over the ages hence causing boredom. In this case, it may not bring any motivation at all (Conger, 2009). This is to say that in the short run, it causes motivation but in the end, it causes boredom and laziness. Therefore, it is not as such a good approach for motivating workers. On the other hand, cultural learning approach causes maximum motivation as workers are let to run things in their own way (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). This encourages innovation and invention. Innovation and inventions will cause competition among the workers, as each one will have the urge to innovate and invent something (Fama, 1983). The competition will be a form of motivation. In general, this approach is much more motivational compared to the other one for cultural change (Langenberg, 2007). All the approaches stated above have positive and negative effects to the leaders and the employees in a business. To the workers, the approaches have some positive effects. For the cultural change strategy, it causes positive effects to the workers, as the workers are able to master the process procedures (Fama, 1983). The workers emulate and do the same thing their leader does from time to time hence, they internalize the process (Conger, 1990). This is an advantage as in the absence if the leader they will be able to do all the procedures alone without problems. On the other side, it causes disadvantage, as the process will become boring due to repetition of the same procedure all the time. Morally the approach will make them upright, as they will be learning to do as their leader wishes (Fama, 1983). This builds their morality and is a sign of obedience. This approach is also disadvantageous as it makes a person look like a slave to the leaders. The workers lack the will to do what they want to do. This is actually not a good practice. On the other hand, cultural learning is good as it gives a person the free will to choose what to do. This makes a person to be upright morally and always on the alert as he depends on himself to decide what to do (Bartlett, Ihlen & May, 2011). This makes a person responsible in whatever he is doing hence morally upright. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage of giving one too much freedom hence one may not like the idea of being supervised later (Fama, 1983). He may be addicted to conducting himself alone hence not willing to mingle and be controlled by a leader. This can be a big problem. In conclusion, moral leadership as analysed by the two approaches is dependent on many factors. Among others, the type of working environment is very important. We have a working environment where one is supervised or an environment where one is not supervised. This is dependent on the approach used. The best approach that instils morality and leadership skills to a person is cultural learning. This is because one will need to work while limiting himself. This makes him a leader, as he will have the knowhow of limiting or dong something. References Bartlett, J., Ihlen, Ø., & May, S. (2011). The handbook of communication and corporate social responsibility. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Conger, J. A. (1990). The Dark Side of Leadership. Organizational Dynamics, pp. 44–55. Conger, J. A. (2009). Sharing Leadership on Corporate Boards: A Critical Requirement for Teamwork at the Top. Organizational Dynamics, vol. 38, p. 183. Fama, E. a. (1983). Separation of Ownership and Control. Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 26, pp. 301–325. Langenberg, E. A. (2007). Guanxi and business strategy. Heidelberg : Springer . Muhr, S. L., Sørensen, B. M., & Vallentin, S. (2010). Ethics and organizational practice. Cheltenham : Edward Elgar. Seeger, M. W., Sellnow, T. L., & Ulmer, R. R. (2003). Communication and organizational crisis. Weasport: Praeger. Read More