Critics on Business Ethics, Singh and Lathams Article - Coursework Example

CRITICAL ANALYSIS By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Critical Analysis Background Information Critics on business ethics have mentioned that business appals have assumed epidemic dimensions and those companies that were once successful have been toppled by their leaders’ transgressions. Besides, these critics raise the captivating subject of how inventive companies turn out to have frauds as leaders. Some leadership scholars believe that contemporary society is anguished by the plague of pitiable leadership in the economy. A comprehension of corporate psychopaths’ assists to counter the query of how inventive companies turn out to have impostors as leaders. In this regard, the report seeks to critically analyse Singh (2008) and Latham (2013) articles, with the aim of comparing the two scholars’ perception of leadership, leaders’ role in transforming business performance, as well as how leaders with no ethics affect the global business. A brief Summary of Singh and Latham Work Singh (2008) study seeks to prove how scandals in the corporate world have taken the epidemic dimensions. Across the world, even famous companies have been knocked down from their high platforms by the leaders’ transgressions, and for this reason Singh seeks to establish how competent organisation end up having ‘impostors’ as leaders. Singh believes that the answer possibly lies in the mislaid highlighting on certain behaviour correlated with leadership. Furthermore, he believes that true leadership needs a sense of balance in the midst of three rudimentary requisites: Integrity, Expertise and Energy. Singh study proves how these three rudimentary requisites upon synchronization can let loose the latent potential in every company. The study realizes that leadership is out of these three interrelating components, and that Integrity makes sure that the company is in the right course, whereby it is run towards collective good instead of self-centred motives. In the study it is realized that leaders must not be chosen based on the apparent qualities since this has blinded many companies in the past (Singh, 2008, p.733). Therefore, the selected leaders must at first pass the Integrity test; thus, Singh recommends a ‘decision tree’ as well as a ‘checklist’ to assist in the process of selection. On the other hand, Latham (2013) describes a framework for leading the transformation to performance excellence (LTPE). Basically, Latham’s LTPE framework has thirty five concepts structured into five groups: change forces as well as facilitators’ leadership behaviours, leadership approaches, organizational culture, and individual leader characteristics. Latham study examines two of the five groups comprehensively: change forces and facilitators as well as leadership approaches. For this reason, the rudiments of all entity factors are explained in company with supporting information, correlations to other factors are described, and connections to theory are acknowledged (Latham, 2013, p.12). Whereas the leadership approaches create a system for strategic leadership, a number of extra leadership theories are recognized as well as talked about together with transactional along with transformational leadership, servant leadership, and spiritual leadership. According to Latham (2013, p.12), from 1980s quality crisis, companies have experienced unparalleled transformation in the areas of international business rivalry, talent competition, fiscal turmoil, and insecurity, together with environmental and communal challenges, compelling them to incessantly change their plans as well as redesign their techniques for attaining sustainable achievement. Critical Analysis I believe our actions and feelings can be prejudiced powerfully by our communications with others. In modern’s workplaces, amid the mounting pressure on teamwork, I concur with Alas et al. (2007, p.52) notion that organisation leaders play a vital part in controlling employees’ frame of mind as well as his/her overall results. Lately, research curiosity about the role of leaders’ character on employees’ character and productivity has been increasing fast (Winchester, 2012, p.1034). For instance, Sui et al. (2012, p.1221) established that leaders’ with positive humour heightened employee’ personal humour as well as organisation affective tone, and was certainly connected to group effort as well as coordination. Boddy (2011, p.369) on the other hand established that a leader have an effect at work associated to adherent through poignant infectivity, and can influence the performance of the adherents (that is to say, behaviour of organizational citizenship). Undoubtedly, leaders are deemed to be important in connection with how employees’ perform and feel given that leaders have the authority and power to instruct employees and are heavily relied upon by employees (Weeks, 2007, p.24). Contrary to other team employees, leaders are believed to be more valuable in conveying mood to others employees as well as in influencing employees’ productivity owing to their salience in the organisation. Since organization leaders are normally more influential than other top management staff, I believe that it is principally imperative to study and better comprehend the mood effect of organisational leaders on employees’ productivity (Tipu et al., 2012, p.471). Fairly similar to the prehistoric mariner’s lament with regards to water, whereby water was all over the place, but there was no a single drop to drink, Singh (2008, p.737) believes that an average person is detained day after day by masses of so-called leaders , but still is left longing to be a leader. In spite of the profusion of such claimants, Singh (2008, p.739) claims that scores of our social organizations, together with corporate, are suffering from a ruthless leadership catastrophe. During selection, business directors whom are perceived as individuals of deep knowledge reflect over whom to appoint as organisation leader. Ultimately, they consistently select the best individual, who appears to have leadership skills from the outside, but in real sense he/she is an imposter (Tourish et al., 2010, p.s44). The never-ending flood of astounding reports concerning executive wrongdoing proves otherwise. Many studies such as Weeks (2007, p.25) and Pardue et al. (2013, p.152) have established that scores of leaders have been selected to head organizations are actually small men camouflaged as leaders: opportunist, gluttonous and with no pangs of conscience. Rather than working enthusiastically for the good of the company they are representing and the stakeholders’ interests, they are more thoughtful of their narcissistic quests, their foolish psychopathy or irresponsible gaming with investors’ funds as well as corporate assets (Boddy, 2011, p.369). Whereas the challenges in organizations are enormous, Latham (2013, p.16) affirms that techniques used by organizations to generate value were developed by humans (deliberately or reflexively) and so they can be redeveloped to generate value for various stakeholders. Latham (2013, p.17) LTPE framework has forces and facilitators intended for change: “tension (f1); resistance (f2); alignment (f3); criteria for performance excellence (CPE) model (f4); and subject matter experts (SMEs) internal and external (f5) (Latham, 2013, p.17)”. A range of both internal and external drivers integrated to generate organisational tension so as to conquer the status quo inactiveness. Whereas the definite drivers for all cases in Latham (2013) study varied in both type as well as intensity, each of the case endured force from a number of change drivers, but over 50% of the cases faced a crisis someday during the expedition. According to Latham (2013, p.24), the responses to tension were frequently self-protective and characteristically pursued a succession of emotions akin to Boddy et al. (2010, p.14) anguished cycle that is made up of refutation, fury, haggling, despair, and recognition. In Latham (2013, p. 20) study, alignment depicts the correspondence of a person’s activities and effort with the general course, task, vision, and principles of the company, which is attained through reliability and analogy of leader actions, plans, processes, policies, interactions, motivations, and culture (Latham, 2013, p.23). In Latham (2013, p.27) study, the excellence journey is an all-encompassing changes rooted in the strategic leadership cycles of the organization. The criteria for performance excellence (CPE) will at all time remain to be a powerful element of that process offering organizational analysis as well as intervention in addition to enhancement of the strategic leadership process itself (Latham, 2013, p.20). Without doubt, I think the CPE itself can be multifaceted and intricate to use. Based on subject matter experts (SMEs), Latham (2013, p.21) established that both external and internal SMEs were valuable transformational facilitators to organizations. For instance, the internal SMEs can assist the organization to plan and carry out meetings, perform training, direct internal appraisals together with systems for performance measurement. Importantly, Latham LTPE framework has nine leadership processes utilized by the organization’s leaders to direct the change. What’s more, these nine leadership approaches create the platform for a unified system for strategic leadership. The nine leadership processes include: stakeholder; compelling directive; focused strategy; the enable, empower, and engage (E3) people concepts; deploy and execute; measure performance; review performance; reinforcing behaviour; and learn as well as improve (Latham, 2013, p.23). We all believe that succession at any organisational level is a vital subject, but given that a shadow of darkness is casted as one ascends the organization’s chain of command, the essence of selecting the right occupants for top-level positions heightens considerably (Pardue et al., 2013, p.152). For this reason, selection for occupants at top-level have lasting implications, and any person selected to fill a unoccupied leadership position will, during his occupancy, directly have an effect on the self-esteem, activities and productivity of every worker beneath his power. Unquestionably, the right individual will guide his followers as well as organization in the right path, and make use of his leadership ability to motivate them into wholehearted action to get astonishing outcomes (Ketola, 2006, p.105; Singh, 2008, p.735). Conversely, if a wrong individual is selected to lead the organisation, he will just deprave his/her followers, and his/her pitiable leadership will irritate them. In this regard, I believe that organisation understand the impact of selecting the wrong individual to occupy a top-level vacant position; thus, selection should always be decided without bias and based only on merit (Boddy, 2011, p.372). However, as a matter of fact, a number of other considerations affect the process of selection and establishing who should be given the leadership reins, and so this enlightens why in the past there has been scores of failures. Some of things that regularly establish the selection of organizations’ leaders are: look for puppets (or clones), premium on personal loyalty, preference for ‘show-horses’, as well as halo effect. Singh, 2008 (p.734) holds the view that persons with embellished personalities have a well-defined limitation for those who look like them. For this reason, when making a choice, they tend to search for individuals with personalities similar like theirs, and so other applicants’ claims, irrespective of their merit, are disregarded during the selection process. Irrefutably, with a puppet or clone around, the puppeteers’ feels at ease knowing that everything is handled effectively. Basically, in the real life of office factions and conspiracies, all and sundry require a group of loyal followers countable for tomahawk tasks, moral support, and various duties (Boddy, 2011, p.257; Tourish et al., 2010, p.s51) Thus, it appears more convenient to use a lot of energy on intensifying and predicting one’s successes regardless of how little it is than on unappreciated labour itself. Alternatively, individuals who carry out their ascribed tasks with silence competence, but are barred by their innate reticence from being successful, are disregarded and deprived of their due prizes. Selectors are as well susceptible to the repute that goes before famous applicants or experienced veterans, and most of selectors believe that conquerors are unconquerable or, are odds-on chance. As a result, they fail to make enough efforts to examine them objectively. I concur that aspiration tends to be equivocal, and its affirmative side is accountable for assiduousness as well as the fervour to do extremely well. Still, its murky side coerces one to try and win at any price and in any way (Singh, 2008, p.739). Although management and ownership are at the moment considered as autonomous conceptions, in scores of family-owned enterprises, they are directly tangled even these days. Even if it could be a tacit law, it is obviously comprehended that family member’s for owners of family-owned businesses are reserved to fill top positions when the time comes. Form owner’s of such business, what matters is blood relationship, but not professional merit. Furthermore, this rule may assist retain family power over the business, but this is a deterrent to justly commendable applicants (Alas et al., 2007, p.56). According to Tipu et al. (2012, p.472), this may be the possible reason why there has been decrease of family-owned businesses subsequent to the third generation. Lately, psychologists have realised that a psychopath subsists and is not vulnerable to aggressive, scandalous behaviour, and as a result, they operate reasonably unnoticed and effectively in the public (Pardue et al., 2013, p.157). Scholars call them thriving psychopaths since they productively avoid getting in touch with legal authorities, but are vulnerable to making unscrupulous selections and that’s why Latham (2013) LTPE is needed at once. Imposters camouflaged as leaders are prepared to lie and take advantage of other employees to get what they desire and so selectors must realise this and be conscious that not all and sundry in any certain company can make moral choices or is a moral being. Based on impugning psychopaths for their morally wrong behaviours, theorists are still arguing about the issue, with a number of them asserting that imposters have knowledge pertaining to what they do at the intellectual level and for that reason they must be impugned; whereas others hold the view that one cannot be a psychopaths due to lack of choice, so they should not be impugned (Boddy, 2011, p.375). I my view corporate psychopaths should be impugned because they are the reason why most organisations end up with imposters and frauds. At present, most concur that corporate psychopaths do know what they are doing, particularly and for that reason they must be held responsible for any action they take. Imposters may behave like psychopath to pretend they do not know what they are doing and so should not held responsible for their insanity. Wether to impugn psychopaths, selectors, or imposters responsible for corporate madness and frauds is a debate far from over, but the LTPE framework, which entails five forces and facilitators, as well as nine systematic processes can be used by organisation executives to select leaders based on their merit and not personality comprehending the desires of the stakeholders and developing conducive relationships facilitates the generation of business excellence for scores of stakeholders by analytically recognizing and communicating the needs of stakeholder to the other eight remaining systematic processes (Latham, 2013, p.26). For this reason, stakeholder groups recognized in the study entailed: employees, the society, customers, investors, contractors and cohorts, as well as the setting. Conclusion In conclusion, imposters in most companies are usually encountered at top organisational levels than at subordinate levels, and these imposters are furnished to ascend the chain of command in the company and reach top positions. From the critical analysis, it has been established that imposters are individuals with no principles, are in command of high percentage of company’s wealth and they never utilise this wealth for the good of the company, but for their own benefits. For this reason, organisations need transformational leaders who can only be found through transparent selection process and based on professional merit. Without doubt, transformational leaders offer rational motivation. In addition, intellectual motivation braced by training is connected to a two-way leadership style. These nine leadership approaches (stakeholder; compelling directive; focused strategy; the enable, empower, and engage (E3) people concepts; deploy and execute; measure performance; review performance; reinforcing behaviour; and learn as well as Improve) merge to generate an unified strategic leadership system helpful for changing the organization from the top downwards; thus, eliminating any chance of an imposter taking the top office. References Alas, R., Tafel, K. & Tuulik, K., 2007. Leadership style during transition in society: case of Estonia. Problems and perspectives in management, vol. 1,no. 1, pp.50-60. Boddy, C.R., 2011. Corporate Psychopaths, Bullying and Unfair Supervision in the Workplace. Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 100, no. 3, pp.367-79. Boddy, C.R., 2011. The corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis. Journal of business ethics, vol. 102,no. 2, pp.255-59. Boddy, C.R., Ladyshewsky, R.K. & Galvin, P., 2010. 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Commitment to Performance Excellence in Ontario. Public Manager, vol. 35, no. 4, pp.22-27. Winchester, S., 2012. Public sociology and the economic crisis. Work, Employment and Society, vol. 26, no. 6, pp.1031-35. Read More