Leadership in the accounting profession - Research Paper Example

The integrative leadership model will be applied to understand the important system of leadership in accounting profession. 2.0- LEADERSHIP IN A BROADER PERSPECTIVE AND IN ACCOUNTING PROFESSION The role of leaders in every organization has gained a critical importance. Organizations increasingly focus on developing leaders along with managers. There are different leadership styles or approaches that plays effective role in different scenarios. The leader is often the main force to drive the organization to success.

Leaders in the organization direct the structure of organization, the culture and ethical values in the organization for contribution towards goal. Leaders actually develop the road map for the organization. Example, of Tim Cook at Apple, Jeff Bazos at Amazon and many more have led to the success stories for the organizations (Williams, 2013). Leadership can be present at any level of hierarchy such as strategic managers, middle-level managers, functional managers and operational managers. Accountancy profession has been witnessed to rely increasingly on the accounting curricula.

Accounting field, since recent past, has realized the growing importance of developing leadership mindset among accounting students to successfully deal with the growing challenges of the practical field. 3.0- INTEGRATED LEADERSHIP MODEL The systematically defined model of leader’s role in professional service firms (PSFs) could better define the role a leader is required to play in the firm. Integrated model of leadership shall clearly define the combined role of employees with mindset of understanding “to whom they are leaders”.

This clearly outclasses the performance of distant roles of liked and imposed jobs (Delong, Gabarro, and Lees, 2007). According to the model there are three major responsibilities that leader possess in the firm that are setting direction, building commitment and ensuring execution. The graphical representation of the model is as follows: (Delong, Gabarro, and Lees, 2007) 3.1- SETTING DIRECTION Direction determination is the necessary element for every organization and leader stands with a direction.

Direction shall lead to the vision of the organization. In the new paradigm, it shall be taken as the major responsibility by the leaders to set the direction for the employees for to keep them on the desirable track (Delong, Gabarro, and Lees, 2007). 3.2- BUILDING COMMITMENT The involvement of all the employees including him/ her should be considerable in related company matters. Leaders shall take it as a responsibility to have consistent involvement of every employee in company matters and decision making.

This activity contains all the employees on the same path in the organization (Delong, Gabarro, and Lees, 2007). 3.3- ENSURING EXECUTION Good leader not only formulate the strategies but they also ensure the execution and evaluation of each planned activity and its execution. Professionals and leader must be accountable for the execution of the strategies. Also evaluation and analysis at every stage about the effectiveness of the implemented strategy is important. Execution does not only mean implementing the strategy but it requires gaining the full planned benefit (Delong, Gabarro, and Lees, 2007). 3.4- SETTING PERSONAL EXAMPLE Position of this aspect being