Huge Importance of Leadership in Organizations - Essay Example

? Leadership in Organizations Research Proposal Contents Introduction 2 1 Suitability of Researcher for the Research 2 2 Research Question 3 3 Research Objectives 4 2 Literature Review 5 3 Research Methodology 5 3.1 Research Hypothesis 6 3.2 Research Design 7 3.3 Methods of data collection 8 3.4 Research Strategy 9 3.5 Sample 10 3.6 Limitations 10 4. Conclusion 10 5 Appendices 10 5.1 Gantt Chart 11 5.2 Research Onion 11 6 References 12 1 Introduction Leadership is a special attribute which is not possessed by all. As the famous saying goes “There are two kinds of the people in this world: those who lead and those who follow”. It is the former who make a major contribution to the society. Leadership skills are required in every field irrespective of the nature. Leadership in organizations has been a topic of interest for many researchers and scholars over the last century. There is immense research that has gone into finding what qualities differentiate the leaders from the rest and why leadership is important to an organiztaion. Organizational leadership is very important for an organization. It is these leaders who account for the majority of the success of the organization. In spite of the research that has gone into organizational leadership, there are various questions unanswered. This report is a research proposal for carrying out further research in the filed of organizational leadership. 1.1 Suitability of Researcher for the Research Leadership has always excited the researcher and understanding leadership has turned into a passion. The researcher has read about the topic intensely and has been inspired by the various leaders such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Winston Churchill, etc. The researcher has been amazed by these leaders ability to command respect from the followers and lead them to a better life. The researcher would like to take this opportunity to officially study his/her passion through this research. The researcher has been following the developments in the filed prior to the idea of conducting an academic research on the topic. 1.2 Research Question The effectiveness and usefulness of a research primarily depends on the depth and accuracy of a research question. Research question addresses the scope of the research. Research question tries to find answers and for new questions about the research subject for further research or investigation (Lester, 1986). In a deductive approach the researcher makes an assumption or theory and then tries to prove his or her theory with the help of the research findings and data. On the other hand, in an inductive approach the researcher uses practical findings and research results to derive a hypothesis. The research question needs to be apt and to the topic. Research question must not be too elaborative or too restrictive. Too elaborative research question would not be very useful to drive the point and it would be more of an explanation than a question. Too restrictive research question might not cover the scope of the research. The research question must be designed in such a way that it compels for an answer. Research question must not address any insignificant issues and divert from the core of the subject. Hence, the researcher must frame the research question with lot of care in such a way that it focuses on the core issue and compels for an answer. The purpose of this research is to study leadership in organization and throw new light on the topic. The research will be targeted in understanding how leadership makes an impact on the organization. It addresses the popular question of how leaders and managers are different. Even though there has been a lot of debate over the above question, the researcher intends to bring in a new dimension to the debate. The various styles of leadership will be addressed and studying further. Researcher is of the view that leaders have qualities of entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is definitely a leader who leads his company or organization to success and greater heights. But what researcher is more interested in is whether leaders posses entrepreneurial characteristics. Based on the above ideas, following research questions are framed: Is leadership in an organization essential? What are the major contributions of leaders in an organization? Mangers and leaders are different. Can they be trained to be leaders? What are the various leadership styles and how they make an impact in an organizational context. All successful entrepreneurs are good leaders. Are entrepreneurial characteristics necessary to be a good leader? 1.3 Research Objectives Research objectives are a very essential part of the research as these are the driving forces behind the research. Research objectives provide a clear understanding of the research question. Research objectives lead to the specific understanding of the research problem than the research question. Research objectives are the ones that indicate the researcher’s sense of purpose and the direction of the research (Saunders et al, 2007). The primary objective of any research would be to prove the research hypothesis. But in order to prove the research hypothesis the various factors surrounding the research question has to be studied and understood and these become the research objectives. The research objectives for the current research are: To understand the importance of leadership in an organization. To understand the major contributions or impact of effective leadership in an organization. To understand how managers and other employees can be trained on leadership qualities. To understand the various leadership styles and how they can make an impact in the organization. To find out if entrepreneurship and leadership are closely related. 2 Literature Review Goleman (2000) in his articles discusses why leadership is important to an organization he states that leadership effectively used gets results. He goes on to state that leaders are able to set strategies, motivate others to do their best and the most important they are able to produce results. Various questions have been raised in such what differentiates them from others?, what is that the leaders posses which is not possessed by others. Many of the questions have been addressed. Yukl (2007) in his book discuses leadership in organizational context in detail. Various leadership theories such as the contingency theory, Burke (2010) has discusses how leadership is vital during an organizational change. Transformational leadership plays an important role during the organizational change. Burke (2010) also identifies various attributes that differentiates leaders and managers. Mangers can still do the job that is required. But leaders are capable of doing it in a effective way. Emotional intelligence is said to be one of the primary differences between a manager and a leader (Robert et al., 2006). This research is also dependent on the works of Schein (2010) and Zaharia et al., (2009). 3 Research Methodology The researcher is of the belief that the leadership in makes a great impact on the organization. Effective organizational leadership inspires and motivates other employees in an organization to realize their full potential. Nobody is born a leader. Researcher believes that leadership skills and qualities are mainly a result of substances and environment that leaders grow. Therefore, it is possible to train employees on leadership qualities and leaders can be groomed in an organization. The researcher also strongly believes that entrepreneurial characters are essential for a leader. In an organizational context, to be an effective leader it is essential to possess entrepreneurial characteristics. The researcher would use deductive approach to prove the above. The deductive approach makes use of both primary and secondary research (University Microfilms International, 1991). The primary research would mainly be concentrated on gathering information (by conducting surveys) from various sources about leadership in an organizational context. That is, the researcher would interview successful employees and managers from various companies and organizations and get their views on the subject. This would help to understand the ground zero realities when it comes to leadership in an organization. Also the researcher would interview various researcher, scholars and successful entrepreneurs to get a realistic opinion on the various research objectives. The secondary research would rely on scholarly publications on subjects like organizational leadership, management and leadership, leadership styles, etc. The data obtained from the surveys will be used to analyze the views of the industry and incorporate them with the ideas from the literature about the subject. Based on the derivation from the primary and secondary research the researcher would try to reinforce his beliefs. 3.1 Research Hypothesis Kumar (2005), states that research hypothesis must be able to allow verification, must be able to relate to the available information and must be able to implement. Research hypothesis must be simple, specific and clear (Kumar, 2005). The research hypothesis for the current research on leadership in organizations is: Leadership in an organizational context is vital for an organization to realize its full potential and can be acquired through training. Also leadership is closely related to entrepreneurship. 3.2 Research Design A research must use both qualitative and quantities information. Both primary and secondary sources of research must be used in a qualitative research. Any data that the researcher collects personally for the purpose of this research is known as primary data. Data that the researcher collects using methods like surveys, interviews, etc are called as primary data. Primary data is referred as ‘filed data’. Any data that is collected by the student personally but is derived for the works of other scholars, researchers and authors in the field is known as secondary data (Kumar, 2005). That is, the researcher is not directly involved in collecting the data but uses the data that is collected from other researchers. Secondary data is referred as ‘desk data’. Sources of secondary data are academic articles, books, journals and non academic sources include data available online and from reports of various professional organizations (Caruso, 2004). The researcher aims at using both primary and secondary sources in the current research. Primary research will be based on the valuable insight that secondary research offers and primary research will be designed on the findings of the secondary research. Quantitative research is dependent on the findings of the qualitative research. Statistical methods will be used to interpret the data obtained from surveys and interviews conducted in the primary research (Rozakis, 2007). Conclusions can be dawn based on the statistical interpretation of the data. For survey and research random sampling methods will be used. This isn because random sampling methods contribute to accurately represent area of study. Random sampling is the most often used sampling methods (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). Random sampling would be a very useful tool as the current research requires data to be collected from a wide range of sources. And the sources would be distributed non-uniformly across the corporate world and random sampling method would be useful to draw accurate conclusions. 3.3 Methods of data collection The several methods that the researcher is going to adapt for collecting data are: a) Interviews: Interviews are one of the best ways to collect information about any subject as it allows for a one to one communication between the interviewer and the participant. This will help in the better understanding of the views that a participant tries to put across. Also it gives scope for clarification. That is, both the participant and the interviewer can clarify and understand the requirement of the discussion. It also allows the interviewer to understand the mind frame of the participant which is very useful in drawing conclusions (Kvale, 1996). b) Questionnaires: Data can also be collected using questionnaires in a survey. The participants will be asked to answer the questionnaire which will contain questions that throws light on the views of the participant towards the research topic. Questionnaires won’t offer the interaction that an interview does. Also care needs to be taken in framing the questions so that they try to extract the needed information from the participant (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). c) Academic and non-academic sources: Academic sources include journals, articles, books etc and the non academic research includes sources for the world wide web, speeches and talks of various industry experts, reports of various organizations, etc. This demands a lot of dedication and time from the researcher (Rozakis, 2007). 3.4 Research Strategy The researcher would conduct surveys to gather primary data. Surveys allow simple comparison, authentic and are easy to understand (Saunders et al, 2007). Surveys do provide accurate figures but they are resource consuming (Kumar, 2005). The researcher intends to use the following methods to carry out the survey: a) Visits to various companies and interview the employees at various levels. b) Interview cooperates from all over the world to get a wider perspective. c) Requesting scholars, industry experts and other sources to answer questionnaire. In the first method the researcher would contact the employees through telephone and fix up an appointment for an interview. For the second method the researcher would try to establish contacts of employees from other countries through various channels like social networking sites, blogs, twitter etc. And then try to interview them through various ways like online chat, video conferencing or telephone. This is very important as it will help to get global perspective of the research topic. Questionnaires will be used to get information from those who are not available for personal interview. An email would be sent them with the questionnaire attached they would be requested to answer it during their free time and send it back. The researcher intends to do more research on the topic to gather the secondary information that is required. 3.5 Sample The population is the employees working in various organizations. At least twenty experts from the industry will be interviewed by researcher. Care will be taken to ensure that all the participants are experienced in the filed. Apart from the interviews, the researcher conduct survey where in 50 employees from different organizations would be requested to answer questionnaire’s about the topic. The researcher would make use of the social networking sites and other internet resources to contact employees from different parts of the globe. 3.6 Limitations The only limitation of the study is vastness of the research topic. But the researcher will put in the best effort to bring in the global perspective into the research. 4. Conclusion This report has successfully summarized the methods and strategy that the researcher intends to use. It summarizes the research’s ideology and the topic and why the researcher intends to conduct a research on the topics. The research strategy will be improvised on conducting further research on the topic. 5 Appendices 5.1 Gantt Chart Sl NO Activity Weeks 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 Dissertation Proposal                         2 Literature review                         3 Inspection of Hypothesis                         4 Develop Questionnaires                         5 Pilot test of Questionnaires                         6 Conducting Survey                         7 Administer Questionnaire                         8 Enter data into computer                         9 Analyse data                         10 Report of findings                         11 Coding and decoding                         12 Updating Literature                         13 Printing and binding                         14 Finalize Report 15 Submission                         5.2 Research Onion 6 References Burke, W.W. (2010). Organization Change: Theory and Practice. CA: Sage Publications Inc. Caruso, D, Weidenborner, S & Parks, G (2004), Writing Research Papers: A Guide to the Process, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004 Goleman, D. (2000). Leaderships that gets result. Harvard Business Review. March-April 2000. p78-90 Kumar, R (2005): Research Methodology: A step by step guide for beginners, Fourth edition, Sage Publications. London. Kvale, S (1996), Interviews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing, SAGE, 1996 Lester, J (1986), Writing research papers: a complete guide, Scott, Foresman, 1986 Maykut, P & Morehouse, R (1994), Beginning qualitative research: a philosophic and practical guide, Routledge, London. Robert, K., Garvin, J., Heaton, N. & Boyle, E. (2006). Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. Leadership & Organization Development Journal. 27(4), pp. 265-279. 2006 Rozakis, L (2007), Schaum's quick guide to writing great research papers, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2007 Saunders, M, Lewis, P & Thornhill, A (2007), Research methods for business students, 4th edition, Financial Times Prentice-Hall, London, Schein, E.H. (2010). Organizational Culture and Leadership. NY: John Wiley and Sons. University Microfilms International (1991), Dissertation abstracts international: The humanities and social sciences, Dissertation abstracts international: The humanities and social sciences, Volume 52, Parts 713-1108, University Microfilms International, 1991 Yukl, G. (2007). Leadership in Organizations. NJ: Pearson Education. Zaharia, M., Hapenciuc, C.V. & Dumitru, N.R. (2009). A study regarding the leadership and organization culture of a service provider. Faculty of Economics and Public Administration, Vol 9, No 1. Read More