How Leadership Is Contributing to Business Efficiency - Research Proposal Example

Leadership Development Introduction: The quality of leadership within an organization is vitally important in improving organizational effectiveness. In a globally competitive environment, effective team leaders can contribute to organizational success by facilitating team work across the globe. Effective leaders are able to provide regular, detailed and prompt communication with team members and articulate role responsibilities among team members, which contributes to improvement in performance and enhances organizational effectiveness (Kayworth and Liedner, 2002; Muir, 2004). They are able to deal with situations involving paradox as well as contradiction by performing multiple leadership roles simultaneously. Effective leaders are able to function in a mentoring role and exhibit empathy towards their team members. These leaders are able to exert their authority without appearing overbearing or inflexible (Kayworth and Liedner, 2002). A positive correlation has been found to exist between transformational leadership and the performance of the organization (Lowe et al, 1996). Transformational leaders are very effective within an organizational context because they are able to inspire their followers, provide support, mentoring and coaching for their followers and infuse them with their own enthusiasm and energy. The transactional leadership style is a more practical kind of leadership pattern and a good transactional leader recognizes the qualities in his followers and makes rewards contingent upon good performance, thereby also contributing to organizational efficacy. (Pillai et al, 1999). Within an organization that focuses on creativity and innovation, the transformational style may be effective, while a transactional style of leadership may be more appropriate for larger organizations where people do not work together in small close knit groups. Leadership thus plays an important role in team effectiveness and the two factors identified above may be especially relevant in determining organizational effectiveness. The Problem Statement: The lack of good leadership communication skills or a failure of the leader to interact well with team members in order to provide a supportive working environment provides a badly managed business where organizational effectiveness is hindered. The wrong kind of leadership style may also impact unfavorably upon an organization and impede its effectiveness. In the context of an increasingly global environment where most organizations are subjected to intense competition, existing leadership styles may need revamping to be effective. This quantitative study therefore proposes to use a survey method in order to examine these two aspects of leadership in the context of organizational effectiveness. Purpose of this research Study: The major objective of this research study is to examine how leadership is contributing to organizational effectiveness through improvement of communications within the firm. On this basis, a survey method has been identified in order to glean the perceptions of employees about their leaders in order to identify how effective leadership is, in terms of communication. This study aims to examine 20 organizations, to identify whether the leadership style that is currently being employed at these organizations is achieving the desired goals. The study aims to derive the views of a wide range of employees of different gender, age and ethnicity within the same organizations in order to gather information about the nature of communication that is taking place and how effective they perceive their leaders to be. Research Questions: Two major research questions are posed as a part of this study: (a) Is there a relationship between leadership skill development, leader behavior, supervision and coordination on the team communication? (b) What are the skills required to indicate transformational factors and the transactional factors that can affect leader outcomes of effectiveness and team satisfaction? Hypotheses: In the case of the first question, the null hypothesis which is proposed is: “There is no relation between leadership skill development, leader behavior, supervision, and coordination on the team communication effectiveness.” Therefore, the alternative hypothesis in this case will be that there is a relationship between the variables identified above. For the second question, the null hypothesis is: “There are no transformational factors and the transactional factors that effect leader’s outcomes and team satisfaction.” The alternative hypothesis will therefore provide the conclusion that these factors do affect leader outcomes. By applying these hypotheses to the results obtained in the study, it will then be possible to assess the relationship between leadership type and quality and effectiveness of communication within the organization, which in turn will contribute to organizational effectiveness. Conceptual/Theoretical Framework: According to Saunders et al (2003), defining the aims and objectives of the research study is important to generate evidence of the “the researcher’s clear sense of purpose and direction.”(p 25). At the outset as the researcher commenced this study, a comprehensive review of the literature had been undertaken on the phenomenon of leadership and leader impact on team communication, in order to arrive at a good understanding of the subject. This literature review forms the background information for this study and the secondary sources of data that are used for the purposes of carrying out this research study. A leadership survey questionnaire will be circulated among the employees that will help to determine how effective these employees perceive the leader’s communication skills to be. The survey will attempt to assess whether such communication levels are satisfactory to the employees and if not, which are the areas where improvement in leader skills is required. For purposes of statistical analysis, the independent variables for this study will be coordination, supervision and leadership behavior. The responses of the employees will be assigned scores and cumulative scores will be helpful to provide a rough idea about the level of efficacy of leader communication. The higher the score, the greater the indication of satisfactory communication skills, while low scores will provide an indication that improvement is needed in terms of leader communication skills. This study will be very useful in identifying where leadership communication needs to be improved from the perspective of the employees. This survey is the primary source of data that will be used to answer the research questions that have been posed above. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were considered for this study. As pointed out by William Trochim (2001), every study has a qualitative as well as a quantitative element to it, since even a numerical response may involve several shades of meaning and even purely verbal responses can be counted. Therefore, it is the approach adopted by the researcher and the nature of the conclusions that are sought to be drawn which will dictate the choice of method. Qualitative methods lend themselves well to those studies where a special understanding of the issues is sought to be achieved and in the generation of a level of information that is very detailed and comprehensive and which is mostly obtained through in depth interviews (Troachim, 2001). Generally, there are only a few participants and the purpose of the study is geared towards ascertaining the subtle nuances of differences in responses received from individual participants, and where relationships have to be explored in more detail. Qualitative data is primarily concerned with the collection of individual opinions and the preferred method that is often selected for use with this kind of research is structured or semi structured interviews. This qualitative interview method was considered for this research study as well. However, there were some problems associated with the use of a detailed structured or semi structured interview in the case of this particular study. For example, the interviewer had to take into consideration the fact that this method was likely to be time consuming when considered against the results that were sought to be achieved. The thrust of this study was to discover overall patterns within a group of twenty large scale organizations, therefore a large number of at least 200 people would have had to be employed in detail which was not feasible in this case. Quantitative data research is useful when general trends have to be identified or measured (Trochim, 2001), when the issues under study impact upon a significant number of people and may be widely applicable to the general population. A quantitative research method aims to gather larger volumes of data in a numerical format, which can be subjected to statistical analysis and where there is no ambiguity in the data, which is measured on an ordinal scale. In this case, it is necessary to conduct the study using a significant number of participants from the organizations identified for participation in the study. The kind of method to be devised must be fast and quick, where the maximum number of respondents could be targeted within the required time frame and as complete an evaluation as possible obtained from them. Thus, bearing these factors in mind, the method selected for this research effort is survey questionnaires. Survey Participants: The participants in this research study will be about 200 employees at 20 organizations in the United States, which is one of the countries where the maximum number of organizations are involved in global operations. Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill (2003, p 311) highlight ethical concerns that may arise in a research study, such as the need to maintain the privacy of individuals and to solicit only voluntary participation allowing the right to withdraw any time, the need to maintain the confidentiality of the data and the objectivity of the researcher. Therefore, the consent of the participants will be solicited first before gathering their views, in order to ensure that they have no objections to participate in the study. The participants will also be informed that the study is for research purposes only. Types of data: There is a subjective element involved in this study, since it is participant attitudes and underlying perceptions about leaders existing at the unconscious level that must be assessed. Wiles and Cornwell (1990) have pointed out that since emotion is a multi dimensional phenomenon, verbal reporting tests will provide the best measure, through the development of typologies. Yet, the proposed study is a quantitative one that proposes to use numerical scoring, therefore, the proposed study will use a verbal measure that is measured by a numerical value. This numerical value will be ranked at five different levels, like a Likert Type scale, where the respondent will tick one of five answers, such as “Very important”, “Not at all important” or “somewhat important”. An example of this kind of questionnaire is the AIM questionnaire – Affect Intensity measurement Questionnaire. (Larsen and Diener, 1987, p 34). Therefore, on this basis, a Likert style AIM survey questionnaire will be developed, with several variables measuring verbal responses in numerical values in the range of 1 to 5, each response signifying the level of importance accorded by the respondent to each particular question. As pointed by Kirakowski (no date), a Likert questionnaire consists of questions which have a similar weight in the respondent’s mind, therefore care will taken while preparing the questionnaire to ensure that the variables do not overlap with each other to provide a false level of weightage to any particular variable through similarity in two variables. For each variable the response provided by the participant will provide an idea of the degree of importance that he/she attaches to it. By averaging out the responses from all the participants, it is possible to obtain an overall score of how significant a particular variable is from the perspective of the research questions that have been proposed in this study. Therefore, this study will use ordinal and interval scales of measurement, principally through calculation of the median values obtained in the scale of responses, mean values and correlation between variables. This will help in arriving at an overall, average result on which category of response appears to be most prevalent among a majority of the respondents and will dictate leadership perception within this particular sample. Applying ordinal measures would also be helpful in later coordinating results of this limited aspect of testing that is carried out in this study with other such scales to determine correlations and variance between them through interval scales of measurement. Internal validity and sampling: According to Campbell and Stanley (1963) the internal validity of a research study establishes the differences that are likely to be a matter of chance, therefore it is a logical rather than a statistical issue, and a basic requirement before any results can be interpreted. External validity however, will establish the degree to which the findings can be generalized to the larger population. There are eight basic threats to validity that these authors have identified, which also includes experimenter bias, therefore, care will be exercised to approach the survey without any form of bias. Convenience sampling has been selected as the method to be used in this study, since specific organizations have been selected and employees in different departments will be identified for participation in the study. Random sampling in this instance may not provide an equal balance of employees from every department of the organization. Moreover, in the real world, it may be difficult to carry out probability samplings without incurring a great deal time of expense and effort in doing so, therefore non random, convenience samples will be used and an assumption is made about the ignorability without actually testing it out as is done in random sampling.(Rivers et al, 2003, p 3). Conclusions: Since this study will be specifically targeted at 20 organizations and will include a fairly large participant sample of 200 employees selected across the organizations, the results obtained are likely to provide a fairly accurate result on the perception of employees about their leaders, their effectiveness and patterns of communication. Deriving values in numerical scores will help in allocating appropriate weightage to the responses. While a much larger participant sample may be required to truly assess the ramifications of leadership across a wider base of organizations, the results provided in this study are likely to provide an excellent indication of leadership issues in the relevant organizations which are the subject of this study. The results should be very helpful to the managers in these organizations to be able to identify the areas of weaknesses where limitations exist, on the basis of the perception of the employees. These areas can then be the focus of efforts made by the organization for improvement, since such limitations are most likely to impact negatively upon organizational effectiveness. References: * Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J, 1963. “Experimental and Quasi-experimental designs for research” Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Kayworth, Timothy R and Liedner, Dorothy E, 2002. “Leadership Effectiveness in global virtual teams” Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(3): 7-40 * Kirakowski, Jurek, No Date: “Likert and the mathematical basis of scales.” [online] available at:http://www.keysurvey.com/likert_and_the_mathematical_basis_of_scales.jsp * Larsen, Randy J. and Diener, Ed, 1987. "Affect Intensity as an Individual Difference Characteristic: A Review," Journal of Research in Personality: 21(1), pp 1-39. * Lowe, K. B., Kroeck, K. G. and Sivasubramaniam, N, 1996. “Effectiveness correlates of transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic review of the MLQ literature.” The Leadership Quarterly, 7(3), 385-425. * Muir, Clive. “Learning Soft skills at work: An interview with Annalee Luhman.” Business Practices. * Pillai, R., Schriesheim, C. A. and Williams, E., 1999. “Fairness perceptions and trust as mediators for transformational and transactional leadership: A two-sample study.” Journal of Management, 25(6), 897-934. * Rivers, Douglas, Huggins, Vicki and Slotweiner, Daniel, 2003. Combining Random and non random samples Paper presented at the Joint Statistical meetings of the American statistical Association. [online] available at: http://www.knowledgenetworks.com/info/press/papers/combosampling%208-03.pdf * Saunders, M, Lewis, P and Thornhill A, 2003. “Research Methods for Business Students”, Prentice Hall * Trochim, William, 2001. “The Research Methods Knowledge base” (2nd Edn) Atomic Dog Publishing * Wiles, J.A. and Cornwell, T.B, 1990. “A Review of Methods Utilized in Measuring Read More