Factors Affecting Leadership Effectiveness - Literature review Example

Factors Affecting Leadership Effectiveness A study on the factors that affect efficient leadership is an important one for any organization. The reason for this is that leadership is dependent on individuals who manage the said organizations and that these individuals are very different from each other. Even when there are existing literature that shows the characteristics of good leaders, not all people can emulate these characteristics because of the fact that they are indeed different from each other. These literature then are just guidelines and it clearly depends on the leaders to follow these or form their own strategies on how to best lead their own organizations. The contention of this paper is that even when there is no universal theory for determining what leads to efficient leadership, it is possible to determine for specific organizations and specific types of managers/leaders whether they are effective and efficient leaders. As such, it follows that the factors that made them effective and efficient leaders can also be determined using empirical research. This paper provides a review of articles on empirical studies on leadership. Not so much as to present an overview since only 6 articles are presented but as a matter of showing examples of empirical researches on leadership and providing in-depth analysis on the methods, samples and sampling techniques, findings and a lot more. The articles included here were researched via Proquest Databases with the search term “factors affecting leadership effectiveness”. This was also limited to full text scholarly articles from 1996 to 2010. There was no need to revise the search term since there were sufficient articles that the search yielded. Elements Article I Article II Article III Article IV Article V Article VI Title of Article Samad, Sarminah. “The influence of emotional intelligence on effective leadership among Malaysian Business Organizations.” The Business Review, Cambridge. 13.1 (2009): 164-170. Web. 24 Feb. 2010 Erkutlu, Hakan. “The impact of transformational leadership on organizational effectiveness.” Journal of Management Development. 27.7 (2008): 708-726. Web. 24 Feb. 2010 McCann, Jack. “Leadership in the apparel manufacturing environment: An analysis based on the multi-factor leadership questionnaire.” S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal. 73.4 (2008 Autumn): 20-30. Web. 24 Feb. 2010 Bakanauskiene, Irenea and Bartnikaite, Edita. “Leadership styles in the context of overall managerial competence: The Lithuanian Company Case.” Organizacijo Vadyba: Sisteminiai Tyrimai. 51. (2009): 7-18. Web. 24 Feb. 2010 Adams, Don, and Gamage, David T. “A study of leadership effectiveness in a large VET institution in Australia.” International Journal of Educational Management. 22.3 (2008): 214-228. Web. 24 Feb. 2010 Yooyanyong, Pisal, Muenjohn, Dr. Nuttawuth. “Leadership styles of expatriate managers: A comparison between American and Japanese Expatriates.” The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge. 15.2 (2010 March): 161-167. Web. 1 March 2010 Location Malaysia Turkey United States Lithuania Australia Thailand Participants Senior management and middle level management of selected telecommunications companies in Malaysia Managers (60) and non-managerial employees (662) totaling to about 722 participants from various botique hotels in Turkey. There were 120 participants scattered among the 12 locations of the four apparel manufacturing organizations who were willing to participate. Ten participants/respondents were taken from each location. These participants were part of the management team and were among the top ranking leaders in the organization. Not specified but characterized the organization as follows: -demonstrated 50% employee turnover from 2005-20078; -expanding locally and globally with an increase of 1/3 of the employees -has better work conditions in comparison with other Lithuanian companies (i.e. better compensation) Teachers and head teachers of two metropolitan and two TAFE institutes in the rural areas of Australia. 23 American and 25 Japanese expatriates who manage selected multinational companies in Thailand Sampling Random sampling Not indicated – assumed as random sampling Not indicated – assumed as purposive sampling Not indicated – assumed as purposive sampling Random Sampling Stratified Random Sampling Data Collection Used a self administered questionnaire which was adopted from Kouzes and Posner (1988) and used a 7 point likert scale. Used the following tools: *Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire; *Organizational Commitment Questionnaire; *Job Descriptive Index Used the following tools: Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire; Questionnaire was developed by the researcher based on reviewed literature and took note of the indicators of transformational; transactional and laissez-fare leadership styles. It also included the following leadership orientations: relationship oriented; development oriented; and task oriented. It was based on Bass and Avolio (2000) Multifactor Leadership questionnaire. Semi-structured interviews; Observations; Self-rating forms (SRF) and Observer Rating forms (ORF) specifically developed for the use of the study based on the literature reviewed and extensive consultation with experts Researcher developed survey questionnaire. Theoretical Lenses Lenses – leadership; management and psychology (emotional intelligence) Lenses- leadership; management; Economics; Production and manufacturing Leadership Leadership; managemet Educational administration; Supervision Cultural differences Leadership Hofsteade’s 4 dimensions model Findings EI dimensions were significantly related to effective leadership Strong relationships between leadership styles and perceptions of the employees in terms of their satisfaction at work which indicates good leadership styles in the context of the full range leadership model. Revealed that the participants perceived the following to be factors of effective leadership: Communicative; Tolerant; Strong in leadership; Has initiative; Honest There is a significant difference in the self-perceptions of the head teachers as regards their leadership with that of the actual experiences of the teachers that they supervise/lead. The Japanese and American expats differed significantly in the following leadership aspects: Decision Making, Visionary Ability, Training Succession and Supervising, Interpretation of the finding based on theoretical framework Social skills combined with emotional intelligence factors influenced effective leadership. Effective leadership is transformational leadership rather than transactional leadership The apparel manufacturing industry is no different from the other industries in terms of their perceptions on effective leaders and also in how they would want to be managed or lead effectively. The theory of full-range leadership applies in the context of apparel manufacturing industry. Leadership styles affects effective leadership in the modern organization Since there is a difference in the perceptions of these two there is a need to develop the leadership skills and leadership styles and strategies of the head teachers specific to the VET institutions studied since a determinant of effective leadership, after all, is the perceived leadership by those governed. There are differences between cultures in terms of managing and leading as seen in the Japanese and American respondents. They have differences in terms of dealing with the people who work for them but through time, they have better understanding of their employees and their culture such that they have better leadership over them. Part II - Critical Review The article by Samad (2009) discusses the relationship of Emotional Intelligence (EI) to the leadership effectiveness of managers in Malaysia. His contention is that high EI should lead to effective leadership since this is after all a very social and emotional aspect of management. The study used the theory on Emotional Intelligence as a focus instead of Intelligence Quotient as basis for determining leadership effectiveness because the as the review of literature shows extremely intelligent leaders do not necessarily have the leadership skills that make them effective leaders. Emotional Intelligence takes to consideration the social skills of the leaders like how they deal with themselves and their emotions as well as how they deal with other people and whether they have the emotional capacity to deal with other people properly. Part of being emotionally intelligent as discussed in the article in its literature review includes self-regulation or being able to remain calm despite stress. As such, the assumption is if the leader is emotionally intelligent, he is able to manage well especially even in times of stress. With respect to the situation of the leaders of telecommunications companies in Malaysia, there is a significant relationship between their leadership effectiveness and their emotional intelligence. The correlation shows a high positive significant correlation which means that the higher the emotional intelligence, the higher the leadership effectiveness of the respondents. The study also revealed with the use of multiple regression that the emotional intelligence aspects of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social skills, and empathy all significantly impacted leadership effectiveness. The most significant aspect of emotional intelligence that significantly impacted leadership effectiveness is the social skills aspect. The study is strong in that it showed causation using multiple regression which answered which impacted more rather than stopping at determining the relationship. It is also strong in the fact that the review of literature extensively discussed the relationship of emotional intelligence and effective leadership. Although it is acknowledged that this was a journal article and that there may have been page restrictions, it would have been better if there were more studies showing empirical proof on the relationship of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness (unless of course it is established that there is little study on this topic in the various fields). To improve the study, it would be nice to include qualitative measures like observations on specific stressful situations, interviews, document analysis and the like to have more insight on the social skills, self-regulation, self-awareness and the like of the managers on the same sample size. This may validate the findings of the present study. The paper by Yooyanyong and Muenjohn (2010) explored the differences in the leadership styles of American and Japanese expatriates who manage/lead selected companies in Thailand. The issue was deemed important because of the growing globalization, companies now have a mix of cultures for their managers and employees. Outsourced production of materials and business processes most especially has resulted to a multi-cultural work environment not only in the US but also in Asia and other parts of the world. It is evident that a mix of cultures can mean differences in views and practices. As such, there is a need especially for managers and even employees to both understand each others personalities and cultures for better management. Since culture has a big impact on the decision making and the way people deal with each other, and that Eastern and Western cultures varied, it was hypothesized for this study in particular that Japanese and American managers had varying leadership styles. The study determined whether such is the case in telecommunications companies in Thailand and included an equal number of American and Japanese expatriate managers in these companies as respondents. The American managers were deemed as representatives for the western culture and the Japanese as the representatives for the eastern culture. The study found out that there are differences in the leadership styles specifically on these aspects: Decision Making, Visionary Ability, Training Succession and Supervising of the American and Japanese expats. These findings were arrived at using the t-test to compare the means of the responses. Aside from this main conclusion, the study also analyzed the means of the specific items in the questionnaire which provides a clearer understanding of the study and its results as a whole. The study was strong in that it contributed significantly on the literature of the field and that it showed and discussed the interpretations of the differences in the leadership styles well. It also showed a sufficient review of the literature with specific examples on the leadership styles of American and Japanese managers. However, it could still be improved by including other cultures like Europeans, Germans, and others. Also, a more important question that could be well determined by a qualitative research or probably with the use of regression is to determine which specific aspects of the overall American managers as well as Japanese managers make them act the way they do as regards leadership and other management aspects. Read More