The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger - Essay Example

? The Devil Wears Prada inserts his/her s Department’s The Devil Wears Prada represents a classic case of the demonstration of an autocratic woman leader who ridicules, orders and rewards/punishes her employees. The book focuses on the (unrealistic) fashion world and demonstrates how the demands for competitiveness and personal success translate to lack of work-life balance, care and sympathy towards one’s subordinates. Therefore, the focus of this paper shall be Miranda who happens to play the role of a leader in the film. Miranda’s case is in stark contrast to the stereotypical image portrayed about female leaders and highlights how preconceived notions of the same could lead one to erroneously assume that Miranda’s leadership style was anything but appropriate. On the other hand, however, the paper highlights various instances where Miranda failed to demonstrate effective leadership especially owing to her failure to motivate her employees. It is important to analyze the leadership style employed by one of the characters Miranda Priestly in order to successfully understand the application of leadership and management in this film. Miranda happens to be a fashion editor of the “Runway” magazine and supervises three subordinates: Nigel, Emily and Andrea. She is confronted with the situation of having to balance her work and home responsibilities as she is married and working simultaneously. This draws our attention to one of the most critical issues highlighted in contemporary workplace- that of work-life balance. Despite facing this dilemma, she has acquired a prominent position in the fashion industry. However, she has been one of the most difficult leaders to approach and is considered a manager difficult to work for. Leaders and managers may derive their f from various sources. Power has, therefore, been defined as being derived from give bases or sources: expert, reward, referent, legitimate and coercive (Bass & Bass, 2008). Miranda has demonstrated four of these types of power. Her expert power stems from the fact that she has served in the position for several years. Her reward power is reflected from the fact that she determines who will be included to the trip to Paris. Legitimate power is derived by virtue of Miranda’s position as director and editor and, finally, coercive power is demonstrated when she prompts her employees that the underperforming employees will be terminated in little time. This also demonstrates little flexibility on the part of Miranda as she can be assumed to be one of those leaders who do not believe in giving second chances or who set strict targets and expect them to be achieved. Furthermore, the movie depicts Miranda’s obsession with power as well as her desire to be the center of attention and how she uses it to make decisions that affect the wellbeing of those working with her. For instance, she uses her power to give orders for bringing in her coffee, preparing her magazines and criticism of the clothing reviewed. Miranda’s tight supervision and obsession with power may be taken as a requirement in the fashion industry which encourages materialism and personal status/success. Power has been deliberately highlighted in the movie from its very beginning where power is shown to guarantee the most fashionable items and that it also allows leaders control in terms of non verbal behavior. Furthermore, the movie, through Miranda’s character, also depicts how power is capable of being misused by leaders. Contrary to Wolf who argues that women avoid expressing power in order to project favorable images of themselves (Wolf, 1994), the movie shows just how women “can” express power without being conscious of appearing nice. Consequently, it follows that Miranda’s leadership style is largely transactional as opposed to being transformational. This is reflected in her behavior of tying employee’s results and performance to rewards and punishments. She expected her employees to strictly follow her instructions and those who complied with them were given rewards such as clothing, parties and trips to Paris. While the film does not explicitly provide evidence of any punishments, the threat of being dismissed in case of underperformance can be assumed as a potential punishment. Punishment constitutes the Reinforcement Theory of employee motivation and is described as the imposition of an unpleasant outcome upon the occurrence of any unpleasant behavior by employees (Daft, 2008). Furthermore, since Miranda herself gave priority to her work over family, she wanted her employees to do the same as well which could result in work-life conflict. Furthermore, she also believed in ridiculing employees openly which meant employees would face disciplinary action in the public. It follows that Miranda was unable to inspire people to work and believed in an autocratic leadership style expecting that her orders be obeyed with little participation or input from employees. She was unable to focus on the bigger picture and set a vision for her team as would be the case had she demonstrated transformational leadership. Consequently, she tapped on extrinsic motivations and rewards (such as trips, clothing and parties) rather than intrinsic rewards. Intrinsic rewards are usually employed to get employees to work by tapping on their needs of being listened to, giving them enriched jobs or simply praising/appreciating them for good work. Miranda’s case was totally the opposite and she did little to motivate employees besides providing them with extrinsic rewards. In fact, what was reflected through her behavior was negative motivation when she ridiculed poor performers or demonstrated her negative reactions to their work through her non-verbal behavior. Miranda never acknowledged a job well done by her subordinates whereas the mistakes done by Emily were highlighted quite proactively by her. This is reflected in various instances where Miranda failed to appreciate Andy’s work ethic although she herself had stood against all odds to hire her. This was particularly evident when Miranda had ordered Andy to arrange a flight for her during the bad weather and, because all flights were cancelled, she then ordered Andy to arrange for flight for Miranda with the assistance of her dad. Upon being unsuccessful, Andy was criticized for being incompetent rather than being appreciated for the extra effort she made in the process. This could be considered as a clear instance of discouragement and negative motivation for Andy in future. It could put off employees from putting their heart and soul into the work. Furthermore, Miranda’s identification of people by virtue of their “power” and not work was reflected in her impolite and, often disgruntled, attitude towards those who were inferior in power compared to her. Another way of classifying Miranda’s leadership would be to place it along the task-oriented versus relationship-oriented continuum. The contingency model of leadership classifies leaders as task-oriented and relationship-oriented. The former refers to leaders who focus on the accomplishment of the task at hand whereas the latter refers to leaders that are focused on managing relationships with subordinates and getting work done through them (Samson & Daft, 2011). It is evident how Miranda’s “orders” are focused on accomplishment of specific tasks such as getting everything in order before she is back and there is little focus on communicating informally with subordinates or taking time out to engage in group discussions etc. Clearly, Miranda represents a classic case of task-oriented leaders. The importance of leadership and management can never be stressed enough. Leaders and managers shape the attitudes and behaviors of their followers which is why the leadership style becomes important. Furthermore, leadership and management have the capability of shaping the organizational culture. Organizational culture has been defined as the system of beliefs, values, assumptions and patterns of “external adaptation and internal integration” that organizations possess (Pfister, 2009). The organizational culture of Runway was far from being innovative. In fact, as one may have inferred from Miranda’s directive leadership style, the culture did not welcome change or new ideas. This is reflected in how newcomers and individuals with different perspectives are not welcomed in the organization. Furthermore, the cultural environment of Runway can best be described as competitive and was far from being collaborative. Miranda’s dictatorial leadership style made employees focus on outdoing each other which is reflected in how the entire unit was in a frenzy to put things in order before Miranda’s arrival. In such an environment teamwork and collaboration was throttled as employees were concerned about their survival rather than their contribution towards the organization. It would not be an exaggeration to state that there was little identification with the organization; employees identified with their leader (Miranda) as opposed to being concerned about organizational goals. Therefore, there was clearly a lack of organizational identification or the extent to which members perceive themselves as one with respect to the organization (Ashforth & Mael, 1989). Miranda’s dictatorial leadership style, the lack of collaboration and teamwork as well as lack of innovation are far from the requirements of the 21st century organization let alone the fashion industry. Literature has stressed significantly on the need to develop open communication, reduce chain of command, delegate and empower employees as well as ensure cross-functional teamwork. Empowerment has been defined as the enhanced intrinsic motivation which is manifested in four dimensions: competence, self-determination, meaning and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). With respect to Runway, there was lack of self-determination, meaning and impact although competence remains a vague area. Self-determination or the freedom to pursue one’s tasks the way one wants (Spreitzer, 1995) was clearly lacking as new ideas or personal discretion was discouraged by Miranda. Furthermore, workers were being coerced to work and did not work on “meaningful” tasks. Finally, there was a lack of “impact” or one’s ability to contribute to organizational goals because, as stated earlier, workers identified more with Miranda than the organization’s goals. Furthermore, literature also suggests that empowerment is a key ingredient of transformational leadership which was clearly lacking in the case of Miranda. Furthermore, the leadership style and culture are not in sync with the requirements of the fashion industry which is largely unstructured in nature and warrants less tight control and more flexibility. In fact, popular apparel brands in the fashion industry such as Levi’s are based on the premise that no one can be forced to work for something he/she does not have faith in (Manlow, 2009). In other words, it is necessary for leaders to get their employees to take on initiatives to adopt practices that are in the best interests of the company rather than being directed to do so. This is made possible by the “values” that exist in organizations which make sure that the company’s leadership is in sync with its people (O'Reilly & Pfeffer, 2000). In the case of Runway, values clearly did not involve working towards a common goal as well as ethical values. The lack of ethical values is clearly missing as Miranda openly ridiculed her employees and displayed a sarcastic behavior towards poor performing employees. Furthermore, there were instances where Miranda was playing an active role in “unhealthy” organizational politics whereby she was pitting one employee against the other. Her disrespect for employees’ needs was reflected in the fact that she did not recognize them by their names. Here it would be useful to shed light on Maslow’s Theory of Hierarchy which claims that workers possess basic physiological needs which, once fulfilled, are followed by the need for security, social, self- esteem and self-actualization. Clearly, Miranda was satisfying the lower order needs (including physiological and job security) but failed to provide opportunities for workers to realize higher order needs. There is little evidence of informal meetings or gatherings which could facilitate bonding among team members and fulfill social needs. Furthermore, the practice of ridiculing employees and dealing with them sarcastically hurts rather than catering to the self-esteem of employees. On the other hand, it is worth noting that Miranda’s behavior is largely being judged on the basis of gender and that critical thought suggests that her behavior would be viewed from a different perspective was she a male. This draws one's attention to the area of discrimination at work place which has attracted considerable attention over the years. According to Sachs, if Miranda were a man no one would point critically at her behavior and would, instead, focus on how greatly she was executing her job. Women are constantly being scrutinized for the way they treat their employees as well as their commitment to the job whereas men are almost always seen in a positive light. There is little doubt that women have been fighting for equal rights in the workplace compared to their male counterparts. However, the disparity exists between women leaders and their male counterparts and gender diversity still remains far from being materialized at the top management level in most organizations. Even renowned authors on leadership texts such as Northouse have argued how women’s underrepresentation in top management positions is accredited to their different styles of leadership and effectiveness (Northouse, 2013). This automatically hints at the deep-seated belief that the leadership styles of men are superior to those of women. This is evident since Miranda’s assertive and dominating leadership style is considered contrary to female traits such as compromising, supportive, passive and submissive. Miranda’s constant humiliation of her employees and power-hungry thinking shows just how women parallel men in being tyrants in their capacity as leaders. Furthermore, it has been claimed that women, owing to their dual responsibilities towards work and family, often end up neglecting work. This basis has been extended to state that women lack the innate motivation and the commitment to lead. Considering that women have traditionally been assumed take care of domestic obligations, they are constantly being criticized for their role at the workplace. However, Miranda defies all these claims as she has given more priority to her work than family. The movie itself is reminiscent of the domination of women in the workplace as it revolves around four “women” characters – Miranda, Emily, Andrea and Nigel with one “gay” character. Women are, therefore, viewed as career women as opposed to wives, mothers or partners. On the contrary, the movie has been criticized for being far from reality and that the fashion world can, in no way, be taken as a representation of the contemporary business environment. To conclude, Miranda’s character clearly classifies her as a task-oriented, transactional leader with little consideration given to the development of a strong vision or values that guide employee behavior. The issue of work-life balance is also represented although Miranda’s choice of giving priority to work rather than family is anything but usual for women in the workplace today. Much has been said regarding how women as leaders fail to fulfill their work responsibilities owing to family related tasks but Miranda goes beyond this stereotypical view. Furthermore, the role of power in leadership has also been highlighted as Miranda constantly uses her power (legitimate, coercive, referent and expert) to asset authority over her subordinates. Her failure to appreciate, empower and motivate employees can further be attributed to her ineffective leadership. Employees’ lack of identification with the company’s goals is also reflected to the extent that employees perform tasks for fear of Miranda’s displeasure and punishment rather than for the organization itself. Applied to the business setting it is doubtful that such a strategy can sustain the interests of workers in the long run which could lead to workers fleeing to competitors and/or merely reducing their quality of work as they know it will not be appreciated. References Ashforth, B.E. & Mael, F., 1989. Social identity theory and the organization. Academy of Management Review, 14(1), pp.20-39. Bass, B.M. & Bass, R., 2008. The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications. 4th ed. New York: The Free press. Daft, R.L., 2008. The Leadership Experience. Mason: Thomson: South-Western. Manlow, V., 2009. Designing Clothes: Culture and Organization of the Fashion Industry. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Northouse, P.G., 2013. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 6th ed. California: Sage Publications. O'Reilly, C.A. & Pfeffer, J., 2000. Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People. Boston: Harvard Business School. Pfister, J., 2009. Managing Organizational Culture for Effective Internal Control: From Pratice to Theory. Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag. Samson, D. & Daft, R.L., 2011. Management. Mason: Cengage Learning. Spreitzer, G.M., 1995. Psychological empowerment in the workplace: Dimensions, measurement & validation. Academy of Management Journal, 38, pp.1442-65. Wolf, N., 1994. Fire with fire: The New female power and how it will change the 21st Century. New York: Random House. Read More