Leadership and its views in football - Essay Example

?Leadership and its Views Introduction In today’s world there are manager in every organization, in every profession and in every stage of work. Manager is the individual who is responsible for the overall performance of any organization or team or group of people. Be it in sports or in any organization managers play an important role in success or failure of the team as a whole. According to the report published by the Manchester Metropolitan University an employment cycle of an organization, or any sports team consisted of 5 different phase. These are recruitment/selection, induction, managing the performance, controlling different level of performance and workforce planning/role or job analysis-job redesign. Being a manger one has to look up to all these parameters and control the performance of his or her team members. At the end, manager has to carry the responsibility of both success or failure of the team as he or she is the leader of the group. (p.4). Responsibility of a Manager: According to their report of Manchester Metropolitan University manager of any organization or any sports team have to perform following responsibilities: Communicate with the team members and convey the overall objective or team goal. Evaluate the training and development requirements of the group members/ staff to ensure that they are adequately supported in relation to their work responsibilities. To make sure that appropriate management systems and actions are in place to meet the team’s health and safety duties. Ensure that equal opportunity for all is in place. (p. 5). In this report, the discussion is about how much responsible is a manager for the poor performance of his team or group in the work field. The evaluation is mainly based on the performance review and analysis of the football team managers as it is more regular event in the sports of football where the manager of the team always used to be the first victim of the poor performance. Later on the discussion will continue considering the corporate world as well. Is It Making Sense to Sack Managers? Being the leader of the group or the team, managers have the responsibility of both success and failures. In any organization or any sports managers have a key role to play. Plays like football, where the managers control the game from the outside. Starting from the developing a team, training, developing strategies, executing those in the field all depends on the manager. Thus, success or failure of the team also considered as the responsibility of the manager. According to the report of Barnes (2013), in the EPL (English premier league), the role of the manager is very important. Being considered as the toughest and most competitive football league of the world, team managers play an important role in the success or failure of the team. Signing new footballer, coaching them, developing team strategies-all depends on the manager. In his review, he cited the example of Paolo Di Canio-manager of the Sunderland football club. According to the report of British media, his enthusiasm was the key behind the success of the Sunderland football club, as they were able to retain their position in the premier league after a horrible start. In his report he pointed out the fact that it is not necessary that only the change in managers brings about the good result. It is nothing to do with the change but it is a trend of event which may happen no matter whether club has change the manager or not. In his word, changing manager may give good result for a game or two, in short for a shorter period of time, but that does not means it will give continuous good result. According to his view, “it s a misleading statistic because not changing the manager would have had the same result”. He cited the example of Aston Villa in the EPL, where they also have facing the threat of relegation like Sunderland, but they did not change their manager. The result of the first 5 games of Sunderland after changing manager and Aston Villa without changing the manager was same: 2 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses. According to his view, it is nothing but the law of average of number which controls the performance level, nothing to do with the manager. According to him a short term decline in the form is not a good reason to sack any manager from his post. (Barnes, 2013). Consequences and Cause of Manager Dismissal: There are several causes and consequences associated with the dismissal of the manager. All across the globe, the performance of any team is the only parameter by which any manager’s work is being reviewed. Same is applicable for any organization also. Being the manager of the group or at the top of the organization performance is the only parameter. According to the review of Tena & Forrest(2007), the key reason for the dismissal of any manager associated with any football club is the concern of the owners related to the demotion of the club in the lower division. This suggests that the clubs hoped to bring about short-term improvement in performance by changing manager. They have conducted a survey on Spanish football league during 2002-03 and 2004-05 seasons, and found that change in the manager only brought about good performance for the teams in the home matches. According to their review, “the decisions taken by club directors who dismissed their managers and implies that appeasing fans can have on-the-field benefits. It is consistent with the importance attributed to crowd support in the literature on home advantage in sports.”(Tena & Forrest, 2007, abstract). Cause of Manager Dismissal: According to the review of Markham (2012), in the game of football managers used to get sacked or fired due to 3 main reasons. These are: 1) Poor on-field performance. 2) Breakdown in relations with club directors/owners and 3) Increasing pressure from the supporters and media for delivering better result. For any organization also the reason of firing any manager is the same like the game of football. Only in case of the supporters, here the stakeholders have the pressure on the leader to give good result as they have their money invested on the company. According to his analysis, in the modern days , both in the field of game as well as in the organization , proper management of power has become increasingly important for any institution to be successful. However, there are contrasting views on whether sacking a football manager leads to improved team performance on average. In modern times fund managers performance can be directly compared with that of the football club managers. Like the managers of the football club, the performance of the fund managers also continuously scrutinized and any kind of performance below par will ensure that they will loose their job. (Markham, 2012). The Effect of Manager Turnover: According to Paola & Scoppa (2012), dismissal of manager is very common in sports as well as in different firms. But the effect of changing manager is not very clear. In sports, there are few instances where the performance of the team change drastically with the change of manager, but in some cases the performance remain the same and sometimes becomes worse. According to their review, change in the manager does not statistically change the performance of the club drastically all the time. Changing the manager is not always related to the performance as well. Sometimes, the owners of the team overestimate the ability of the team and expect some very good result which may be beyond the capacity limit of the team. Sometimes, firing the manager may be due to implementation of the scapegoat theory where the team owners to please the members as well as supporters fire the manager. This same theory is applicable in case of the organization as well where the top bosses to protect themselves from the anger of the stakeholders fire the managers and put the blame of poor performance on them. (Paola & Scoppa, 2012, pp.164-165). According to the review of Arnulf, Mathisen and Haerem(2012), like the football club managers all across the globe, it is the tendency of different corporate also to fire the managers when team(here team stands for organization) does not performing up to the supporters(in case of organization it is the stakeholders of the company) expectations. According to their review, the performance of the football club might have improved just as well and even quicker if they do not change the manager after team’s poor performance in few outings. According to their analysis, the top decision makers may be fooled by randomness and learn wrong lessons about team leadership. They have also mentioned that team leadership both in the corporate world as well as in the case of sports is an emergent, output variable. The measurement of that is just based on the performance. But still, before taking any decision one have to consider the dependent variables associated with the performance of the manager like the available resources, circumstances, time to cope up with the environment, competitors etc. In their view, exaggerated focus on the individual manager may ruin long-term performance. One must give the leader a set group of resources for a considerable amount of time before reviewing the performance. Unless continuous change in the top leadership may give some short term success but in the long run it never help the team to be at the top of the tree.(Arnulf, Mathisen and Haerem, 2012, abstract). Conclusion: In today’s world, Managers in the traditional hierarchical structures have the entire responsibility, from the development of teams, deciding on the strategy, train the members of the team, taking care of their health and mental set up, motivating them for the big days-everything is the responsibility of a manager. Be it in the sporting field or in case of the organization, managers have to perform the same role. So, when one have to criticize the performance of a manger, it is unfair if the dependent factors are not take in to the consideration. Most importantly the top management of any organization –be it a business unit or the spots team have to understand their own strength and weakness, their own capability and based on that they must designed their objective. Setting some impossible goal in front of the team does not make any sense, as it just brings unwanted pressure on the team members. It is being driven by the expediencies of downsized organizations and increased competition. Changing may give a short tem success but it is a proven fact that sticking with a plan always give success in long run and that success is always long standing one not a fluke or a temporary one. Bibliography: 1. Arnulf, JK; Mathisen, JE and H?rem, T (2012), Heroic leadership illusions in football teams: Rationality, decision making and noise-signal ratio in the firing of football managers. Leadership, 8(2): 169-185. 2. Barnes, H (2013), Does it make statistical sense to sack a football manager? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23724517 3. De Dios Tena, J and Forrest, D (2007) Within-season dismissal of football coaches: Statistical analysis of causes and consequences. European Journal of Operational Research.Vol 181 (1): 362-373. 4. Markham T, (2012), The Sacking of Football Managers as an exact science: who got it right and wrong, Sporting intelligence, web, retrieved on 2nd December, 2013 from http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2012/04/23/the-sacking-of-football-managers-as-an-exact-science-who-got-it-right-and-wrong-230401/ 5. Paola D M. & Scoppa V. (2012) The Effect of Managerial Turnover: Evidence From Coach Dismissals in Italian Soccer Teams, Journal of Sports Economics, 13(2), 152-168, 6. The Role of The Manager: an Introduction; Manchester Metropolitan University: Department of Human Resource, nd, web, retrieved on 2nd December, 2013 from http://www.mmu.ac.uk/humanresources/devandtrain/resources/the-role-of-the-manager-an-introduction.pdf Read More