Management and Leadership: Bureaucratic and Learning Organization - Essay Example

Management and Leadership; Bureaucratic and Learning Organization This essay would analyze and will try to make a fair comparison between management and leadership and then between bureaucratic and learning organization. The major points pertaining to the topics that are discussed in this essay will be purely from academic literature and arguments on these points shall be deployed based on the author’s perception. People in business domain are faced with the dilemma to differentiate between leaders and managers. They often broach this key topic and finally they are left with no conclusion. The reason for their grave concern is that because they want to explore which entity is better than other. Although there is no plausible explanation to this issue but there exist substantial difference between both the characters. Perhaps none of them has a superiority or lead over the other but it is imperative that both traits should be present in business organizations. Management is the process of planning, controlling, organizing and evaluating the tasks and utilizing resources to achieve organizational objectives. Management hierarchies were formed because small businesses observed phenomenal growth and it was difficult for the few individuals to operate and drive the business. As a result, management hierarchies were created as a method of maintaining control over things such as planning, budgeting, reporting and organizing. Good management means that even in the most complex organizations everything happens and flow in an orderly and controlled manner (McKay, 2005). On the other hand, leadership is referred as the process of initiating and coping with a dynamic change. Under the contemporary environment, change is considered to be a vital factor as we are observing significant changes in technology, competition, regulations, demographics and economic conditions. Hence it is necessary for the organizations to tackle and adapt to such changes in order to trounce their rivals. “Leadership is influencing people to get things done to a standard and quality above their norm” (Stimmel, 2008). Kotter in his book A Force for Change describes the purpose of leadership as and bringing and driving a revolutionary change; and the role of management to provide stability, consistency, order and efficiency (as qtd. in DeGrosky, 2006). While management focuses on coordinating and controlling the complex processes that have emerged after significant organizational growth; leadership is about challenging existing ways of doing work and reengineering the current business processes and thus setting new directions for the organization. Generally, a good manager produces positive results by satisfying the requirements of time and cost. Good leaders on the other hand produce positive change by providing vision, aligning people efforts with the organization direction, and keeping people focused on the mission and vision by motivating and inspiring them (DeGrosky, 2006). Managers have subordinates and they have a position of formal authority vested in them by the organization. Leaders have followers which can be differentiated from subordinate. A follower is more devoted than a subordinate as a leader holds a high regard in the sight of his follower. This does not imply that subordinates turn a deaf ear to their managers but they have only formal connection with their managers. Subordinates are held only responsible within the premises of the organization whereas followers adore their leaders and they are not bound to follow them in certain occasion or within certain boundaries but they have healthy relationship which makes them truly enamored of their leaders. Followers are not entitled to work for certain time period as they are always and readily available for their leaders. Management style is transactional as they interact in the organization for certain purpose or goal. Their subordinates perform only those tasks of which they are directed to do so. On the other hand, leaders have a transformational style. They do not simply tell their followers to perform a task. In fact they have to inspire their followers and win their hearts so that they would be willing to walk into perilous situation which they normally consider risky. Leaders create such profound changes by their charismatic personality and gentle persuasion; as a result their followers blindly believe them and align themselves to the leader’s vision. A manager has an orientation towards the work. He has a work focus and is centered on work concerned with operations of the organization. They are paid to get things done within the constraints of time, money and people. On the contrary, leaders have a people focus as they are always in the stage of inspiring, motivating and encouraging their people to follow them. “Leaders know how to make people function together and how to motivate them to excel” (Stimmel, 2008). They acknowledge and give credit to others and face the accusations placed on them. Most of the studies indicate that the managers are risk averse, as in uncertain environments they try to gain complete information and then make decisions. Leaders appear to be risk seekers as they consider it common to face the obstacles blocked in their way and they take actions to remove those impediments. They see these problems as opportunities and are optimistic to encounter and turn these problems into opportunities. Our comparison of leadership and management shows that both entities are vital in a complex and volatile environment. Organizations not only need to focus on the single tool to execute their business. Instead they should imbed both the characters in the structure of their organization and moreover they should try to foster an environment which will nurture outstanding leadership and sound management. Similar to the concepts of leadership and management are bureaucratic organizations and learning organizations. Before drawing any conclusion about these terms let us analyze what these concepts are and what are their virtues. At the heart of the organizational behavior lies a daunting term; bureaucracy. The word bureaucracy often carries a negative connotation. There is some truth to this stereotype but we will analyze through our discussion that their virtues prevail over their vices. The first person who corroborated the theory of bureaucratic organization was Max Weber who referred it as an “ideal type” (Volti, 2006). Weber emphasized that bureaucratic organizations develops rationally designed structures and processes to achieve their goals. Logic and empiricism are considered as the primary sources of developing the policies, procedures and processes hence we can recognize that rationality is the fundamental element of a bureaucratic organization. However, a problem can arise if organization utilizes rational methods to attain irrational or unethical goals. Bureaucracies are often characterized by impersonality that is a notion to treat everyone fairly and equally regardless of their status, gender, position or race. The employees are selected based on their skills, expertise, competency and abilities. Similarly, promotion is granted based on the objective evaluation of performance and not on the features that are non-relevant with the work and operations. Bureaucratic organizations place an emphasis on merit, skill and expertise which results in elaborate division of labor. Each individual possess a different set of skill to perform his specialized task. These tasks are incorporated into formal roles and are given a specific title. The title describes the position of the employee and defines his domain of responsibility. The roles of individuals are elucidated and they clearly describe what should be and should not be done by that person. According to management theorists such clear division of labor allows the workers to develop specialized skills and more importantly it makes them work at a regular and frenetic pace. Specialization of tasks creates the need for coordination between different processes. To control the operations in an efficient manner, bureaucratic organizations develop rules, regulations and strict procedures also known as standard operating procedures (SOP). “All bureaucracies make abundant use of explicit and implicit standard operating procedures to guide and control the activities of the employees” (Volti, 2006). A very critical issue is raised when there are no SOP’s to guide a situation or problem. Under such uncontrolled situations members of bureaucratic organizations make decisions based on their personal inclinations or which might satisfy their own requirement rather than being for organizational interest. Another feature exhibited by bureaucratic organization that is unpalatable for many of us is hierarchical authority. This implies that the organizational chart will clearly specify who is subordinate to whom and super-ordinate to whom. Under such environment complying with the orders directed by superiors are considered to be of supreme importance. The orders have to be followed whether they are in accordance with the mindset of the subordinate or not, that’s why such structures are distasteful to lower level employees. In today’s competitive era, organizations face recurrent changes in their internal and external environment. They need to cope with these changes effectively in order to survive and maintain their business. They can not survive in fierce competition unless they adapt themselves to the changing conditions. The learning organization is seen as a favorable response to these unpredictable business environments. Learning organizations are those organizations that can provide work environments that are open to creativity and innovation. All the members in learning organization utilize their mental capacity to create results that they desire and the organization itself fosters an environment where innovative thinking is nurtured and developed. Learning organization is a new concept and it differs substantially from the traditional (bureaucratic) organization. The leadership style in a traditional organization is much of controlling that is they more or less regulate the conduct of the employees. However in learning organizations the leaders seek to empower their employees. These leaders know that those who use the system are much more aware of its flaws hence they should be empowered to rectify the issues. The leaders empower the employees by providing them the necessary resources, by delegating authority, by celebrating success and by being a learning architect (Hitt, 1996). The second feature that distinguishes it from a bureaucratic organization is the type of team. Certainly, learning organizations build synergistic teams. The members of a learning team eventually become proficient in five core learning disciplines; systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning (Hitt, 1996). The collective intelligence of the learning team surpasses the sum of intelligence of the individual members. Furthermore their members always engage in a meaningful dialogue and they believe in honest and open communication. Previously the emphasis of organizations (bureaucratic) was on orderliness as they believed that activities must be systematically arranged and carried out. They embedded the concept of orderliness in organizations by devising clear cut hierarchical structures. Moreover this implied that valuable information was to be passed through certain channels and move into specific hands. Obviously there is a need of orderliness in organization but when there is a need of flexibility then an absolute dependence on orderliness can impair organizational effectiveness. Learning organizations are designed both for orderliness and flexibility that’s why they are able to adapt themselves to the changing conditions. Stability or orderliness is provided by vertical structure and flexibility is provided by dynamic networks (Hitt, 1996). As employees are empowered in learning organizations therefore critical information is unshackled to them. Another difference that exists between a bureaucratic and learning organization is the measurement system used by them. The drawback associated with the measurement system of traditional organization is that it merely depends on financial performance. The focus on single aspect may engender organizational myopia. To encounter this problem, learning organization therefore uses a balanced score card. A balanced scorecard includes financial measures and as well as operational measures such as customer satisfaction, internal processes, organization innovation and improvement activities (Hitt, 1996). From the above discussion we can conclude that learning organizations are most suitable and adequate type of organization in the current era as they are created to encounter changes in a convenient way. Although this does not imply that we should forget the principles of bureaucratic organization as they are considered as the foundation for building learning organizations. Bibliography DeGrosky, M. 2006, The Difference Between Leadership and Management [Accessed 05th October 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: Hitt, W.D. 1996, ‘The learning organization: some reflections on organizational renewal’, Journal of workplace learning, vol. 8, no. 7, pp. 16-25 McKay, G. 2008, Management and Leadership What’s the Difference? [Accessed 05th October 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: Stimmel, C. 2008, Leadership vs. Management [Accessed 05th October 2008]. Available from World Wide Web: Volti, R. 2006, An introduction to the sociology of work and occupations, Pine forge press, New York Read More