Correlation of a Good Leader and a Manager into the Leadership and Management Literature Discussion - Research Proposal Example

Leadership and Management Rationale and Research Questions Researching texts written about nineteenth century leadership and management, we found authors, who published books about nineteenth century leadership and management particularly leadership and management journals, newspapers, pamphlets and brochures. These authors often placed leadership and management literature they were studying into historical context by discussing the important events of leadership and management of the year in which literature was published.Most of the authors discussed leadership and management literature success in terms of heroic leaders in their political era (see Wallace for example). My goal in this paper is to bring correlation of a good leader and a manager into the leadership and management literature discussion that will bring positive contribution in terms of current knowledge to young people who are eager to be successful leaders and managers in their career. To achieve my goal, I have discussed my paper in sections. First section, I have discussed the conditions to propose leadership and management literature as my topic of study. What motivates me on this research is that while these authors discuss journals, newspaper, pamphlets and brochures, I could not find much discussion about how a leader or a manager can be successful without any negative attribute in his or her leadership.It is important to look at leadership verses management because when both are properly practiced leads to success of a leader or a manager. For example,” leaders manage and managers lead, the two activities are not synonymous… management functions can potentially provide leadership; leadership activities can contribute to managing. Nevertheless, some leaders do not lead and some managers do not manage” (Bernard, 383).What makes a football club manager? Success and persistence of prosperity will depend on his leadership and management qualities. Literature Review In this section, I have discussed how leadership and management literature have developed from historical, geographical and social leadership and management to the individual level of each person. The existing literatureon indigenous leadership is not extensive while we know very well that this is a growing area. Many of the handbooks written by many authors contain a collection of biographies of leaders which tend to reflect on “great man” or” hero” approach of studying leadership (Brian, 160). As I carried out research of how they became great or heroes in their leadership and management, most of them did not necessarily have the competence, skills and knowledge to become legends leaders in their era while competence, skills and knowledge most of the time contributes to good leader and a manager. To become good leaders and managers, we should have Suitable, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bounded targets by asking our self by asking our self the following questions; where we expect to be in future. What strength and weaknesses do we have? Moreover, how we can get to where we want to be (Adair, 11). In this section, my focus is to look at the difference between leadership and management and how the two can be combined to help a leader or manager realize positive change in his or her work. Management makes systems of people and technology work efficiently. Managementfunctions such as coordinating people, planning before implementing something, controlling and organizing a particular task ensures that people and technology operates efficiently and effectively to achieving the set objective(s). On the other hand, leadership creates systems that managers manage and changes them to fundamental ways to take an advantage of opportunities and to avoid risks. For example, a good leader is one that creates and strategies vision, communicate and set directions, motivate and align people to achieving goals of their organization(s).When people have high competencies in management and leadership, they are able to meet challenges today as well as tomorrow (kotter 180). Nevertheless, leadership can change management since not all leaders have common qualities of leadership and management. Indigenous leadership and management literature handbooks, discussed a successful leader by using the approach of their traits, behavior and styles that are inadequate to describe the success of a leader (Rakish et al, ch 15). The hypothesis in their situation is that some of styles and behavior practiced by early leaders lead to their success where on the other hand led to their failure.This creates questions to the current knowledge about leadership and management literature whethertraits, behavior and style will really define the success of a leader today. According to my research, success of every leader today is because of competency of every person under the manager or a leader. This is because a leader or a manager does not directly participate to the work he or she is supervising. Success of a leader or a manager comprises of three dimensions; credibility that involves what employeesthinks about their bosses such as how he or she relate to them.Credibility improves communication and how the bosses make themselves accessible to employees. (2) Respect, what employees think their boss think about them. respect is shown when there are explicit forms of acknowledgement of work well done and extra time spent by employees in working for the benefit of the organization.(3) fairness, how the level is in playing field in terms of salaries, fringe etc. each employee should be rewarded according to their performances and should be done equally(Robert, 125). This is not portrayed in indigenous leadership and management literature since their handbooks analyzed a leader by incorporating situational factors and contingencies of leader’s style making them to be very general and shallow of information since they did not look at many characters that could have contributed to success of a leader. On the other hand, assessing their information was very tedious because means of accessing information was hindered by the absence technology in terms of transportation means, poor storage of their information since they stored their information only in books that are not accessible by all interested people all over the world. Indigenous leadership and management literature did not contain facts and reasoning; a fact is an actuality, reality or truth about something. Facts provide the firmest grounding for an explanation of something. Rarely are facts sufficient to solve a certain problem therefore some of ancient handbooks were written using an inductive reasoning that allowed concluding that the fact of a successful leader was contributed by his or her leadership and management styles, behavior and traits thus, this result to one of the most limitation of indigenous leadership and management literature of personal assumption. Contrary, when you analyze the success of a leader with all the information about him or her accessible with the help of the current technology and by looking not only their styles of management, behavior and traits but also how their styles, behavior and traits imply to those who are being led will play an important role in evaluating the success of a current leader. This is because some of the leaders may be using dictatorial style of management, and practice nepotism at work that is not a fair leadership in order to be successful. Unfortunately, literature is subjective to change day-by- day and therefore, we may analyzethe successfulness of a certain leader of certain football club today that has made the club achieve a lot of its trophy but incase another leader leader is brought in and the club starts doing poorly, the good qualities of the former manager fades. Methodology Method of data collection is important in order to have a statistic value that will assist in contributing to the current knowledge research on leadership and management literature today. In my case, qualitative method of data collection will be appropriate because analyze and describes a phenomenon using wordsand explains a theory that did not exist before. This method will help me explain a phenomenon that most of the leadership and management literature handbooks written by author in the past century did not put in to account when they were publishing their content on leadership and management. Most quantitative research method techniques fall under two categories, interval estimation and hypothesis test. Interval estimation is a common statistics used to estimate a parameter of a sample. This will assist me in taking just a few of successful leaders or manager as a sample of the whole parameter on leadership and management and the outcome of the research will interpret on what is happening to the whole leadership and management it terms of their success. The hypothesis test will help me to address the uncertainty of past century authors on leadership and management. A Quantitative technique appropriate in my research is use of questionnaire technique. A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series questions and other prompts for gathering information from the respondents. The advantage of using questionnaires over survey method in my research is because they are cheap, less tedious since they do not require as much effort from the questioner compared to verbal or telephone survey. This will be beneficial to me since I will carry out more questionnaires as much as possible. Lastly, questionnaires often provide standardized answers that make it simple to compile data. By dividing questionnaires into questionnaires with questions that measure separate variables will help to obtain a leader’s or manager’s preferences where he or she can well perform, their behaviors e.g. how they associate with their juniors and lastly, their facts about their success as la leader or a manger. Attribute such as respect, fairness, caring etc. which will reciprocate to his or her influence to the performance of the employees. This will serve as survey. On the other hand, placing questionnaires with questions that aggregate into either scale or index includes for example questions that measure latent traits e.g. personal character of a leader,attridutes e.g. towards management and lastly an index such as social economic and political status. The mode of administering questionnaires is also reliable. For example, use of face-to-face questionnaire will reduce cheating of some respondent, computerized questionnaires will reduce the cost of travelling and can reach respondents that are far and have the access of a computer. Adaptive computerized questionnaire administration, where a selection of questions that a questioner is interested in is presented on the computer and the respondent answers are based on the selected items. This questionnaire method will assist in obtaining only the answers that I am interested in hence avoiding irrelevant answers. Placing questionnaires with simple questions and in appropriate language to every respondent will act as a way to obtain answers even from both illiterate and semi- literate respondents. Questions in a questionnaire are gathered in a standardized manner making them more objective and certain than use of interviews. Likewise, large information and data can be obtained from a large group of respondents by issuing them with similar questions.Structured picture can also be drawn on the printed question paper to obtain information from illiterate respondents. Using test- retest method will help me to verify the reliability of the information that I will obtain from the data I collect. Test- retest is a statistical technique used to estimate component of measurement respondent error by repeating the measurement problem on the same subject under similar conditions and comparing the observation. Reliability refers to the precision of the statistical method in obtaining information and data collection. The information and data should not be bias. Therefore, for reliability of my information and data, I would ensure that I am not bias in the questions I ask the respondents, avoid use of inductive reasoning, conduct a pre-visit to know the time that my respondents are readily available. This will help me to obtain information and data at the appropriate way and in a fair means. On the other hand, conducting self-administered questionnaires will assist in obtaining reliable information and data since sometimes allocating it to other people will result to unreliable data since some of them may be untrustworthy or lazy to obtain the information and data. By ensuring that I avoid all these will verify the reliability of information and data that I will collect (Mellenbergh, 235) Ethics to Consider at Fieldwork 1) Informed consent; respondents should knowwhat they are asked to do and the risks associated with answering every question in the questionnaire before they agree to take part. A questioner does this by providing an information sheet containing information about the study. The information sheet should say who you are, why the participants were selected to take part, the participants can decide to take part or not without giving an explanation of their decision, guarantee them confidentiality of the information they give, what they would be asked to do if they take part and lastly, say what the information will be used for, how it will be stored and how long it will be stored. Storage of data should comply with Data Storage Act and University’s Data Protection Code. Participant(s) should sign the consent form. 2) No pressures on respondents to participate; participants should not be given tokens or incentives for them to participate. If a participant fails to return the questionnaire provided, questioner should in advance know how to approach him or her in a courteous way. There should be no solely reliance of gatekeepers of the participants. In this case, owner of the organization should not be relied on to provide information related to the manager. 3) Respect individual autonomy; the freedom of the participants on what to do should not be influenced by thy interviewer. For example if the respondent needs the information he or she have provided to be cancelled, they have the freedom to do so. 4) Avoid causing harm to the respondent; the research should not cause harm on the respondent. If there is confidential information that the respondent provide, it should not be made public but remain protected. In case such information becomes public, the researcher should be hold accountable by the law for that mess. 5) Take particular care with research involving vulnerable groups; researcher should take great care with information that involve prominent participant by looking at vulnerability at its widest sense. These will protect the respondents from prejudice. Research ethics to the society; a researcher should be honest to the society by avoiding cheating while conducting the interview and giving them false promises. He or she should not cause harm to the society by littering the environment with the question papers used during the interview and lastly, the researcher should be fair while collecting information and data (Blaxter, 135). References Blaxter L., Hughes C., & Tight M. (2001) second edition. How to research. Chapter 6: 153-191. Buckingham: Open University Press. Foddy, W. H. (1994). Constructing questions for interviews and questionnaires: Theory and practice in social research (New edition.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Grinyer A. (2002). The Anonymity of Research Participants: Assumptions, Ethics and Practicalities. Social Research Update: Issue 36. University of Surrey John Adair. (2004). Qualities of a Successful Leader and a Manager. Longhorn publishers. Mellenbergh, G. J. (2008). Chapter 11: Tests and Questionnaires: Analysis. In H. J. Adèr & G. J. (With contributions by D. J. Hand), Advising on research methods: A consultants companion (pp.235–268). The Netherlands: Johannes van Kessel Publishing. Robert C. (2001). Leadership and Management. Harvard. Rakish et al, (1997).Qualities of a Great Man or a Hero. Cambridge university press. .University of Leicester (2007) Research Ethics Involving Human Subjects. Read More