Constructing Leader and Follower Identities - Literature review Example

People - The Human Side of Organising Question 1 (5 p) Constructing leader and Follower Identities It is a trend that people, who work in groups or teams, acquire different identities. This aspect of the organization is as illustrated in sports, which encompasses a group of players that come together with a common goal. The main strategy in achieving the desired results is through interdependent cooperation with the organizational goal in mind. An organization is a system of interdependent activities with the members motivated and committed to the organizational action. A practical scenario is the football arena that comprises of eleven members or players for every tournament or match. The eleven players form the subsystems of the whole system with high-level interdependence cultivated to achieve team success. The formation of a complete team is a process that takes time to function normally and optimally. The environment being critical to the formation of team identity; it is imperative that with time different players adopt different identities. The dynamic environment of competitiveness and demand for teamwork helps in shaping the individual members and the team identity. The dynamic environment calls for a high degree of adaptability from the players. This is one key aspect that determines whether one adopts a leader or a follower identity. With the high level of interdependence forming a foundation of successful teams, the ability to work cooperatively with other players is critical. The demanding environment and the organization system help in shaping leaders of the team. The need to cultivate understanding between the players and to forge new approaches to attaining the team goals calls for a player with these abilities as a leader. With any team expected to deliver results for every tournament or competition, the commitment of individual players is tested. Leadership in any team is supposed to reflect a commitment of the highest level; hence, it becomes one key component for the team leader. With the high demand and responsibility placed on the team leader, it is no doubt that most players fall under the follower identity (Peze, 2003, p.5). The trait approach advocates that individuals with certain characteristics become leaders, and others have to follow them. This is a reality more often, with the player that exhibits greater self-confidence, determination and high integrity selected to take on the responsibility of a team leader. The challenge of rallying a group behind an idea or course of action plays a key role in shaping a team leader. The greater the influence of the player within the group, the greater the ability to influence a group, hence others in the team inevitably follow him as a leader. Question 2 (5 p) Critical Approach on Leadership Identity regulation is regarded as a mode of control that is accomplished through the self-positioning of employees within managerially inspired dialogs about work and organization with which they become more or less identified and committed (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992, p.437). Any individual in the workplace is assumed to have a number of potential identities. These identities include personal identity, social identity, nested identity, cross-cultural, higher order, and lower order identities. The shift in significance of the identities is mainly due to their situational relevance. For identity regulation to prompt identity work, a discourse of identity regulation must be available and repetitive (O’Doherty & Willmott, 2002, p.115). Understanding the way such discourses link themselves to organizational members identity work is key. The various organizational practices of identity regulation make the link possible. Organizational practices of identity regulation come through various targets of identity regulation. Concerning the employee, the practices aim to define the individual and define a person by defining others. Through action orientation, the practices regulation aim at providing specific vocabulary of motives, spell out the morals and values and provide knowledge and skills. By providing group categorization and affiliation, the practices aim at providing regulation on social relations, while the scene is regulated through establishment of a distinct set of rules defining what is to be accepted as normal or abnormal and defining the context. These practices of identity regulation help in understanding how identity regulation relates to the identities of organizational members. Organizational members are exposed to identity regulation in specific contexts (Kuhn, 2006, p.1342). For the order workers, the concept of participation has been identified as a way of enacting discourses of identity regulation. Participation eases the management process through inclusion of the dialogs in their weekly or regular meetings. A study on this practice and its effectiveness in regulation adopt the process of recruitment as its focal point. This entails micro practices with the various moves that allow interviewers to have control over how candidates express themselves. Practices are mainly focused on organizational members everyday activities (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011, p.1242).They are generally viewed as patterns of repetitive actions that require constant supervision to be carried out. Therefore, with the organizational practices in place, the management can adopt them as general templates of identity regulation within an organization. Managerial trainings provide another good opportunity for managers in the process of identity regulation. This is because most of these programs are collectively developed in ways that have implications for the shaping and direction of identity (Alvesson & Willmott, 1992, p.450). The trainings form a set of micro-practices that are tailor-made in order to reach certain goals that includes the development of a particular knowledge and skills set. This in turn results to unplanned outcomes that have a bearing on identity formation. Question 3.(5 p) Leadership in Salient Groups. Social identification process can affect the effectiveness of a cohesive work group for a non-prototype manager. A non-prototype manager focuses on the identity theory that seeks to define an individual relative to others. This means much emphases is placed on position or role rather than the social aspect of fitting or belonging in a group. The effectiveness of teams is largely dependent on the members’ interdependent cooperation more than any one individual’s role. Therefore, for a non-prototype manager achieving effectiveness in a cohesive group or structure becomes hard. For a group manager to achieve effectiveness in the group, the process of prototyping is necessary. This involves the depersonalization of the individual to fit the group. This involves coming up with identity regulation practices within the organization that emphasis on relationships, social processes, as well as organizational collectives. Emphasizing on team performance as an organization rather than competition is also another approach. This involves changing the view of one group versus another which in the end may not yield the expected synergy and adopting an organizational identity rather than a group identity. This helps to reduce conflicts that may arise out group differences and categorization. The manager has a role and responsibility of ensuring that groups function cohesively and effectively. By adopting an organizational identity, the organization can harness the great potential of diverse groups of individuals within a team. List of References Alvesson, M., & Willmott, H. (1992). On the idea of emancipation in management and organization studies. Academy of Management Review, 17(3), 432-464 . Feldman, M. S., & Orlikowski, W. J. (2011). Theorizing Practice and Practicing Theory. Organization Science, 22(5), 1240 - 1253. Kuhn, T. (2006). A ‘Demented Work Ethic’ and a ‘Lifestyle Firm’: Discourse, Identity, and Workplace Time Commitments. Organization Studies, 27(9), 1339-1358, O'doherty, D., & Willmott, H. (2001). The question of subjectivity and the labor process. International Studies of Management and Organization, 30(4), 112-132. Peze, S. (2003, July 31). Controlling Managers ’becoming’: The Practice of Identity Regulation. Palgrave. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00849533/document [Retrieved 2014-11-19] Read More