Fiorina - Chief Executive Officer of the HP Company - Example

Introduction. Fiorina is an enthusiastic, charismatic lady with vision for success. She had the tenacity and the aggressiveness that saw her success in the job and that made her be hired for the most competitive job as the chief executive officer of the HP Company which is the second biggest company in the world. Her exemplary leadership in the lucent technologies company made her an enigma in companies’ organizational behaviour as a role model. It just could not even stop to rumours that she could also be hired for a very senior position as a cabinet minister in the Country under the Bush administration. Her performance at the lucent technologies which is in the same business line was a turning point in her life that made it all her success. Common to the public eye as a rock star CEO, her life started taking a different direction just immediately she took over the leader ship of HP. The profits stabilised while the revenues sky rocketed under her leader ship and neither did the stock market make any impressive change. Her personality was the next question to be discerned by the board members of HP Company. Reducing power in the company was the next alternative for the board members. She was such a public figure that she could not avoid canvassing with people but unfortunately seemed to overdo it to the extent that she forgot her responsibilities as the company CEO. Cultural values of the company seemed to have been swept clean by her presence and that also seemed not to be liked by the many staff members under her jurisdiction. Despite her good performance record at the Lucent technologies, all seemed to have been turned upside down Discussion It is like she had forgotten that personality has a very big influence on the work outcomes. Rumours had it that she had most of her time talking to her friends other than providing leadership in the company. One can assume of having had a power vacuum in the company’s leadership under her jurisdiction. Personality controls the job performance, work motivation, attitudes, leadership, power and politics. Some people have stress and adaptability that enables the coping may be influenced due to wrong personality. ‘Leadership requires team effectiveness that helps reduce counterproductive or deviant behaviours’ (Bradberry and Greaves 2009, pp 123). Behavioural traits have been associated with emotional competencies. Bar on model on emotional and social intelligence defines intelligence as being able to understand one self and others to help in relating to other people, adapt to and cope with immediate surroundings in order to be successful in dealing with the environmental demands. ‘While the trait EI model associates the aspects of behavioural dispositions and self perceived abilities which is the opposite of ability bases model that take account of actual abilities to manage and show exemplary leadership for success’ (Boyatzis, Goleman and Rhee 2000,pp 356). All this are investigations within the frame work of personality of individuals and can also cover group attributes. The popular success and the rumours out weight judgment based on abilities and gave way for trait based consideration which is a wrong. Assessment of personality therefore is not important factor when it comes to trait based model. However, the ability based model or system when applied to find out the personality of an individual will provide the correlation with somebody’s ability to cope with the new environment, tolerance factor, and abilities to move towards success. Hence, in reference to the Fiorinas’ case, Personality is an essential thing because her position directly influences all the undertakings in the company. All her directive also affect the co-operate social aspect especially if they appear tainted like she does by brushing shoulder with other celebrity rock stars. Personality and business growth are therefore related indirectly. It has been argued that Fiorina failed because her personality. They say it was ‘too big’ and that she became more of an introvert that turning on the nuts-and-bolts of business at the HP. It is now being contested whether somebodies personality can be too strong and how that is actually influenced. Personality is an issue to do with perceptions, either by the interested personalities or individuals who when asked about you will have something to say. This is judgemental and is a risky line of though considering that people have different ways of conceptualizing ideas on who somebody is or can be. The say that she was drawn to her pomp and circumstance is an indication of her being self possessed and overconfident on rock matters now that she had even adopted a new title of a rock CEO. She was a celebrity and a good architect; she enjoyed the attention of other people, and that portrayed her as an enthusiastic and exciting. Little did she understand the fact that organizational depend on the people, individuals and groups working in the organization. Yes, a person’s personality could be so strong. ‘According to the systems approach to organizational behaviours, people and organization are seen in terms of a whole person, whole groups and whole organization and whole social systems’ (Huczynski &Buchanan 2004, pp 540). Better relationships can be developed by achieving the human objectives, organizational objectives and social objectives. This is subject to the human behaviour, change, leadership and team works that help to establish a culture. The philosophy developed in order to achieve the company’s vision, goals and mission rests on the elements of the organizational behaviour. ‘This drives the culture and determines the type of leadership, communication and group dynamics’ (Forshaw et al 2006, pp 314). She alone would not make HP succeed without the support of other executive staff in the company. The quality of work life directs the degree of motivation for the employees and hence the outcomes are performance, individual satisfaction, personal growth and development. All this build the frame work that an organization or a company can operate on. Her leadership was not liked because she chose to work on a single model of leadership management. She was more autocratic that the people refused to perfume due to a change they were not interested in. good management will depend on applications of right models of leaderships. For instance, she ought have used a combination of the custodial, supportive and collegial than autocratic frame work of management. This helps in checking of the performance of thee employees and hence giving different outputs that are a measure of good management. All this have a bearing on the McGregor’s Theory X and Y Whether gender has role to play in Fiorina’s firing is another contestable idea. Some people were of the opinion that Fiorina's firing was an example of the double standard that being aggressive and forceful works for men but backfires for women. Fiorina’s firing was purely based on her inability to drive the company towards the channel of success just as she had done it while at the Lucent technologies. She may have the best personality as of the public opinion, but if that is not reflected on the work output as it deed reflect, it does raises eye brows on ones abilities and capabilities. She was an aggressive lady and it did not stop with her being aggressive at the time she made a choice to take up leadership at the HP Company. However, we cannot deny the fact that gender plays a fundamental role in everything we do. This links to the behaviours of males and females in business organization. It is also of value to state categorically that gender demographics have been used by many organizations to further their political agendas. Personal specialists have promoted the idea that anybody can become whoever he/she wants in life and no boundaries have been set. Gender communication is thus important in structuring and operating organizations. Also, studies have been done on the functionability of women show that women have a stronger functional social orientation than the male gender. ‘Women always seek and want very competitive, challenging situations but in a safe environment with enough job security’ (Robbins, Judge and Campbell 2010, pp 325). On the other hand men seek open, no holds competitive environments. They in fact prefer a linear environment with equal opportunities for competitive situations. It is a very dynamic society that has developed room for every individual. Those who have the required attributes for a certain position are hired without consideration of the gender nor age or the social class. ‘The contemporary relationship between diversity, culture and behaviour has been associated to the relationship between individuals’ (Saks & Johns 2007, pp 57). Fiorina’s hiring by the board of directors of HP Company would not have occurred were it that they had this kind of thinking. Mutual respect for one another has been a key pillar to success between individuals in companies. Acceptance of diversity in the times ethnicity, socio-cultural, Socio economic status, gender, age, physical abilities and religious beliefs has shaped many co-operations of today. Acceptance of diversity incorporates tolerance to embrace and celebrates and embraces the very rich dimensions that each and every individual or group brings to the company or to a group. Personality testing was part of the assessment criteria used for her selection, it comprised of a full two hour, 900 –question test which did go through very successfully. The relevance of personality testing has been put to test on its reliability to assess a person’s personality. Personality tests are conducted to find out the other aspect about an individual’s trait that they are not likely to observe. However, most people will try to fake their personality depending with their job requirement. This does not suggest that personality test have no value at all. They are an important part of personality assessment, teamwork, responsiveness, aggressiveness and leadership abilities. It is the theoretical understanding that is assessed and not the practical approach to leadership and management of which most people are emotionally intelligent and every other leader will pass that test. It is also imperative to consider that there are different types of personality tests and the main objective is to find out about somebody’s stable character throughout a person’s life, individuals person thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Personality tests come as projective tests and the other one that tends to assess personality indirectly. Scoring of personality can be either by the normative or topological approach. ‘Topological approach describes opposing categories where individuals differ with the intended objectives, while normative responses could be graphed as bell curves implying that not all aspect of the personality are very relevant’ (Rumbles et al 2010, pp 127). However, all this has heard various criticisms and controversy. A biased test taker interpretation has shown that people only acknowledge the information that applies to them. This has been linked to the Forer effect that often used in psychology. Social factors over personality test have also been contested and it has been asserted that personality does not often predict behaviour in specific contexts especially by the psychologists. Recent research over personality test revealed that behaviour is aggregated across contexts, and it can be predicted that personality can be good or modest predictor of behaviour. It is now acceptable that all social norms and individual difference factors influence behaviour. Respondent faking has also been an issue of self report measurement of personality. Most respondents are able to fake their or distort their response. It has been particularly a problem in the context of employment and other context that do require serious decision to be made and presentation in a favourable manner has quite some good incentive. Strategies have been adopted to reduce the chances of faking. Fiorina is an independent enthusiastic individual with excellent social attributes. She understands herself and her environment very well and knows what it takes to be in her position. It is very well then that she can go through any personality test and perform excellently. The board of directors proposed her because of her well augured personality while at the Lucent technologies. She has even been referred to in Organizational books as a good leader. She has all the attributes people can read and identify from her traits and having had been a public personality, that cannot be faked at all. Conclusion Her tenure at the HP saw her personality go down the lane because she had low tolerance capacity to changing environment. The change of culture at the HP Company also did influence her and that is why she adopted an authoritarian rule to handle the employees which did not go down them very well. As a result, they became less motivated and the whole work output was to go down too. Also, it can be said that she lacked the balance between her social life and the co-operate life as a CEO and leader of the company. The company also saw itself down the lane of business despite having had an excellent track record in management and leadership. Personality test therefore has no role to play on this factor. It is still a very important part of the assessment process. While gender has no role completely because the company only recognises success and not gender. Above all, personality is the greatest influence to every success. Reference list Boyatzis, R, Goleman, D, and Rhee, K 2000, Clustering competence in emotional intelligence: insights from the emotional competence inventory (ECI). In R. Bar-On & J.D.A. Parker (eds.): Handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 343-362). Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Bradberry, T and Greaves, J 2009, Emotional Intelligence, 2nd edn, Group West, San Francisco. Huczynski, A, Buchanan, D A 2004, Organizational behaviour: an introductory text, 5th edn, FT/Prentice Hall, New York. Forshaw, C et al 2006, Organizational Behaviour in a Global context, 3rd edn, University of Toronto, Toronto. Robbins, PS, Judge, TA, and Campbell, T 2010, Organizational Behaviour, Pearson Education limited, Canada. Rumbles, S et al 2010, Organizational Behaviour, 2nd edn, Wiley and sons, New Jersey .pp 127 Saks, AM, Johns, G 2007, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edn , Pearson Education, Canada, Read More