Organizational Leadership and Performance - Literature review Example

Organisational Leadership and Performance Student’s Name: Course Code: Tutor’s Name: Date of Submission: Organisational Leadership and Performance 1.0 Introduction George et al (2007) indicates that there are well over 1000 literatures in past half a century so as to outline ‘definitive styles, characteristics or personality traits of great leaders’. Nevertheless, there has been no unified resolution on who is an effective leader (p.129). Despite of the later, all scholars in this field unanimously accept that leadership occupies an integral role in an organisation (Gill, 2011, p.65). The world is rapidly globalising, therefore, it implies that a leader has to match/ conform/ adjust or anticipate and direct changes at global level to be an effective within and outside the organisation. The key concern is how leaders are able to leverage on the changing context globally to deliver a leading organisation by exploiting internal competencies and minimising threats through interpersonal skills like persuasion, motivation, emotional intelligence and communication skills among that allows them to shape and align the behaviours of those under their leadership to match the dynamic environment (Bolden et al, 2003, p.12-13). Using the case example of Steve Jobs second stint at Apple Inc., the ultimatum of this discourse is to interrogate, discuss in exposition format and outline the way that leadership has changed within the context of globalised environment by profiling the leadership and communication of this said international business leader. To undertake this task, the paper first examines from a theoretical angle changes in leadership within the context of globalised environment. Secondly, the paper outlines the admired leader and why by examining through comparison and contrast on timeline and trends basis the achievement of that leader and the scenario before. Thirdly, using the case example of the leader/ Jobs the paper presents a perspective of how leadership has changed. In this regard, the paper assess issues such as driving change through human relations approaches, followership & leadership styles, use of organisational culture as a transformation approach & capacity building and lastly, being authentic in leadership through positive deviance. All these embodies change in leadership where one is expected to take charge, bear responsibility, know the bigger picture, push for perfection, have organisational & people’s acumen 2.0 Change in leadership within the Context of a Globalized Environment over time When talking about the way that leadership has changed within the context of a globalized environment over time, calls for analysis of elements and manifestation of leadership such as types of leadership, the changing roles, behaviour of the leader (s), and application of social skills so as to organise the behaviours of employees and create a guiding culture. Indeed, most leaders are cognisant of the fact that employees’ needs are more than economic gains since they have other psycho-social needs. Ability to recognise this appreciates the fact that performance of individual is tied to wide array of factors which acts as constraints (Pindur, Rogers and Kim, 1995, p.65). Hence, the paradigm shift in leadership so as to keep abreast with changes calls for having a mix of people’s skills and technical skills. The change in leadership within the context of globalised world over time can be framed through trait analysis. In this regard, it prudent to examine various traits that leaders have acquired developed and perfected over time so as to discharge their mandates within the globalised, competitive and dynamic environment (Bertocci, 2009, p.20). Gill (2011, p.65) notes that it believed that ‘effective leaders have special traits in common’ with most these being ‘cognitive, emotional or interpersonal skills’. Bertocci (2009, p.20); Gill (2011, p.65) indicates these traits include intelligence, personality, communicative skills, physical characteristics, supervisory ability, integrity, self confidence, sociability, & determination as well as cognitive ability. The other approach that is used in framing the change in leadership within the context of globalised world over time is the situational model whereby it is known fact that a given situation might be applicable to other scenario and that external environment has a greater impact on the behaviour of a leader (Bertoci, 2009, p.33). Thus, the situation is like to influence the changing role of a leader in the globalised context. Bertoci (2009, p.34) opines that these include personal characteristics of a leader, the nature of the job, the nature of the organisation and the nature of the people who follow. Thus, the changing roles would be contextualised on how the leaders exploit external environment/ situational theories and internal characteristics/ trait theory and how they run their organisations to be market leaders based on them and the globalised environment. 3.0 Admired Leader and Why 3.1 Historical Trends 3.1.1Early Phase From a historical perspective, the company was established by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald G. Wayne in 1976. Wonziak and Jobs had 45% stakes each while Wayne owned the remaining 10%. At the inception, the three distributed responsibilities whereby Wayne was mandated to head documentation and mechanical engineering; Jobs was bestowed with the role of marketing and engineering while Wonziak was in charge of engineering (Iliev, Lindinger & Poettler, 2004, p.12). For them by then, their aspiration was to see their company $500 million mark within the first ten years. Nevertheless, this target was superseded within the five year bracket. At this time, the microcomputer segment was dominated by production of small desktops (Iliev, Lindinger & Poettler, 2004, p.11). Moreover, in this era, IBM dominated the industry as they were the market leaders. Other significant players by then include Atari, HP (AT&T) and Commodore. Apple Inc. by then was a fringe player owing to the fact that the firm was non compliant to benchmarks of the industry. Additionally, the partnership between IBM and Microsoft so as to produce Microsoft Disk Operating System pushed other players to periphery. 3.1.2 Second Phase The various CEOs at Apple Inc as authentic leaders brought with them various business models. The first strategy unveiled in 1984 based the company operational success on Macintosh. Additionally, to spread risks and increase profitability, the company under leadership of John Sculley diversified its production line and shifted focus to peripherals such as Apple Scanner (Muehlhausen, 2010). Muehlhausen (2010) notes that later it was realised this latest model wasn’t working since competitors such as IBM offered competitive alternatives such as MS-DOS and Windows. That meant that Apple no longer enjoyed a monopoly in the PC market. As a result, the management, under Sculley, decided to adopt a product diversification strategy. As consequence of failed business strategy, the company experienced significant drop in turnover and profits. In a generic view, this is premised on the rationale that diversification strategy only ended up manufacturing products that were already offered on the market. Critically, the expansion strategy did not follow a particular pattern. For instance, Apple started producing online portal aimed at competing with what America Online offered on the market at that time. To reverse this downward spiral trend, the new CEO, Michael Spindler licensed Macintosh clones which failed because clones ate into the company’s PC sales. The new CEO, Gil Amelio in attempt to reverse this negative experience reverted to the initial focus on Macintosh with the belief that if new technology is injected on to it would be successful (Muehlhausen, 2010). 3.1.3 Steve Jobs Second Tenure During his second stint at the firm, Jobs as the new CEO anchored the operations of Apple Inc. on improvement of principal products. As response, he terminated the issues of clones which ate Aplple’s PCs market share with the focus shifting to authentic Macintosh. Hence, the designs of the PCs were made user friendly, powerful, appealing and attractive. The next turnaround was innovation that saw launch of iMac, iPhone, iPod and the iPad. The ultimate focus was to churn out products that offered solutions to customers anchored on research and development (Muehlhausen, 2010). To attain the goal of technological leadership, Jobs cajoled his employees to be innovative and creative since he affirmed to them that henceforth innovation and creativity would be an integral part of Apple’s organisational culture (Wooten, 2010, p. 8).Based on Jobs organisational re-engineering programme, Satariano (2012) note that Apple is presently rated as the most valuable firm globally. Miller (2012) observes that portfolios such as iPhone, iPads and iPods have pushed the firm into such greater heights whereby it is the largest firm in the universe with a market cap closing in on $600 billion. Satariano (2012) affirms this view by observing that “iPhone is Apple’s top-selling product, accounting for 53 percent of its sales in the quarter that ended last December”. This is grounded on its features that ‘wows’ the customer as a result of sleek design, integration of technology in one gadget and faster internet connectivity (Yin, 2011). In 2012, the company accounted for 8% of the world mobile phone market and it is rated as the finest in the mobile phone market. “The company's sales of 37 million iPhone accounted for a highest-ever 8 percent market share” (Apple Insider, 2012).therefore, it can be argued that Jobs is one of the greatest leaders in business world. The rationale for splashing that accolade is in line with the belief that an organisation is a reflection of its leader. 4.0 Change of Leadership in Globalised Environment: A Case Example of Steve Jobs In the business world, one of the admired business leaders is the former Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc. late Steve Jobs. The underpinning for such observation is based on his efforts where he moved the company which was almost going to oblivion to one of the leading telecommunication company based on authentic leadership (Goffee & Jones, 2005, p.1). To conceptualise vividly the way that leadership has changed within the context of a globalized environment over time, the discourse reviews the traits, beliefs, behaviour as per the situation and approach taken by Steve jobs during his second stint at Apple Inc. In this globalised context, Jobs is depicted as leader with the urge to transform, grow, put theory into practice, motivate for success and ability to listen analyse critically and offer solutions. From Isaacson (2012) while citing Jobs himself, he notes that the current leaders must be able to focus, simplify, take responsibility end to end, put products before profit, bend reality, impute, push for perfection, tolerate only ‘A’ players, engage face-to-face, move in front, know the big picture and the details and lastly combine humanities with sciences. 4.1 Driving Change Lucey (2008, p.12) suggests that leaders are those people are able to initiate change and create a surrounding where change is the order of the day as opposed to those who are for stability and implementers of change. The question then how did he create that change. Yet Beaudan (2006, p.23) in his ideology states that change at one given time induce fatigue to employees. This is the stage that he refers to us as ‘stall warming’. In his literature, “making change last: how to get beyond change fatigue”, he postulates that leadership has a critical role in sustaining change by combating fatigue associated with it. To exemplify how leadership has changed within the context of globalised world especially in relation to taking responsibility, knowing big picture, leading from front, putting products before profit, bend reality, impute, push for perfection, tolerating only ‘A’ players is embodied on how Jobs managed change at Apple Inc. Jobs on his second stint, found the company on its death bed. The amazing fact is how he was able to turn it round not only as a profit making company, but to the leader of its industry and most valuable firm in the world with a market cap closing in on $600 billion (Miller, 2012). When Jobs came back to Apple in 2000, the company was worth about $5 billion. Presently, the firm is worth $170 billion (Wooten, 2010, p.4). By 2010, the company controlled 9% of the personal computer industry. That was such a tremendous gain given that its position had dropped significantly as a result of a poor business model adopted earlier on by the management, before the return of Jobs. Additionally, his return saw the company control 73% of the MP3 player market in the United States of America and 11% control of the global market share of the Smartphone. From the example of driving change what lesson can then be learnt about the way leadership has changed within the context of globalised environment? The first aspect is the role of human relations approaches and capacity building of leadership so as to create a sustainable and competitive organisation as envisioned in the ‘change dream’. In executing this plan, the link between human resource and the outlined strategies is critical (Gannon, Goherty and Roper, 2012, p.514) so as to achieve business goals (Massey, 1994, p.27). The goal of the leader in this precinct is to enhance the competencies of the employees so that they can deliver. These are usually achieved through technical assistance, training and system development (Agboola & Salawu, 2011, p.236).in this respect, the role of a leader in globalised context would be to empower others to lead while staying on his grounds (George, 2007, p.137) meaning the leader accepts that the bucks stop with him, but delegates the functions. Apple Inc. has effective human resource management that guarantees higher productivity & work & life balance; hires people irrespective of their background and empowers them to be innovative (Iliev, Lindinger & Poettler, 2004). The other approach utilised in being effective leader in the globalised context is creation of followership by utilisation of various leadership styles. Frankel (2008, p.24) argues that for a leader to be effective he or she must tune the people below him to be the followers of his ideas by minimising resistance to change through various leadership styles such as transformational leadership, charismatic, democratic & transactional leadership. These can only be attained through various soft/ interpersonal skills such as communication teamwork & teambuilding, emotional intelligence, empathy and so on. The result of such endeavour is the development of a support team. George and colleagues (2007, p.136) notes that a leader can’t succeed without a loyal team behind him. The ultimate result that is seen in the case of apple is unrivalled performance. Nevertheless, for a leader to have followers he must be authentic. Goffee and Jones (2005, p.3) notes that if a leader isn’t authentic, followers will relent because they’ll feel cheated. 4.2 Authentic Leadership George et al (2007, 129) notes that a leader can’t make it by imitating others. The key to success is being your own man by knowing yourself while relying on their experiences as a reference point. In this regard, they note that in this 21st century we need a new crop of leaders who ‘demonstrate passion, for their purpose, practice their values consistently, and lead with their hearts as well as their heads’. Moreover, such leaders build long-term meaningful engagements and practices self-discipline to get results (p.130). the core to such deviance is the ability to practice his core values while balancing extrinsic and intrinsic motivations (George et al, 2007, p.134 & 135). While acknowledging the role and traits of other previous leaders, Jobs decided to be a person of his through what is called a positive deviance where he moved out of the known comfort zone to unknown, but through planned procedures? According to Wooten (2010, p. 8), Jobs was able to achieve these higher feats because of his ability to see things differently by seizing opportunities. The core to his leadership was innovation through research and development. This has seen the firm launch masterpiece products one after the other with the hall mark of this process being iPhone. Jobs aligned the organisational culture with other key components vital for success. By having a vision driven by innovation, creativity, risk-taking and experimentation encouraged among Apple employees. Finally, Jobs was on the fore front of ensuring that there is free sharing of organisation knowledge. Employees are encouraged to create, acquire, transfer and retain organisational knowledge in order to produce great results as a whole. He embraced teamwork from his words “We’re going to do it. Let’s try” (Wooten, 2010, p. 8). In summary and based on the above, analysis and corroboration provided by Gill (2011, p.65), on how leadership has changed in the globalised context include characteristics such as ability to show positive energy, authenticity and deviance from the existing comfort to new unknown territories through research and development. Secondly, leaders must poses people’s skills/ acumen where they don’t judge with bias be able to direct and lead teams, motivate individuals & to help in personal growth and corporate growth and ability to cut losses. The third emerging perspective is organisational acumen where the leader cultivates trust, share information, listen expertly, be able to pinpoint causes of underperformance, deliver on promises, change orientation swiftly and be decisive & incisive. The other includes urge for success and not for the sake of leading, rational judgement and voracious urge to grow and turn learning experiences into reality. 5.0 Conclusion The aim of the paper was to assess how leadership has changed within the context of globalised environment. The paper utilised the case example of Steve Jobs second stint at Apple so as to conceptualise the leadership changes within globalised world. Since leadership traits and behaviour that have changed are numerous, the paper used case examples that would combine numerous traits into one. The first example utilised by the discourse is driving change. In regard to driving change, globalised context requires a leader to lead from front, take responsibility, have positive energy, cut loses, have capacity to critically sees where the problems exist & offer solutions and lastly, keeping to the promise. The last example used is authenticity through positive deviance that calls for modern leaders in globalised world to be able to employ organisational and people’s acumen. References Agboola, A. A. & Salawu, R. O. (2011). Managing Deviant Behavior and Resistance to Change. International Journal of Business and Management, 6(1), 235-242. Apple Insider (2012). Apple's iPhone believed to account for record 8% of global mobile phone market. Retrieved on 27 September 2013 from: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/27/iphone_believed_to_account_for_record_ 8_of_global_mobile_phone_market.html. Beaudan, E. (2006). Making change last: how to get beyond change fatigue, Ivey Business Journal, 22 (7), 23-89. Bertocci, I. D. (2009). Leadership in organisations: there is a difference between leaders and managers. Lanham: University Press of America. Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A. and Dennison, P. (2003). A review of leadership theory and competency frameworks. 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