Article Critiques on Leadership Aspects - Coursework Example

Article Critiques on Leadership Aspects Name Course Instructor Institution City/state Date Article 1: Jonhson C 2003, ‘Enron’s ethical collapse: lesson for leadership educators’ Journal of leadership education, vol. 2, no. 1, pp 45-56 Background information This article explains ethical concerns as a leadership aspect that educators have to understand. Johnson draws the concern of his work from ethical issues that arose from Enron officials who misused their powers. The officials breached ethical obligations by manipulating information and being self centered leading to poor or bad leadership. On the other hand, the author confirms that bankruptcy found its way into this firm in 2001 followed by a series of scandals (Jonhson 2003, p.46). Thus, Enron forms the basis or a case study of moral failure. From this point of view, Johnson gives leadership educators a reference for teaching leaders against bad leadership or moral decay at work. The research uses secondary collection of data as a methodology to ascertain facts about moral down fall in Enron. Many literatures like magazine articles and various books like Cruver the Anatomy of Greed (2003), which reported true facts about the wrong doings in the organization. Article summary Though this article uses secondary data in substantiating its arguments, it has presented certain issues that are worth noting with regard to leadership. Firstly, Johnson validates his claim by pointing out leadership issues in Enron. For instance, he faults the rampant moral failure at top management. Secondly, abuse of power was the basis of down fall of this organization since both its chair and vice used their powers ruthlessly. Lay and Skilling were responsible for this ethical concern. The article also mentions excess privilege that employees enjoyed at the expenses of the company. Moreover, deceit is the other wrong doing that this article identifies since top management manipulated accounting figures. The other ethical issues that Johnson brings into attention include inconsistency in treating both internal as well as external constituencies (employee-public relationships) and misplaced loyalties (Jonhson 2003, p.48). However, from Enron’s down fall, the author has also made an inference on the implication of such case study on leadership educators. For one, he claims that educators also have a part to play and should share such blame since most of Enron leaders took ethics and leadership courses not excluding Lay himself (Jonhson 2003, p. 47). After training in such schools like Harvard, it would be easy to fault the leadership wrong doings of their students. Secondly, there is the need to integrate ethics as a subject in most curricula since the education sector is neglecting the subject. Johnson also postulates that leadership trainers must put a distinction between the responsibilities of leaders and those under them as away of reducing ethical concerns. Conversely, the article explains other implications of this research including recognition credibility and accountability of followers or workers. The challenge of Enron’s down fall on education is also cited in Dean 2003(p.5). Evaluation of the article From the article title, Johnson addresses the topic under study by first colleting an empirical data from secondary sources like books and article magazines. Ethical collapse in Enron is a good reference for leadership training today, a statement that Boje et al 2004(p.754) supports. In substantiating his argument, the author has researched on some important aspects about these leaders. For instance, he explains the effects of excess privilege by referring to extravagance of Lay and his family. The chairman once said that he would want to be one of the top rich people in confirming the effects of excess privilege (Jonhson 2003, p.51). Lay borrowed $75 million dollars from the company and still bought his wife a 2 million dollar house (Jonhson 2003, p. 52). These facts are represents the validity and importance of this study with regard to leadership as it shows how excess privilege may lead to ethical breaches. The other substantiating evidence include information manipulation where workers altered accounting figures which the Senate Permanent Subcommittee investigated and found out that that the top management were aware as well as giving $55 bonus to top officials while denying laid off employees their privileges (Jonhson 2003, p.53). These substantive evidences give the article an academic strength. Johnson uses logical approach in explaining implications of his research to leadership educators. He gives the exact way on how ethics and leadership should get coverage in classrooms. The author gives supportive arguments of how to approach ethics and leadership in a way that the students will live to uphold these values within college and places of work. Educators must blame for ethical and leadership tragedies. A large number of university and masters graduates from the same field end up committing the wrong doings that Enron Company experienced. In this case, the author is trying to hold the education system accountable for moral decay in the work sector. On the other hand, Johnson is right to infer that educators must integrate ethics and leadership in most units as opposed to giving the subject a brief coverage as current education system does. Finally, the article enlightens educators on defining responsibilities of both leaders and their followers. Defined roles and responsibilities leads to responsibility among leaders thus it helps in doing away with ethical breaches (Jonhson 2003, p.54). However, weakness of the article is the data collection method. The author referred to various books as well as article magazines that were pointing out corporate wrong doings in Enron (Jonhson 2003, p.47). Implication of the research Enron’s situation has an implication for teaching ethics and leadership. In this case, the article has accomplished its objective of trying to change how educators should handle this subject. The use of Enron is an example of real life situation that indicates effects of bad leadership. The company collapsed and most of its employees were graduates of ethics and leadership as an area of study. Therefore, this article points at a different direction on how the education should handle certain leadership aspects like ethics because it has long term effects on the students. Conclusion/inference of the article The author has done a great job of bringing it focus Enron as a reference that educators must use to warn against unethical behaviours. He uses Enron collapse as a lesson for leadership educators since they should also bear the blame, integrate ethics in syllabus an encourage accountability in both leaders and staff. Moreover, there should be a clear line of responsibility of all stakeholders which makes them more accountable. Thus, the article, through a detailed research, addresses the hypothesis of ‘Enron’s ethical collapse: lesson for leadership educators’ (Jonhson 2003, p.45). ARTICLE 2: Tourish & Vatcha 2005, ‘Charismatic leadership and corporate cultism at Enron: the elimination of dissent, the promotion of conformity and organisational collapse’, leadership journal, vol. 1, no. 4, pp 1-40 Background information This article explains internal organization culture and its impact on an organization with reference to Enron as an example of business failure known in history today. The authors bring out a new phenomenon of cult leadership in their research. Thus, the two scholars have used employee archives to get their profiles and match them to emerging trends like cult leadership and charisma in the modern world with reference to its top leaders like Lay and Skiing. From different literatures that the authors looked at, they point out at communication failure as the major setback that saw Enron collapse. The research also seeks to find out how Enron’s example has implication on business practices and its impact on leadership and ethics education as well as the role of corporate governance (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p.5). From various literatures, the two authors conclude that the scandal at Enron was as a result of poor communication in its governance. The research also uses secondary data as a methodology but adopts conceptual framework with reference to various cultic organizations. Finally, the research uses analytical framework to draw conclusions from its secondary data. The article draws most of its critical information from the works of Sherry Watkins who put the company into spotlight as well as other literature on cult leadership (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p.8). Most importantly the authors have addressed their topic of study by comparing charismatic leaders with cults. Cult leaders are emulated by its followers thus they will do whatever he or she says. This was the case in Enron when Lay and Skiing manipulated their employees into following what they do. Article summary The two authors bring out a new subject of cultism in corporate governance and this is the phenomenon responsible for the fall of Enron. Besides, the research gives an implication of the cultism in business practices and education sector in general. The article draws data from different sources but it majors on Enron archives as well as literatures that have covered cultism and charismatic leadership. From their research, the two authors come to a conclusion to give a working definition of cultism for a comprehensive understanding of the topic under study. The other definitions in this study include charismatic leadership, compelling vision, individual consideration and promotion of a common culture (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p.11). Charismatic leadership entails inflicting visions or beliefs to followers which serves socially or individual benefit leaders as in the case of Enron. The other concept that is present in the article is compelling vision which is the image that leaders create for their companies to appear untouchable in future. From this concept, there arises the notion of intellectual vision where leaders try to make their organizations distinct under normal circumstances. In addition, the article explains the concepts of individual consideration to mean being self-centered, a trait that was present in Enron. Finally, the article summarizes with common culture as a cultism trait that enables leaders and their followers to do monopolize their activities thereby spreading out wrong doings to every single worker in an organization. The authors have also stated the impacts of these leadership traits to business performance, education since it is a form of corporate governance where both employees and top management speak with the same voice. Article evaluation or interpretation Tourish and Vatcha have made a major contribution in explaining the origin of wrong doings in Enron Company. By using substantive evidences, the authors have drawn a new attention by comparing corporate governance in this company to cultism. After giving some traits of cultism, the authors have done a great job of comparing these theoretical assumptions with real situations in Enron. Firstly, the authors ascertain that Enron leaders created a charisma around them that would make them enjoy some self-inflicted privileges. They gave themselves certain privileges that were constantly reported in most business reviews. For instance, one employer used the name Vader to mean ‘a master of energy universe who had the ability to control people’s mind’ (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p.11). Some used names like Storm Troopers, Mark the Shark and The Prince as some of the cult names (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p11). Such an example from the article confirms that Enron was a place for cult and charismatic leadership. Other supportive evidences of cultism in Enron include compelling visions that made the company to coin a vision of “From the World’s Leading Energy To The World’s Leading Company” (Tourish & Vatcha 2005, p.14). Therefore, the authors authenticate their arguments with direct examples from Enron leadership. Implications of the research The strength of this article is that it gives an analytical approach to the issues under study. The research seeks to find out how cultism and charismatic leadership led to Enron’s down fall by first comparing such leadership trait with some instances in the company. Hence, it is right to conclude that charismatic leadership has an impact on organization’s communication. The leaders lead the way and followers follow the exact footsteps of their executives. Nonetheless, this research has contributed in the education sector by bringing a new concept of cults and leadership. This is because the area has received little attention from most literatures hence the article has made a great contribution in leadership and ethical education. Conclusion/inference of the article The dynamics in Enron resemble cult organizations. From the traits that these authors explain, Enron was a clear example of cult leadership which the authors explain as individual considerations that shape behaviours and promoting common culture usually maintained by the use of punitive measures. However, the research has a great implication on business operations since charismatic and cult leadership in corporate governance lead to communications issues in an organization where people speak with one voice that originates from the top management. Nonetheless, the research also has an impact on leadership and ethical education by pointing out importance of negligible areas like effects of cultism and charismatic on organizations. Comprehensive comparison of the two articles The two articles are addressing certain leadership aspects with a common reference of Enron Company. They both agree that poor leadership led to the down fall of this great company by developing a corporate culture that made everyone unaccountable for their actions. Moreover, they both cite importance of their studies in leadership education that Dean 2003(6) ascertains. Johnson provides the best approach for ethical and leadership education while Tourish and Vatcha explain the need for new literatures on the importance of cultism and charismatic leadership. Thus, they both give a new direction on ethical education. However, the two pieces of work differ in that Johnson gives the solution to bad leadership while Tourish and Vatcha digs into the root course of the problem. Johnson offers new approaches of teaching ethics and leadership while Tourish and Vatcha rather concludes that cultism and charismatic leadership are the causes of bad leadership. References Boje D, Rosile G Durant R and Luhman J 2004, Enron spectacles: A critical dramaturgical analysis, Organisation Studies, vol.25, no. 1, pp751-774. Cruver, B 2003, Enron: Anatomy of Greed, London: Arrow Books Dean, L. R 2003, a challenge to change business education, mid-american journal of business, vol.18, no.1, pp5-6. Jonhson, C 2003, ‘Enron’s ethical collapse: lesson for leadership educators’, Journal of leadership education, vol. 2, no. 1, pp 45-56. Tourish, D & Vatcha N 2005, ‘Charismatic leadership and corporate cultism at Enron: the elimination of dissent, the promotion of conformity and organisational collapse’, leadership, vol. 1, no. 4, pp1-40. Read More