Leaders Set the Vision, and Managers Carry out the Practice - Assignment Example

Understanding and Managing Organizations

Q1

It is a common quote and concept in organizational behaviour that “leaders set the vision, and managers carry out the practice”. The quote insinuates that proper integration of effective leadership and management defines any successful enterprise. The two concepts form an integral component of an organizational structure that oversees the fulfilment of laid goals and objectives. However, leadership and management are two distinct concepts that independently influence development (Gold, Thorpe, & Mumford 2010, p 26). They operate under different principles. The structure of an organization determines their effectiveness. For instance, leadership can work effectively in a societal or communal set-up than management. However, where individuals are involved in an efficient and effective utilization of resources; and where the observation of time and limitations is imperative, management becomes the ideal concept of application.

Both leadership and management are crucial in any organization. The two concepts work together to force organizational success. They both deal with people, but in different ways. For instance, leaders are inspirational; they rejuvenate people’s capabilities; they restore people’s strengths. Strong leaders can influence a large group of people: communities, societies, and even the whole world (Bertocci 2009, p19). They usually work together with the people in a way that attracts conformity. In this case, leaders are positioned in the right place to understand people will, expectations, and needs, both intellectually and naturally. The prowess and powers that leaders have and exert on people are normally innate. Another statement that alludes this sentiment is that, ‘leaders are born, managers are made’. With this natural intuition, they can figure from people some gestures that managers can never observe. From an intellectual scope, it is undoubtedly that leaders are more artistic, creative, and influential to people spirits, minds, and emotions (Schein 2004, p 11). They are flexible and apply their command with deep understanding; they are indefinite, which is the social nature of humans.

Managers are more definite and scientific. They work under strict managerial concepts to deal with people. Leaders, therefore, control people to work for them. If need be, they can manipulate their employees through motivational measures to ensure that they meet their organizational goals. Considering leadership, the principals usually have people followers. Leadership works through the organization and influences its activities as the core driving force (Silzer & Dowell, 2009). People are contented with them and obey their calls. Leaders, therefore, can envision the needs of their followers or workers. Managers normally undergo training to carry out their tasks effectively. They learn skills, which they use to control people. Managers do not always harbour to control people, but they also understand the organizational structure and its functions. They utilize their skills to speculate and determine working and ineffective functions. They are brilliant, good managers can achieve their objectives without the universal acceptance of the people working for the organization. However, they not only need the substance of their skills, but also rely on the wisdom of leaders to figure our complicated issues about humans as social beings that they are unable to comprehend accurately. In this essence, organizations need to observe both concepts of leadership and management.

Most entrepreneurs operate under sole proprietorship. Successful business owners need to be both good leaders and managers (Adeniyi 2007, p 19). Agreeably, leadership envisions, and management carries out the practice. The work of a leader is to inspire and motivate, while that of a manager involves organizing, planning, and coordinating. Since single entities own most businesses, the owner needs to learn both concepts. Leaders have followers and managers have subordinates. Despite this fact, many organizational leaders have subordinates, but only because they are also managers. Only leaders in the mainstream roles such as politics have followers. In business organizations, there are resources to be overseen. The entrepreneur should ensure that time and resources are both observed within the scopes of efficiency and effectiveness. Similarly, the factor of human resource, which defines labour, is core to the organization’s growth and development. However, methods of dealing with definite resources are different from those of dealing with indefinite social, intellectual, and emotional people. In this essence, organizations need both leadership and management.

The visions of a leader encourage and informs. The wisdom of a leader creates an environment conducive to effective management. Therefore, leaders’ direction in leading people makes it easier for managers to plan details and manage work. Because leaders have visions, their course of direction usually takes a long-term period. On the other hand, managers carry out the practice to meet objectives, which are usually short-termed. Organizational leadership and management scholars have alluded that the heart normally guides leaders’ course of action, while the head guides that of managers. Passion and control represent these two items respectively. Leadership focuses on people, influence, and objectives (Daft 2011, p 371). That is the reason leaders facilitates while managers make; they shape while managers enact; they are transformational while the latter are transactional. This proactivity and reactivity between leaders and managers reflects to achievements and results respectively. Therefore, as leaders envisions, the managers carry out the practice because the previous seeks new roads while the latter establishes their action on existing roads. Organizations achieve utmost success when the principals employ both leadership and management skills.

Q2

An organization structure refers to the method of organizing, harmonizing, and dividing organization activities. It can be vertical or flat where vertical structure have many management levels while flat system is associated by few levels of management (Shafiee 2016, p161). A flatter organizational involves few levels of management. Over the past decades, they have had trends of favour in the business world. It involves having small layers in a company’s organizational chart. Each chart varies with the complexity of the firm. The reduced layers in flatter organizations make its system less bureaucratic. Otherwise, flatter organizations with bureaucratic structures accumulate many layers prompting the managers to recruit many employees (DuBrin, A. J, 2012, p 274). A flatter organization can either be a small business whose staff report directly to its president. It can also be a multinational corporation with a large number of management levels.

In a flatter organizational structure, each manager in a unit has high numbers of direct reports. Division of sub-units such as middle management staff and the executives determines whether an organizational structre is delayed or horizontal. These sub-units in the structure relate based on the positions and the role they play. The difference between a taller and a flatter organizational structure depend on the levels of management and managers available.

Limited supervisors in each layer between the bottom level and the executive levels is a characteristic that defines the flat or horizontal organizational structure. In a flat organizational structure, they usually have the manufacturing, procurement, marketing, human resource, research, and development enterprises horizontally placed to each other.

Advantages

This organizational structure has many advantages that include faster decision-making, cost effectiveness, better communication channel, promoting knowledge development, collaboration, and high productivity. Less management level the flatter structure requires is the major factor that leads to these benefits.

• Faster decision-making

They have few layers hence information can pass between different management levels for faster decision-making. Consequently, they respond quickly to opportunities and threats facing the organization. Quick decision-making will enable the decision makers to answer to new business issues promptly.

• Cost Saving

Since the characteristics of flatter organizations include fewer levels of management, the structure incurs in terms of salaries paid to employees. In addition, it tends to be rigid in granting salary increase and promotions. Flatter organizations have increased decision-making, which contributes to more effective communication and lower costs (Woods & West 2010, p 411). Promotions follow performance, which makes it beneficial cost wise.

• Better communication system

The management levels are few; therefore, information does not have to pass through a series of channels, which can lead to message distortion of before its destination. This facilitates greater level of communication between managers and employees (Cornelissen 2008, p11). Therefore, communication system is reliable, faster, and effective. It has high level understanding among stakeholders, which enhances communication and influence each stakeholder exerts in the organization (Burford 2012, p 55)

• Greater knowledge development

It also promotes knowledge development by encouraging group performance, dialogs, and making sources of innovation closer to employees. Every personcan bring ideas and get feedback from the operational process, services, company policies, products, and business models. These will enable the company to discover new business ideas for a competition (Cameron el al., 2014, p149).

• Adaptability

There is lack of bureaucracy that makes employees and work groups to adapt to dynamic environment easily. There is high customer satisfaction through complaint resolution when top-level employees are empowered to solve customer complaints without management approval. In addition, work groups can device their own operational process without management approval. These promote adaptability among employees within the organization.

Disadvantages

Flat organizational structure is also associated with disadvantages such as close supervision by manages. The number of staff employed in such firm are very few because they high experience and knowledge in their respective work. Therefore, managers always monitor their job closely to avoid any error. These demoralize employees and make them feel forced to perform their duties.

Because flatter organizations are downsized, the workloads are often heavier leading to employee dissatisfaction (Woods & West 2010, p 312). There are high chances of power struggle among the managers because most of them have equal qualifications. Leadership wrangles are likely to arise amongst workers on whom to take charge when top executive managers die. The workers lack specific boss to report to, which creates confusion and more power struggles among them. It characterizes low motivation because of less management levels to give chances for promotion. This will make it difficult for employees to concentrate and specialize on their job. The low motivation affects the levels of performance in the organization negatively.

Employees’ retention becomes difficult since it discourages workers promotion thereby most of them to will switch to other organizations for promotion. Some employees will also move to other firms to seek for better salaries. All this factors will lower the performance of the organization by raising the cost of training new employees into the firm.

There can be work relationship struggle when managers have many individuals to manage each day. This will make it hard to relate to their employees personally which leads trust issues between them. Finally, this affects the morale of the levels of organization’s authority. In addition, there will be less respect between workers and their bosses.

The management can lose control when they have less people to control their behaviour. The system can also bring problems to the whole firm when the level of staff to manage becomes very large for managers to control. This will affect the performance of the organization by lowering efficiency level within the organization.

Q3

A strong culture is an indispensable tool that controls behaviours of individuals within organizations (Reisyan 2016, p 246). It provides the basis or platform of actions. People respond to what they believe. Accustoming to certain standards and adhering with their influences and repercussions construct the beliefs. Organizational culture can influences all transformations within institutions (Driskill & Brenton 2011, p 20). For instance, it motivates staff, defines management tools, and influences performance ratios. Positive results are usually associated with strong organizational culture, and, therefore, should be encouraged. Traditions develop from culture. Strong culture, therefore, cultivates good traditions that oversee organizational success.

The world of business is dynamic. Norms and operational concepts change from time to another. Organizations face challenges each time they have to rationalize operations due to the ever-changing business environments. Scholars in line with organizational leadership and management have argued that extremely strong culture is never appropriate enough for organizations that operate in dynamic environments since it builds rigidity and inhibits. It inhibits creativity and discourages change. They impact of its strength, therefore, is never suitable for working styles that require frequent changes (Woodside 2010, p 17). However, moderately strong culture binds people working within an organization together and contributes to smooth functioning. It establishes strong markets and operational foundations that can withstand some changes in the internal and external business environments. The culture establishes a common behaviour patterns among individuals who constitute the organization. When the culture is strong, employees tend to have similar believes and behaviour patterns. It also becomes intolerant to behaviours that deviate from the common or acceptable standards.

Because the strong culture cultivates a system that works mutually and with common understands, it promotes teamwork. Organizations have different people with various backgrounds and talents. When these individuals come together and work under a common culture that embraces their variation, they become motivated to work with one another. They communicate freely, which enhances coordination; hence, teamwork. Enhanced communication and teamwork is a crucial factor in determining performance. The behaviour patterns are supported by organizational requirements. For instance, an advertising company would require members that are creative and innovative. In this case, the organization would require a culture that encourages and promotes people with passion for adventure and are ready to experiment new things, and take risks. Similarly, employees working in the healthcare practice need to be more cautious and well trained. They would need a different culture that supports their practice. When a culture is stable, the employees follow suit.

Every business organization needs to identify themselves with some level of uniqueness. This makes them distinct operators in the market. Firms or business enterprises normally makes up the industry. Without standards that identify the organization, it becomes difficult to attain competitive advantage. The consumers have different tastes and preferences, which determine their choice of company to make purchases. The organizational culture ensures the production of standardized products that would establish a loyal market segment for a company.

Strong corporate culture indicates the like-mindedness of the employees, which encompasses similar ethical values and beliefs. When the beliefs and values align with organizational objectives, they become effective in building trust and rapport, which are important in team working (Pfister 2009, p 26). The bond that ensues helps the employees to avoid internal conflicts and focus on performance, and task completion (Hinden, Sturm, & Teegarden 2013, p 20). The strong culture eases responsibilities and communication to everyone within the company. The culture reminds employees of their job prescription, rewards forms that are available in the company, and how the management assesses their productivity. To integrate culture and performance, organizations structure their recruitment processes in a manner that attracts and engages people with similar values and beliefs to constitute its culture (Schein 2010, p11). It ensures that new employees assimilate to the organization, which further strengthens the culture. Companies should oversee that they align the performance management systems with the established culture. When management systems and culture are not aligned, the management must should redirect them to facilitate the employee behaviour to result in organizational goal and achievements.