Handbook of Management and Leadership - Essay Example

Apple Inc Management and Leadership Paper Swarnambika S Academia Research Leadership has different meanings to various Leadership could be defined as influence, that is, the art of process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals (Bass, 1981). In earlier times, managers only needed to know the 'how' of business processes and act upon them. Today, there is a necessity to know and understand the 'why' of business, because the 'why' enables the knowledge power to anticipate business opportunities and be proactive. Leadership is not a one-day thing. It is a journey of constant commitment to excellence without a final destination. Leadership demands self-improvement and self-renewal to continue. Leaders make decisions that create the future and above all, successful leaders of today dare to desire. They must dominate the events around them while maintaining an atmosphere of dignity and mutual respect. In this paper, we would be discussing on the roles and responsibilities of leaders in creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture. Literature Review The ability to look at the world as it is and view something new and improved is a valued leadership trait. Leaders with this quality have been able to create something new by breaking down the barriers caused by existing paradigms that once stifled progress. They have been innovative, creative, flexible, responsible and not afraid to experiment. Many organizations consist of multi-disciplinary teams as a way of doing business. This system may work well until a problem occurs. The teams' behavioral interaction may change and they may begin finger-pointing and apportioning blame, instead of finding solutions cooperatively. For example, the marketing department may look at what is perceived to be a distribution problem. Instead of the unnecessary finger pointing, marketing adopts the customer's perspective and suggests a solution to solve the problem. Ideas and solutions can be found in some of the most unlikely places and leaders should not be too quick to dismiss the less than obvious. Once the idea or solution has been sourced, one should not be afraid to experiment and take risks to invest in ideas that show promise, even if it means trying the idea again and again in different variations. To understand management and leadership better, it is essential to analyze the role of leaders in creating and maintaining a healthy organizational culture. Fred E. Fiedler and his associates at the University of Illinois have suggested a contingency theory of leadership (Fiedler, 1967). The theory holds that people become leaders not only because of the attributes of their personalities but also because of various situational factors and the interactions between leaders and group members. On the basis of his studies, Fiedler described three critical dimensions of the leadership situation that help determine what style of leadership will be most effective (Miner, 1982, p.22): Position power is the degree to which the power of a position, as distinguished from other sources of power, such as personality or expertise, enables a leader to get group members to comply with directions; in the case of managers, this is the power arising from organizational authority. As Fiedler points out, a leader with clear and considerable position power can obtain good followership more easily than one without such power (Bowers, 1975, pp.167-180). With the dimension of Task structure, Fiedler had in mind the extent to which tasks can be clearly spelled out and people held responsible for them. If tasks are clear (rather than vague and unstructured), the quality of performance can be more easily controlled and group members can be held more definitely responsible for performance. Fiedler regarded the dimension of Leader-member relations as the most important from a leader's point of view, since position power and task structure may be largely under the control of an enterprise. It has to do with the extent to which group members like, trust, and are willing to follow a leader (Yuki, 1981, p.14). To approach his study, Fiedler set forth two major styles of leadership. One of these is primarily task-oriented; that is, the leader gains satisfaction from seeing tasks performed. The other is oriented primarily toward achieving good interpersonal relations and attaining a position of personal prominence. Favorableness of situation was defined by Fiedler as the degree to which a given situation enables a leader to exert influence over a group. To measure leadership styles and determine whether a leader is chiefly task-oriented, Fiedler used an unusual testing technique (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991, pp.48-60). He based his findings on two sources: (1) scores on the least preferred coworker (LPC) scale - these are ratings made by people in a group as to those with whom they would least like to work; and (2) scores on the assumed similarity between opposites (ASO) scale - ratings based on the degree to which leaders see group members as being like themselves, on the assumption that people will like best, and work best with, those who are seen as most like themselves. Today the LPC scale is most commonly used in research. In developing this scale, Fiedler asked respondents to identify the traits of a person with whom they could work least well (Fiedler, 1967). On the basis of his studies with this method, as well as studies done by others, Fiedler found that people who rated their coworkers high (that is, in favorable terms) were those who derived major satisfaction from successful interpersonal relationships. People who rated their "least preferred coworker" low (that is, in unfavorable terms) were seen as deriving their major satisfaction from task performance. From his research, Fiedler came to some interesting conclusions (Ingrassia, 1985). Recognizing that personal perceptions may be unclear and even quite inaccurate, Fiedler nonetheless found the following to be true: Leadership performance depends as much on the organization as it depends on the leader's own attributes. Except perhaps for the unusual case, it is simply not meaningful to speak of an effective leader or an ineffective leader; we can only speak of a leader who tends to be effective in one situation and ineffective in another. If we wish to increase organizational and group effectiveness we must learn not only how to train leaders more effectively but also how to build an organizational environment in which the leader can perform well (Indvik, 1986, pp.189-192). In a highly structured situation, such as in the military during a war, where the leader has strong position power and good relations with members, there is a favorable situation in which task orientation is most appropriate. The other extreme, an unfavorable situation with moderately poor relations, an unstructured task, and weak position power, also suggests task orientation by the leader, who may reduce anxiety or ambiguity that could be created by the loosely structured situation. Between the two extremes, the suggested approach emphasizes cooperation and good relations with people. While many people believe that leaders are born rather than made, Fiedler (1967) points out that leadership is a learnable skill that is complementary to management. He writes: "Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. It has nothing to do with having charisma or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of the chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Both are necessary for success in a complex and volatile business environment." But before considering what the differences are between management and leadership, let's first consider what the terms mean. One simple definition of management is "coping with complexity." The growth of large organizations led to the creation of management hierarchies as a method of maintaining control over things such as planning, budgeting, reporting, and supervising and so on. Good management means that, even in the most complex of organizations, things happen in an orderly and controlled fashion. Leadership however, is about the process of initiating and coping with change, now a vital factor with significant changes in technology, competition, regulation, economic and demographic changes occurring more and more frequently. While most management processes have in the past been geared towards gradual evolutionary change, organizations are increasingly finding themselves in situations that require constant change. More importantly, this constant need for change is not simply occurring at the top of the organization, it is a pressure being experienced at all levels in the organization. The question of the difference between a manager and leader is raised frequently. In a broad sense, managers are administrators who write business plans, set budgets and monitor business. Leaders, on the other hand, get organizations and people to change. Management is a function that is exercised in any business. Leadership is the relationship between the leader and those being led and this relationship can energize an organization. What is it that makes a manager a good leader One has to ask why people follow this leader and what does the leader have to do to make organizations and their teams successful. History has shown that people follow a leader either out of fear or for a mix of positive reasons such as hope of success, trust in the leader, excitement about a project or mission, or the opportunity to stretch oneself to the limit. Leaders create a vision which inspires people with an ideal of what can be achieved. They make people feel they are the best and can achieve whatever they imagine. Leadership effectiveness is a topic that continues to engender considerable attention in both the popular and scholarly literature (e.g., Waldman, Ramirez, House & Puranam, 2001, pp.134-143). Increasing globalization and the challenges of operating in the global economy have only served to heighten this interest. Developing an understanding of what constitutes effective leadership, however, has been a complex undertaking. The debate has ranged from the belief that leadership is a "useless concept" (Pandey, 1976, pp.475-488) to Day and Lord's (1986, pp.453-464) assertion that, after controlling for confounding errors, differences in executive leadership explained as much as 45 percent of an organization's performance. Thomas (1988, pp.388-400) presents two views about leaders - "Individualists and Contextualists". Individualists support the position that leaders have a significant and possibly crucial impact on the performance of the organizations they lead. Contextualists, on the other hand, emphasize that the contributions of individual leaders are limited by situational factors. Waldman and Yammarino (1999, pp.266-285) described the shortcomings of such studies by pointing out that part of the problem in attempting to understand the potential effects of leadership at the highest levels is that researchers generally have confined leadership and its effects to the individual, dyadic, or small group levels of analysis, rather than to the organization as a whole. One way in which organizations have attempted to measure individual leadership effectiveness has been through the use of 360-degree instruments, which collect ratings from the leader's boss, peers, direct reports and others. These instruments have usually been associated with leadership assessment and development. It has been suggested that 360-degree feedback can be effective for motivating behavioral change (Waldman, Atwater & Antonioni, 1998, pp.86-94). Much of the research on 360-degree assessments has attempted to establish a link with individual leader effectiveness by focusing upon relationships between these instruments and criteria such as supervisors' assessments of promotability, performance appraisal ratings, actual promotions, and desired organizational outcomes (CCL, 2000). Over the past 20 years, researchers have increasingly investigated organizational culture and possible links to organizational performance (e.g., Wilkins & Ouchi, 1983, pp.468-481; Denison 1984, pp.5-22; Gordon, 1985, pp.43-50). Denison (1990, pp.123-125) indicates that mergers, declining productivity and global competition have all focused attention on the cultures of organizations and the impact they have on organizational effectiveness. According to Pascale (1990, pp.199-205), organizational culture, more than any other factor, will dictate an organization's ability to survive. After several decades of work, Denison (2000, pp.145-146) has established organization culture as an important component in explaining organizational success. Studies by Denison (1990, pp.123-125), Denison and Mishra (1995, pp.204-223) and Kotter and Heskett (1992) all provide support for the link between organizational culture and performance. Fisher and Alford (2000, pp.206-217) conclude that research conducted by Denison (1984, 1996) and Fisher (1997) clearly shows that regardless of the size, sector, industry, or age of a business, culture affects organizational performance. A current trend noted in the popular press suggests that organizations should not be concerned with developing leaders, but instead, should be focusing on the leaders' current strengths (e.g., Buckingham & Coffman, 1999, pp.23-28; LaBarre, 2001, pp.88-98). Research (CCL, 2000) indicates that the attributes necessary for leadership effectiveness are dynamic. These dynamics include: (1) strengths can be come weaknesses; (2) skills once learned, often need to be modified; (3) required skills often change with organizational level; (4) leaders rely on a general set of rules, but they select which skills to use for different management challenges; (5) leaders learn more than skills across a career - they also learn the values and perspectives necessary to lead effectively; and, (6) success is related to the ability to make transitions. Judging from these findings, it appears that formal leadership development processes may be a very important factor in preventing leaders from becoming derailed, thus increasing their effectiveness. Another implication for research and practice is the hierarchical effect found in the relationship between individual performance and organizational culture. Because the relationship between leader effectiveness and organizational culture is stronger for upper-level managers than it is for lower-level managers, the tendency to include only upper-level managers in research of this type may not be as problematic as previously thought. Upper-level managers appear to have more impact on an organization's culture, thus their performance is probably the best indicator of organizational culture. Conclusion To conclude, increasing change in the organization's environment implies a need for creating a leadership culture. One key element of success in this is the need for informal networks of likeminded individuals that can facilitate change in the same way that formal management structures ensure control and order. Most organizations have fragmented networks with a few well connected people and a majority of poorly connected ones. The creation of strong informal networks can help ensure that individual or departmental visions can be complementary rather than fragmented. Individuals who wish to be successful in creating change need to be aware of how the complementary skills of management and leadership interrelate. Both are necessary but whereas management is about coping with complexity, leadership is about coping with change. While one considers what is probable, the other considers what is possible. An organization needs both management and leadership to be successful. Whereas the disciplines of the former have perhaps been better recognized and applied in the past, the successful organizations of the future will be those that recognize, develop and apply both in equal measure. References Bass, Barnard M. 1981. Stodgill's Handbook of Leadership: A survey of theory and research, Rev. ed, New York: The Free Press. Bowers, David G. 1975. 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Wilkins, A. & Ouchi, W.G. 1983. Efficient cultures: Exploring the relationship between culture and organizational performance. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 468-481. Yuki, Gary A. 1981. Leadership in Organization, (Englewood Cliffs, N.]: Prentice-Hall, p. 14. Read More