Organizational Behavior and Leadership Styles - Essay Example

LEADERSHIP STYLES Greenberg and Baron (2003), define leadership as the process whereby one individual influences other group members toward the attainment of defined group or organisational goals. They present the following as key characteristics of the leadership process: Leadership Involves Non-Coercive Influence Following from the above definition, the leadership process primarily involves influence whereby one individual can influence or change the actions of several group members or subordinates. There are many techniques for exerting such influence ranging from relatively coercive wherein the recipient has little choice but to do what is requested, to relative non-coercive ones, wherein the recipient can choose to reject or accept the influence offered. In general leadership refers to the use of non-coercive influence techniques. It is important to distinguish a leader from a dictator. Whereas dictators get others to do what they want by using physical coercion or by threats of physical force, leaders do not (Greenberg and Baron, 2003: pp 471). Leadership influence is goal oriented From the definition it is clear that leadership involves the exercise of influence for the purpose of attaining group or organisational goals. In other words, leaders focus on changing those actions or attitudes of their subordinates that are related to specific goals. They are far less concerned with altering followers' actions or attitudes that are irrelevant to such goals. (Greenberg and Baron, 2003: pp 471). Leadership requires followers Also, from the definition one can see that leadership requires followers that is leadership is a two way street. Although leaders do indeed influence subordinates in various ways, leader also are influenced by their subordinates. As a matter of fact one can say that leadership exists only in relation to followers. After all, one cannot lead without followers. (Greenberg and Baron, 2003: pp 471). The figure 1 below illustrates the characteristics of the leadership process as described above. (Greenberg and Baron, 2003: pp 471). Figure 1: Summary Of The Leadership Process Leadership Style Leadership style refers to the adoption of Authoritarian Management or a Democratic Management style by an individual in an organization, depending on which style is more comfortable to his or her personality. (Statt and David, 1999: pp 91). Leadership Styles Of Two Senior Member In My Organisation The leadership styles of two senior members in my organisation are as follows: The first senior member is primarily concerned with establishing good relations with subordinates and being looked by them. He/she engages in actions such as doing favours for subordinates, explaining things to them and taking steps to ensure their welfare. He is reluctant to act in a directive manner toward subordinates and often shy away from presenting them with negative feedback. The second Senior member on the other hand is concerned mainly with production and focuses primarily on getting the job done. The senior member engages in actions such as organising work, inducing subordinates to follow rules, setting goals, and making leader and subordinate rules explicit. The leadership styles discussed above can be linked as shown in the figure 2 below: Figure 2: Basic Dimensions of Leadership Behaviour. Taken from: (Greenberg and Baron, 2003: pp 471). From the figure above one can observe that though the leadership styles discussed earlier are far off from each other, these leadership styles often converge at times. For example, there are leaders who are both production oriented and at the same time person oriented. Some leaders can be 75% person oriented and 25% production oriented and vice versa. Also some leaders can score equal points for each of the two dimensions as well as some may not be found in any of the dimensions. That is they are neither person oriented nor production oriented. Likert's Four System approach. Following an extensive research at Michigan University, Rensis Likert came up with four different leadership systems including: Exploitive Autocratic, which he described as a leadership style in which leaders have neither trust nor confidence in their followers or subordinates and as such issue orders and put pressure on performance; Benevolent Autocratic in which he describes the leader as having some trust in subordinates and so occasionally seeks ideas and opinions, but the style is paternalistic; Bureaucratic: here the leader has considerable confidence and trust in subordinates' views and opinions whilst retaining power; and Democratic where the leader not only vests complete confidence and trust in subordinates' views and opinions but also acts upon. Exploitative Autocratic Leadership Shell and Richard (2002) assert that the exploitative autocratic leader looks upon himself as the source of power, and makes all the decisions in an organization in terms of being the absolute centre of authority and control and that a major advantage of working for the strict autocratic leader is that the subordinate always knows where they stand with the leader, namely, the leader will both make decisions and take responsibility for them. By so doing work relationships for the employee or subordinate is made simple since all he/she needs to do is carry out assignments and comply with the autocrat. (Shell and Richard, 2002). However, this limits creativity as well as neglects individual development. Great difficulties are faced by creative people such as scientists in the health profession or in corporate research and development under and autocratic leader. (Shell and Richard, 2002). This is because such people, who under normal circumstances should exhibit self-discipline, find it difficult being bossed around by an autocratic leader. Benevolent Autocratic Benovelent autocratic leadership style is a modification of the strict autocratic leadership style. Under such leadership style the autocrat makes all the decisions, but tends to constantly communicate to employees that decisions are being made in their "best" interest. (Shell and Richard, 2002). This style is, in part, an outgrowth of the "identity of interests" concept of management, which was prevalent in the United States prior to 1930. (Shell and Richard, 2002). According to this concept, "Owners, managers, and employees of a business automatically have the same interest, which is the growth and success of the firm. Consequently, the manager's choice and actions in leadership and decision-making situations will always be in the interest of the subordinates because managers are paid to run the business in the best and most efficient possible manner." (Shell and Richard, 2002). A number of difficulties arise with this leadership style. One of the problems with this style is that it is based on the assumption that subordinates will accept the fact that the managers know what is in their best interest and have the wisdom and judgement to make those kinds of supportive decisions. (Shell and Richard, 2002). It however turns out that professional people being highly trained and skill oriented they are not ready to accept the judgment of their leaders as being necessarily in their interest or the goals of the organisation. However, for the benevolent autocrat to succeed he must continually rely on rewards to gain the support and cooperation of subordinates failing which he is doomed to fail should the organisation witness a hardship and the rewards become less available. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Following from above, subordinates will now be able to take a more negative look at the actions and leadership control functions of performed by the autocrat. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Despite the fact that benevolent autocratic leadership, accompanied by rewards, has been shown to work quite well for short periods of time with non-professionals, situations where this style works best are not common in the professional environment. Some managers tend to practice the autocratic style simply because they are basically insecure in their jobs. (Shell and Richard, 2002). A less trained manager will likely become and autocrat because he feels that greater competency will be needed if more people are included in the decision-making process. Such autocrats who are usually referred to as incompetent autocrats retain most of the decision-making authority so as to shy away from the possibility of being discovered by more competent subordinates or employees. The disadvantage with the incompetent autocracy is that when subordinates start perceiving that incompetence exist they will lose respect for the autocrat and he will be domed to fail. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Under the autocratic leadership short-run increases in productivity are being paid for by human assets whose moral, loyalty, feeling of warmth and support and identification are not considered important. (Shell and Richard, 2002). This leadership style therefore considers important human relations factors not to have any positive impact on productivity and the value of the human assets continues to depreciate as they are being exploited by the autocrat. (Shell and Richard, 2002). The idea of exploitation was developed by Rensis Likert who proposed that Human resource valuation should be measured on the balance sheet along with other tangible assets and concluded that autocratic leadership which is witnessing short-run increases in productivity is trading off long-run productivity by exploiting the human assets of the organisation and he termed his system for evaluating human assets human resource accounting. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Bureaucratic Leadership The bureaucratic leadership style stems from the term bureaucracy, and it is a system that utilises formal rules and regulations as the source of power. Shell and Richard (2002) explain that this style of leadership is used in many large organisations. Rules and regulations are considered to be the source of power for decision-making. When practicing this style, the leader goes by the book and does not get personally involved in the decision-making process. Successful application of bureaucratic management in these kinds of situations involves convincing the subordinates that the application of rules cannot be avoided. There are limited instances in which this leadership style can be an advantageous approach because there are times when it is desirable for the manager to be personally removed from an unpopular decision. (Shell and Richard, 2002). The ability of managers of professionals to convince employees that nothing can be done about applying the rules is a function of several factors which include the subordinates' perception of the strengths and weaknesses of the manager, their training and professionalism, and their perception of the specific situation. (Shell and Richard, 2002). It is more difficult to convince professionals that formal regulations must be followed than it is to convince paraprofessionals who may have been taught to follow the rules from their induction into the organization. (Shell and Richard, 2002). . DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP The democratic manager believes that power is derived from the subordinate group. This style gained impetus from the acceptance theory of authority as developed by Barnard in the late 1930s. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Many practicing managers have accepted this reasoning over the years, which have laid the groundwork for a strong belief in democratic management. The work of Lewin in the late 1930s and early 40s involving small boys in experimental leadership groups built a good case for democratic management. (Shell and Richard, 2002). Lewin found that democratically managed boys who engaged in productive tasks exhibited more cooperation, less frustration, greater satisfaction with task, and better overall performance than similar groups managed by laissez-faire or autocratic leaders. Leadership style was shown to be more important than the personality of the leader in determining the behavioural patterns of the subordinates. (Shell and Richard, 2002). However, much like Likert, in short-run situations, Lewin found productivity could be equally high or even greater among autocratic as opposed to democratically managed groups. This analysis of style thus far could easily lead to the conclusion that democratic leadership is usually the most useful. After a careful study of the Likert's four-system approach to leadership, one can conclude that the first leader is bureaucrat since he establishes a rules based system of management and hides under the umbrella that there is nothing he can do about the rules since he is not the author of these rules. Thus as Likert puts it the welfare of the employees is sacrificed for productivity. The second senior member is a democrat. As can be seen Likert's four-system approach fits exactly into the leadership behaviour defined for the two members of my organisation. The first manager has no concern for subordinates; he does not listen to their problems and does not care about their welfare. This style fits exactly into the bureaucratic leadership style as explained by Rensis Likert in his four-system approach to Leadership behaviour. The second manager is a democrat because he considers the contribution and importance of employees and subordinates in his decision-making process. He has concern about their welfare and treats them like valuable assets in the organisation. This leadership style fits exactly what Likert describes as Democratic Leadership Style. Therefore Likert's four-system approach has successfully explained the two leadership styles above. Only the first two approaches have not been found in the leadership styles identified for our senior organisational member identified above. Arruda et al (2002) assert that being English means being a member of a society where due respect for authority is never misunderstood as submission; where the future is not controlled by written laws and rules but by caution, by the belief that changes are a part of a natural and continuous, not abrupt, process. Where relatively reserved behaviour and individual autonomy, together with a law-abiding honesty, and personal development and liberalism are taken as the basic rules of life. But also where the ego can prevail over the social and aggressive assertiveness is a component of daily life. (Arruda et al, 2002). Following from this assertion it can be concluded that the leadership behaviour of the democrat can be generalised to the Anglo-context of society and to the Hickson and Pough's groups of society. The Anglo-Saxon society supports the democratic leadership structure where relatively reserved behaviour and individual autonomy, together with a law-abiding honesty, and personal development and liberalism are taken as the basic rules of life. The model of administrative reduction of variance in behaviour developed by Inkson, Hickson and Pugh postulates that two main strategies of administrative control, structuring of activities and centralization, will give rise to conforming behavior and low levels of conflict through their prescription of roles. Structuring of activities, however, is found to be associated with higher levels of conflict and hardly at all with conforming behavior, while centralization is associated with higher levels of conforming behavior, but not with conflict. (Child, 1973). The latter paragraph again points to the behavioural styles described above. It explains that centralizing activities through bureaucracy might result to conflicts in an organization whereas the structuring of activities will not lead to conflicts. Hence the Anglo-context and the Hickson and Pugh's groups of society can be used to generalize the leadership styles outlined above. REFERENCES Arruda c., Hickson d. J. (2002) Managerial Decision-Making: An Anglo-Brazilian Comparison CADERNO DE IDIAS CI0206 Child J. (1973). Strategies of Control and Organizational Behavior Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 1-17 doi:10.2307/2391923 Greenberg G., Baron R. A. (2003). Behavior In Organizations. (Eight Edition) Prentice Hall. Shell, Richard L. (2002). Management of Professionals (2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded). New York, NY, USA: Marcel Dekker Incorporated, Read More