The Management And Leadership Of Organisations Management Essay

Management can be thought of as a map that is portion of an administration ‘s formal construction. This is apparent in Mullins ‘s ( 2005, p. 190 ) statement that he regards direction as: taking topographic point within a structured organizational scene and with prescribed functions ; directed towards the attainment of purposes and aims ; achieved through the attempts of other people ; and utilizing systems and processs. He besides goes on to state: It is through the procedure of direction that the attempts of members of the administration are coordinated, directed and guided towards the accomplishment of organizational ends. Management is hence the basis of organizational effectivity, and is concerned with agreements for the transporting out of organizational procedures and executing of work. This definition draws on the thought that direction is a peculiar map, which is embedded in the organizational construction and involves a figure of different sorts of activities that are associated with each other. Therefore Fayol ( 1949 ) proposed five elements of direction – planning, organizing, commanding, organizing, and commanding – which can be seen to associate to formal organizational systems. Naylor ( 2004 ) besides distinguishes between the two: Management is the procedure of accomplishing organizational aims, within a altering environment, by equilibrating efficiency, effectivity, and equity, obtaining the most from limited resources, and working with and through people. ( p. 6 ) Leadership [ on the other manus ] is the procedure of act uponing people towards accomplishment of organizational ends.

Other authors and research workers have concentrated more on the functions that directors play, that is, what directors do. For case, Mintzberg ( 1979 ) describes the 10 functions that directors do and suggested as a consequence of his survey of main executive officers in both little and big administrations. Mintzberg ( 1979 ) grouped managerial functions into three sets: interpersonal functions ( figurehead, leader, affair ) ; informational functions ( proctor, propagator, spokesman ) ; decisional functions ( enterpriser, perturbation animal trainer, resource distributor, negotiant ) . An scrutiny of these classs and the functions within them highlights the ambiguity of the relationship between direction and leading. As this model shows, leading is merely one facet of a director ‘s occupation, a position that is echoed by Handy ‘s ( 1993 ) contention that taking ( which he takes to include the functions of front man, leader and affair ) is largely concerned with the interpersonal facets of a director ‘s activities. Consequently, although a director must besides be a leader, a leader does non ever have to be a director. Kotter ( 1990 ) gives a utile sum-up of the differences between taking and managing. Both Mintzberg ‘s and Kotter ‘s differentiations between leading and direction agree with Mullins ‘s ( 2005 ) decision that direction is concerned with activities within the formal construction and ends of the administration, while leading focuses more on interpersonal behavior in a broader context. His statement ( p. 284 ) that ‘leadership does non needfully take topographic point within the hierarchal construction of the administration ‘ typifies this position. To back up this contention, he refers to Watson ‘s ( 1983 ) 7-S organizational model of: scheme, construction, systems, manner, staff, accomplishments, and superior ( or shared ) ends. Based on this, Watson maintains that direction is more concerned with scheme, construction, and systems, while leading is more concerned with what he calls the ‘soft ‘ Ss of: manner, staff, accomplishments, and shared ends. Leadership, so, is concerned with set uping shared visions and ends ; with interpersonal relationships and communicating ; and with motive and acquiring the best out of people. Ultimately, leading is about act uponing others in chase of the accomplishment of organizational ends.

There is a scope of theories purporting to explicate what makes a individual a good and effectual leader. These can be put into two wide classs. The first includes those theories which contend that there is ‘one best manner ‘ of exerting leading and that there is a peculiar set of features which ‘good ‘ leaders should posses. The 2nd class challenges this and suggests that there is no 1 best manner, but a scope of leading manners that should be applied differentially harmonizing to the state of affairs in which leading is required.

The first attack to leading is a theory of what leaders should be like, in other words what traits ( e.g. physical and personality features, accomplishments and abilities and societal factors such as interpersonal accomplishments, sociableness and socio-economic place ) are declarative of a successful leader. However, there is a grade of confusion as to whether there are certain personality and other features which, when nowadays, ‘fit ‘ a individual to be a leader. Early research ( Stodgill, 1948 ; Mann, 1959 ) came to the decision that there were few relationships between the traits possessed by leaders and their public presentation. The impression of ‘born to take ‘ did non keep up under examination. However, more recent surveies reveal stronger grounds of an identifiable set of personality and cognitive traits that are said to qualify successful leaders. The first of these is a meta-analysis ( one that studies and brings together the consequence of other surveies ) carried out by Lord, De Vader and Alliger in 1986 which concluded that there could be six traits which distinguish successful leaders from others: intelligence ; holding an extravert personality ; laterality ; maleness ; conservativism ; being better adjusted than non-leaders. A few old ages subsequently, Kirkpatrick and Locke ( 1991 ) besides surveyed bing leading surveies and suggested their ain list of six leading traits: thrust ( achievement, aspiration, energy, doggedness, enterprise ) ; leading motive ( personalized or socialized ) ; honestness and unity ; assurance ( including emotional stableness ) ; cognitive ability ( the ability to marshal and construe a broad assortment of information ) ; cognition of the concern. In 1996 Dulewicz and Herbert reported on their original research on a sample of 72 directors who, on the footing of several indexs of success, could be identified as either ‘high-flyers or low-flyers ‘ . What these two research workers did was to administrate two different personality trials to these directors to find what features differentiated the high-flyers. The consequences showed that the high-flyers scored higher than the low-flyers on the undermentioned: risk-taking ; assertiveness and decision ; accomplishment ; motive ; fight. They besides showed exceeding managerial accomplishments: planning and organising ; pull offing staff ; actuating others. It is interesting to compare and contrast these three lists. For case, the trait of intelligence comes up in the first two surveies mentioned. However, Fiedler ( 1989 ) points out that there are some state of affairss that can forestall leaders utilizing the intelligence they possess – such as hapless dealingss with their foreman, hapless interpersonal relationships and a non-directive manner. Therefore intelligence on its ain is non sufficient to vouch a successful leader.

The 2nd theory that we will look into is Fiedler ‘s eventuality theoretical account of leading. There are three situational variables to find the manner of leading to be adopted: Leader-member dealingss – the extent to which a leader has the support of her or his group members. To find this, inquiries might be asked about the willingness of group members to make what the leader tells them, the grade of trust bing between the leader and the followings and the extent to which followings will back up the leader ‘s determinations ; Task construction – the extent to which the undertaking or intent of a group is good defined and the results can be seen clearly to be a success or failure. To find this, inquiries about the quantifiability of the results might be asked. In other words, is it possible to judge ‘success ‘ objectively or might at that place be different positions on how the results should be assessed? ; Position power – the sum of power ( peculiarly reward power ) the leader can utilize to carry through his or her, and the group ‘s, intents. The issue here is whether the leaders have the support of higher direction for the manner they deal with subsidiaries. Harmonizing to Fiedler, the manner of leading adopted should take history of peculiar situational status in footings of the three variables identified and the subsequent grade of favourability, or otherwise, of the entire solution. What is different about Fiedler ‘s findings is that the relationship of leading manner to the favourableness/unfavourableness of the state of affairs is a curvilineal one. In other words, when the state of affairs is really favorable, or really unfavorable, the most effectual leading manner is said to be a task-oriented, more directing one, instead than a person-oriented 1. When the state of affairs is of moderate favourability to the leader, the manner recommended is a person-oriented 1. However, the statement that a more advisory and participative manner is necessary in state of affairss of confusion and possibly intuition seems logical. When the state of affairs is really favorable to the leader, he or she can likely take a more directing manner, given the trust and support to be expected from group members. In really unfavorable state of affairss the leader must stress the demand for undertaking achievements in order to force the group toward its ends. This demand, in bend, dictates a more directing task-oriented attack. Implicit in Fiedler ‘s eventuality theory is that leaders can accommodate their leading manner to the prevalent state of affairs. However, Fiedler believes this to be hard and, hence, suggests either that leaders should be chosen so that their direction manner fits the state of affairs or that elements of the state of affairs demand to be modified. However, neither scheme seems easy, therefore corroborating the being of certain troubles in ‘matching ‘ leaders and leading state of affairss.

In decision, direction and leading are different. Management stands more steadfastly in the context of the formal administration while leading stands more of course associated with the informal facets of administrations. Leadership theories varies from those which maintain that there are a set of features that leaders must hold if they are to derive success in what they do to those which argue that no individual leader can be successful regardless of their ain penchants and the state of affairs they find themselves in. Regardless of which set of theories gain attending at any clip, understanding is going apparent that taking alteration requires more than the bid and control behaviors stylish in times when administrations operated in stable predictable environments. The replacing of insistent work with machines, the increasing accent on cognition and the demand to introduce to last and thrive have brought a acknowledgment that, for people to be originative, while working in state of affairss of uncertainness requires leaders who are able to tackle the accomplishments of others through working in collaborative instead than hierarchal ways.