Leadership in Contemporary Organizations - Literature review Example

LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATIONS by Student’s Name Course Code + Name Professor Date Leadership in Contemporary Organizations The success of contemporary organizations largely depends upon their leadership. In the wake of rapid and vast technological changes and globalization, leaders perform multifarious functions. Leadership is an indispensable aspect in effective and successful management of organization affairs (Robbins & Judge 2013). Organizations have to be led by effective leaders in order to attain the organizational goals through directing the efforts of the subordinates in that direction. Effective leadership engages all the elements of production in a coordinated way to contribute more to the realization of organizational goals. The success or failure of organizations usually depends a lot on the leadership provided to it. In contemporary organizations, leaders are a source of motivation and they direct group activities (Robbins & Judge 2013). The leadership usually motivates the subordinates and this influences the workers performance. A higher the level of employees’ motivation leads to good performance. Motivation exerts high levels of efforts to attain organizational goals conditioned by the efforts capacity to satisfy some individual need. Modern organizations have come to realize that worker motivation has a direct relationship with sustainability, profitability, and productivity of the firm (Gebauer & Lowman 2009). Non-monetary and monetary compensations are used to drive homes the organizational objectives more so that organizations are now very competitive and look for ways to draw the best workers to their firm so that they can become the market leader in respect to the best workforce. Through exercising their leadership function, leaders motivate the employees to work harder (Gebauer & Lowman 2009). They have to use a fitting leadership style that is best suited for the organization in a given context. Motivation is an aspect of dynamic leadership and its absence can lead to an organization failure. The leadership also plays an important role in directing group activities. The leaders’ most important responsibility is to ensure that work is done effectively. Leadership personal attributes such as courageous, enthusiastic, and charismatic enhance the leadership capability and the ability to get work done effectively. These attributes also help leaders today to create visions of future, inspire organizational employees to want to realize the vision and to challenge the status quo in an organization. Leadership also plays the important role of setting the climate in the organizations. Truly effective leaders usually stand for something positive and communication enables the subordinates’ to know what that it is (Gitman & McDaniels 2009). The leaders are the voice of the expectations and direction of the organization, the standards to be maintained, as well as the philosophical orientation of the organization. The leaders force the organizational vision, create the organizational philosophy, and continually communicate them until they are completely understood and entrenched in the mind of all members in the organization. Leaders in contemporary organization also build and sustain empowered businesses through empowering employees and offering them the capacity to act resourceful (Robbins & Judge 2013). Employees are empowered when they are able to solve their problems and challenges in their own way. Leaders encourage employees to be resourceful and empowered-they are encouraged to be innovative and to solve problems (Gitman & McDaniels 2009). The leaders multiply their power for positive change through exercising their leadership to empower employees. Employees’ empowerment takes the form of involving them in decisions that affect them, expanding their role, utilizing teamwork, and offering them the freedom to engage their minds and hearts. Macey et al (2009) argued that employee engagement by the leadership promotes the employees sense of purpose and enables them to have focused energy, which is apparent to other people through the demonstration of persistence, effort, flexibility, and personal initiative directed towards the organizational goals. They further suggested that high levels of fairness and trust in the organization culture is key to creating and sustaining engaged employees and interventions for driving engagement usually entail building resiliency, confidence, social support networks , restoring or renewing employees energy and improving their freedom and motivation to engage. According to Gebauer and Lowman (2009), employee engagement by the leaders’ leads to a broad and deep connection with the organization and this leads to employees’ willingness to go over and beyond what is expected to assist the company be successful. Leaders provide a framework for building engagement founded on knowing, involving, inspiring, growing and rewarding employees and within this framework recommend actions for human resource personnel, managers, seniors leaders and the employees themselves. A good case of employees’ engagement is Google. The leadership of Google values the employees’ opinion and it “communicates an environment of playfulness from whimsical doodles to April Fool’s Day jokes” (Vorhauser 2013, par 7). Facebook also ensures that employees’ values are aligned with those of the company through employee communication and articulating its values in meetings and on posters. Vorhauser (2013) asserted that using the right employees’ engagement practices as well as being aware of the drivers most important to employees usually works towards creation of a high-performing and more motivated workforce. Vorhauser further noted that committing to an intentional culture that is transparent, open and which enables the employees to thrive plays an important role in retaining proficient employees. According to McGregor’s Theory Y, workers can be motivated using positive incentives and will try hard to accomplish organizational goals if they believe they will be rewarded for doing so (Gitman & McDaniels 2009). In addition, according to Herzberg Motivator-Hygiene theory, leaders need to focus on motivating factors or satisfiers. An organization with many satisfiers for the employees usually motivates employees, provide job satisfaction, and prompt effective performance (Gitman & McDaniel 2009). Expectancy theory also highlights the importance of worker motivation. It posits that the probability of an individual acting in a particular way depends on the strength of that individual belief that the act will have a particular outcome and on whether the individual values that outcome. Based on expectancy theory, manager should motivate the employees by determining the rewards that they value, determining the desired performance level, and then communicating it clearly to employees, making the performance level attainable, and linking rewards to performance. They should also determine the factors, which might counteract the effectiveness of a reward and make sure that the reward is adequate for the performance level (Gitman & Mcdaniel 2009). Consistent with expectancy theory, Maslow’s theory of human needs implies that leaders who understand and assist employees to satisfy essential needs at work attain productivity. Leaders thus motivate employees towards organizational objectives (Schermerhorn 2011). In order to succeed in a rapidly changing and competitive business environment, leadership in contemporary organizations set a new vision, inspire and coach employees to follow the vision in order to produce breakthrough results. Such results enable organizations to remain competitive in times of chaotic marketplace and rapid changes. Leadership functions encourage creativity, innovation, and this leads to new and better products or ways of doing things (Robbins & Judge 2013). Setting vision entails developing a vision for the future as well as developing the strategies to make the changes to realize the vision. Leadership inspiration role entails communicating direction, working together, and energizing employees to overcome impediments to change as well as achievement of group vision and personal goals. Leaders also mentor and train employees so that they obtain the attitudes and skills needed to realize change (Robbins & Judge 2013). Leaders thus usually develop a sense of direction in the organization. They provide a vision, mission (what should be done), and a strategy (a means of accomplishing the mission and a means for the group to reach there). The leaders also clearly communicate the organization sense of direction to the employees. They also identify and choose the most appropriate method of encouraging the employees to work towards realization of the set mission (Robbins & Judge 2013). Leaders also maintain commitment, cohesion, and morale of the organizational members and promote their creativity. Leaders encourage employees to be creative in order to remain competitive. Shalley and Gilson (2004) argued that taking into consideration heightened competition, turbulent environments, as well as unpredictable technological changes, more and more leaders have realized that they should encourage their employees to be creative. Shalley, Zhou and Oldham (2004) noted that employees creativity essentially contributes to organizational effectiveness, innovation, and survival. Employees are able to produce useful and novel ideas. According to Shalley and Gilson (2004), for creativity to take place in organizations, leaders promote as well as support it, because they are well-informed individuals about the employee work outcomes that should be creative. They also have extensive influence over the context in which creativity happens. The leaders in contemporary organizations also serve as a key driver in effective strategy implementation (Hrebiniak 2005; Pearce & Robinson 2007). Leaders envision, anticipate, and maintain flexibility and empower other people to create strategic change as required. Strategic leadership is very important in the contemporary competitive business environments. Such leadership is usually multifunctional and it entails managing through other people and it helps organizations to deal will the change which seem to be rising exponentially in the current globalized business context. Strategic leaders are able to integrate and accommodate both the external and internal business environment of the organization and to engage in and manage complex information processing. Strategic leadership usually contributes positively to successful strategy implementation. Hitt, Ireland and Hoskisson (2007) identified various identifiable actions, which characterize strategic leadership. They include determining strategic direction, setting up balanced organizational controls, efficiently managing the resource portfolio of the organization, maintaining an efficient organizational culture and laying emphasis on ethical practices. Strategic leaders usually play an important role in each of these identifiable actions. Each of these actions effectively leads to successful strategy implementation (Hitt et al. 2007). Strategic leadership effectively communicates the organization strategy to the employees so that they can understand it (Robbins & Judge 2013). The leader provides the strategic direction of the organization and ensure that the incentives for and goals of the workforce are in line with the organizational strategy. They also ensure that resource allocation is in line with the organizational strategy and there is an alignment between the strategy and organizational culture. Leaders’ enables change to be effectively managed (Robbins & Judge 2013). They also ensure that core competencies are aligned with the strategy and social capital is efficiently developed to support the implementation of the strategy. Leaders in contemporary organizations also quickly and clearly work through the intricacy of key opportunities, problems and issues to affect actions, for instance resolve issues, and leverage opportunities (Byham, Smith, & Paese 2000). Leaders identify the root causes of issues and display a keen sense of significance, relevance, and priority. They integrate information from various sources, detect associations and trends in the competitive market environment, and create pertinent options for handling opportunities and problems and realizing the set outcomes. They also translate intricate situations into meaningful and simple explanations that employees can understand and provide employees with important context for work. Leaders also identify and exploit opportunities for new markets, products, and services. The proactively align and build stakeholders abilities as well as resources for realizing complex goals and getting things done quickly. The leaders leverage and integrate the capacities of resources across all organizational levels to achieve multi-level goals (Byham et al. 2000). The leaders also attract, develop, and retain talent to make sure that employees with the right motivations and skills to meet the organizational needs are in the right place at the required time (Robbins & Judge 2013). They make sure that their organizations have employees with potential to meet their current and future organizational needs. They relentless identify and secure high-potential talent and increase the readiness of high potential talents by offering development opportunities (Byham et al. 2000). In addition, they minimize barriers to success, maximize the individual likelihood for success, and build and facilitate a culture that embraces development. The leaders in contemporary organizations also build commitment and passion towards a common end. The leaders are also global thinkers and integrate information from every source to come up with a well-versed, diverse point of view that can be employed to optimize the performance of the organization. They consider the implications of opportunities, decisions, issues beyond the boundaries of own country and understand the diverse approaches, and perspectives to facilitate effective handling of cross cultural individual differences and challenges (Robbins & Judge 2013). They also identify opportunities for worldwide leverage, for instance, opportunities to develop research and develop strategy from a global perspective. The leaders are also change drivers and they create environments, which embrace changes and make changes happen especially in the rapidly changing business environment. Reference List Byham, W, Smith, A & Paese, M 2000, Grow your own leaders: Acceleration pools: a new method of succession management, DDI Press, Pittsburgh, PA. Gebauer, J & Lowman, D 2009, Closing the engagement gap: how great companies unlock employee potential for superior results, Portfolio, New York. Gitman, L & McDaniel, C 2009, The Future of Business: The Essentials, 4ed, South-Western Cengage Learning, Mason, OH. Hitt, M, Ireland, R & Hoskisson, R 2007, Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization, 7ed, Thomson/South Western, Ohio. Macey, W, Schneider, B, Barbera, K & Young, S 2009, Employee engagement: tools for analysis, practice and competitive advantage, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Robbins, S & Judge, T 2013, Organizational Behavior, 15ed, Pearson Education, Inc. Schermerhorn, J 2011, Management, 11ed, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey. Shalley, C & Gilson, L 2004, What leaders need to know: A review of social and contextual factors that can foster or hinder creativity, Leadership Quarterly, vol.15, pp.33–53. Shalley, C, Zhou, J, & Oldman, G 2004, The effects of personal and contextual characteristics on creativity: Where should we go from here? Journal of Management, vol. 30, pp. 933–958. Vorhauser, S 2013, How the Best Places to work are Nailing Employee Engagement, Forbes, Viewed 09 November 2013 http://www.forbes.com/sites/sylviavorhausersmith/2013/08/14/how-the-best-places-to-work-are-nailing-employee-engagement/ Read More