Organisational Culture and Leadership - Essay Example

Organisational Culture and Leadership Introduction In any organization, there is a set of values and beliefs that are highly regarded by the employees and management. These beliefs are held for long since employees adapt them after joining the organization. The leadership of any organization has to keep a keen eye on organizational culture such that they can adjust the leadership behaviour accordingly. When organizational leadership integrates organizational culture, the strategy for accomplishing organization’s mission is adjusted and this influences the job satisfaction level of the employees. Furthermore, the employees make intense contribution to collaboration and team communication since employees understand the rules for behaviour within the organization. According to House, Javidan, Hanges, & Dorfman (2002), proper integration of organizational culture into organizational leadership result to implicit motivation on the employees which then affect their behavioural systems. Additionally, explicit motivation is also sparingly used through language to improve the consciousness of the employees. The discussion in this paper focuses on the relationship between leadership and organizational culture in terms of their definitions and the associated benefits. 1. Organisational Culture 1.1. Describing organizational culture When a group of people follow a set of beliefs, customs and norms during their everyday interaction, there develop a culture. Culture is not just within a community of people living together but also within organizational workplaces. Within any organization, culture points at the organizational discernment or framework of familiar importance apprehended within an organization. The key elements characterizing organizational culture include novelty, risk taking, attention to specific issues, result, people and team orientation, hostility and steadiness. It is not necessary that any organization has just a single culture hence it is possible to find another culture that is not the center of the organization (Schein, 2006). The leading culture is expressed in the centre principles that are shared by a bulk of the organization’s affiliates. Core values are the primary or dominant values that are accepted throughout the organization. However, there may be numerous other subcultures or small cultures in a business unit, characterised by sector-based title and physical parting. For any organization, leadership has the sole responsibility of passing on culture. For instance, great leaders like Steve Jobs in Apple left a culture that has seen Apple products continue to excel in the market through unmatched innovative (House, et al., 2002). 1.2. Importance Culture describes the frontier between one association and another by assigning a sense of individuality to its members. It augments the steadiness of the social system by making possible the creation of commitment to anything bigger than self-interest. Besides it serves as a sense-making and control mechanism for fitting employees in the organization. 2. Leadership 2.1. Description of organizational leadership The definition of leadership is founded on the possession of a distinctive skill to influence people towards attaining set goals and objectives (Tsai, 2011). Since each organization has its own culture that governs it, the result is that there is no universally acceptable leadership style or leader. However, it is believed that provided a leadership takes into consideration the culture within the organization, the results will be great (Tsai, 2011). The first dominant framework on leadership was the Trait Theory or the “Great Men” Theory which was proposed in the early twentieth century. The theory considers “personality, social, physical or intellectual traits to differentiate leaders from non-leaders” (Shoup, 2005, p.2). This theory ascribes conventional qualities like ambition and energy, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence and knowledge to leaders and holds that leaders are born, not made. Mid-twentieth century saw the rise of the Behaviourist school of leadership which emphasized on the actions and dominant behaviour of the leaders and highlighted the leaders’ behaviour on the job, use of authority and task-relationship orientation. Later, scholars such as Fred Fiedler realised that a leader must match his/her situation and leadership style should vary depending on the situation and context. This gave way to a third phase of leadership studies, known as the Contingency school, which focussed on job constitution, leader-member association and power position. (Shoup, 2005, pp. 2-4) Later James McGregor Burns brought about a marked transition through his classification of the transactional and transformational leader. He defined transactional leader are one who superficially deals with a situation by hovering around the edges of the problem and transformational leader as one who sees a problem as an opportunity to change the world through his visionary ideas and experiments. (Polelle, 2008, p. xii) 2.2. Importance Leaders act as connections between the association and external regions. During difficult times, they serve as trouble-shooters by engaging in negotiation and conflict management (Polelle, 2008, p. xii). Besides, they provide essential advice, coaching and mentoring to their subordinates to improve upon their individual, team and overall organizational performance (Tsai, 2011). 3. Relationship between Organisational Culture and Leadership Leadership and organizational culture are two inter-related and inter-dependent concepts. Culture is socially learned and transmitted by members within organizations. The leaders of an organization are the creators and perpetrators of its culture. The norms, values and ethics exhibited and showcased by the leaders go on to form the culture of the organization. The leaders or the founders of an organization hire and keep only those employees who think and feel the same way they do. The leaders then teach and make these employees act to their beliefs or philosophies and feelings. The leaders’ behavior acts as an ideal framework that supports employees to feel at one with them and thereby adopt their beliefs, principles, and suppositions. Effective leaders, in order to promote an ethical culture, often employ managerial practices like being a visible role model, communicating ethical expectations, providing ethical training, providing protective mechanisms, rewarding ethical acts and punishing unethical ones. (Week 1 Lecture notes, 2014) Conclusion While the leaders are the pioneers of culture within an organization, it is the culture that keeps the gifts of their leadership alive and useful for the future members of the organization, thus fostering the growth of new leaders in future. To sum it up, it will not be wrong if we assert that if leaders are the creators of culture, then culture is the medium through which the leaders are immortalized in the history of an organization. Bibliography House, R., Javidan, M., Hanges, P. & Dorfman, P., 2002. Understanding Cultures and Implicit Leadership Theories Across the Globe: An Introdution to Project GLOBE. Journal of World Business, Volume 37, pp. 3-10. Polelle, M. R., 2008. Leadership: Fifty Great Leaders and the Worlds they Made. Westport: Greenwood Press. Schein, E. H., 1992. Organizational Culture and Leadership. USA: John Willey & Sons. Schein, E. H., 2006. Organizational Culture and Leadership. New York: John Willey & Sons. Shoup, J. R., 2005. A Collective Biography of Twelve World-Class Leaders. Maryland: University Press of AMerica. Tsai, Y., 2011. Relationship between Organizational Culture, Leadership Behavior and Job Satisfaction. BMC Health Services Research, 11(98), p. online. Read More