COMPARISON PAPER

Comparison Paper



Comparison Paper

Introduction

Leadership is often referred to as a powerful and dynamic person who forms the path of a nation and this may affect the organizational management. In an organizational context, leadership is viewed as a prime force that may determine the organizational competitiveness in a global economy. In order to support the objectives, leaders often choose particular interaction styles that may represent the values and motivations, the wants and needs, the aspiration and expectation of both leaders and followers. For example, interactions in the traditional leadership approach emphasize on the ability of followers to accomplish job targets as set up by their superiors. Conversely, interactions in the contemporary leadership approach focuses more on the quality of relationship with followers, such as building reciprocal trust, participatory decision-making, democratic style, and concern about individuals. Many scholars think that contemporary and traditional based interaction styles have used different treatments and this may be categorized in two major forms, namely transactional leadership and transformational leadership. Both leadership styles are important to motivate employees to achieve organizational strategies and goals.

Body: Discussion and Analysis

In an era of global competition, many organizations shift the paradigms of their leadership styles from a transactional leadership to a transformational leadership as a way to achieve their strategies and goals. This leadership style suits with the dynamic organizational environments.

Comparison of Miller's and Wiener's Articles

According to Miller, transformational leadership has four important features: intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, individualized influenced attributed and individualized influence behavior. Intellectual stimulation is often viewed as a leader who cares about intelligence, rationality, logic and careful problem solving in organizations. Leaders implement this approach through stimulating followers to reexamine traditional ways of doing things, use of reasons before taking actions and encourage them to try novel and creative approaches (e.g., interesting and challenging tasks). Individualized influenced attribute is related to a leader who has capabilities to clearly formulate and openly communicate the vision and goal challenges to followers. This idea encourages leaders to motivate followers focus more on performing the targeted goals than providing them with rewards and punishments may strongly increase followers' self-confidence in accomplishing the targeted goals. Hence, individualized influence behavior is seen as a leader develops his/her capability to be a role model in providing good supports to followers who have obstacles in doing the job and encouraging followers to do the work beyond their self-interests (Miller, 2007).

As per Wiener, ...