Leadership in Business Organizations

Introduction

Relevance of different perspectives on leadership for business today as economy has transformed from industrial-based to information-based, traditional perspectives on leadership may not be appropriate. This paper distinguishes four dominant perspectives on leadership in the twentieth century and discusses critically their relevance or irrelevance for business today. (Conger, pp. 40)

Trait approach early leadership theories attempted to explain leadership by internal qualities with which a person is born. Trait approach is established on the idea that leaders are born, not made. The key to success is basically in identifying those people who were born to be great leaders. Types of traits examined by diverse researchers encompassed personal characteristics, individuality characteristics, communal characteristics, and individual abilities and skills.

Discussion

Trait approach has the greatest potential application in selecting and developing managers. Appraisal on personality traits together with information about someone's prior experience and performance can be used to predict their likely success in a senior managerial position. Human resource planning and training is more effective when matching the skill requirements for each position with the skills of current employees. (Conger, pp. 40)

Nevertheless, findings from research yet cannot prove it very useful. Although it showed that traits might help to distinguish leaders from non-leaders in terms of subordinates, it failed to distinguish effective and from ineffective leaders. Further, this approach assumes a leader to have relatively stable characteristics all the time but ignores the impact of situational and environment factors in leader's effectiveness.

The criticism of traits approach moves the focus on "what successful leaders do", not how they look to others. A major objective of behavioral approach is to identify effective leadership behavior and how effective leaders differ in behavior from ineffective ones. The idea is that leadership is not inevitably an inborn trait, but in fact effective leadership methods could be taught to workers. (Conger, pp. 40)

Ohio State Model Major studies were developed at Ohio State University that focused on two different dimensions of leader behavior: "concern for people" (consideration) and "concern for productivity" (initiating-structure) where a high-structure, high-consideration style was assumed to be the best style. (Conger, pp. 40)

Michigan Model Similar studies were conducted in University of Michigan to identify two different styles of leadership: employee centered and job-centered who parallels the consideration and initiating-structure styles identified by Ohio State group.

Blake-Mouton grid Blake, Shepard, and Mouton (1964) developed a Managerial Grid on two dimensions of "concern for people" and "concern for task" and proposed that leaders should adopt a style that demonstrates high concern for both people and task. (Conger, pp. 40)

The results of above three models failed to produce significant evidence of any relationship between different types of leader behavior and the resultant outcomes, though some consistencies suggested that certain types of situations and leadership process might impact a leader's effectiveness. Specifically, no one single style is universally superior to others. (Horner, pp. 280)

The behavioral approach seems logical as it focuses on how subordinates react to a leader's behavior. It ascertains that behavior is a factor which explains leadership ...