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Nursing and Leadership
Nursing and Leadership
Summary of the article
Throughout much of the social science literature there is a
great deal of evidence relating to the concept of leadership
in a number of organizational settings. However, little of
this research has been focused on the relation, if any,
between leadership styles and leadership effectiveness.
The area of leadership effectiveness is so complex and at
times confusing that any summary will, of necessity, be
rather superficial. Some preliminary generalizations can be
made on the basis of a brief review of the literature despite
the limitations delineated. One of the earliest studies was
carried out in the early 1940's by Lippitt and White [2] at
Ohio. They studied groups of boys at a summer camp and
organized them into three broad types: 'autocratic groups',
where leaders were appointed by the researchers and were
subsequently often unpopular; 'democratic groups', where
leaders were appointed by the group members themselves;
and 'laissez-faire groups', where there was no leadership or
organization at all. The three groups were men set to
performing certain tasks. The main result was that the
'laissez-faire' was most unproductive and that the
'autocratic' was felt to be slightly more productive than the
'democratic', In this instance, it would seem reasonable to
put forward the argument that leadership styles directly
determine leadership effectiveness, which in turn
dramatically affect output.
Clearly, these characteristics of leadership style —
consideration, generality, democratic learning and
punishment tendency - all appear to play a critical part in
determining the efficacy of leadership utilized in a work
setting.
Many of the generalizations forwarded have been criticized,
if not actually disproved. These criticisms have arisen
through the historical development of leadership studies,
beginning with the psychologist's search for characteristic
traits or inherent qualities in the leader, passing through a
human-relations phase in which leadership was regarded as a
'group-function', and reaching the current phase in which
critical features such as the context in which the leadership
styles occur, the nature of the work under supervision, and
the nature of the personnel involved are all analysed.
The above discussion has shown that the problem of
leadership and supervision in industrial organizations is one
that has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years.
Some writers in management have gone so far as to contend
that the quality of leadership is the single most important
factor determining the success or failure of such
organizations. But while the importance of this factor may
be over-stressed, there is an increasingly impressive body of
research on this question which does suggest that it is a very
significant factor, that variations in production levels, in
absenteeism, in labour turnover, in grievances, and
employee commitment and co-operativeness can be directly
traced to variations in the quality of leadership within such
organizations.
These criticisms levelled against the current theory and
practice of leadership and leadership training can be
examined more closely from three points of view. Firstly,
the nature of the qualities associated with good and poor
supervision in different work situations needs to be
determined. As the above analysis has attempted to show,
early work in the field, while recognizing the importance of
the technical skill or expertise of the individual, tended to
stress that this can more accurately be regarded as only a
necessary condition for leadership effectiveness and that
without the necessary social skills involved in managing
people it alone could ...
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