Organisational Behaviour & Leadership

Organisational Behaviour & Leadership

Organisational Behaviour & Leadership

The aim of this essay is to analyse how the management of people; and in particular the leadership of people; can contribute to effective organisational behaviour, development and good health. In order to do this it is important to define effective organisational behaviour, development and good health, consider all the factors that can contribute, before looking specifically at how leadership can contribute.

Defining effective organisational behaviour, development and good health is an area that can pose difficulty. Organisations are made up of different stake holders and each stake holder can have a different view on what constitutes effective organisational behaviour, development and good health. An organisational stakeholder can be defined as "anyone with an interest, or stake, in the actions of the organisation and its members" Buchanan and Huczynski (2004). This definition of organisational stakeholders includes those internal and external to the organisation. The definition highlights that organisational stakeholders will have similar overall goals and objectives but there will be some key differences not only in the importance placed on each but also how the organisation achieves them. An organisation's stakeholders can include an almost endless list of employee's, suppliers, customers, shareholders etc that can be broken down and sorted into various groups with independent goals and objectives designed to meet their own view of effective organisational behaviour. An example of stakeholder conflict can be seen at The Countryside Agency, a government body with the aim of 'improving the quality of the Countryside for those who use it and the quality of life for people in rural communities'. Simply by dissecting the aim of the body it is possible to see that there are clearly conflicting interests at an organisational level because it is trying to satisfy two major external groups at the outset by balancing the needs of those who live in The Countryside with those who visit it. Internal stakeholders such as the finance department view their role as ensuring that any public money that has been spent was justifiable and recorded and stored accurately. This is often to the annoyance of the Policy work areas who feel stronger about improving the countryside than the bureaucratic process of justifying and recording public spending often seeing the financial procedures as a time consuming hindrance. This conflict means that each stakeholder will have a different view of whether the organisation is successful or not and will have different solutions to what they individually see as being the key obstacles to success.

When looking at how the management of people can contribute to effective organisational behaviour, development and good health through leadership it is important to establish the differences between management and leadership. Some theorists hold the opinion that leadership is one area of the management role and in order to be a successful manager they must possess some leadership skills by default. The argument for differentiating between leaders and managers was started by Zaleznik (1977, 2004) in 'Manager and Leaders: Are they different?' where ...