ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR

Leadership in Business

Leadership in Business

Introduction

Leadership has meaning only in an organizational context, and only in the sense of on managing within a system of inequalities. Superior-subordinate relationships help to define leadership behavior, and the culture in any particular society influences the nature of these relationships. Two leadership roles are common to all societies, however. The first is the Charismatic role, or the capability to provide vision and inspiration. This emphasized by transformational leadership concepts. The second is the instrumental role, or the capability to design effective organizational processes, control activities, and meet organizational objectives. This describes the functional expectations of someone is a leadership role. However, each society determines the relative importance of each role and therefore what makes a good leader.

Cross-cultural research has identified a pattern of characteristics common to effective leaders in these two roles, but these commonalities do not constitute shared traits. They include:

Conscientiousness Dependability, achievement orientation, and perseverance within the scope of one's responsibilities

Extroversion Open, accessible attitude, as opposed to remaining insulated from group activities

Dominance Appropriate use of authority in a system of inequalities

Self-confidence Comfort in one's own skills and abilities for managing

Bases of Power

A leader's power has been defined as the ability to get followers to do things they would not otherwise do (Dahl, 1957). Leaders possess varying amounts and types of power and can use a variety of behaviors to exercise their power. Power can be exercised coercively via threats of punishment or by means such as identification, persuasion, or exchange. French and Raven's (1959) description of five bases of power (i.e., referent, expert, legitimate, reward, and coercive) are indicative of the differing ways in which power can be expressed by leaders.

Power in the Current Scenario

Employee 1

English and Arnold (1987) presented a model that integrated the concepts of power, authority, leadership, and influence strategies with outcome variables such as channel member satisfaction, channel effectiveness, efficiency, conflict, and cooperation. Their conception of power sources, power, and leadership is consistent with earlier channel literature. But they offered a different perspective by dividing leadership into two components: (1) type of influence strategy employed, and (2) leadership style. Influence strategies were defined by Frazier and Summers (1984) as “communications utilized by a source firm's personnel in their influence attempts with target firms.” Influence strategies may focus on altering the target firm's perceptions via information exchange or recommendations. Or the source Corporate A's personnel may attempt to alter the target firm's behavior without changing perception through the use of promises, threats, or requests. Leadership style concerns how a channel leader uses power. Studies in intraorganizational behavior have indicated that effective leaders use particular styles to secure the compliance of subordinates. Channel leaders can exhibit any number of leadership styles in their use of power. Three of the most commonly identified leadership styles are directive, participative, and supportive (English and Arnold, 1987; House and Mitchell 1974; Schul et al., 1983).

Employee 2

A variety of different friendly programs and its application will be discussed in this ...