Ayesha's Blog

Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s changing world?

OVERVIEW OF LEADERSHIP

Historically, the idea of leadership was introduced by Warren Bennis in his early 90s. He wrote 30 books on it. He defined leadership as a skill that can be gained by handwork (Sterbenz 2014). There are two types of leadership style, Early styles known as Traditional leadership and modern leadership known as Contemporary Leadership. The early ideas of leadership were invented of industry expansions and revolution that described leader as a great individual. Early theories of leaderships known as Traditional Leadership styles, include the great man 7 traits theory (Hunt, Thaddeus & Fedynich, Lavonne 2019).

Trait theory(1930s): In this theory, Effective leaders are born not made, we have great examples like Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. Leadership qualities are always recognised through personal abilities, characteristics and the 7 leadership traits.

Kurt Lewin in 1930 invented three types of leaders; Autocratic, Democratic and Laissez faire leadership styles (Carlin 2019).

Autocratic Leadership

In autocratic style of leadership, every decision is made by the upper level management without consulting their team members. It is known as a boss centered leadership with power distance between the leaders and the employees (Degree 2018).

Democratic Leadership

In democratic style, decision making process includes team members. They believe in creativity and innovation and it encourages employees towards better performance. It is also known as team centered leadership (Degree 2018).

Laissez-Faire Leadership

In this leadership style, employees are given full freedom to work in their own style and provide them with resources. It creates high job satisfaction, but sometimes time management problem occurs because of this style. It is also known as Hands-off leadership, let the people do as they choose (Degree 2018).

DEFINITION OF LEADERSHIP

Leadership is a process of social influence, an art of motivation and encouraging people towards a certain goal (Ward 2020). Leadership is the ability to transform vision into reality, whereas a good leader is someone who has followers (Kruse 2013).

The most important features of leadership come from these essential leadership theories which includes the following;

Traits Theory

A good leader has followers and leaders inspire them. To be a good leader, an individual need to have 7 traits associated with leadership (Economy n.d.)

Drive: A leader need to put a lot of efforts to achieve high goals and be more ambitious towards the aim.
Desire to Lead: They should have the ability and capacity to lead and take responsibility to influence others to achieve the target.
Honesty and Integrity: They must create a healthy environment and connection with their followers, workers, and be more honest with them to show them the right path and consistency to work hard.
Self Confidence: A good leader needs to be confident about the target and lead other with self-confidence.
Intelligence: Leaders need to have plenty of knowledge about situation to solve problems and to create a vision for the followers
Job Relevant Knowledge: Leaders should have full information about the company and its matters, so it helps the leader in making favourable decision for the company
Extraversion: it is related to optimism that leader should have a positive attitude and be more social and active.

Situation Theory

Situational leadership theory reflects that no leadership style is the best. It all depends on the circumstances of an organisation and the most effective leaders are the one who adapts the style of leadership according to the requirement of the situation (Cherry 2019).

Visionary Theory

In visionary leadership, leaders work according to the requirement of the world that how the world should exist. (Lucas 2019).

Charismatic Leadership (1970-1980’s)

Charismatic leaders have an ability to persuade and inspire the followers. They even sacrifice their own comfort to achieve a certain aim. They are focused, creative and confidence (Sisk 2018).

For this blog, I would like to talk about the leadership styles that are now used in the modern world. Modern leadership is known as Contemporary leadership. Contemporary leadership has two types; Transformational and Transactional leadership.

Transformational leadership:

Transformational leadership was introduced by James MacGregor Burns, he said that transformational leadership is all about taking each other to the upper level of ethical and inspiration. Transformational leadership includes motivating people and spreading positivity in the working environment. Leaders who follow transformational leadership are more optimistic and energetic and ambitious towards their work (Cherry 2020). In transformational leadership, leaders are innovative, creative and enthusiastic and they can bring change with a sense of promise and motivation. Study indicates that groups led by transformational leaders have higher levels of performance and satisfaction than groups led by other types of leaders(Cherry 2020).

Transformational can be further categorise into four concepts (Cherry 2020).

Idealised influence
Inspirational motivation
Intellectual stimulation
Individualised consideration

Transactional leadership

Weber described transactional leadership as the exercise of control on the basis of information. In transactional leadership, leaders are more practical (St. Thomas University 2018). They are more focused on results, have formal authority and positions of responsibility in a company. Transactional leaders recognise the demand of the followers and gives reward to encourage them to increase their efforts and performance towards the certain goal (Cherry 2019).

Transactional leadership has following characteristic

Attentive towards short term goals
Conflicting to change
Favour current policies and methodologies
Incline to be more inflexible
More focused on following rules and doing everything efficiently

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRANSFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL LEADERSHIP

For Transformational leadership I’ll take an example of Michelle Obama, a lawyer and who was the first lady of US from 2009 to 2017. A recent article in Forbes stated that Michelle Obama has been actively in the news for her fashion sense and her leadership skills and community activism. A female Transformational leader who inspired others, motivated people and enhanced the morale of the followers. Michelle Obama established this quality as she leads the change from fast food to healthy eating for everyone, but especially the children. She also led a countrywide move from inactive to physical activities for children to contribute in the effort to end childhood obesity (Agbor 2017). For Transactional leadership, we can take an example of Bill gates, a well-known computer tycoon of Microsoft. He is known for an influential and strict leadership style he transformed Microsoft into a stable monopoly. He had strict rules and regulations to control the organisation’s operations for the development and acceptance of the products by consumers. He was more focused on sales. As a Transactional leader, he used to control his new product and ask relevant and hard questions until he was fully satisfied from the output by his employees (Rampton 2016).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

So, if we conclude the contemporary leadership, Michelle Obama was more focused towards humanity and did work for the betterment of the nation and always influenced her followers, that is why she is known as a Transformational Leader. But Bill gates always focused on increasing the profits of the company and never motivated his workers for better performance, so he comes in the category of Transactional leadership. Now a days, people prefer working in an organisation with Transformational leaders to enhance their skills and positive environment.

REFERENCES

Agbor, S. 2017 Michelle Obama – Transformational Leader [online] available from https://contentbuilder.merlot.org/toolkit/html/snapshot.php?id=51988240193565 [17^th march 2020]

Carlin, D. 2019 Democratic, Authoritarian, Laissez-Faire: What Type of Leader Are You? [online] available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcarlin/2019/10/18/democratic-authoritarian-laissez-faire-what-type-of-leader-are-you/#2afacba72a6b [14^th march 2020]

Cherry, K 2019 The Situational Theory of Leadership [online] available from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-situational-theory-of-leadership-2795321 [16^th march 2020]

Cherry, K 2019 How a Transactional Leadership Style Works [online] available from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-transactional-leadership-2795317 [14^th march 2020]

Cherry, K. 2020 Transformational Leadership [online] available from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-transformational-leadership-2795313 [ 14^th march 2020]

Degree, M. (2018) Leadership Styles Autocratic, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire [online] available from https://thirddegreesolutions.com/leadership-styles-autocratic-democratic-and-laissez-faire/ [14^th march 2020]

Economy, P. N.d. 7 Traits of Highly Effective Leaders [online] available from https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/7-traits-highly-effective-leaders.html [ 14^th march 2020]

Kruse, K. 2013 What Is Leadership? [online] available from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/04/09/what-is-leadership/#2bb81cd65b90 [ 14^th march 2020]

Lucas, S. 2019 Visionary Leadership [online] available from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/visionary-leadership-4174279 [14^th march 2020]

Rampton, J. 2016 How Bill Gates Became a Leadership Legend [online] available from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/250607 [16^th march 2020]

Sisk, A. 2018 Charismatic Leadership Theories [online] available from https://bizfluent.com/about-7416354-charismatic-leadership-theories.html [16^th march 2020]

St. Thomas University. 2018 What is Transactional Leadership? How Structure Leads to Results [online] available from https://online.stu.edu/articles/education/what-is-transactional-leadership.aspx [14^th march 2020]

Sterbenz, C. 2014 The Man Who Invented The Study Of Corporate Leadership, Warren Bennis, Died on July 31st Aged 89 [online] available from https://www.businessinsider.com/the-man-who-invented-the-study-of-corporate-leadership-warren-bennis-died-on-july-31st-aged-89-2014-8?r=US&IR=T [14^th march 2020]

Ward, S. 2020 The Definition of Leadership What Is Leadership? And Can You Learn to Be a Good Leader? [online] available from https://www.thebalancesmb.com/leadership-definition-2948275 [ 14^th march 2020]

Hunt, Thaddeus & Fedynich, Lavonne. (2019). Leadership: Past, Present, and Future: An Evolution of an Idea. 8. 20-24. available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331473953_Leadership_Past_Present_and_Future_An_Evolution_of_an_Idea [14th march 2020]

CULTURE WITHIN AN ORGANISATION

Cultural Paradigm

OVERVIEW

Historically, the idea of culture was clearly normative. The word “Culture” is derived from a french expression, which in turn originates from the Latin ‘colere’, which means growing and inclining to the earth and grow (Zimmermann 2017). Matthew Arnold said that the culture is a chase of thoughts and ideas that has been said in the world and by this understanding we can transform them into our concepts and behaviour (Johnson 2018).

What is Culture?

Culture is an umbrella that includes social behaviours and standards found in human social orders, as well as the information, convictions, beliefs, customs, traditions, attitudes, hierarchies, religion, values and motives (Zimmermann 2017). Culture is very essential, and it plays a vital role in your daily life. There are two types of Culture, National and Organisational culture;

What is National Culture?

National culture is a set of norms, beliefs that differs from other countries. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions became a framework for comparing cultures and understanding cross cultural differences (Hofstede 2019). These cultural dimensions of Hofstede highlight the independent preferences of one with other that differentiates countries from each other (Hofstede 2019).

I will take Apple as an example to explain the hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Apple is an American company and is also operating in UK. We can identify the national cultural differences between America and UK by hofstede’s cultural dimensions.

UK AND USA NATIONAL CULTURE COMPARISON. HOFSTEDE INSIGHTS.

UNITED KINGDOM

USA

POWER DISTANCE

UK is a society that believes that inequalities should be finished in their country, whereas has a high PDI which means that the power is distributed unequally, and a society’s inequality is recognised by the followers as much as by the leaders (Hofstede 2019).

INDIVIDUALISM

UK and USA both have the highest score in individualism, the people are more private in this country and which means that people only look for themselves and their direct families, employees only works for mutual advantage, and the management is the management of individuals (Hofstede 2019).

MASCULINITY

USA is a masculinity society, which means they live in order to work. they are more decisive, focuses on performance and fights the competitions. In UK, at 66 means that UK is also a success driven country and organisations are high performance ambition and focuses on creating more equity (Hofstede 2019).

UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE

In UK, UCI is low which means Top managers are involved in the strategy and power of superior is dependent on position (Oliver 2011). The US scores are low which reflects their national culture as a fair degree of acceptance of new innovations, products and has the power to try different technology or practices (Hofstede 2019).

LONG TERM ORIENTATION

In UK, LTO is halfway which means a leading partiality in British culture cannot be examined. In USA, LTO is low which shows that Americans are susceptible to analyse new information to check whether it’s true or not (Hofstede 2019).

INDULGENCE

Uk is more classified as indulgent as they are more optimistic, and they give high degree of importance on leisure time and enjoy their life. In USA, LTO is low and has a restraint culture (Hofstede 2019).

What is an Organisational Culture ?

Organisational culture is the aspect and visible personality originated within every organisation. Even if you are not aware with many companies like Google or Virgin, but their big names reflect the taste of their places of work, their values and the principles of the company (Morcos 2018).

The day to day activities of an organisation that are followed consciously or subconsciously, reflects the organisational culture (Ashby 2000). Your organisational culture reflects how you do business for yourself and others and how do you interact with others, how your team interacts with the outside world, primarily your clients, staff, vendors, media and all other stakeholders. Strong culture leads to ongoing engagement of employees of an organisation and can forecast current and future financial performances (Ashworth 2015).

APPLE’S ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE

For this assignment I will use Apple as an example, Apple is a Multinational company based in America. It was established by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. Apple is one of the largest companies in the world that manufactures and sells electronics, computer software and other online services. It is the second largest phone manufacturer in the world after Samsung (Toppr n.d).

Apple’s organisational culture is the key factor that lead the company to such great success. Organisational culture of Apple during Steve job’s period was known as harsh and demanding, as he was a very strict leader and wanted everything to be on point and perfect. Charles has explained the organisational culture by its handy model

Charles Handy, defined four different kinds of culture: Power, Role, Task and Person.

APPLE was known as a power culture during Steve jobs period because he was very dominant, and he used to make every decision and had strict rules and regulations. When Steve Job was serving as the CEO of Apple, teamwork was the priority to take company to the highest level. Steve Job was a high maintenance co-worker who always demanded excellence from his employees. He resigned from Apple in 1985 after losing a boardroom battle for control of the company, imagine the person resigning from the company he founded? (Oliver 2015). But when he came back in 1997, after his company NeXt was bought by Apple, he implemented his personal culture in the organisation. He focused on making beautiful objects that made money. Steve Job was considered as the most valuable assets of the company (Times USA 2019). He was able to combine his unchangeable, persistent passion with a development in management style to create one of the most successful company in the world (Tetzeli 2015). After Steve job’s death, Apple company is still following a centralised structure in which every decision is made by the CEO of the company or his close associates (Tasnim 2018). Apple’s organisational cultural is really inspired by innovation. Apple has a main aspect in their culture, which is secrecy and Tim has put a lot of efforts and time in making the working conditions and environment of the organisation happy. Employees work in pressure because of high competition and it will remain a part of working environment and culture (Pratap 2019). A reflection of Apple’s culture is mainly a mixture of Task and Personal culture because people are considered special and distinctive to the organisation and is more like a bundle of employees working together for one organisation.

CONCLUSION

Thus, Apple has developed a rich and healthy organisational culture. Today, Apple is one of the most successful company, it could never be this successful if Steve job would not have created such strong organisational culture. Apple is undoubtedly effective but can also be more by using adhocracy practices. There should be some little amendments like, employees should also be allowed in the decision-making process as this help them understand goals more effectively and will work more closely on it.

REFERENCES

Ashby, F. C. (2000) Revitalize Your Corporate Culture. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India Private Limited.

Ashworth, P. (2015) Why Company Culture is So Important to Business Success [online] available from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-company-culture-so-important-business-success-peter-ashworth/ [15th February 2020]

Dormehl, L. (2018) Tim Cook vs Steve Jobs: Who is Apple’s best CEO ever? [online] available from https://www.cultofmac.com/543227/tim-cook-vs-steve-jobs/ [23rd February 2020)

Hofstede Insights (2019) Country Comparison [online] available from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/the-uk,the-usa/ [23rd February 2020]

Hofstede, G. (2019) The Six Dimensions Of National Culture: Hofstede insights https://hi.hofstede-insights.com/national-culture

Meyer, P. (2019) Apple Inc.’s Organisational Culture & Its Characteristics (An Analysis) [online] available from http://panmore.com/apple-inc-organizational-culture-features-implications [23rd February 2020]

Morcos, M. (2018) Organization Culture: Definition and Trends [online] available from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329140215_ORGANISATIONAL_CULTURE_DEFINITIONS_AND_TRENDS [15th February 2020]

Oliver, S. (2015) Steve Jobs left Apple on his own, wasn’t forced out, Wozniak says [online] available from https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/13/steve-jobs-left-apple-on-his-own-wasnt-forced-out-wozniak-says [23rd February 2020]

Pratap, A. (2019) An Analysis of Apple’s Organizational Culture [online] available from https://notesmatic.com/2017/05/an-analysis-of-apples-organizational-culture/ [23rd February 2020]

Tasnim, M. (2018) ‘An Organisational Analysis on Apple’. European Journal of Business and Management, [online] Volume (10), 36. available from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/43e8/06c4c4e68f14b1d3463c8763613213ba4321.pdf [23rd February 2020]

Times USA (2019) The Apple Revolution: 10 Key Moments [online] available from http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1873486_1873491_1873461,00.html [23^rd February 2020]

Toppr n.d. Company overview of Apple, Intel [online] available from https://www.toppr.com/guides/commercial-knowledge/business-organizations/company-overview-of-apple-intel/ [23rd February 2020)