Leadership

A Leadership Story:
A group of workers and their leaders are set a task
of clearing a road through a dense jungle on a remote
island to get to the coast where an estuary provides
a perfect site for a port.
The leaders organise the labour into efficient units and
monitor the distribution and use of capital assets
progress is excellent. The leaders continue to monitor
and evaluate progress, making adjustments along the
way to ensure the progress is maintained and efficiency
increased wherever possible.
Then, one day amidst all the hustle and bustle and
activity, one person climbs up a nearby tree. The person
surveys the scene from the top of the tree.
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Leadership

And shouts down to the

assembled group below
Wrong Way!
(Story adapted from Stephen Covey (2004) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Simon &
Schuster).

Management is doing things

right, leadership is doing the right
things
(Warren Bennis and Peter Drucker)
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Leadership
Controversy has arisen
over whether leaders are
different from managers
or whether management
is different from
leadership.
The role of
management is to
promote stability or to
enable the
organization to run
smoothly

The role of leadership is

to promote adaptive or
directive changes
We can define
Leadership as the
capability of a person to
direct, guide, and
influence a group in an
organization toward the
achievement of goals of
that organization
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Leadership

Leadership is the process where a

person exerts influence over others
and inspires, motivates and directs
their activities to achieve goals.
Effective leadership increases the
firms ability to meet new challenges.

Leader: The person exerting the influence.

Personal Leadership Style: the ways leaders

choose to influence others.
Some leaders delegate and support subordinates, others
are very authoritarian.
Managers at all levels have their own leadership style.
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Leadership
Types of
Leadership

Democratic:
Encourages decision making
from different perspectives
leadership may be emphasised
throughout the organization
Consultative: process of consultation
before decisions are taken
Persuasive: Leader takes decision
and seeks to persuade others that the
decision is correct

Leadership
Democratic:
Types of
Leadership
Style

May help motivation and

involvement
Workers feel ownership of the firm
and its ideas
Improves the sharing of ideas
and experiences within the
business
Can delay decision making

Leadership
Autocratic:
Types of
Leadership

Leader makes decisions without

reference to anyone else
High degree of dependency on the
leader
Can create de-motivation and
alienation of staff
May be valuable in some types of
business where decisions need to
be made quickly and decisively

Theories of
Leadership

Leadership

Trait theories:
Leadership is characterized by some specific traits
which can differentiate leaders from non-leaders.
Such as
Ambitious and energetic
Determined
Honest and integrative
Confident
Intelligent
Self-directing
Knowledgeable

Theories of
Leadership

Leadership
Trait theories:
Are such characteristics
inherently gender biased?
Do such characteristics
produce good leaders?
Is leadership more than
just bringing about change?
Does this imply that leaders are born
not bred?

Theories of
Leadership

Leadership

Behavioural:
Specific behaviours differentiate
leaders from non-leaders
Imply that leaders can be trained focus on
the way of doing things
Structure based behavioural theories focus on
the leader instituting structures task orientated.
Define standards of performance
Relationship based behavioural theories focus
on the development and maintenance of
relationships process orientated
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Organizational Ethics
What is ethics?
The term Ethics was chosen from the ancient
Greek "ethikos", meaning "arising from habit";
also morality.
Fundamentally ancient philosophers grounded
the term ethics on morality.
Then psychologists, sociologists, and eventually
economists, like Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Milton
Friedman, and Maynard Keynes addressed the
term from their own point of view.
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Organizational Ethics
Ethics, a major branch of philosophy, is
the study of value, or morals and morality.
It covers the analysis and employment of
concepts such as right, wrong, good, evil,
and responsibility.
Ethics is the science of standardization of
eternal human behavioral pattern, culture,
criteria, norms, and values for human
action, conduct, and attitudes.
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Organizational Ethics
Ethics in Organization: Individual Culture
A controversial topic of ethics in organization is
related to its origin issue.
Collins et al., (2005) argued that problematic
agency derived in modern organization is due to
self definition, construction, and articulation of
morality to support self-interest.
The subjects who are acting as problematic
agents, like discriminators in organizational
structure are conceptualizing morality in their
own constructs and consequently defending
their problematic agency as moral.
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Organizational Ethics
Ethics in Organization: Organizational
Culture
But several authors dealing with
organizational ethics do not agree with this
individual view (Tabachnick, Keith-Spiegel, & Pope, 1991; White
& Rhodeback, 1992; Bauman, 1993; Gunz et al., 2004).

They found the influential impact of

organizational philosophy on individual
view and consequently characterize
immoral and unethical views as the
product of modern organizational culture.
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Organizational Ethics
Ethics in Organization: Organizational Culture
Modern organizational culture forces individuals
and groups to comply with organizational norms
and values which are significantly deviated from
traditional ethics.
Schein (2000) argued that top executives, who are
climbing the ladder to the top, are unaware of
morality and do not response to right or wrong.
They fully accustomed to relative truth of the
organization. More ironically, they advocate for
any matter which is better for the company as
the truth.
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