Leadership and Practical Management in East and West

MANAGEMENT THEORIES AND LEADERSHIP STYLE

Author: Muhammad Irfan Aslam Cheema

University of Salford

A Greater Manchester University

Greater Manchester

England, U.K

 

 

ITRODUCTION

 

The word leadership has got much attention in last few years due to the rapid and continuous changes because change is endemic. So organisation must be cared and prepared to adapt the readily all sort of changes. For effective and flexible strategy development and implementation need a competent and effective leadership in management, which is integral part for success in today changing organisation environment and power culture? It is need of hour to understand the psychology and need of individuals and group needs to influence, motivate and lead to achieve the organisation goals and objectives (task needs) in best possible way which is critical for business (survival) and strategy (vision for future)?

 

More over it is very important for adding value to business and for organisation’s successfulness to understand the management behaviour and style of leading subordinates when exercising power or using position.

 

The main objective/purpose of this paper is to look insight the characteristics of the leadership style using two theories and their comparison and application in real world.

 

HERESY AND BLANCHARD’S SITUATIONAL MODEL

 

The Heresy and Blanchard modulate the maturity into four different categories which show in the model below. In other word’s I could say that is job-centered and team-centered approach. So both theorists describe their model based on three factors which are as:

• Job/Task/Objectives.

• Situation/ Nature of task, Organisation structure and environment, follower readiness.

• Group/Team ability, skill and commitment.

 

So effective and efficient leader is who manage these to achieve goal and objectives of the organisation.

Diagram .1 Sources: [7]

 

Diagram 2: source [8]

 

Leadership styles suggested in this theory (empirical based) are:

 

1. TELLING

Telling style of management, in this style gives dictation to subordinates and strictly follows up the decision. So this could generate coercive from followers.

 

1. SELLINNG

Selling style of management adopted when leader is alone and has complete information’s on which decision is based upon.

 

1. PARTICIPATING/CONSULTATION

Consulting style of management, consult with subordinates but manger has control for final decision. Provide some degree of subordinate involvement.

 

1. DELEGATING/EMPOWERING

In this style of management manager/leader leader choose when s/he sell the decision and failed. In this style group make decision according to defined limits which is fit for problem. But the as leader s/he will take all responsibility and accountability of the decision.

 

1. JOINING

In joining style of management, in this style manager role as leader is to chair the meeting to emerge out the decision after group discussion and don’t impose his/her decision as peer/head because s/he is part of group.

 

TANNENBAUM AND SCHMIDT

 

In most organisations, problem arises for managers to decide which action is best for handling particular situation to achieve objectives.

So for providing meaning/description of leadership behaviour both researchers suggest a continuum illustrated as below.

 

 

Diagram 3: Source [6]

 

In left side of continuum depicted the high degree of managerial control/boss-centered approach. Where as in right side of this model it shows the delegation of manager to their sub-ordinates/sub-ordinate centered leadership style for decision making.

 

COMPARISON AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF BOTH THEORIES

 

If we check both model all activities along the curve of Hersey and Blanchard model are same to the diagonal line of the Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s model.

 

The fundamental objective of the Heresy and Blanchard’s situational leadership theory [SLT] is to determine of the leader behaviour with task and follower’s readiness. The situation of the leader behaviour is based on the level of task and level of follower/employee readiness. As the task and level of readiness is change, leader behaviour changes [1]. So the leader behaviour with task and relationship could be effective when follower’s readiness match with leader behaviour. The follower readiness is the maturity/ability of the followers. Both behaviour and readiness are necessary for the specified job/task to complete or being directed to complete. In heresy and Blanchard situational model briefly described above show the high degree of leader maturity but it depends upon the situation, skill of team members and task nature.

 

Hersey, Blanchard and Johnson [4] did not plead the coercion for workers which according to them is horrible and insecure. According to them situational model is fit for all situations where to influence the behaviour of others. As written down above it provides important variables (e.g. Task, Situation, Team) to adopt the particular style when dealing people and handling task.

Vecchio critical features of behaviour which already identified are focused in this model too [5]. So no body could say its theory superior than others. A critique conducted by the Claude Graeff [3] presented and disregarded it on based on pragmatic and theoretical level. Further more, Graeff said that this four dimension model in two dimension graph is a critical problem for the theory

In Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s model is showing scale of time and employees commitment. Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s model left side show autocratic style, in this area boss/leader uses his/her own decision i.e. “de facto decision” [2]. This side shows the less maturity of the leader/manager. Using this style leader uses force, position, threat and punitive actions to achieve the shared goals. The authoritative action is stitch to organisational objectives and goals. In this style task is priority not individual or group which is major disadvantage of this approach.

The right side of model shows the democratic style of leadership. It shows the maturity of the leadership skill and perception. In this style sub-ordinate has their participation in goal setting, criticizing but within defined limits set in the task objective which already set by the boss or senior executives.

Authoritative approach is commonly effective for short-term goals but democratic approach which is participative and for long-term objectives. Tennenbaum and Schmidt’s model has advantage that it gives leaders a range of choices and focus on the more specified criteria. More over this model has made difficult for others to develop the relevant theories and research. So organisation and business always think for long term not for short terms for its survival.

 

At last we could say that both are situational or contingency theories of leadership.

 

 

 

 

MANAGEMENT THEORIES IN PRACTICE

 

MANAGEMNT THEORIES AND ROLE OF HR MANAGER IN EAST

 

Cino-Pak International Traders has a flat managerial structure which consists of General Manager, Human Resource (HR) Manger, Financial manager, Export Manager, Marketing and Sale Managers, and Administration Manager. I was the Head of HR department with one Assistant Manager and two recruitment officers. Our department main job was to recruit the new staff and develop the different training programmes and arrange meetings of company officials etc.

 

Mostly, I discussed departmental matters with my assistant and rarely involved the others. My view was that there is no need to involve the junior staff in policy matters and think it is better and comfortable for me. I saw my self perfect and knowledgeable than others. My staff always expected they should be involved and used their professionalism and ability in both innovative and routine work. I used mostly “Telling” Style but some time discuss with my assistant managers and involved others rarely mentioned above used “Selling” style because I was responsible and accountable for any concerns. So I used the authoritative behaviour in form of telling and selling to achieve the company goals and objective through power and position. I did not trust in their ability and as a result created anger, coercion and suppress.

 

But according to my knowledge in our country authoritative style of leading and managing has been adopted due to cultural and environmental effects because most of companies are private. In public sector companies this style of leadership is exercising also.

 

MANAGEMENT THEORIES AND SKILLED WORKER OBSERVATION IN WEST

 

In U.K when I joined the Northern Foods Plc Hull in Aug 2004 as skilled worker I observed that there are regular workers meetings to tell about company news regarding profit, new procedures and asked for comments and suggestion regarding something discussed if someone has. In this way Workers think that they are important for company and feel pleasure and get motivated to perform their job efficiently and effectively. In this company the leading style is “Consulting” and “Participating” and some time “Joining” For example last year the absent level was too high as a result company lost their profit. It is still a challenging task that how to drive out the absence cost and reduce its level. So management arranged meetings and discussion session on it at all level to resolve this discrepancy. Further more last week company General Manager gave presentation to increase the workers salary 2% and told company financial condition. Employee union leaders said we will take it in election and know the workers opinion in this regard and then will inform you that we are accepting your offer or not. In other word according to Tannenbaum and Schmidt model there is a democratic way of leading and managing people which is most effectively using in EU and other western countries mostly not for others.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Overall, the behaviour of leadership style and the approaches used in Hersey and Blanchard and in tannenbaum and Schmidt’s model are valuable contribution. These theories are more realistic then other management theories. Both theories provide different leading styles but did not suggest which one is best to adopt in all situations. If we attempt to find a best leadership style is an extremely complex and challenging task for a leader. The finding of this study shows that leaders should not restrict to one leadership style, with aim of developing and creating the best possible environment and achieving the highest possible performance outcomes on the part of followers. The Heresy and Blanchard theory according to different researchers need further research and clarification and must encompasses more variables within the leading situation. The leader must be well activated, flexible, open-minded, well-informed and adaptable. An old saying is “a wise man would not have any fixed thinking, but adopt the views of others as his own”. In my point of view this saying is a good edge for leaders/managers to think and adopt when leading and managing people.

 

REFERENCES

 

[1]:Blank, W., Weitzel, J.R. and Green, S.G. (1990), “A test of the situational leadership theory”,

Personnel Psychology, Vol. 43 No. 3, pp. 579-97.

[2]: George T.,Y. Zotos & P. Dekoulou (2007), “Leadership style in the top Greek media companies: Leading people with mixed style”, The International Journal on Media Management, 9(2), P( 77-86).

[3]: Graeff, Claude L. 1983. “The situational leadership theory: A critical view”. Academy of

Management Review. 8 (2): 285-291.

[4]: Hersey, Paul, Kenneth H. Blanchard and Dewey E. Johnson. 2001.” Management of

Organizational behavior: Leading human resources. 8^th ed”, Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall.

[5]: Vecchio, Robert P. 1987.” Situational leadership theory: An examination of a prescriptive theory”, Journal of Applied Psychology. 72 (3): 444-451.

[6]http://www.whitestag.org/resources/sb217.htm Accessed date (02/07/2007).

[7]:http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdocument.aspx?logid=5&id=AC427B1E-CBA0-4323-AE41- E854EB835109 Accessed date (28/06/2007).

[8]:http://www.enviedentreprendre.com/images/motivation1.jpg Accessed date (11/07/2007).

 

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