Organizational Leadership

7 Key excerpts on "Organizational Leadership"

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  Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

  • Pamela McCauley(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  77 chapter three Leadership within an organization To be effective as a leader, it is important to understand how to add value in support of the vision and mission of an organization. Thus, an individ- ual must gain some knowledge of Organizational Leadership within the environment, the specific organizational culture, and finally the organi- zational structure. Understanding Organizational Leadership Part of being able to correctly lead within an organization depends on understanding the functioning of the particular organization. Organizations are far more dynamic than they once were; people no lon- ger stay at the same company for their entire careers. It is essential to quickly adapt to and understand the needs of your organization in order for both you and it to grow. Thus, it is even more important that a clear perspective be gained early in one’s tenure at an organization. Generally, individual leaders are established throughout organizations to support the overall organizational objectives and goals. According to Zaccaro and Klimoski [1], the primary areas of Organizational Leadership that have some degree of consensus in the literature can be narrowed down to four principles. These broad principles include the following: 1. Organizational Leadership Involves Processes and Proximal Outcomes (such as Worker Commitment) that Contribute to the Development and Achievement of Organizational Purpose Leadership positions are setup in the work place to enable organi- zational subunits to achieve the reasons for their existence within the larger system. The purpose of an Organizational Leadership is to set a direction for collective actions. The process of leadership is aimed at defining, identifying, establishing, or translating orga- nizational directions for their followers and aiding or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the accomplishment of this function.

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  Essentials of Engineering Leadership and Innovation

  • Pamela McCauley(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  chapter three Leadership within an organization

  To be effective as a leader, it is important to understand how to add value in support of the vision and mission of an organization. Thus, an individual must gain some knowledge of Organizational Leadership within the environment, the specific organizational culture, and finally the organizational structure.

  Understanding Organizational Leadership

  Part of being able to correctly lead within an organization depends on understanding the functioning of the particular organization. Organizations are far more dynamic than they once were; people no longer stay at the same company for their entire careers. It is essential to quickly adapt to and understand the needs of your organization in order for both you and it to grow. Thus, it is even more important that a clear perspective be gained early in one’s tenure at an organization. Generally, individual leaders are established throughout organizations to support the overall organizational objectives and goals. According to Zaccaro and Klimoski [1 ], the primary areas of Organizational Leadership that have some degree of consensus in the literature can be narrowed down to four principles. These broad principles include the following:

  1.  Organizational Leadership Involves Processes and Proximal Outcomes (such as Worker Commitment) that Contribute to the Development and Achievement of Organizational Purpose

  Leadership positions are setup in the work place to enable organizational subunits to achieve the reasons for their existence within the larger system. The purpose of an Organizational Leadership is to set a direction for collective actions. The process of leadership is aimed at defining, identifying, establishing, or translating organizational directions for their followers and aiding or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the accomplishment of this function. Organizational purpose and direction is described in several ways, including through mission, vision, strategy, goals, plans, and tasks. The operation of leadership is inextricably tied to the constant growth and accomplishment of these organizational goals.

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  Managing Organizations

  Current Issues

  • Stewart R Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, Walter R Nord, Stewart R Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, Walter R Nord(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  2 Leadership in Organizations A L A N B R Y M A N Leadership has long been a major area of interest among social scientists and in particular psychologists. However, the field of leadership in organizations seemed to be in a trough in the early 1980s. For some time there had been a feeling that the field lacked an agreed-upon framework (a paradigm) within which research took place and that the findings of a century of research were trivial or contradictory. New approaches continued to surface (e.g. Hunt et al. 1982) but the field seemed to lack coherence and there was a sense of despondency about its fut ure direction. There was even a cal l for the temporary abandonment of the concept (Miner 1982), but such extreme views did not find many adherents, because, for all the undoubted problems with the area in those years (some of which have not gone away), the notion of leadership is one that continues to attract generations of writers, in large part because we tend to view leadership as an important feature of everyday and organizational affairs. Leadership, as one might anticipate, is not an ·easy concept to define. Its widespread currency and use in everyday life as an explan ation affects the way it is defined and indeed probably makes it more difficult to define than a concept that is invented as an abstraction ab initio. Most defi-nitions of leadership have tended to coalesce around a number of elements which can be dis-cerned in the fol lowing definition by a researcher whose work had a profound impact on one of the stages of theory and research to be encoun-tered below: Leadership may be considered as the process (act) of influencing the activi ties of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement. (Stogdill 1 950: 3) Three elements can be discerned in this defi-nition that are common to many definitions: influence, group and goal.

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  Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior

  Evidence-based Lessons for Creating Sustainable Organizations

  • Steve M. Jex, Thomas W. Britt, Cynthia A. Thompson, Cynthia A Thompson(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Managers are people who don’t make things worse for their work team, but also don’t get them very excited either. Interestingly, the leadership–man- agement distinction is much more of an issue in the popular leadership literature than it is among leadership scholars. This may explain why people have strong feel- ings about the issue (see Comment 10.1). Despite all the factors that complicate the meaning of leadership, it is possible to iden- tify some common ground among the numerous definitions. Yukl and Van Fleet (1992) define leadership as “a process that includes influencing the task objectives and strategies of an organization, influencing people in the organization to implement the strategies and achieve the objectives, influ- encing the group maintenance and identifi- cation, and influencing the culture of the organization” (p. 149). This definition is summarized in Figure 10.1. Vroom and Defining Leadership 513 Jago (2007) defined leadership more succinctly as “a process of motivating peo- ple to work together collaboratively to accomplish great things” (p. 18). There are several things to note about these definitions. First, leadership involves the influencing of others’ behaviors. Second, leadership is viewed as a process and not as an outcome. Based on this definition, it is possible for a leader to engage in unsuccess- ful influence attempts. Third, these defini- tions imply that leadership requires a variety of skills. Influencing task objectives and strategy may require strong analytical and conceptual skills; influencing people to implement those strategies and objectives requires interpersonal and persuasive skills. Finally, leaders are frequently important agents of change in organizations. Changing the culture of an organization is a tall order (see Chapters 12 and 13), although it may be necessary at times if an organization is to survive. Because of the influence they have, leaders are often in the best position to facil- itate cultural change.

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  Leadership for the Twenty-First Century

  • Joseph Rost(Author)
  • 1993(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Osborn and Hunt (1975) provided the only definition of leadership in Hunt and Larson's first symposium: "Leadership is defined in terms of discretionary influence. Discretionary influence refers to those leader behaviors under the control of the leader which he may vary from individual to individual" (p. 28). Again, discretionary influence operates in many human relationships other than leadership. Engstrom (1976), whose book takes a religious approach to leadership, gave a classical behavioral definition: "Leadership is an act by word or deed to influence behavior toward a desired end" (p. 20). Corwin (1978), a political scientist, translated the dictionary "ability to lead" definition to organizations: "Leadership consists largely of the ability to influence organizational policy and practice to manipulate organizational resources" (p. 78). Filley (1978) provided a management-oriented definition. Leadership is "the ability of an individual to establish and maintain acceptable levels of satisfaction and job-related perfor- mance so that organization needs are met as well" (p. 52). With such definitions circulating in the literature, it is easy to understand how leadership and man- agement were viewed as the same process. These definitions are all fairly standard stuff, and if one looks at the textbooks of this period, they are endlessly (and mindlessly) repeated over and over. Leadership is initiating and maintaining groups or organizations to accomplish group or organizational goals. That was the standard, mainstream understanding of leadership in thousands of college and university classrooms throughout the country. The more exciting material and the more substantive definitions of leadership came from scholars who were developing understandings of leadership that did 60 LEADERSHIP FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY not fit into the mold of the mainstream approaches.

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  Strategic Leadership Development

  Building World Class Performance

  • Colin Carnall, Chris Roebuck(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  How leadership is not only internal to organisations but also how organisational leadership impacts on the wider community both locally and globally. Once this is in place we hope it will help those engaged as leaders to improve their own performance, as well as that of the people they lead, and their organisations overall. In the final analysis, leadership is as much about action – making things happen and transforming lives and organisations – as it is about thinking. Throughout the book we distinguish between strategic and personal leadership devel-opment. Personal leadership development focuses on the skills and behaviour of lead-ers as a means of understanding effective leadership viewed in relational terms. Here we seek to understand how leaders interact with people, whether subordinates, colleagues, clients or other stakeholders, and at the impact of the nature of those interactions. 1 1 Strategic leadership: a key to organisational success Strategic leadership focuses on the decisions, judgements and actions of senior leaders and how they came to be formed. We do not claim these to be independent factors. Thus a leader who has poor relationships with colleagues may not be adequately informed and therefore make poor decisions. However, in our view, too much attention in leadership development literature and practice focuses on personal leadership development. The purpose of this book is to seek to address that imbalance. The book examines leaders and the development of leadership in a changing world, and in organisations good leadership can facilitate the delivery of optimum perform-ance from individuals, teams and the whole organisation. It presents a perspective based on nearly 70 years of the authors’ combined experience of working with senior leaders and organisations in both the public and private sectors, together with substan-tial research evidence and a number of significant case studies.

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  Fundamentals of Management

  • Ricky Griffin(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Describe the nature of leadership and relate leadership to management. • As a process, leadership is the use of noncoercive influence to shape the group’s or organization’s goals, motivate behavior toward the achievement of those goals, and help define group or organization culture. • As a property, leadership is the set of characteristics attributed to those who are perceived to be leaders. • Leadership and management are often related but are also different. • Managers and leaders use legitimate, reward, coer-cive, referent, and expert power. 2. Discuss and evaluate the two generic approaches to leadership. • The trait approach to leadership assumed that some basic trait or set of traits differentiated leaders from nonleaders. • The leadership behavior approach to leadership assumed that the behavior of effective leaders was somehow different from the behavior of nonleaders. • Research at the University of Michigan and Ohio State University identified two basic forms of leadership behavior—one concentrating on work and performance and the other concentrating on employee welfare and support. • The Managerial Grid attempts to train managers to exhibit high levels of both forms of behavior. 3. Identify and describe the major situational approaches to leadership. • Situational approaches to leadership recognize that appropriate forms of leadership behavior are not universally applicable and attempt to specify situ-ations in which various behaviors are appropriate. • The LPC theory suggests that a leader’s behav-ior should be either task oriented or relationship oriented, depending on the favorableness of the situation. • The path-goal theory suggests that directive, sup-portive, participative, or achievement-oriented leader behaviors may be appropriate, depending on the personal characteristics of subordinates and the environment.

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