PLEASE RESPOND TO DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION ANSWER

Management and its impact on organizational efficiency.

Your leadership style affects the motivation, effectiveness and productivity of employees. Different types of leadership styles generate different results. There are times when one type of leadership style is the overt style in an office, but other styles are incorporated in specific department needs. Understanding how various leadership styles affect productivity allows leaders to analyze and adapt for effective Democratic Leadership Style

The democratic leadership style takes the stance that everyone's opinion counts. Employees like this style because they feel empowered and engaged in the success of the company. However, sometimes employee input on major company decisions can be negative. When one group of employees outvotes another group, the losing group can harbor resentment because their ideas were not implemented. The democratic leadership style also creates confusion about the company's direction because no one is sitting at the helm giving that direction. Confusion about business direction and leadership negatively affects productivity.ness.

The coaching leadership style has a positive impact on morale and productivity. Leaders who coach not only encourage team members but also look at what works and what doesn't to target areas of growth. Employees feel good that action plans help them improve rather than focus on negative qualities or performance problems. Employees feel the company is investing in their success. Coaching doesn't work if it isn't Authoritative Leadership Style

The authoritative leadership style puts lines in the sand and enforces those lines without flexibility. This leadership style can work in areas of a company such as sales where a team must hit specific sales goals for company profitability. However, when the authoritative leadership style is the dominant style in an office, employees feel fearful that any misstep can result in being fired. Authoritative leaders need to incorporate other styles such as coaching to help employees define goals and set standards and timelines for improvement to meet and exceed goals.consistent and done as a standard part of employee training and review.

Transformational and Charismatic Leadership- a systematic analysis.

Leaders have a significant role in creating the state of mind that is the society. They can serve as symbols of the moral unity of the society. They can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in the pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.

How did transformational and charismatic leadership theory develop? Why is transformational and charismatic leadership so popular? Where is transformational and charismatic leadership theory heading? I will try to answer these questions and others in this chapter. First, I review some of the major historical works that provided the scaffolding for current theories of transformationaland charismatic leadership. In terms of the contemporary theories, I focus in particular on Bass’s (1985) theory—known also as the “full-range leadership theory” or the “transformational-transactional” leadership theory (Avolio & Bass, 1991)—because it is the flagship theory of the transformational and charismatic

movement (Antonakis & House, 2002). Although a part of my work has focused on transformational and charismatic leadership (Antonakis, 2001; Antonakis & Atwater, 2002; Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003; Jacquart & Antonakis, 2010), I critically review this theoretical stream and in

particular its for bearer, Bass’s theory, highlighting some of its strengths and weaknesses. Given that I am “one of them”—that is, part of the charisma “leadership mafia” as Gemmill and Oakley (1992) would say—it is not easy for me to take this step back and review the theory with a critical eye.  Although 

I pay my respects to the theory, my purposeful “friendly fire” highlights voids and inconsistencies in the full-range theory (Antonakis & House, 2002;Antonakis, House, Rowold, & Borgmann, 2010); a theory can only be improved if it can be challenged, and it is with this mindset that I am poking some holes in this model. Finally, I also briefly review competing transformational and charismatic paradigms and conclude with where transformational and charismatic leadership is heading, or rather should be heading.

The impact of gender in leadership positions on management- review of the literature

Ever-increasing globalization is a challenge for leadership since it tends to lower prizes, escalate innovation and improve services. All this contributes to a need for new thinking in leadership. At the same time, leadership and organizations are rooted in a national context. It is surprising, however, that analysis of the interrelation of leadership style and nationality –appears to play an insignificant role in the leadership literature. Some scholars describe leadership in a context of “country” (Bass, 1990). From available data, it can be noted, that nationality influences leaders, but it is not necessarily the main factor of analysis (Cames, Vinnicombe& Singh, 2001). This strong social phenomenon is clearly under-researched in the context of  leadership, even though it is evident that people around the globe describe their lives in terms of national culture (Kramer, 2011). This is surprising, as national features and the importance of nationality become more prominent during crises or conflicts. In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008 and warnings about a “second wave” of global crises, we need more knowledge on the national effect on leadership styles. Another vital development of leadership is the growing participation of women in the labor markets, especially in services. As a consequence of this, more and more women are entering leadership positions in organizations. What impact does this have on leadership styles? Here, national differences are quite prevalent in the participation rates of women, and their number in management and on boards of directors. This seems to be an effect of official policies (maternity leaves; availability of pre-schools, the tax system, gender quotas on company boards, etc.), as well as the educational system, the national culture and the struggle of feminist movements. Few studies have focused on gender, leadership behavior and top management (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Bartol, Martin, &Kromkowski, 2003). Hence, one of the goals of this systematic review is to retrieve available data regarding research on top management levels in business in relation to their leadership style, gender and nationality. Leadership style is a rather constant pattern of behavior (Dubrin, 2010) and  behavior is a response of an organism “which been attributed to a great variety of causes located within and outside of people.” (Reber, Allen, & Reber, 2009). People tend to have certain a pattern in leadership – a style. But it seems, that how they respond (behave) depends on various factors such as: culture, gender, nationality, and historical aspects.  There is no doubt that culture influences leaders (Hofstede, 1996, Schein, 2004, House, et al., 2004). Even though definitions of culture vary a lot, in general it has been understood as the way of life, customs, and script of a group of people (Gudykunst & Ting–Toomey, 1988). Three different research traditions have studied the effect of culture and societal institutions on leadership and corporate organization. On the one hand, sociologists are looking at societal institutions, such as industrial relations, the education system, labor markets, career systems of managers, culture etc. and their effect on behavior in firms (Gallie, 1978, Lane, 1989, Maurice et al., 1986). On the other hand, it is the approach of Hofstede (1996) and the GLOBE-research group (House et al. 2004) focusing on how cultural values have an impact on behavior, and how people view leadership. Finally, there is research on ethnicity in multicultural societies. Scholars of the institutional approach (Gallie, 1978; Lane, 1989; Maurice et al., 1986; Dore, 1973) stress the historical involvement of societal institutions and consider crucial differences in the way in which different 

nations come to industrialization. Contingency scholars reduce the importance of culture, but institutional writers point out that differences in organizations and work relationship are rooted in differences in national institutions and cultures, timing of industrialization, national institutions, etc. One consequence of this is a national variance in career paths to leadership positions, as well as in the relations between managers and their subordinates (Edvardsson, 1992).   Leadership and culture has been described in a number of iconic books: Hofstede (1996), House et al. (2004), Bass and Bass (2008), etc. All of them identify differences in leadership styles in relation to culture: attitudes, perception, societal effects, etc. The majority of works in this field focus on categorizing countries, in order to help business function in a globalizing world. As a result of his multi-nation study Hofstede (1996) devised four dimensions (power distance, individualism, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance) to characterize cross-cultural differences. GLOBE research had focused on leadership worldwide, analyzing different cultures, in order to come up with “universal” attributes of leadership (House et al., 2004, Hofstede, 1996).   Ethnicity has received rather limited attention in relation to leadership style (Butterfield & Grinnell, 1999; Cleveland, Stockdale, & Murphy, 2000). It is noted that research on ethnicity in leadership is particularly applicable in multicultural societies (Selvarajah & Meyer, 2006). Research suggests ethnic differences in leadership are likely to exist (Kanter, 1977; Bartol, 1978) and there is evidence to support it (Selvarajah & Meyer, 2006).   In order to understand cultural and national impacts on leadership we need a synthesis of former research. Although national culture has a strong influence on leadership and even gender, national policies have an influence as well. There we see availability of men and women to participate in the labor market (pre-school availability, parental leave), educational potential, equal opportunities, as well as the possibilities of ethnic groups to advance in firms.

In conclusion, our study is a small contribution to the emerging theory of gender, nationality and leadership. We hope that our findings will encourage other researchers in exploring the dynamics of leadership from a contextual perspective.