Make corrections noted by professor on windows track changes, and then remove windows track changes on finished copy

THE LACK OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP TRAINING LEADS TO POOR DECISION MAKING

Richard Hairston

GM 599-01 Applied Research Project

5/15//2018

Professor

Craig McCoy

Introduction

Leadership involves influencing other people to achieve organization goals. Nowadays the leadership styles and management practices adopted by any organization’s leaders has been paramount in determining the direction of the organization and influencing the success factors of the organization. Leadership is one of the key determinants of the success level of any organization. It therefore plays an essential role at the heart of the decision-making process influencing the styles applied and the effectiveness of the process. The manner and approach used in providing directions, delegating roles, implementing decisions and motivating staff influence the organization’s culture and affect the performance of the organizations.

The impact of the styles of leadership is felt both in small and large organizations. The level of participation and involvement of employees and other important stakeholders influences the results achieved in the organization and defines the direction of the particular organization towards its objectives.

Leaders are responsible for making decisions in the organization. They should do this under organized structures and process that are defined and laid out. The process adopted and structuring of the process of decision making impacts customer satisfaction, execution and the general effectiveness of the organization. Management should decide on what levels decision making takes place, how much input from other stakeholders is required and lay out a concrete roll out and implementation plan that defines the timelines and level of employee participation (Karina Nielsen, 2011). It is therefore important to carry out research linking leadership and organization management

The purpose of this research therefore is to investigate various leadership styles that may have a negative effect on the decision-making process within educational organizations. This research will add on to previous research focusing on management practices and their impact on organization but will provide a unique perspective by examining how impacts of styles of leadership trickles down to the employees influencing the execution process of a decision and generating measurable impacts on the recipients of the decision, in this case, the students.

Statement of the problem

Many schools lack effective leadership training in decision-making leading to poor institution management, success, and productivity. This research focusses on a school setting by comparing the management and leadership styles adopted and determining the success by focusing on the success indicators such as performance, employees’ satisfaction and discipline of the students. Great schools do not exist apart from great leaders. Many schools and education facilities face challenges of settling on the best administrative structures, bureaucratic systems and determining the appropriate levels of leniency and strictness in engagements with staff and students all the same. The complex nature of a school setting that facilitates close daily interaction between the business, its leaders, employees and clients (students) calls for the need of a system of leadership and decision making that caters for all involved stakeholders while taking into consideration the diverse and dynamic characteristics of the decision recipients.

Research in this area of study has been conducted focusing on the correlation that exists between different school variables and the performance of these institutions (Hanushek, 1997). Among these variables are recourses, teacher qualifications, diversity, racial tolerance and parental contribution (Melvin V.Borland, 1992) (Erick, 1981) (Darrow, 2003). These reports have established the importance of assessing these variables together, as alone; they barely amount to an influence over the institution. However, the case of leadership is quite different. The relationship between a principal, the teachers is a heavy determinant on its own and has even more significance and influence on the school’s performance when assessed in conjunction with the trickle-down impact of the relationship between the staff(teachers) and students (Price, 2011). These relationships are determined by the management styles applied, whether democratic, inclusive, dictatorial, overly bureaucratic etc. (Garyl Yukl, 2009).

Intended Audience

This research will be of great help to prospective organization leaders; particularly, those involved in educational institutions who seek practical guidance in determining the level of leadership, structuring, hierarchy establishments and delegation levels to use in their organizations in order to adopt a work culture that is not too soft to allow misdemeanor and yet is not too bureaucratic to create fear and suppress or inhibit employee and other stakeholder’s contributions. It will help define relationships between leadership and various stakeholders while defining limits and codes of engagement which should be established to govern engagements and avoid overstepping beyond mandated levels (Kark, 2012). This research would find audience among both leaders and employees in all organization types as the general concepts and findings underlined by this research have a broader scope of application and can be adopted to any organization seeking to use the recommendations and suggestions of this research to evaluate its leadership and influence necessary changes.

Value to the audience

The reader of this research is bound to benefit from the widely researched empirical results that this research will arrived at. One will be able to access practical approaches where effective organizational leadership styles have been used to solve organization problems leading to desired outcomes. Besides this, this research shall instill in the reader great knowledge of organizational structures and levels of leadership, expound on their appropriateness and reveal as experienced by the researcher first-hand, the appropriateness of each management leadership style contingent to the different environments and needs of the organization. A reader is able to acquire some of the most important leadership qualities and management guidelines which will make him/her suitable to manage an actual organization.

Meta-analysis Methodology

Meta-analysis methodology provides a qualitative analysis of different resources that have used first-hand data or data derived from other sources so as to develop a list if various hypotheses which are related to the main topic of research. Meta-analysis method provides a comprehensive qualitative analysis of articles and other publications that focus on the value of training leaders in ensuring effective sound decision making in schools. Most importantly, it gets to examine the history of leadership styles and how it has been used in the corporate world over the past decades, its trends, and the effect it has on organization success or failure. The selection of different resources and generation of this methodology was based on thematic meta-synthesis.

The method held identify the resources that identify research gaps on the leadership and decision making and leadership training. It offers first-hand data-based findings that reveal the actual contribution of training on leadership and decision-making process in schools. This method was used by identifying key words “leadership training,” “school leadership and management,” and “decision making” and searching them through engines. Only relevant articles within five years were selected and used in order to achieve the research objective. Basic fundamental information concerning the history of organizational leadership, theories of leadership, and importance of corporate leadership and management was provided by the articles, A study on the impact of leadership styles on employee motivation and commitment by Chowdhury and Workplace Intimacy in Leader-Follower Relationships by Kark. According to these articles, there are different types of employee motivation which can be used to enhance employee commitment in different workplaces. One of these methods is through employee retention in the corporate sector (Chowdhury, 2014). This is considered important because giving employees a sense of job security works a long way in developing their trust for the organization which earns a competitive advantage in the respective industry. Even though these resources focus on specific organizations, it was evident that the same leadership concepts and approaches apply to leadership in schools.

Brief Review of the Literature

Having an overview of the general corporate world is important so as to depict possible differences between corporate leadership and leadership in a school. However, the difference between the management and leadership styles used in these two levels is negligible. The success of the educational processes is dependent on the role played by the school administrators. As such, resources which have addressed leadership in educational institutions have been analyzed. This has also been another area of focus so as to establish the most desirable behavior for school administrators. The various selected articles have addressed this issue differently. However, only those that have provided adequate, research-oriented, and evidence-based research have been selected for this analysis. According to Melvin and Roy, most administrators find it challenging to satisfy the large educational markets which lead to the decline of students’ academic performances. This is one of the resources which offer adequate information which can be used in evaluating the challenges which are experienced in managing different components of the school; in this case, maximization of educational utility and at the same time improving academic performances.

In a research on the Jacob et al. (2014b) on the Training needs and supports for evidence-based decision making among the public health workforce, institutional leadership is paramount in their success and productiveness. The author states that decision making in leadership impact greatly on the institutions resources and productivity. This is important in the formulation of functional policies that will help sound decision making in schools. Jacob et al. (2014b), suggests that leaders should critically evaluate situations at hand before making any decision. Training helps individuals be able to be equipped with skills and knowledge that will enable them to do so. Therefore, training of leaders makes the institution to be equipped for sound functional decision making.

According to Ejimabo (2015), many factors influenced decision making, key of them being skills and information in the concerned field. This is facilitated by training program of leaders in the schools. This information is important in enabling management to understand the role of training on leaders and the success of institutions because of competent leadership. According to Ejimabo (2015), leaders that undertake training are usually better placed in making effective decision that drive the institutions to greater success heights that ensure high productivity and employee satisfaction. Trained leaders have been known to be charismatic, transformational and transactional in their leadership. This makes use of the combination of both the environment and employee characteristics which makes a problem solving in a particular situation of productivity to be amicable and sound (Santos et al., 2015). This information is important in finding the relationship between leadership training and success leadership in school. According to Santos et al. (2015), training is an efficient tool in equipping leaders to be conversant and knowledgeable in their field of management. In schools, teachers and leaders that attend training are sharpened in order to develop concrete and collaborative teaching and learning which enhances the goal of the institution in helping clients achieve their educational objectives. Training contributes to sound decision making in resource acquisition and pooling, information acquisition and dissemination, which influences effective decision-making process. This is important in addressing the problem statement which is trying to find the role of training on the sound decision making in schools. According to Ololube (2017), leadership forms an important section of institutions functionality and so they should be sharp in skills, knowledge and competent in making informed decisions. This will improve the image of the institutions and foster their success and goals achievement. Training makes the trainee understand the models in decision making and the structure and hierarchies that are important in decision making for effective management of clients in schools.

According to Munn (2017), training makes a leader sharp, inspiring and orderly. Training also enhances the participants’ practical knowledge in leadership and reasoning abilities which improves their skills in identifying necessary actions to take in leadership during crisis and evaluation techniques of the actions, be able to modify programs and improve planning in order to achieve effective leadership. Leadership training enhances leaders’ skills of information acquisition and dissemination and articulation of the scientific information for the betterment of the decision-making process of the organization (Munn, 2017). Luciano et al., (2014) states that, trained leaders are better placed in the decision-making processes. Training of leaders exposes leaders to different intervention tools for solving problems and decision-making components. According to them, training leaders in effective decision-making process in schools especially in the ever changing and dynamic environments in our schools. It is imperative that the institution be effective in decision making process in order to ensure sound management and vibrant and quality service provisions to its diverse subjects and ever-changing management environment (Jacob et al., 2015). According to their findings, higher percentage of schools that had high trained leaders ranked high in management, communication and discipline structure. This information is imperative to prove that leadership training links them into one formidable and strong-willed task force that foresees situations and re-organizes to evade them early before they occur. Many studies have therefore proven that institutions that have trained staff are functionally sound and effective. The information in the article above also reinforces that training makes leaders innovative and technologically advanced because training expose them to current models and evidence-based information that inspire effective decision making and sound running of the institution.

Summary

The research will indulge further on an analysis of existing literature covering the area of research and the specific problem inquiry linking leadership style, decision making and organization performance. This will be helpful in acquiring a better perspective of previous research done in the area of research covering different target audience and help one establish a basis and guide to data collection and analysis

Findings and Conclusions

This study used meta-analysis to assess the content from sources that used primary data on the central topic of the lack of effective leadership training and its effect on decision making. From the results, four distinct results emerged as follows. Firstly, it was found that when leaders fail to go through effective leadership they tend to lack both dynamism and focus. Such leaders tend to be slow decision makers since they do not have a definite direction to follow. For these reasons, this study concluded that the lack of focus and dynamism in leaders which arises due in effective leadership training leads to an inflexible and multi-directional leadership. Thus, the decision-making process is gravely affected because without a specific and united sense of direction, the leader will have over-ambitious plans that will not materialize as reported by Howdhury (2014).

Further, it was found that the lack of dynamism leads to poor decision making in a report by Ololube (2017) that established that leaders often stick to the same ideas even when faced by situations that require a change of tact. Thus, without dynamism the leadership forces the followers to use the same methods in their work for a long time even when such work has been surrounded by change. With the technological changes occurring ubiquitously in the world, leaders must learn to be dynamic to allow the decision-making process to be more accurate and effective in the face of changes. Therefore, on this finding the study made the same conclusion that such leadership is inflexible and not unidirectional.

Another finding was that with poor leadership training, there formation of high performance teams by such leaders is virtually impossible. Today, most organizations do well with high performance teams to improve the performance of each worker across board. Without such teams, it is not possible to achieve wholesome performance as some of the highly skilled workers will overshadow the semi-skilled workers. This leads to low motivation amongst workers which leads to gross demotivation of a majority of the workers with time (Santos, Caetano & Tavares, 2015). Therefore, this finding led to the conclusion that ineffective leadership training leads to poor performances across board due to the lack of high performance teams.

In yet another finding, it was established that poor leadership training leads to poor coordination. Leaders, as reported by Munn (2017), often juggle several activities at once. They are responsible for coordinating all core processes so that unplanned overlaps of the processes do not occur. As well, the leader is expected to effectively coordinate all the leadership positions below them so that the leaders do not interfere with each other’s work. For this reason, the study concluded that poor goal-setting was the result of poor leadership training. This conclusion was aligned with the earlier inference that without teamwork performances are hard to maintain at a high. Thus, without team work and with poor goal-setting capabilities of the leader, then leadership lacks vision. Without vision, challenges cannot be handled well.

From all these inferences and conclusions obtained from the meta-analysis, two major alternative solutions. One of them is that leaders with the mention qualities of lack of dynamism, focus and goal setting capabilities can attend leadership seminars that will address issues specific to them. Such leaders ought to know that attending such a seminar requires them to participate actively to ensure that possible skill gaps that they have are covered. This will improve their leadership comprehensively (Munn, 2017). The image shown below shows the logical diagram

Findings Conclusions Alternative Solutions

Ethical Considerations

From an ethical consideration, the study applied several considerations to ensure that ethically the study was in a good position. Firstly, the study ensured that all borrowed ideas and concepts from other sources were all well cited. This was done to prevent using another author’s information as one’s own. This would a crime on copyright but it would also be unethical which is why the study adhered to it. Further, the study avoided using the names of the respondents whose responses were used. Therefore, one of the ways that the study selected sources for the meta-analysis is by checking whether the anonymity of the respondents was respected. This was part of the ethical considerations in the preliminary stages of the study. Thirdly, the study ensured that all the sources collected for analysis were such that information was meant for scientific reasons only. Once this was established, the next step was to ensure that the information on the study was going to be used for scientific reasons only just like the other sources.

Further, the use of other sources for a meta-analysis needed to be acknowledged. It would ethically inconsiderate to use these sources for more than just the ideas and findings. Using them for their data need extra permission from the authors of those respective sources. Therefore, the author of this study made it a point to send email requesting permission to use the data for a meta-analysis. Once the response was received, the study went ahead to consider the sources for use. This was meant to ensure that apart from the copyright laws being adhered to the authors wanted to make sure that the ethical misdeed of using the hard work of other authors was also respected. This way, the study ensures that all the possible and essential ethical considerations were met in the course of completing the study.

References

CHOWDHURY, R. G. (2014). A STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP STYLES ON EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION AND COMMITMENT:. Navi Mumbai. Retrieved from http://www.dypatil.edu/schools/management/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/A-study-of-the-Impact-of-Leadership-Styles-on-Employee-Motivation-and-Commitment-An-empirical-study-of-selected-organisations-in-Corporate-sector-Rima-Chowdhury.pdf

Cobb, A. K. (2002). Qualitative Research: What Does It Have to Offer to the Gerontologist? The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 57(04), 197-202. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/57.4.M197

Darrow, A.-A. (2003). Dealing with diversity: The inclusion of students with disabilities in music. Sempre, 21(01), 45-57. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X030210010401

Ejimabo, N. O. (2015). The influence of decision making in organizational leadership and management activities. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 4(2).

Erick, H. (1981). Throwing money at schools. Journal of Political Analysis and Management. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/3324107

Garyl Yukl, M. O. (2009). Influence of leader behaviors on the leader‐member exchange relationship. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 24(04), 289-299. doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940910952697

Hanushek, E. A. (1997). Assessing the Effects of School Resources on Student Performance: An Update. American Education Research Association Journal, 141-164. doi:https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737019002141

Jacob, R. R., Baker, E. A., Allen, P., Dodson, E. A., Duggan, K., Fields, R., ... & Brownson, R. C. (2014). Training needs and supports for evidence-based decision making among the public health workforce in the United States. BMC health services research, 14(1), 564.

Jacobs, J. A., Duggan, K., Erwin, P., Smith, C., Borawski, E., Compton, J., ... & Leeman, J. (2014). Capacity building for evidence-based decision making in local health departments: scaling up an effective training approach. Implementation Science, 9(1), 124.

Luciano, M. M., Mathieu, J. E., & Ruddy, T. M. (2014). Leading multiple teams: Average and relative external leadership influences on team empowerment and effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(2), 322.

Karina Nielsen, R. R. (2011). The importance of employee participation and perceptions of changes in procedures in a teamworking intervention. Work and Stress, 91–111. doi:10.1080/02678373.2012.682721

Kark, R. (2012). Workplace Intimacy in Leader-Follower Relationships. Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship, 10(1093), 423-438. doi:9780199734610.013.0032

Melvin V.Borland, & Roy. M. (1992). Student academic achievement and the degree of market concentration in education. Economics of Education Review, 11(01), 31-39. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7757(92)90019-Y

Munn, J. E. (2017). Information Technology Certification Training Implementation: Exploratory Case Study of Air Force and Civilian Leaders Experiences (Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix).

Ololube, N. P. (2017). Is the Character of Institutional Leadership Central to the Quality of Higher Education (HE) Management?. International Journal of Strategic Decision Sciences (IJSDS), 8(1), 46-64.

Santos, J. P., Caetano, A., & Tavares, S. M. (2015). Is training leaders in functional leadership auseful tool for improving the performance of leadership functions and team effectiveness?. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(3), 470-484.

GM599: Applied Research Project — Brief Review of the Literature
Item criteria Areas to be evaluated	Points Possible	Points Earned
Title Page Created a unique title for the paper that captures the essence of the organizational problem.	1	1
Introduction · Described the objective or purpose in writing your applied research project. · Informed the reader on the logical flow of your paper. · Set the stage in how this applied research project will advance understanding of the investigation of a real-world organizational problem.	8	6
Statement of the Problem · Stated the nature of the problem clearly and succinctly. · Generalized the problem that is common in a wide range of organizational settings. · Assessed the distinction between symptoms/issues and what is truly the underlying problem to be investigated. · Convinced the reader of your paper on the development of a formal and comprehensive plan to advance the applied research project.	10	8
Intended audience · Identified and described what person or group would be interested, receptive, and motivated in reading the applied research project. · Discussed the nature of the problem and how stakeholders are affected.	6	6
Value to the Audience · Informed the reader how the applied research project will advance greater understanding of the organizational problem. · Identified and described key lessons the reader of this paper can take away.	6	5
Meta-Analysis Methodology · Described the value of using a meta-analysis research approach. · Identified features and benefits of meta-analysis. · Described how the applied research project will use a qualitative and holistic approach to analyze relevant and credible data from previous peer-reviewed studies. · Assessed how systematic methodology procedure enhances a research process.	12	10
Brief Review of the Literature · Identified and gathered relevant and credible data in the body of literature · Analyzed the data from previous peer-reviewed studies that advance the investigation of the problem. · Applied your own researcher critical analysis on how the data supports the investigation of the problem. · Assessed how implementing the review of literature component produces deliverables that advance the research process to investigate a real-world organizational problem.	20	17
Summary · Summarized key points. · Convinced the reader that you are advancing the investigation of the organizational problem. · Assessed how an iterative approach advances project improvements. · Informed the reader on next steps in the research process.	8	6
Reference Page · Cited relevant course reading sources. · Cited at least two other peer-reviewed journal articles outside your course materials that support the investigation of the problem. · Included citation and reference page per APA 6th edition.	5	5
Paper Length: Writing the meta-analysis methodology section will add 2 pages (600 words), double spaced, not including the title page and reference page.	4	4
Writing Style: Appearance, Spelling, grammar, originality, organization, clarity, and APA 6th edition format and style.	20	18
LATE Paper Deduction	-X
Total Points	100	86

Comments:

Richard,

The Brief Review of Literature section is coming along nicely, but it is ok to add other authors and make improvements as you deem appropriate as you move forward with the logic and coherence to your paper. Please see my comment with regard to creating a separate paragraph that showcases your own researcher analysis.

In this iteration of your Applied Research Project, you continue to demonstrate improvements within your paper. The focus of this iteration is on the expansion of the data that other authors bring to the discussion by adding more understanding of the original problem statement.

Good job moving this research paper forward…

Prof. McCoy

You earned 86 points out of 100 (86%)

This paper was submitted to Turnitin.com. Your Similarity Index Score is 4%. This means that you are doing a good job in paraphrasing the information from your sources and citing the authors properly.

Leadership is inflexible and not unidirectional

No teamwork leads to low performances

Goal setting is not effective

Lack of focus

Lack of dynamism

High performance teams are not achieved

Poor coordination

�

Please take another look at these edits that I also inserted into your unit 2 version of the paper. There is room for enhancement.

�

Just a reminder…

In the coming days as you move the research process forward, it may be very likely that you will find other points of value and key lessons that the reader can take away. So please know that it is perfectly okay to expand this section a bit more with some of those points of value.

�

Thank you for removing some of the previous cited sources that you add in this section. I hope that you will find a better home for them in the new sub heading section called--- a brief review of the literature.

�

Before you jump right in to identifying information/data from a cited source, please consider inserting a short paragraph that begins this section. In this short paragraph you could bring in some key insights from the unit 3 reading resources that would inform the reader on the value of conducting a review of the literature. Thank you for making this enhancement.

�

It is evident that you have found substantial information/data in existing body of peer-reviewed literature. However, I would like to have you make the following refinement-- which I mentioned in the unit 3 seminar. That refinement is…

First, create a paragraph that identifies and discusses the relevant data from a particular cited source.

Then, follow with a short paragraph in which your own researcher analysis shines forth as you inform the reader how that data is in support of your own investigation of the problem.

Repeat this process with each of the cited sources that you found in the body of literature.

Doing so, will enhance the reader's ability to distinguish between what is information from a cited source and what is your own researcher analysis. Thank you for making this type of improvement and I will be watching for it in the upcoming unit 4 version of the paper.

�

Please continue to expand and develop the summary section as you convince the reader that you will are moving the research process forward.

�

Some of these references need to be formatted properly with a 1/2 inch hanging indent.