Business Ethics

Running head: BUSINESS ETHICS

Business Ethics

Crystal M Jackson

Ashford University

Organizational Behavior (NAB1425A)

Professor:  Vanessa Washington

July 13, 2014

Assignment Robert Nardelli was heavily criticized for his leadership style and methods he used during his tenure as CEO of Home Depot. Using your readings for this week, along with outside research, describe his style of leadership and take a position on whether you think his actions rose to the level of being unethical. Write a three- to four-page paper (excluding the title and reference pages) addressing the following in your paper:

a.      Clearly describe Robert Nardelli’s leadership style in terms of Leadership Theory, incorporating the following theories within your paper:

o    Trait Theory

o    Behavioral Theory

o    Situational and Contingency Theories

b.     State whether his actions were ethical or unethical.

c.     Cite the text material and research that support your position.

Your paper must use a minimum of three scholarly sources, in addition to the textbook. Your paper must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center.

 

The Difference Between Management and Leadership

This week we will be examining the twin concepts of management and leadership. Bolman and Deal (2003) described leadership as the subtle process of mutual influence that creates cooperative efforts toward mutual goals. Bolman and Deal also described several sources of power that can be associated with leadership, but we will only talk about two in this Guidance. The two sources of power for this discussion are ‘position power’, or formal authority, and ‘personal power’, or informal authority.

Examples of official leadership are CEOs, Vice Presidents, and Managers in organizations, Admirals, Generals, and Colonels in the military, and of course, the official leader everyone is familiar with, the President of the United States. These titled leaders have been granted power and authority by virtue of their positions, but leadership is not always associated with these elements (Robbins, 2001). Those with official titles and formal authority can have the power to require or even force the actions of others (Wren, 2005).

Leadership often transcends official titles and granted authority. Consider your kids’ soccer coach. He or she has to be a leader in order to motivate and bring the best out of a would-be-team of  7 year olds. Or how about that person you work with?   You know the one. The person who has no lofty title but others follow him as if he was the Pied Piper, simply because they recognize and respect him as a leader.

We have all seen leaders who have no specific or granted authority by way of an official title, yet they are clearly leaders. Famous examples of this type of leadership are Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Civil Rights Movement and Mohandas Gandhi, non-violent protest leader against British Colonizers in India. Consider also Nelson Mandela, the leader against South African apartheid, and Susan B. Anthony, who lead the women’s suffrage movement, which ultimately brought about the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. None of these leaders had official titles, but they were unquestionably leaders in their own right. There are many such examples of non-titled leadership throughout the annals of history as well as in the present day. One such present day example is U2’s Bono, who is a leader in social activism and is well known for his philanthropy.

Informal authority is the power or support that followers voluntarily give to a leader. The informal leader has no formal power to coerce or force followers to do anything; informal leaders lead merely on the basis of cooperation and respect. They lead through the strength of their personality and they often have personal charisma that helps coalesce individuals into a mutual goal oriented team or group.

Informal leaders are everywhere. Look around you and notice those people who step up and take charge when there is an emergency or a crisis, or who get things organized for a local bake sale, or who take charge of building a local PTA chapter for their children’s school. These are examples of leadership without the trappings of an official title. Informal leadership accomplished through personal influence and little else.

So what makes some people recognizable leaders while others are merely people with titles?

Leadership takes well developed interpersonal skills and good emotional intelligence in order to motivate people to work in concert toward a mutual goal (Robbins, 2001). Leadership skills may or may not be bolstered by the delegated authority of a formal title or position. Leadership takes an understanding of what motivates people and the ability to create cohesiveness among a group of individuals. Leaders often have personal presence and charisma, which are helpful but not necessarily essential. Robbins describes emotional intelligence as comprising of five factors consisting of self-awareness, self-management, self-motivation, empathy, and social skills. Robbins also notes that high emotional intelligence is the essence of great leaders. For Denning (2007), some of the other qualities that leaders have are confidence, integrity, intelligence, and personal drive.

Many factors make up a good leader. Some of the core factors are interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, and the ability to influence others. However, no single quality or attribute in and of itself makes a great leader, but rather it’s the combination of skills, attributes and qualities that make a great leader. In other words, one does not need to have a formal title or have delegated authority in order to be a great leader.

Often the assumption is if one is a good leader then he or she is a good manager and vice versa. This could not be farther from reality. Management is not the same as leadership. While “management” may be difficult to instantly identify and separate from leadership, the concept of management has been described by Peter Drucker (1993) as a function that is task and process oriented, which includes planning, organizing, analyzing, and measuring. Further, Bolman and Deal (2003) commented that the difference between leaders and managers is doing the right thing verses doing things right.

One thing to note here is this gives some guidelines to the functions of a manager and speaks to what management is generally made up of. You should also know that many of the qualities and attributes of leaders and managers overlap. Leaders often exhibit managerial qualities and managers often possess leadership skills. In an organization most everyone has some level of leadership and management skills, but it’s the degree to which the skills manifest and are used that makes the difference.

So you can see that the skills it takes to be a good manager are not the same skills it takes to be a good leader. To be sure, a good leader can be a good manager, and a good manager can be a good leader, but this is not always the case (Glen, 2003). I once worked for a man who was a great leader but a terrible manager. As a leader he was brilliant at influencing people, including his peers across all business units. He was exceptional at getting them to agree as a group to work toward and complete goals; this was an accomplishment that had proved impossible for his predecessor. As a leader, he had personal charisma and a high level of emotional intelligence, which allowed him to understand and motivate people to a common cause.

However, once people were motivated and ready to take on the challenge, he was unable to plan or organize those resources effectively, so his efforts would fall apart or were rendered ineffective due to his lack of management skills. To his credit, he recognized his deficiency and hired someone with great management skills to complement his leadership abilities. The combination of their skills made the department very successful in delivering projects and solutions to appreciative business units.

If possible, do your own  search for additional material, try the search terms ‘leadership qualities’, ‘leadership attributes’, or ‘leadership styles’. These word parings will yield many interesting sites on the subject of leadership. Additionally, as you think about leaders and leadership, think about your own leadership. What attributes do you have now? What do you want to enhance for your own future in leadership?

To summarize this mini-lecture, we have discussed how leadership and management are different skill sets and functions. The leadership skill set is primarily based on emotional intelligence and personal qualities that attract followers (Robbins, 2001), while management is a task oriented function (Drucker, 1993). A good leader does not always make a good manager, and a good manager is not always a good leader (Glen, 2003). Both skill sets are vitally important for an organization to nurture in balanced measures in order to be successful, and it is incumbent upon an organization to ensure that leadership and management are complimentary elements in the process.

References:

Baack, D. (2012).  Organizational behavior . San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2003). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice,

          and leadership (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Denning, S. (2007). The secret language of leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-

          Bass. Drucker, P. F. (1993). Management: tasks, responsibilities, practices. New York,

          NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Glen, P. (2003). Leading geeks: How to manage and lead the people who deliver

          technology. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Langer, N. (2012). Who Moved My Cheese? Adjusting to Age-Related Changes. Educational Gerontology, 38(7), 459-464. doi:10.1080/03601277.2011.559860

Robbins, S. P. (2001). Organizational Behavior (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

 Prentice-Hall. Wren, D. A. (2005). The history of management thought (5th ed.). Hoboken, NY

 John Wiley & Sons.