An Examination of Leadership Styles and Their Effectiveness in the Organization Performance
An Examination of Leadership Styles and Their Effectiveness in the Organization Performance
Abstract of An Examination of Leadership Styles and Their Effectiveness in the Organization Performance
This research project aims at investigating leadership Styles and work productivity in an organization: A study of Keffi Local Government Council. Some of the topics dealt with are summarized in the research and findings are stated accordingly.
Chapter One of An Examination of Leadership Styles and Their Effectiveness in the Organization Performance
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Leadership is an important aspect of management. Indeed it exists in various segment of the population that is studies, military, business, home, mosque, church, etc.
Leadership is only one part of management the two terms are not interchangeable. While leadership is an important part of management, particularly at the supervisory level, a good manager or leader must have conceptual and technical skill as well as human leadership skill.
A leader who is successful at directing worker to strike toward group objective, which he has identified goals are attainable and can be periodically achieved.
The word leadership can be regarded as influence or process of influencing people so that they will strive willing and in flusiatcally toward the achievement of group goals or organizational goals, there are certain designable traits or style which makes a leader to be effective for example charisma, foresight, initiative, integrity persuasiveness and intevigence etc.
Leaders can be replaced if we could identify the style associated with leadership then our ability to select effective leadership behavior and a technique is therefore improved.
Nevertheless, leadership is both effectuate that bond works group together and the catalyst that triggers employer’s motivation. As a result of this, the leader’s straight comes primarily from the support of the sub-ordinates; without their support and co-operation, the leader finds It practically impossible to reach the planned objective and the come generally in effect.
Moreover, leadership occurs within a specific situation. In the social setting there is a person, a position and a situation despite all that has been written about leadership, these has been no consensus concerning the primary role, or function of leadership.
Finally, leadership becomes necessary in all area of management either in trading concern or non-trading organization because it help those who direct others or influence others to know why it is necessary to allow fairness and justice in their decision making.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Leaders, in most of the organization are political appointees who may not be professionally competent; these political appointees interfere in the day to day activities of the organization. As a result of these political and in-competent interference, many organizations cannot perform their responsibility effectively and efficiency, in most organizations. There are poor leadership systems. As a result of improper control and directives become rampart in most of the organization. Poor attitude of leadership toward obligation also militate against efficiency.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this project work as to give an in-depth research or examination of leadership style effectiveness in the organization performance: Some of the objectives are as follows:
i. To identify some of the general characteristic of a leader and show the situation in which a group find its seat in determining the choice of a leader.
ii. To determine how the leaders behavior affects the behavior of others in different fields.
iii. To examine the various ingredients and function of leadership.
iv. To examine the factors affecting leadership styles and
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
i. How dose effective leaders gain the power to control and influence other to achieve organization objectives?
ii. How can the behaviors of leaders affect the behaviors of their subordinates?
iii. What are the various ingredient and function of leadership?
iv. What are the major problems associating with leadership and how they can be solved?
RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
Presented below is a set of hypothesis used for this research work.
Ho: Style of leadership does not determine the attainment of organization goals and objective.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Apart from the fact, it will also be useful to companies and organizations, this is because the country is striving hard to make necessary effort to improve leadership style in all the sectors of the organization and this would help the economic growth and development of Nigeria.
SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The research work covers the major factors, which leaders need to know, this includes the style of a good leader to improve productivity and attainment of the organizational goals and also to meet the team of expert, the behavior and style of leader well as the existing type of leadership.
There are certain constraints, which were encountered during the course of this study.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS
The following terms are hereby briefly defined
i. Leader: A leader is defined as someone who guides others action and opinion, it’s also entail one who checks activities of others in any big enterprise.
ii. Leadership: leadership is defined as the prominent of one or few individual in a group which is the process of control and co-ordination.
iii. Organization: Is a system by which manager’s co-ordinate human and materials resources within the formed structure of task or authority.
iv. Style: Can be define as a way of performance in an organization, in order to retain satisfies her customer according to their demand.
Chapter Two of An Examination of Leadership Styles and Their Effectiveness in the Organization Performance
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
INTRODUCTION
There is no universal agreement on what leadership is or how it is conceptualized. Akpan (1982:3) defined leadership as “ability to influence subordinate to do what they have to do. It has been defined as the art of inducing subordinate to accomplish their assignments seal and confidence”.
According to Montgomer (1962) defined leadership as the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purposed, and the character which inspires confidence. Thus, leadership has to do with character, inspiration and capacity in guiding the conduct of subordinates. Lord Slim further attempted to differentiate between leadership and management. He said “There is different between leadership and management. Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision; its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculations, of statistics, of methods, timetables, and routines, its practice is science, managers are necessary; while leaders are essential”. Viewed from the standard point of result, leadership can be defined as getting people to what the leader wants them to do because he has influenced or inspired them to believe it is what they want to do.
Leadership is viewed from other contest by Robert C. Klekamp, Daniel W. Geesing in their work entitled Management Principles and Practices (1982). They defined leadership as a way of stimulating and motivating subordinates to accomplish assign task. Apart from stimulating leadership is also concerned with guiding, conducting and directing.
He/she moves the group within the constraints of it maximum capabilities to attain certain specified objectives. Their group response will depend upon capacities of the leaders.
Leadership has a greater relevant in activating and controlling sector, one should assume that leading is synonymous with managing. A good manager is a good leader, may not increase to be a manager.
Leadership was defined by Mallam Hammed Yanga (1960) in management as the “Process of influencing members of the organization or to work willingly with zeal and confidence so that organizational or the group’s objective can be accomplished. To lead is to guide, direct and proceed” According to Apple (1961), leadership simply refers the ability of management to induce subordinate to work toward organizational goals with confidence and Drucker (1962) argues that when we talk of leadership, we are talking common men. Leadership “Is the lifetime of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of man’s personality beyond its normal limitation”. Therefore, leadership occurs whenever one person influence and other to work toward some prediction goals, willingly and enthusiastically.
Leadership is term used to describe a position in an organizational hierarchy. Following this definition, the president of chief executive officer of a firm is a leader by virtue of holding a high office. Others use the term to describe particular personal characteristic under this definition, a person is fudged a leader because of possessing certain style (for example; perseverance, maturity, intelligence, fairness, spirit of competition inquisitiveness, honesty and integrity, among others).
Finally, the term leadership is also used to describe a category of behavior, following this development, leadership refer to a dynamic process in which individual behaves in a certain manner thereby influencing other to follow stating. To those view point, leadership is the art of individual or group activities towards achievement of enterprise goal. Leadership has given a variety of definition in behavioral science; leadership is social influencing process for the attainment of goals.
A leader is the most influential person in organization who provides direction to follow, guide group activities and ensures group objective are realize. The function of leadership pervades all organizations. A good leader therefore, is one who of personating other to move enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals. An example of a charismatic leader could be creative, initiative and moving on his speech, actions including his style of interaction with other people in his society.
Leaders characteristically induce or inspire other to achieve leadership because it occurs within a specific situation on the role or function of leadership. According to Nwachukwu (1962) maintained despite all that has been written about leadership, there had been no consensus on the primary role or function of leadership.
In other views, the topic leadership is not an easy one to tackle, who is a leader? What does leadership mean? Ask these questions from any randomly selected group and a multitude of conflicting answers will ensure.
We have been told that some people are born leaders; other shave leadership trust upon them. But today, psychologist agrees that leaders can in fact be made. Leadership consists of certain fundamental positive style which can be learned and applied to anyone.
Moreover, the concept goal derived from leadership theory. These theories suggest that leaders are effective because of their position impact on flowers motivation, ability at performance and satisfaction. It is called path-goal, due, in essences to the leadership influence on the subordinates’ perceptions of work goals; itself develop goals, and attainment. The basic of goal concept is expectancy motivation which state that an individual’s attitude, job satisfaction behavior is seen as leading to various out comes that is the valances/or the preference for those outcome.
CONCEPT OF LEADERSHIP
According to Chester (1938), leader defined “the goals that organization purses the develop, the planning and control system that guide and monitor the organization destiny they construct structure appropriately for the tasks undertaken and they motivate their subordinate to complete these tasks”.
International encyclopedia of social defined leader as somebody who rapidly perceive to perform the act of leadership. Traditionally the term leader applied to power status and disparity. Stodgill defined a leader as person who occupies a high level of responsibilities.
Manager (1996) defined manager could be defined as person who make things happen through the efforts of other people because without the use of people, there are not means of achieving the objective or goals of an organization. A manager is a person who own business or employed by the entrepreneur to manage the business on behalf of broader perspective. A manager therefore, is persons who carry out the following process (planning, organizing, staffing leading and controlling) and they study management in order to improve the management skills. At this stage of growth, there must be men women whose job is to plan, organize, and control the works of the others. The above mentioned types are a concise function of a manager and the role he/she is expected to perform in any institution or organization.
A leader who works hard will have followers that will learn to emulate him. Gorman think as their leaders think and men known unerring how their leaders think.
Because of importance of leadership to all kind of group action there is a considerable volume of theories and research concerning it difficult to summarize such a large body of research in a form of relevant today management? However, in the succeeding page we shall identify several major types of leadership theory and outline some basic kind of leadership styles.
It is no wonder that when Stogdill completed his survey of leadership theory and research in 1974, he found it necessary to abstract and analyzed over zoo books and articles in the field.
These theories include the following:
i. The Trait/Great Man Theory: The earliest studies of leadership were based largely on an attempt to identifying the traits that leader actually possessed stating with the “Great Man” theory that leader are born and not made, to belief dating back to the ancient Greek Romans inquires where made to identify the physical mental and personality trait of various leaders. The Great Man theory lost much of its acceptability with rise in influence of the behaviorist school of psychology, which emphasis that people are not born with traits over them inherited physical characteristic and perhaps tendency toward good health. In general, the study of leader traits has not been a very faithful approach to explaining leadership. Not all the leader possesses most or all of them, also, the trait a person should have furthermore, and out of dozens of studies, there is no uniformity of identified traits or any significant correction of traits with actual instance of leadership.
As psychologist Engene E. Yennings has said “research has provide such a variegated list of traits presumable to describe leadership that for all practical purpose it describe nothing” Stogdill found from a review of the literature that “there was a definite correction between the traits of intelligence, scholarship, dependability, responsibility, social participation and socio-economic status of leadership compound with non-leader”
Ghisell (1967) found significant correction between leadership effectiveness and the traits of intelligence supervisory ability, initiative, self-assurance and individuality in the way work done.
ii. Fielder’s Contingency Theory: Fielder’s theory implies that leadership is any process in which the ability of a leader to exercise influence depends upon the group task situation and degree to which the leaders’ “People become leaders not only because of the attributes of their personality but because of various situational factor and interaction between the leaders and the situations”.
iii. The Situational Theory: After increasing disillusionment with great man and trait approaches to understanding leadership, intentioned turned to the study of situation and belief that leaders are the products of a given this multidimensional approach. Leadership was dictated early in the studies of Stogdill and his associates when it was discovered that in analyzing 470 Navy officers occupying forty-five (45) different position, their leadership ability was heavily affected by such situational factors as their jobs, the organizational environment in which they operated and the characteristic of people they were assigned to lead. Other studies made over the years have shown that effective leadership depends upon response to such environment factors as the history of the enterprises, the community in which the organization operate the psychological climate of the group being of led, group members, personalities and cultural influences, and time required for making decisions.
This approach obviously has much meaning for managerial theory and practice. Therefore, it has meaning for practicing manager who makes into account of the situation it’s entirely when they design environment for performance.
TYPES AND QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP
In a broad term, we can say leaders are representatives of a group of a people and of course exercise some control over the group. In social psychology, leadership is frequently treated in the analysis of small groups. In sociology, it is designed as the exercise of influences or power in social collectivities.
According to Abenge (1995) “Leadership is that force that direct and co-ordinates organization resource toward attaining its goals and standard”. Leadership cannot take place in the vaccum, it resumes and reciprocal relationship. Weberian sociology has identified three (3) types of leadership corresponding to different forms of authority; there are:
a. Charismatic Leadership: This rests on belief in the extra-ordinary personal style of leadership, charisma has no replacement, leaders such as Alexander the great, Hill Car Barca, Hannibal, Napoleon, Bolivar, Macco, Lenin, Gandhi, Mao Nrunah, Lumumba and Murtala Mohammed had personal style of leadership separate from whatever office they occupied, charismatic, also refer to the claim or leadership by which people claim or are believed to posses rare style refer to the possession of some divine appeal and approval. People fear, respect and honor leader that posses the wise style as their believe to have some outstanding impersonality and appeal.
b. Traditional Leadership: Traditional legitimizes power by endowing certain statutes, offices and person with mystical, divine or secular authority.
c. Rational Leadership: This rests on the “Belief in the validity of legal status and function” “Competence” based on rationally created rules; “Here belief no longer rests on tradition or personality but on reason”.
Katz and Kalu (1966) maintain that “the term leadership has three major meanings, and a category position and who behaves in certain ways”. The influence of a leader in power and the degree and extend of his power depends on his prestige i.e. the degree to which is actions are regarded as significant relevant and important by others. In other hand, rational legal this is the types of leadership which derives from and the constitution. It comes from the position holds as set out the constitution of the society. Examples of these types of position of leadership in Nigeria are the president and the state governor, this is the usual type to be found in work organization; there is no automatic succession.
d. Autocratic Leadership: Autocratic leader centralize power and decision making in him and exercise complete control over the subordinate. He holds over the head of his subordinate, the threat of penalties and punishment. He sets the group goals and structure the work. He runs his own show the leader give orders and subordinate are to follow them ungrudgingly and unquestioned. The problem with this is that subordinates are aware of what to do but not why, it may be satisfying for the leader to dictate terms to other continuously but for subordinates, this may be totally frustrating. He breathes so closely down the necks of his subordinates that he makes effective action impossible. Subordinates are compelled to follow the leader’s direction to the later even though they may be wrong. Latter when errors creep in, subordinate will avoid responsibility since they were merely obeying. In autocratic situation, frustration, low moral and conflict develop easily. Subordinates are induced to avoid responsibility. Initiative and innovative behavior.
Moreover, autocratic leadership is good when leader is; if the leader is weak and incompetent, the followers will be weak and incompetent.
Autocratic style permits quick decision making and hence can be applied with success, situating where:
i. The subordinates lack knowledge of company goals