Leadership and Organizational Culture - Coursework Example

Running Header: Leadership and Organizational culture Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Leadership and Organizational Culture Organizations should develop strong service ethos and ensure that the employees do feel cared and they will indeed be able to care for the customers. Leadership is necessary and important part of delivering to the customer. The leaders are the ones responsible for setting the tone in the organization since they are the role models, they undermine or support the employees and they make it clear whenever the customer are the priority (MacGregorv 2010, pp. 18). They also send out the powerful signals for example in the cases where they share out decision making on sparingly release or the customer issues. The leader can be able to provide the energy that is required to drive the organization. This paper looks into how good leadership and organizational culture are essential in shaping the direction of the organization. The organization’s culture is the way we do things with the substantial impact on the effectiveness and the quality of the relationship with the customer. Culture is best demonstrated through the way the people behave towards each other and towards the customer (Brown, Mehta & Armenaks 2011, pp 313). In the way they deal with the organization, the customers are able to see all kinds of visible symbols of the kind of culture they expect. The culture can be friendly to the customer or unfriendly to the customer and it can be fast and furious or slow and bureaucratic. The leaders therefore need to set an example in creating positive environment through which collaboration is strongly encouraged and the act of working alongside the customer is deliberately designed to facilitate a flow of understanding to that customer. Organizations therefore need to manage this chain of the processes from the start to the finish instead of simply taking good care of the final stage of the customer contact. Organizational leadership requires that the leaders possess the ability and the discretion of setting up setting up strategic direction and course that can be able to influence the outcome of the organization. For example, the CEO are the ones responsible for setting of corporate agendas, allocating resources and making decisions that are required for managing the diversity (MacGregorv 2010, pp. 19). The CEOs which is a representation of leaders also sometimes takes personal stands on the need for the change and acts as the role model for the behaviors that are required for the change. They are also involved in assisting the work of moving the organization or the firm in the right direction. This type of commitment by the top management and its diversity is the basic thing that makes the junior officers to follow a specific culture. Moreover, diversity management often requires efforts that are long term. Other elements of diversity may not be realized immediately. As a result, the CEO should commit to keep both financial and mental support on the diversity of the management for a period of many years to cultivate a progressive culture in the organization. It is this kind of leadership that shapes members of the organization have the right altitude and be able to maintain the good behavior even in the absence of the tangible rewards and reinforcements. It is also the key ingredient in the achievement of difficult goals when they encounter challenging goals. The top leaders are the ones responsible for establishing the responsibility, opportunity and the accountability of the organization ( Rowold 2011, pp. 635). To ensure that the organization runs effectively, leaders must design a good environment for the junior leaders. This environment should be capable of establishing the opportunity to lead, accountability of the members that are effective, responsibility to lead and the feedback on the leadership technique. Creating these kinds of opportunities for groups in organization to lead may times be seen as an insurmountable logistical barrier; however it enhances everyone in the organization a chance to give his or her best and to allow people to know one another better. Rotating the leadership among leaders is also encouraged for the junior leaders within the departments. This prevents dominance and reinforces the ideas and also challenges their own leadership prototypes through enabling them to observe firsthand how others can lead as their prototypical leaders do. Organizational cultures and performance should be judged in terms of legal, economic, philanthropic and moral responsibilities. When the organization needs to respond to disappointing organizational performance, the organizational leaders need to challenge the employees with the aim of changing the organizational culture (Herrera et al 2011, pp. 2632). Organization cultural transformation comprises of change content and the change process. One of the ways of implementing the transformation of the organizational culture is through changing the espoused beliefs and values, artifacts and the underlying assumptions. Implementation of the organizational cultural change needs to have a model that can be used to guide and plan the cultural change. The influence strategy is important when the message being transmitted is of persuasive communication and requires active participation and the management of the external information. Leadership is a commitment that leaders take to manage situations that will arise any time even without prior notifications. Among the conflicts that the managers solve arises from the fact that they are managing a diverse organization. Though the motivational bases for the top executive is to commit to relate to the adoption of the diversity management, it is important reason for being able to identify and distinguish that the diversity can have different implications on a firm’s diversity and the outcomes. The level and the type of commitment to the diversity that a leader espouses can have an impact on the organizational response to the diversity in the workplace. Individual response to the different commitments can range from cooperation to championing and from resistance to compliance. In this situation of diversity in workforce, the top executives can resist to comply with the prescriptions or the proactively manage the diverse of the workforce. The top executive affective and normative bases for managing diversity are related more strongly with the internal regulation of the organization than the external regulation of the company (MacGregorv 2010, pp. 19). When the people have something that they would want to do, there it may be unlikely to follow through than if the constrains were not present. A good example is when there is a normative commitment alone that is enough to encourage the adoption of the diversity in the management, sometimes this may not be as great as when the instrumental commitment is there since the obligation can be viewed as constraining. Commitment to compliance with the culture of the organization is important to the management. External regulation is another key element to help the top executive to deliver. Absence of the external regulation would mean that the top executive instrumental motives for the management of the diversity would be weak. Research shows that best evaluation of the top management is done by a party that is outside the organization (Rowold 2011, pp. 628). This way the commitment of the senior management can be gauged as to whether they are driving the organization in the right direction. In some situations, the commitment of the management may shift over the course of their period depending on the changing and evolving situations in the organization. Moreover, the top executive may be less likely to require regulation from outside for their commitment in managing diversity with increase in tenure. This will derail the organization ability to achieve its objectives of cultivating a good culture. The followers of a leader buy into their leader’s vision and perform according to their expectations. The leader has to take the varying values and interests of his or her followers into account. The transitional leaders however focus on clearly defined transactions that are between the leaders and the followers. Whenever there is a good relationship between the leader and his followers, then the organization they are working for will create a good working condition for everyone. The leader should be free with his employees or followers so that in cases of difficulties or achievements, the leader is able to know and give appropriate support ( Rowold 2011, pp. 632). The managers or leaders that participate in simulation exercise have high locus of control heterogeneity of work team impacts performance. Team heterogeneity is an important context factor alongside freeness of the manager with the employees. In heterogeneity kind of work the leader’s sets the goals and the rewards that can be expected after the results have been performed successfully. The quality of work life is portrayed by opportunities for learning and particularly from the mistakes of new endeavors. This could be realized from the type and the extent of the supervision given to the employees (Andre 2011 pp. 603) For example, the mentorship of the manager would help the employees to find solutions to the daily challenges and be able to increase the competence while handling complex tasks. Moreover, the problem solving and decision making abilities of the managers can transform potential problems into opportunities that can be used for learning and of reflective inquiry for the employees. Use of appropriate authority and in particular ensuring that work and resources are fairly distributed enables the creation of balance between the outcome and the expectations of the employees. Appropriate leadership guides the employees in aligning their individual goals to match those of the organization. It is such alignment that encourages the individuals to view their day to day tasks in a way that they can make impact in the strategic prospects of the organization.The distinction that is between the leadership and management is very important to understanding transformative and transactional leadership (Schein 2010, pp. 45). A functional competence in the transactional leadership that has transformative perspective enables the employees to address the present challenges for the future competitive advantage. The quality of work is also fundamental if instilled in the culture of the organization. Quality work life can range its boundaries from clarity of the roles to skills variety and to the expectation of job expectation of job extension (Zhong, Lam, & Chen 2009, pp.620). The employees would always want to be recognized for their professionalism and more so in the expertise and skills that define their job identity. If the job is clear in identity, then the level of quality associated with it is high. Organizational culture plays a critical role in ensuring that the quality of work is high. Employees believe that they do have a high quality of work life if there is a clear sense of trust and openness between the employees and the management and there is no fear of being misguided or short changed in task performance. In particular, the moral intelligence level that is associated with the work ethic is seen as important in ensuring there is equitable treatment concerning the employees across the organization (Roland & Jessica 2011, pp. 41). This transparency of the organizational practice should be enforced by the regulations and the policies that are consistently and strongly upheld. The power distribution among the managers should be clearly structured through appropriate and trusted hierarchy since this prevents the employees from receiving signals that are conflicting yet they are decisions of the management. In conclusion good leadership and organization structure results in organization having a good structure that embraces teamwork. Teamwork also plays an important role in promoting the leadership and work quality. Teamwork creates and promotes opportunities for collaborative learning, decision making and problem solving. In the organization, the employees view teamwork as one of the key determinant that helps in shaping the quality of work is to a large extent determined by the opportunity that helps to capitalize on strength between one another to enable production of bigger outputs that are able to meet the organizational demands (Zhong, Lam, & Chen 2009, pp.623). Moreover, teamwork promotes the shared expectations, task interdependence system and member competence. This collaboration taps the employee’s communication, socialization and negotiation skills that offer them an enriching work experience. References Andre, R 2011, ‘Using Leadered Groups in Organizational Behavior and Management Survey Courses,’ Journal of Management Education, Vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 596-619. Brown S, Mehta, A & Armenaks, A, 2011, ‘Organizational Culture: Assessment and Transformation’, Journal of Change Management, Vol. 11, no.3, pp. 305-328. Herrera, R, Duncan, A, Green, M, Ree, M & Skaggs, L 2011, ‘ The relationship between attitudes toward diversity management in Southwest USA and the GLOBE study cultural preferences’, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 22, no.12, pp. 2629-2646. Macaulay, S & Cook, S 2011, ‘A customer-centric action plan,’ How to Create Effective Customers, Vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 14-16. MacGregor, J 2010, Leadership, Ricky Publisher, San Francisco. Roland, K & Jessica, L 2011, ‘Working out the quality of work life, International Marketing Review, Vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 39-45. Rowold, J 2011, ‘Relationship between leadership behaviors and performance’, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 628-647. Schein, H 2010, Organizational Culture and Leadership, John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco. Zhong, A, Lam, W & Chen, Z 2009, W ‘Relationship between leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behavior,’ : Examining the moderating role of empowerment, Vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 609-626. Read More