The Impact of Self-Management Leadership on Organizational Creativity by John Politis - Article Example

 The complexity of modern business can be best attributed to the revolutionary changes occurred during the last century notably since the emergence of globalization and industrialization. In order to vie with the emerging market contingencies reasonable changes are inevitable with regard to an organization’s internal and external environments. It is not only the matter what the proposed changes are, but the mode of strategic implementation play a crucial role in the success of a venture.

The given article- ‘The impact of self- management leadership on organisational creativity’ is the project work of John D. Politis. The article scientifically experiments the correlation between self management leadership and creativity factors. It clearly illustrates that a management without effective leadership quality and participative approach cannot confront with the vehemence of the modern high-tech competition. His arguments have been supported by his experiments based on statistical method of fact finding.

According to him, a management without innovative notions and well developed structure cannot par with the excellence required for the modern market trends. The following part includes the critical summary of his findings along with the similar perceptions found in some other volumes. How become more creative? Although business firms understand the essential of employees’ creativity, the tough task lies in this transition process. Politis states that management must employ an effective supervisory inspiration in order to motivate the employees to be more creative in their performance.

An aggressive supervisor would little succeed with forming a creative workforce. In contrast, if a manager or a supervisor successfully maintains interpersonal relationship with his employees he would best make use of their potential. The manager must also be a role-model for his employees by demonstrating extraordinary level of quality in work performance. Politis also describes the importance of providing innovative job chances to employees (2). He argues that as a leadership tactic, employees can be given opportunity to be innovative in their own way so as to outsmart their co-workers in work performance.

In addition to reducing employees’ workload manager must ensure workers feasibility to access adequate resources such as technical knowledge and effective advice. The correlation between mental state and work performance is a trivial subject for research today as they have been emphasized by many of the organizational experts in their promotional experiments of employees’ creativity (Rego, Machado, Leal & Cunha). The essential focus of every promotional theory goes toward the quality of work environment which can ensure workers’ mood consistency.

It involves an employee’s scope of getting maximum support from seniors as well as from co-workers in his pursuit to achieve creativity. Obviously the introduction of modern technical facilities has been proven successful as they assist employees to dispose their duties rapidly and efficiently. Politis strongly recommends that employees will be more active if they are provided the opportunity to share their innovative concepts with management officials and with co-workers (2).

Group assignment would promote integration of various departments and thereby employees’ self management aptitude and organizational cohesion. Organizations should try to ensure employees’ participation while taking important strategic decisions. Moreover managers must pay genuine concern even to employees’ small achievements which will add to their enthusiasm. Reward system becomes an important area of concern at this context with regard to employee motivation. For instance, management can initiate incentives or awards to promote employees with creative ideas or outstanding work performance.

Why should make employees creative? The survival of an organization today heavily depends on its flexibility to adjust with new market trends. In the view of Politis, the flexibility of a firm is almost based on the innovative ideologies of its employees to create the situation which fits with frequent market fluctuations (1). For instance, assume that Nokia Cell Phone Company introduces a handset with 10 mega pixel camera and 25 GB internal memory support. In this situation, Sony Ericsson-the competing company must develop some handsets with more attractive features in order to retain its market.

The opinion of Penttila would be appropriate to quote here; “Creative people are driven by exciting work more than by a paycheck, and they need to express themselves through their work” (Penttila, 2003). The creative employees engage in their work more emotionally which aids the firms to have diversified product lines. Similarly, an organization can minimize its operational costs if the employees are creative because their creativity helps the organization to avoid the costs of consultancy services.

In case of creative employees, wastage will be at minimum rate so that cost of production can be minimized. In short, creative, self-managed employees are valuable assets of an organization since they retain the market stature of the company. To what extent a leader can motivate employees? The article tends to convey the notion that self-management leadership stimulates the inherent abilities of the employees through a variety of techniques. According to Politis, managers or supervisors can encourage and motivate the employee to be more creative until the exertion of motivation cause to alienate their innovative attitudes.

In addition to this, the over work load may weaken the efficiency of employee performance and it adversely affects the business operations of the firm (Mcshane & Glinow, 81). The article precisely opines that a leader with hierarchical ideologies cannot successfully implement self-management programs since he follows an orthodox concept. The leader must also understand the maximum capacity of a worker beyond which he/she is not to be forced. Self-management leadership and elements of creativity In the opinion of Politis, self-management leadership encourages various individual factors such as ‘self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reinforcement, self-expectation, rehearsal, and self-criticism’.

In addition to encouraging these six factors, the self-management leadership also stimulates the positive factors of the creativity such as ‘freedom, sufficient resources, and challenging work’. In other words, leaders stimulate various inspirational factors of the employees and also provide favorable working environment to make use of employees’ creativity. The leaders engage in these two activities with the intention of coordinating the phenomenon of idea generation with process of idea implementation.

From the hypothesis testing of Politis, the obtained results reflected some moderate positive correlations between self-management leadership factors and stimulant elements of creativity. On the other hand, the results showed non-significant or zero correlations between self-management leadership factors and negative stimulants of creativity (10). Even though leaders try to bring the best results from employees through encouragement and inspiration, sometimes they do not get the desired results due to stimulation of negative elements of creativity.

Negative stimulation occurs when the leaders exert over workload on employees. Impact of self-management leadership on organizational structure We discussed the experimental results of Politis from his hypothesis testing. The leaders who encourage the employees’ self management leadership factors get good results since this activity promotes positive elements of creativity. The stimulation of positive work dimensions creates a creative atmosphere in the organization. His findings also suggest that a participative and self-leadership style enable the management to mould employees with creative concepts.

The results also points out that the stimulation of some obstacle factors impedes the creative activities of the organization. In the words of Politis, excessive workload pressure, internal strife, conservatism, and rigid, formal management structure are the main obstacle factors. The effective leadership can stimulate the positive ingredients of creativity very well and thereby a working environment with positive strength. Politis’s hypothesis testing illustrates the correlation between self- management behavior and components of creativity.

He got positive correlations between self-management factors and stimulant elements of creativity whereas non-significant or zero correlations existed between self-management leadership factors and obstacle elements of creativity. In short, the idea it conveys is that a leader’s approach makes his employees creative or mechanical. Works Cited Grant, Ken (Ed). Fourth European conference on management, leadership and governance. UK: Academic Conferences Limited, 2008, Print.

Hughes, Jason, & Seow, Christopher. Workplace Learning. Emerald Group Publishing, 2005. Print. Mcshane, Steven L. & Glinow, Mary Ann Von. Organizational Behavior: Essentials, New York:Tata McGraw-Hill, 2007, Print. Politis, John D. ‘The impact of Self-management leadership on organizational creativity’. Higher College of Technology. United Arab Emirates. Penttila, Chris. “An art in itself: managing your creative employees can be a challenge, but doing it well is crucial to your business”, bnet Business Publications.

Dec, 2003. Web 7 Dec 2010 Rego, Armenio. Machado, Fernanda. Leal, Susana & Cunha, Miguel Pina e. “Are hope full employee more creative?An emprical Study”. Academic papers.org. n.d. Web 6 Dec 2010