The Individual and Leadership

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Theoretical Frameworks of Leadership
Individual and Organizational Leadership
Effect of Ethical Leadership in Organizations
Conclusion
References

Introduction

In organizations, effective leadership is important in ensuring that achievement of objectives is realized. Leadership facilitates the attainment of a explicit goal or objective. The goal is common among all the people. To be an effective leader, it is imperative that all objectives are clear and every member understands his or her role.

Various theoretical frameworks and explanations provide insights on various ways that objectives become achievable through effective leadership. Besides, ways of exercising leadership differ across the board. This expository essay illuminates on the broader concept of organizational leadership. The paper will utilize various standpoints held by critical thinkers who have been pivotal throughout this course.

Theoretical Frameworks of Leadership

There are various theories that explore the concept of leadership especially in organizational context. Ciulla (2003) explicates that leaders ought to adopt a style that suits their situation. While that is so, leaders have to exhibit specific traits that make them stand out in a group. Trait theories articulate that leaders have intrinsic ability to influence others.

This implies that leaders are inborn and not everyone in the society is able to assume a position of leadership. Another theory that explains the concept of leadership involves cognition and learning. The theorists assert that people acquire leadership traits through experience and being in a position of followership.

Thus, everyone can assume a position of leadership as long as they have acquired enough experience to lead a group towards its goals and objectives. These are among many theories that explain leadership in the context of organization.

Further, it is important to notice that exercise of leadership is dependent on the strategy that a leader assumes. Ellis & Harper (1997) says that transformative leaders will employ a style that is convincing to people and use their charisma to enhance the achievement of organizational goals.

This is contrary to dictatorial and authoritative leaders who not only use their authority to decide the course that a group takes but also dismiss teamwork. Situational leaders on the other hand will always attempt to handle every matter as it arises (Yukl, 2006). They are also synonymous to contingent leaders who respond to different situation as they crop up. Indeed, they do not have any prior plans that anticipate situations.

In the contemporary world, the need for supportive leaders is increasing. This is in lieu of the fact that leaders will be the focal point of every organization in ensuring that members achieve their goals as planned.

They support and encourage their members without any form of discrimination. In addition, they allow members to participate meaningfully when working towards a common goal. This way, members are able to contribute important insights that lead to improvement of the organization.

Ciulla (2003) says that organizations should be able to ensure that all members are able to give their opinions. She further says that effective communication where information flows from the staff members to the management is the best way to enhance ethical and effective leadership (Ciulla, 2003).

This way, a leader is able to understand the emotional intelligence of all members and make sure that they do not cross the line when issuing instructions (Ellis & Harper, 1997). To this end, members become committed to the organization making it easy for the leaders to achieve effectiveness. Nonetheless, it is upon the leader to adopt a leadership style that he or she feels will be able to motivate the group towards the objectives.

Individual and Organizational Leadership

Spence et al. (2004) articulate that organizations are composed of different individuals who fulfill their roles and responsibilities to achieve its objectives. As such, various individuals perform their duties at different capacities. Of particular interest are leaders of departments and other functions of the organization.

As a leader, it is important to ensure that the members are able to comprehend their roles in a clear manner (Ellis & Harper, 1997). This is possible through effective communication and support.

The leaders should be in a position to form a team through which various abilities, talents and skills become apparent. In addition, the leader should be able to inculcate an element of trust among his followers. This way, members will open up and give the leader a chance to understand their emotional intelligence.

While some members respond to a specific situation in a calm way, others may react in an opposite way. As such, emotional intelligence is the key to unraveling the character that every member possesses. Ciulla (2003) explains that an individual who occupies leadership position in an organization ought to understand the aforementioned aspects of group members. According to Hobbes, a leader has power.

Power within an organization is positional. It ought to propel an individual to ensuring that the organization achieves its mandate, which to large extents, involves influencing others. To this end, a leader should be able to comprehend the aspects of power that could impede the achievement of goals.

Effect of Ethical Leadership in Organizations

In the modern business environment, the concept of ethical leadership has become a norm. Corporations are seeking to control their activities and limit them to only those that yield benefits for all stakeholders.

Ethics are guidelines of acting in a way that does not injure humanness of people in the pretext of increasing profit margins. While it is true that many organizations have entrenched ethical frameworks in their decision-making processes, sometimes they experience ethical dilemmas. This is when the interests of the organization are at stake for taking ethical standpoints.

For instance, McDonald’s fast food company embarks on an aggressive social responsibility regardless of its financial performance. The company has suffered immensely from health practitioners’ articulations that junk food is unhealthy for people. Nonetheless, the fast food giant continues to make substantial amounts of revenues notwithstanding the health issues raised regarding fries and junk.

Should a company bear the social obligation to meet the demands of the society despite making profits from hazardous goods to consumers? Apparently, the major objective of any corporate organization is to maximize on profits and increase the wealth of the shareholders.

This case presents two moral dilemmas for an organization. First, despite profiting from unhealthy products, the company continues to direct substantial proportion for the revenues to corporate social responsibility. Is it worthwhile? Second, to what extents are companies morally obligated to assume moral standpoints yet the main objective of a company is to increase its profit margin and increase the value for its shareholders.

Corporate social responsibility reflects reward power to the society where the company reaps benefits from sales and rewards the society through the initiative (Spence et al., 2004). The use of reward power by McDonald’s has helped the organization to meet its objectives amidst calls for a paradigm shifts in eating habits.

Yukl (2006) explicates that the most important aspect of an organization that the leaders ought to understand entails dealing with stakeholders in a manner that does not lower their value. According to Yukl, does the company have the moral obligation of helping the society?

Leaders ought to be the representatives of organizations and as such, they act in line with the organization’s objectives (Yukl, 2006). By embarking on the aggressive social responsibility strategy, the leaders are just acting in line with the objective of making unprecedented profits and the strategy reflects use power influence.

Further, the concept of power and self-interests elucidated by Plato could infer that McDonald’s has centralized power of influencing both the employees as well as the society. Plato sees no rationale for embarking on such strategy since it would imply that people have power.

He distances himself from ‘people power’ and argues that the company, which in this case represents the ‘Republic’, should not bear any moral obligation for the society (Bostock, 2000). In essence, the society has no mandate to demand any source of help from the company.

The wielder of power, in this case, McDonalds bear the mandate of distributing power in any manner it feels best address the interests of the people without coercion. Due to the power of self-interests, McDonald’s should focus on its objectives, which is to increase the wealth of its owners rather than distributing its revenues to people (Annas, 1981).

The self-interests of the shareholders should prevail as opposed to the need to address society’s issues, which is in itself contradicts the essence of the ‘Republic’. Annas (1981) points out that leaders of the organization who are the shareholders and management should concentrate power for the sake of achieving individually motivated goals and objectives.

Contrary to the views of Plato, Hobbes could judge the dilemma from different perspectives. His perspective of power, which in this case is wielded by McDonalds, should be in relation to other people. In his masterpiece, The Leviathan, Hobbes says that power is relational to other people without whom there would be no any phenomenon referred to as power (Ellis & Harper, 1997).

Hence, McDonalds has wielded relative power given that the consumers continue to have faith in the company. To that end, the exercise of power should be with the aim of ensuring that the organization’s stakeholders have the satisfaction with the organization. This way, the company will continue making profits and achieve it financial and organizational goal.

This raises the next question, to what extents are companies obligated to have a social responsibility initiative? Hobbes argues that there is a minimum standard power that people should possess.

In what he referred to as ceding power, McDonalds’ aggressive corporate social responsibility should be seen as a way of showing that people hold this type of power. It is therefore important for the company to act devoid of self-interests and provide healthy foods to the consumer as a show of ceding power (Zaccaro et al., 2001).

Niccollo Machiavelli would argue in line with his premise that human nature is typical of endless competition. In fact, the essence of life is to ensure that every person gets an edge over others. Applying this argument to the context of an organization, McDonalds should not relent on its current strategy whether or not the food they serve are healthy.

Antonakis et al. (2009) assert that the company should focus on ensuring that it maximizes on profits without considering the consequences of its operations on the society or consumer. This is in lieu of the fact that an organization should aim at posing the increased competition with other food industry despite the means it uses.

Owing to this nature of human beings, the revenues of the company should not fund corporate social responsibility since it negates human nature (Ciulla, 2003). Machiavelli infers that an organization should act selfishly and amass wealth for the stakeholders who ultimately should understand that life is short, nasty and brutal (Davis & Blomstrom, 1975).

Despite such radical standpoint held by Machiavelli, all organizations are selfish because competition is a reality in business environment. As such, all companies aim at having an edge over others in order to increase their earnings and enrich the stockholders as opposed to the stakeholders.

To the contrary, Rand conceptualizes the concept of power by elucidating that practical power is important and inherent aspect of human beings (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2006). Therefore, McDonald’s consumers should be able to question the motives of the organization and demand the company to give back to the society through corporate social responsibility.

Conclusion

In essence, leadership is an important aspect of organizations. Various theories attempt to explain leadership from different standpoints. They include cognition, behavioral and traits among many others. These theories attempt to unravel the reasons behind successful leaders in organizations and amplify the role of individuals in an organization.

Further, it is important to emphasize the importance of ethical leadership and dilemmas. The aforementioned case of McDonald’s gives an illustration of various ways that an organization can face ethical dilemmas despite adopting ethical decisions.

References

Annas, J. (1981). An introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Antonakis, J., Ashkanasy, N. & Dasborough, M. (2009). Does leadership need emotional intelligence? The Leadership Quarterly, 20 (2), 247–261.

Bostock, D. (2000). Aristotle’s Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Carroll, A. & Buchholtz, A. (2006). Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management. Mason, Ohio: Thomson/South-Western.

Ciulla, B. (2003).The Ethics of Leadership. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Thompson-Wadsworth Publishers.

Davis, K. & Blomstrom, R. (1975). Business and Society: Environment and Responsibility. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Ellis, A. & Harper, R. (1997). A Guide to Rational Living. Hollywood, California: Wilshire.

Spence, L., Habisch, A. & Schmidpeter, R. (2004). Responsibility and Social Capital. The World of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises. New York: Palgrave.

Yukl, G. (2006). Leadership in Organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Zaccaro, J., Rittman, L., & Marks, A. (2001). Team leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 12(4), 451-483.

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