Blog 2: Contemporary Leadership Styles: How relevant are they in today’s changing world?

What is leadership?

Leadership is a type of responsibility which aimed to achieve particular target by applying the human and material resources and providing a cohesive and coherent organisation in the process (Ololube, 2013). Northouse (2007) and Rowe (2007) also states that it is a process where a person influences others to achieve a common goal.

Modern Issues leading in a changing world

Leadership is one of the most hotly debated topics for decades (Pfeffer, 1993). Bennis and Nanus (1985) maintain that there is no consensus about the essence of leaderships. The modern world has causes numerous of challenges to the leaders due to the changing trends in the business world. Leaders have to behave differently to acquire the essential practice skills and knowledge to survive in 21st century global economy.

In the recent years, the internal characteristics of leadership has much focused on values and ethics (Hanges and Day, 2001). The lack of certainty in political leadership has been developed by the precise values that political leaders use to inspire their actions. Offermann (2001) claims that people is more aware with the values play in leadership effectiveness and success. As a results, this type of leader will attract different followers in regard of their values (Ehrhart & Klein, 2001).

Bass & Stidlemeier (1999) has described the two most popular concept of leadership which are transactional and transformational leadership.

Transactional leaderships was “based on reciprocity where leaders not only influence followers but are under their influence as well” (House & Shamir ,1993). However, this leadership overemphasizes on set routines and method of doing tasks causes the seldom encourage for the employees creativity.

Transformational leadership occurs when managers upraise the interest of the group, when they lead to achieve the purpose of the group and when they motivate the individuals (Bass, 1990). However, Yukl (1999) identified a few weakness or limitation of this concept which are the ambiguity underlying its influences and processes, and insufficient specification of situational variables and heroic leadership bias.

Challenges faced by current leaders

In the recent years, leaders have faces numerous challenges to manage people, challenges includes- developing trust, producing a combined purpose, deciding problems of bridging success and measurement of soft skill development (Boss, 2017). The conception and expectation of leadership will depends on the cultural background of individuals. Therefore, the chance of adopting western leadership is low, thus such leadership approaches are being questioned (Takahashi, Ishikawa & Kanai, 2012).

The changes in terms of demographics have been witnessed in the organisation for the past few years, especially in the modern century. According to Eagly and Chin (2010) the changes of demographics may causes a serious challenges to the leaders when dealing with the diversity issues in the workplace. However, this problem can be solves by obtaining the five categories of French and raven power sources.

According to the Google annual diversity report (2018), the company’s diversity is improving but it’s moving at a very slow pace. The numbers of both black and Native American workers at the firm have grown less than 1 percentage point over the past four years and the black US employees are leaving more than any other ethnic group. Therefore, Google have to solves this issues my using the Adair’s model on action-centered leadership. The organisation must set performance standard as ‘task need’ for targets market despite thinking about the background of the person, and discipline for ‘group task’ will minimize the challenges as it will improve the company reputation within the hierarchical level which have to be made by diverse set of people (Adair, 1973).

Future scope of leadership

It has been claimed directly that “Theories of leadership have overlooked diversity issue” (Chin, 2010). This is an important exclusion given that leadership will continue to become more diverse. For this reason there has been attention paid to diversity concern in leadership which are: Gender and Natural culture (Carli & Eagly, 2012). Eagly and Chin (2010) argue that leadership literature needs to better address diversity concerns and draw on research and hypothesis from the diversity literature to help address those worries.

References

Adair, J.E. (1973), “Action-Centred Leadership”. McGraw-Hill, London.

 Bass, B. & P. Steidlmeier. (1999). Ethics, Character and Authentic Transformational leadership Behaviour. The leadership Quarterly 10(2) , pp. 181 – 127.

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, Vol 18(3) , 19-31. 

Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (1985), Leaders: The strategies for Taking Change, Harper & Row, New York. 

Boss, J. (2017). The Top Leadership Challenges For 2016. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffboss/2016/02/02/the-top-leadership- challenges-for-2016/#47fc0c7719e0 [Accessed 24 Mar. 2019].

Carli, L. L., & Eagly, A. H. (2012). Leadership and gender. In D. V. Day & J. Antonakis (Eds.), The nature of leadership (2nd ed., pp. 437-476). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Chin, J. L. (2010). Introduction to the special issue on diversity and leadership. American Psychologist, 65, 150-156.

Diversity.google. (2018). Diversity | Google. [online] Available at: https://diversity.google/annual-report/ [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

Eagly, A and Chin, J (2010). ‘Diversity and leadership in a changing world’, American Psychologist, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 216, DOI: 10.1037/a001895

Eagly, A. H., & Chin, J. L. (2010). Diversity and leadership in a changing world. American Psychologist, 65, 216-224.

Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership Theory and Practice (3rd ed.) Thousand Oak: Sage Publications. 


Ololube, N. P. (2013). Educational Management, Planning and Supervision: Model for Effective Implementation. Owerri: SpringField Publishers.

Pfeffer, J. (1993), ‘The Ambiguity of Leadership’, in M. Matteson & J.M. Ivancevich (eds.), Management and Organizational Behavior Classics, Irwin, Homewood.

Rowe, W. G. (2007). Cases in Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Takahashi, K., Ishikawa, J., and Kanai, T. (2012). Qualitative and quantitative studies of leadership in multinational settings: Metaanalytic and crosscultural reviews. Journal of World Business, 47 (4), 53-538. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2011.03.031.

Yukl, G. (1999). An Evaluation of the Conceptual Weaknesses in Transformational and Charismatic Leadership Theories. Leadership Quarterly. 10(2) , 285-305.