Principles and Practices of Leadership and Management
Consumer Strategic Insights (CSI) Director Jorge Rubio is changing his part of PepsiCo into a more flexible style of organisation. This essay will critically evaluate the most important leadership skills and competencies that will help attain that goal. Arguments will be supported using leadership theory.
Background Information
A leader is someone who influences another or others to act consciously, willingly, and with ownership to achieve a common purpose (Lees 2014). Lees (2014) defines leadership as a process by which an individual who is ascribed by others to act as a leader in any situation, causes others to act deliberately, willingly, and responsibly to accomplish a common goal. There are different forms of leadership that determine the extent to which an organization achieves its objectives. Different types of leadership shape the culture of the organization and the extent to which followers become accountable to a specific organization’s mission and vision. This paper examines the case of the Consumer Strategic Insights (CSI) section of PepsiCo Foods Mexico (PFM) with regard to the plans of its director to transform it into a flexible organization. The paper will discuss specific leadership theories and principles that suit the change. This approach to organization culture requires the staff to be more self-responsible and the managers to assume the roles of teacher, counselor, and friend with regard to the treatment of employees. Thus, this paper will discuss the leadership theories and associated principles that might help CSI attain this culture.
Path-sGoal Theory
Among the class of contingency theory that suits the situation is the Path-goal theory. Based on this theory, a leader is charged with increasing the motivation of the subordinates by clarifying the behaviours needed to accomplish tasks and the rewards for finishing the relevant tasks. Based on this model of leadership, the leader initiates change by defining what the follower needs to do to accomplish work outcomes. The leader then clarifies the work role of the follower. The follower then has increased knowledge and confidence to attain outcomes. Subsequently, the employees show increased morale and effort; thereby, helping accomplish the organizational vision and goals.
According to House and Mitchell (1974), this model of leadership is premised on the identification of a style or behaviour of leadership that suits a specific employee and work situation to realize a specific goal. This leadership theory aims to increase employee morale, empowerment, and job satisfaction to make them productive. Based on the Path-Goal model of leadership, an individual’s act depends on the expected outcome and the value of the outcome to the actor.
The path-glory theory envisages a process in which leaders select specific behaviours that are suited to the needs of employees and the working environment in order to guide the followers through their path in the achievement of their day-to-day work activities (Northouse, 2013). The path glory path sticks to three basic steps. The first step is to determine the characteristics of the employee and the environment. The second step is to decide on the leadership style, and the third step is to concentrate on motivational factors that will facilitate the success of the employees.
Followers interpret their leader’s actions in relation to the former’s needs. Such needs are the structure, affiliation, desire for control, and perceived level of ability. For instance, providing more structure than necessary may demoralize employees making them less committed to achieving the organisational goals. Therefore, a leader must understand their subordinates to identify ways of motivating them.
The model was especially informed by the need to transcend obstacles. In fact, overcoming obstacles is a special aim of the theory. In case an obstacle becomes too strong, the leader must intervene and facilitate employees in selecting a path to circumvent the problem. Various situations often need the intervention of leaders. These circumstances relate to the design of the task, authority system, and workgroup. Task design often may need the support of the leader. Ambiguity of a task may require leaders to step in and provide more structure to the problem. With regard to a formal authority system, the leader can give clear goals, employee part, or full control. In the case of non-supportive teams, the leader must express cohesion and espouse esprit de corps that provides comradeship, devotion, and enthusiasm towards individual members.
Leaders’ behaviour constitutes the independent variable of the leadership model. In order to motivate employees towards excelling at their goals, the leader must adjust his or her style or behaviour to the needs of the employees or the characteristics of the task. In their model, House and Mitchell (1974) identified four types of leadership behaviours or styles: achievement, participative, supportive, and directive. These behaviours are related to the two factors identified in the Ohio State University research study (Stogdill 1974). These two factors are consideration and initiating structure. Consideration relates to relationship-strengthening behaviours, such as respect and trust. Initiating structure relates to task behaviours, including seeing that work is completed, scheduling, and organizing.
Directive leadership behaviours are based on the initiating structure, whereas achievement, supportive, and participative leadership are premised on consideration. Directive leadership involves informing the followers on the set expectations, including telling employees the steps they should follow in performing specific task. Such leaders also schedule and coordinate work. Such leadership behaviour is most effective when employees are uncertain about the task or when the environment is unstable.
Supportive style relates to leaders making work characteristically satisfactory for the employees by expressing concerns for their needs and by exhibiting approachableness and friendliness. This is most effective in situations involving physically and psychologically challenging tasks. In the participative leadership style, the leader discusses with employees before deciding on the course to take to achieve a specific end. This style works best when employees are trained and highly engaged in their work. The other form of leadership, achievement, involves the leaders setting challenging goals for the employees, expecting them to perform at the highest level, and expressing confidence in their ability to attain the expectation. This style of leadership corresponds to professional work settings, including technical, scientific; or achievement settings, including sales.
Trait Theory
The trait theory of leadership argues that leaders act in a specific way that is guided by their genes. The theory is based on the term trait, which is the characteristic way in which a person perceives, feels, acts, or believes (Kassin, 2003). This theory contends that leaders have specific inherited characteristics or personalities and that they cannot be trained or developed. From this standpoint, the leaders in the case of CSI should have specific personalities that are innate in order to achieve the drive the desired organizational change.
The implication of the trait leadership theory is that the director of the CSI must identify specific personalities among the staff and appoint them to leadership positions regardless of their experiences. Through personality assessment, he can find the right people with the correct set of personalities (Roe, 2014) to promote them to leadership positions to aid in transforming CSI into a flexible organisation. In this light, the trait model of leadership specifies characteristics for specific leadership positions. However, to achieve flexibility, an organisation must recognize the individual leadership potential of all employees, as every person has unique capabilities and mindset. This authenticity calls for employees to be given some degree of autonomy to do what is right from their own perspective rather than be dictated to. Taking this approach has the potential to achieve customer creativity. It involves taking risks with employees. This scenario calls for empowerment leadership.
Empowerment
People can be empowered from two perspectives: social affiliation perspective and psychological motivation perspective (Liu, 2015). From the social affiliation perspective, empowerment of employees means resource allocation that can minimize the dependence on high power. Leadership behaviour consist of a set of managing practices that include decentralization, participation, information exchanges, and training (Hakimi 2010). On the other hand, empowerment includes any management decision or technology that can enhance a worker's inner level of morale by boosting his or her self-determining needs or self-efficiency (Conger & Kanungo 1988). Indeed, employee’s perception of power constitutes their perception of autonomy, work meaning, influence, and self-efficacy (Spreitzer 1995).
Relevance of Leadership Principles
The director of CSI aspired for an organisational culture that motivates employees to be more responsible towards achieving the organization’s goal. In fact, accountability is an essential aspect of a workplace, especially in the current competitive global market. Making employees take ownership of their work empowers them to make decisions proactively and engage within the organization (Dowden, 2013). When leaders of an organization can hold employees accountable for their work, the employees in turn become committed to their jobs resulting in motivated teams that organization can depend on. However, there are tradeoffs involved with such organizational paradigm.
Increasing the power of employees over their work increases their responsibility. While employees are more satisfied in work environments that demand high accountability, they are subject to increased levels of job stress. This tendency emerges because such workers feel more like owners of their responsibilities and are directly answerable to the results of their actions when stakes are high (Dowden, 2013). The relationship between employee empowerment and positive consequences for the organization calls for the correct leadership.
Because of the above relationship between outcome and approach, leaders intending to increase the responsibility of their workforce, as the CSI director, must evaluate their leadership styles for consistency with the aspired vision. In other words, they need to consider whether their leadership approaches promote or contradict their efforts. This is especially critical because research evidence proves that the style and quality of leadership experienced in this situation determines the way employees respond to such an enhanced accountability approach.
Research to examine the effects leadership at the time of heightened responsibility would influence the outcome for the followers. Such a situation causes job tension, increased satisfaction, and emotional exhaustion. Research proves that abusive supervision may provoke adverse responses from their followers regarding heightened responsibility (Breaux, Perrewe, Hall, Frink & Hochwarter 2008). Specifically, the research showed that under increased responsibility, negative leadership styles such as disrespectful leadership elicited negative responses on a range of outcomes, such as job satisfaction, burnout, and tension. On the other hand, respectful leadership stimulated positive outcomes including reduced tension and burnout, and increasedsatisfaction with the job (Breaux et al. 2008).
The above results of the study have implications for organisational practice. In this light, therefore, while increasing employee responsibility is central to employee empowerment and engagement, the strategy may backfire without the proper leadership (Day & Antonakis 2012). Therefore, organization must take into account the leadership styles to apply before initiating measures to increase employee’s responsibility in their departments (Bennis 2007).
Mobilizing employees to take responsibilities of their decisions and actions and to accept the consequences of such initiatives can cause immense benefits for the organizations. Nevertheless, the work environment must be supportive of this course. After initiating a supportive environment, the change champion can institute greater accountability measures and gain from the heightened empowerment and freedom it provides. According to Dowen (2013), initiating a supportive environment will decrease tension and emotional burnout, at the same time helping employees to flourish and experience greater job satisfaction.
Clearly, the right leadership is essential for the success of a specific organization philosophy, such as a flexible organization. It is expedient, therefore, to discuss the styles of leadership approaches that suit the CSI situation. These leadership theories are trait theory, situational theory, as well as contingency theory.
Contingency theory of leadership holds that “one thing depends on other things” (House & Mitchell 1974). Contingency approach means those approaches that intend to delineate the characteristics of circumstances and followers and evaluate the leadership styles that can be applied successfully to the situation. Fielder’s contingency model helps in diagnosing the style of leadership between task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership used in an organization.
Conclusion
In summation, leadership behaviour is the independent variable and therefore, it is up to the leaders themselves to change to suit the employee’s needs and the work circumstances; wherefore, they must be flexible. Leadership experience other than leadership traits has the ultimate influence on the decisions and actions of a leader (Ridley 2003). The main leadership principle matching the CSI situation is supportive leadership behaviour.
References
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