Presented herein is an analysis of 2 Peer Reviewed Research Articles based on how researchers understand organizational leadership and worker traits and their ethical relevance to Information Technology. It gives the summary, the analysis, and the synthesis of the articles.
Article 1
Summary
This research article is based on the effective project team leadership theory as viewed from the angle of leader traits, skills, roles, and behaviors. The research examines leadership principles from the actual work settings of organizations, specifically the dynamic projects, with an aim of discovering the actual happenings as compared to the espoused theory. The research question investigated is whether the theories hold up and can effectively be integrated in the management domain. Empirical evidence is used in establishing the significance of leadership behavioral differences. The paper discuses contemporary and alternative leadership theories based on traits. Such traits include personality traits, emotional maturity, task/relationship orientations, Leadership Virtual Reality, charisma, and Level 5 Leader Trait Hierarchy. The research findings depict that there is a gap between applied leadership behavior and the extant organizational leadership theory. The results reveal that leader traits, skills, and personality greatly contribute towards effective leadership behaviors. The research further shows that in information technology; specific leader behaviors based on the prevailing situation, and not the leadership principles from management science, results in effective and efficient management.
Analysis
The paper reinforces the importance of leadership at all levels of the organization. In every organization, people are involved. Managing these people and the organization’s projects in a manner that meets the objectives of the organization requires technical competencies, interpersonal ability, cognitive aptitude, and the capability of understanding the people and the situation, and then applying the most appropriate leadership behaviors. The researcher tells that there is a difference between leading and managing, even though they are complementary and interdependent, and are needed in every position at all levels.
The social capability of the effectiveness of leader is a key leadership trait that helps the managers to network, develop and maintain cooperative relationships in the organizations, thus resulting in managerial effectiveness. Besides, the paper views organizational leadership as an interpersonal managerial role that necessitates motivating the subordinates.
According to the researcher, relationships should be cultivated across the organization to impact the leadership and enhance reputation for effectiveness through meeting the expectations of the stakeholders. This depicts that leadership traits, relationship building skills, role-sets, and stakeholder expectation are all dependent. The key point however, is that, motivational leadership behavior increase the effectiveness of the leader.
The paper characterizes leadership as a trait or character (leadership ability), the application of power, adjective (managerial quality), an object or role set (getting the work done), or a process. As a process, leadership entails motivating, inspiring, influencing, mentoring, coaching, and facilitating. The paper also classifies leadership based on the factors that influence it. These factors include the environment (business environment), the situation of the business, and the characteristics of the internal organization.
The research understands leadership as a combination of qualities, knowledge and processes. To be effective, leaders need more than just the ability, skill, or innate attributes. Traits and skills are related and increase the chances of success of the leader (leader effectiveness). Traits are patterns of human attributes like skills, needs, values, and behaviors, and are relatively stable since they repeat over time. Skills, on the other side, are the abilities to do things, make decisions, and satisfy the needs in an effective manner. Literature reveals that there are different patterns of leadership skills, behaviors, and activities which affect the effectiveness of the leader. They include status acquisition through demonstration, group facilitation, and performance; task understanding; intelligence; self-confidence; sensitivity to others needs; persistence; initiative; ability to exert control and dominance; and the willingness to accept responsibility.
Most successful leaders share the four basic traits: intelligence, strong inner drives/motivation (self-efficacy and self-confidence), maturity/broad interests, and consideration of others values/needs (emotive sensitivity). Considering the project domain of organizations, leadership skills are viewed as the ability of translating the knowledge into actions that produce desired performance. Effective leadership, according to the researcher, also results from social skills like leader flexibility in response, and the ability to perceive the stakeholder and follower needs and responsiveness.
The conceptual or cognitive ability of the leader is highlighted as the social complexity ability of thinking in multidimensional and abstract manner, and synthesizing the information at various levels of abstraction.
Synthesis
The article shows that for leaders to be effective, they should know their behaviors, skills, and traits, and should cognitively balance the behaviors and traits based on the prevailing situation. In so doing, the leaders should take into account the organizational context, the stakeholders, the teams, and themselves, based on the priority of each. The researcher uses case studies where leaders demonstrate skills, traits, roles, and behaviors conforming to the organization’s requirements. This eliminates conflicts of interest between the leaders and the organization.
Leaders, however, adopt more managerial roles such as directing, monitoring, and controlling, than the leadership roles such as facilitating, guiding, and mentoring. This in most cases may be unethical as it puts the objectives of the organization first with little or no consideration of the interests of workers.
Article 2
Brown, E. M., and Treviño, K. L (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly 17 (2006) 595–616.
Summary
The ethics scandals in government, business, non-profit, sports, and even religious organizations bring the question of leadership. The article highlights the emerging the constructs of ethical leadership and compares it to the common concern for a moral dimension of leadership such as authentic, spiritual, and transformational leadership. It draws mostly from the literatures of ethics and leadership and offers positions about antecedents and results of ethical leadership. The paper further identifies the issues that need to be addressed in the future and discusses their implications for practice. The researchers’ review shows that ethical leadership is largely unexplored, which offers leaders vast opportunities to improve their performance and effectiveness.
Analysis
The article defines ethical leadership from normative perspective by pointing out how ethical leaders should behave; an approach of philosophers. It also considers the social scientific approach which focuses on describing the ethical leadership and identifying its antecedents and consequences.
Based on various observations, the article highlights that personal traits like integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness, have great importance to the perception of effective leadership. Cognitive trust such as professionalism, dependability, and the exercise of care in work also constitutes effective leadership styles.
In a nutshell, the paper defines ethical leaders as those characterized as principled, honest, and caring, and make balanced and fair decisions. These leaders communicate frequently with their followers about set clear ethical standards, ethics, and the use of rewards and punishments to ensure that those standards are adhered to. The article further defines ethical leaders as those who practice what they preach and are practical role models for ethical conduct and behavior.
The researchers discuss the leadership theories that overlap the ethical leadership domain as: Transformational leadership, authentic leadership, and spiritual leadership. Transformational leadership and ethical leadership focus on personal characteristics. Such leaders act consistently with moral principles, care about others, are ethical role models for others, and consider ethical implications of their decisions. Authentic leaders are deeply in control of their behavior and thinking and are perceived by others as aware of the values/moral perspective, strengths, and knowledge; aware of their operation context; confident, hopeful, resilient, optimistic, and of high moral character. Authentic leadership is defined by openness, consistency, transparency, and self-awareness. Spiritual leadership, on the other hand, is defined by vision and identity; hope and faith, reflecting the confidence of realization of the vision; and altruistic love reflecting the caring of the work environment. Such leaders have integrity, altruism, and consideration, and are consistent with authentic and transformational leadership.
The authors propose individual characteristics that enhance effectiveness and credibility of ethical leaders. They include personality characteristics, motivation, Machiavellianism, and additional individual characteristics such as moral judgment level, moral utilization, locus of control, and self-monitoring. The authors further outline the outcomes of ethical leadership as: follower ethical decision-making, i.e. ethical leaders are positively related to follower ethical decision-making; positive employee pro-social behavior; positive employee counterproductive behavior; and positive follower work attitudes.
Considering the future implications, the authors consider how prevalent is ethical leadership is, whether it can be selected or developed through training, role modeling, and organizational culture and socialization.
Synthesis
Ethical leadership is one of the greatest concerns and the topic has great potentials for further research. There has been high profile failures resulting from unethical leadership and this has made organizations focus on selecting, developing, and retaining ethical leaders. In selection, an organization selects the individuals based on the perceived values. After hiring, role modeling is used by the organizations to develop ethical leadership. The authors stipulate that ethical leadership relies on the social learning processes, and through role models, ethical leadership is developed. Training is also used by the organizations in developing the ethical leadership. Finally, organizations embrace organizational culture and socialization processes to facilitate ethical leadership is development and the retention of the ethical leaders.
Based on the vast demands of ethical leadership in business, government, and non-profit organizations, there is need to train the stakeholders and the students on how to become ethical leaders. From a moral point of view, research that can improve the ethical performance of leaders is necessary, thus, the academic researchers should capitalize on it. The authors give a recommendation that due to the relationship between effective leadership and ethical leadership, scholars should consider the latter with great interests and diverse motivations.
Brown, E. M., and Treviño, K. L (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The Leadership Quarterly 17 (2006) 595–616.
Strang, K. D. (2004). Examining effective technology project leadership traits and behaviors. Computers in Human Behavior 23 (2007) 424–462.
