Abstract
Over the past years, various arguments and theories have been made on the supremacy of either of the two roles played by leadership and management. Different scholarly articles and literature have been made by different people but most of them tend to support the dominance of leadership on management. This may be true, However, in order to support this assumptions and conclusions made we will take a deep review of the same in this article. This article will try to contrast and compare leadership and management and what each entails. Different articles have been postulated about this primacy of leadership such as Covey (2003) and Kotter (1990) who had a view of developing leaders in an organization as opposed to managers within the same firm. Relevant appraisal can be done on existing managers to develop them to handy leaders. We will also be able to learn on the activities of management and principles of management that managers use in their day-day running of firms.
Management and Leadership
Literature Review
Management principles are rules of thumb that guide managers in their decision making process and guide them in course of action to undertake while carrying different operations of the business. Analysis of Journal of Management (JOM), peer-reviewed postulated by Henry Fayol (2010) accrues of the fact that management is a holistic process that calls for collective bargain by top management organs of the organization in question. Some of the principles fostered for by theorist Fayol include seclusion of individual interest: where managers are expected to be in a position to set aside all their individual affiliations and interest for the better good of the company. If the company does not do this then it risks falling into conflict of risks between the company and the managers interests which lead to poor performance of the company. The managers are stewards of the company and are capable of bringing down the company or ensuring it performs better than ever. The other principles fostered for by the author include fairness and equity: where managers of a company are expected to be fair in resource allocation, appraisal of jobs and allocation of duties. They ought to do this to ensure they do not create room for demoralization on account of favors. All employees should be treated equally amidst presence of difference in age, sex, level of education, color, race and other differences that may be existent in the workplace. Hence this management principle as spelt-out in the journal, work to build a productive labor force with an efficacious work environment aimed at increasing performance of the labor.
Liberti, T. and Marchant, S. M. (2010) in their literary review on Business, Management and Operations Research. Quarterly Journal of Operations Research vol. 4; demonstrated the crucial role that managers play in the general management of the organization and in successful execution of projects. According to Liberti and Marchant (2013) managers ought to ensure the morale of their staff is high at all times as this works to encourage high performance and lead to greater yield s in terms of output. Managers can ensure this is exhibited by initiating mechanisms of detecting low staff morale and countering such threats by ways of increasing employee satisfaction.
Managers can get a quick peak of this from studying from journals such as business management daily (2010) article that addresses ways of how to detect low staff moral in employees and methods of increasing high staff morale through moral persuasion. Analyzing project management research: Perspectives from top management journals by Werner Sylvester is another business journal on management riding on the principle of Hierarchy chain. This chain of command in a company should be well laid out to ensure reduced cases or no ambiguity on who to report to. Employees face this problem with some experiencing problem of reporting to wrong superiors who do not act on reports. Hierarchy of command that is clearly spelt out will be a plus to a company since it will considerably earn great admiration from its employees as it will portray clearness of chain of command and order exhibited within the company.
Unity of command should be from one known supervisor to all the other subordinate management as explicitly demonstrated by Werner Sylvester. Management should strive to ensure that their constituents departments are working together and no friction is exhibited and if so should be rectified within very short period. The working together of all departments harmoniously ensures success within the company. A company having a common unity of command ensures that the employees and different departments have no confusion on power flow from the top to the bottom guaranteeing effective management protocol.
Management can ensure that they create room for accepting views and policy making on part of their employees to reduce bureaucracy of the policy making procedure and idea generation. Since employees are the actual soldiers on ground; they have better judgment on processes that need to be added or scraped on the production. They may also have great ideas that would help the firm improve its operations in terms of efficiency, level of output and increase controls. Michael Poh (2011) in his article Management Development: EmeraldInsight; gives a precise example of ways of increasing creativity and initiative on part of employees from view by managers. The article talks of employees being rewarded on creativity, creation of teams for innovation, availing resources to test for creativity and having a room for creativity in the company.
Literature Review on Leadership
On the flipside of this literary review, we get to analyze the concepts of leadership as construed by other scholars and academicians in this field of business management and leadership. According to Waren G. Bennis, in his review on leadership theories and management demonstrated leadership as the concept of doing the right thing and this differs from managers who essentially do things right. This stimulates thought of the primacy of leadership. Managers are viewed by the scholar as being machines that take instructions and carry them out mechanically while leaders are engaged in person at every implementation stage of the project in question. Number of scholarly reviews have been postulated by different researchers in the course of outlining the crucial role that leaders play in the running of institutions or corporate firms.
Henry, Fauster (2010), in his journal review on, Difference of Managers and Leaders: Characteristics of Effective Leaders, vol. 1 demonstrated the crucial role leaders play in the day to day running of the organization. In his review Henry states that a good leader is one who is cognizant of other people’s worries, troubles and situations facing them. By checking on the needs of others he/she will be able to determine the urgency, seriousness and intensity of situations being faced by the workers. The other leadership principle outline is that a leader is a role model. A good leader is one who sets good example to others and leads from the front. A leader of this caliber ensures that he has a high standard of moral code of conduct and abides to the governing rules and policies of the organization. A leader lacking good etiquette cannot be able to lead by example to others. The leader is supposed to show and not tell. He will do this by improving his conducts and behavior ensuring they are at par.
These sentiments were echoed by Kotter, H. (1990) in his literature review on Management as a Discipline: Reinventing Leadership and Management. He stated that in his review that it is important to develop and maintain a sense of responsibility on workers: A leader should be able to maintain a sense of responsibility on his workers knowing what they require, what they are supposed to do, care about the well-being and general care of their affairs. A leader and can do this by ensuring he involves his workers in decision making processes, delegating some of his powers to develop the workers management skills and so on. He can also ensure they are satisfied in terms of working environment, being a good employer through fair consideration in different cases.
Analysis of Mcgeorge’s work on the Wall Street Journal. Difference between management and leadership is another review journal on leadership gives a concise interpretation of concept of leadership in relation to organizational performance and delivery of the work force. In order to achieve this, leaders work closely with their employees and get to know each one of them at a personal level unlike managers who are only concerned with oversight role and general supervision. A good leader ensures that he communicates of changes, new policy making, improvements in processes and any new thing that will be relevant to employees. According to the scholar, employees are happy when their leader will talk to them about problems they are facing, ideas they had aired or other issues they raised, when leader give room for listening to what they say. They may not necessarily have to complain about something but also may have relevant advisory to their leaders; when their suggestions and ideas are acted upon by their leader they feel being co-owners of different processes, feel warmth and at ease with their leader and they also view their leader with lots of respect.
A good leader not only focus on utilizing their positions of power to lead a team like managers but instead have a wider perspective view of issues at hand. A leader not only maximize on their strengths to optimize productivity but also determine how to handle their weaknesses. According to Mcgeorge (2007), a leader who knows his/her weaknesses is at an advantaged position to deliver more because of a number of reason: a leader that knows his weaknesses will be able to know how to counter the same and therefore he will be confident of knowing solutions to the problems. They are able to save time on things they would have wasted time on for the simple fact that they do not engage in activities which they are not conversant with.
On the other hand, a leader who is aware of his strengths and weakness, will be able to offer guidance to his peers and subordinates. The leader will be an inspiration to others given that leaders tend to be more involved with the running of the organization at the grounds level.
When the leader is aware of his capabilities he feels a sense of self-actualization has been attained furthermore, a leader who knows his weakness and strengths will be able to concentrate on the weaknesses to solving them and hence by doing so empowering themselves (Kouzes & Posner, 1995).
According to these scholars Kouzes & Posner (1995), a leader is one who is able to make profound and timely decisions: A leader ought to be able to make timely decisions that are of importance to him and to others. Decisions made out of time no matter how accurate they are useless. Leaders unlike managers-who mostly do supervisory work, should be able to issue clear and precise instructions lacking ambiguity to ensure his subjects are able to make proper interpretations from them. Clear instructions ensure wastage of resources and time are avoided as demonstrated by Kouzes and Posner in their interpretation. Proper articulated Instructions ensure the successes of various objectives intended to be done. The leader should also supervise roles and ensure they are duly completed after issuing instructions to his subordinates.
Kouzes & Posner (1995) fostered for models that fostered for accountability to leaders for all actions that they make on behalf of their organization. The leader should ensure that he is a figure head and seeks to hold varied roles which make him a leader in the eyes of his subjects.
A leader who does not yearn to obtain success is not a leader but doing mediocrity. Success should be their character and one of their main pillar of working hard. Be able to withstand times of trouble. A leader who lacks trait of being perseverant will not be able to withstand when the hard time kick in and his subordinates will be very keen at the time to watch closely. Subordinates will be inspired by a perseverant leader and seek to emulate his good trait of standing strong. A leader who lacks patience will not be able to consider his subordinates when they are not sure of their actions or are incapable of carrying out instructions issued by their superior. This will lead the subordinates terming him as not a leader but a manger.
Comparison between Management and Leadership
In comparison between by Henry Fayol (2010) Journal of Management (JOM), peer-review and Kotter, H. (1990) in his literature review on Management as a Discipline: Reinventing Leadership and Management demonstrate the difference between leaders and managers. In this case, leaders are followed by followers whereas managers head employees. This is one main difference between leaders and managers whereby the employees are forcefully required to listen to their managers’ views and instructions whereas a leader will not forcefully instruct but will educate on the importance of set guidelines. The leader to follower relationship is that of submissiveness only compared to that of a father and soon.
Leaders are on the fore front to bring change in a place whereas managers react to change. Leaders will be the actual case of changes as they will bring in new methods of tackling things. On the other hand, managers will be the tools of bringing change to their employees.
Leaders will implement ideas whereas the managers will only hold these ideas. This is true as seen by the managers issuing ideas to Leaders who will in turn act upon the same ideas to bring desirable effects.
According to literature review on leadership it is evident that it leads to creation of teams working together whereas managers will create groups. Leaders will have teams that will work closely together with them towards a goal and the managers will hold groups under him that will be only characterized by authority by organizations.
Leaders persuade their views to their teams whereas managers communicate to groups. The leaders will enter into consideration talks with teams to try and explain their thoughts but managers are bureaucratic and will not have room for any deliberation on issuing of the instructions.
Leaders are goal oriented whereas managers are profit oriented. Leaders are not influenced by profits the firm makes but hold views of solving certain problems and reaching prescribed goals.
Leaders share their focus with team members whereas the managers focus by themselves. Managers do not influence other people in the focusing stage but leaders include team members in order to obtain different views from team members.
Leaders develop powers they hole whereas managers use their powers on people. This is another striking difference between managers and leaders. Leaders view power as not important but managers love to exercise power directly on staff members.
Managers are appealing to the head whereas leaders are appealing to the hearts of followers. Managers will stump out their authority on staff whereas leaders will try to draw the heart of team members closer to them.
Leadership styles between leaders and managers is also different where managers exert force, autocratic management and bureaucracy whereas leadership style is all about participatory leadership and consultative management.
Consistency, stableness in term of tenure: Employees are at times affected by frequent rotation practices by the managers of a firm. With increasing the period of operation in one area, an employee is able to learn fully what he is required and effectively increase his skills on the same. Frequency of changes from different positions may render the employees frustrated on account of good efforts by the mangers that they may not be fully aware of. Such changes can be communicated to employees and feedback obtained from them before removal and manager should weigh the need for the change versus employees reluctance to move.
Order: Order may take many forms in a company. Order in social parameters, placing of orders and management order are some of the forms of order found within a firm. Managers are tasked at ensuring that order prevails within employee-employee setup and nothing will come in between to remove the mutual co-existence present within different members of staff in a company. The company should be able to maintain an acceptable level of order from its customers and also from within its department to ensure the best profitable levels are in place. Placing of material orders can be reviewed by seniors of various departments to ensure cost effectiveness, economies of scale, no stock-out related issues and maintaining proper demands from customers at check.
Good packages in terms of remuneration: Managers can maintain competitive levels of remuneration by keeping track of industrial levels of competition, bonus packs, appreciation incentives, good benefits such as health and educational policies for self, children and family. This will lead to low staff turnover on the company employees, high staff morale, better and fair methods of remunerating employees. Staff morale and remuneration are directly related since employees view better pay as most important form of remuneration.
Common direction: The whole entity should have one direction in terms of objectivity and goals in place. Managers are entrusted with this task to ensure different departments and persons should not exhibit different goals. The holding of different goals in a firm will lead to competition for resources, divided operations and reduced or no coordination within the operations of the firm.
Discipline and Code of conduct: The management should ensure that a prescribed code of conduct is in place to ensure harmony and co-existence within the company is achieved. A company may not be able to run if its culture of operations is not based on strict discipline of all the concerned personnel. The managers are also required to maintain a high standard of discipline that will ensure the subordinate staffs are able to emulate them and subsequently copy them.
Responsibility and Authority: Each and every staff of the organization including the managers is expected to be responsible and accountable on their part of roles done. No officer of the company will be held accountable for things done by a different officer. This will bring a sense of responsibility on the action of individuals’ officers as they carry out their duties on behalf of the company.
Concluding Remarks
The management study guide website further helps us to determine how management is process by stating that it is a series of functions that are inter-related and inter-linked. Management as a process will create, direct and operate an organization through systems that are coordinative and are coordinated by humans (George R. Terry). The journal on great management scholars further goes to inform us that management is a process that is distinct which consists of the roles of organizing, planning, coordinating, directing, staffing and recruitment that is paramount for management to be exhibited in an organization. As a process management will include following aspects:
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