Advantages And Disadvantages Of Leading And Leading People

In an era of organizational flux due to competition and globalization, companies and employees are faced with constant change. Leaders must be able to adapt to change as the environment shifts. HR has been known as the organizational change agent, administrative expert, and employee advocate. More recently they have been regarded as business strategic partners for many organizations. In order to be successful and remain competitive in today’s market, Human Resources (HR) must be considered a strategic partner if an organization wants to flourish. Top executives today commit significant resources to ensure that their company’s functions are capable of rapid change and achieving their

There are many ways to define leadership, but perhaps the most laconic as well as accurate definition is presented in Peter G. Northouse's Leadership: Theory and Practice book (Northouse, 2013, p.5): "Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal". Individuals, engaged in leadership, use influence to solve challenges, which the groups under their leadership face, in order to succeed in their common goals.

Contemporary globalization of businesses and growing global market competition has made effective human resource planning as one of the major strategies to forge ahead and remain proactive. It can be said that an organization 's success lies to a great extent to the knowledge, skills, creativity, and dedication of its workforce. Every aspect of an organization needs human capital to drive its activities or operations to achieve individual strategic goals and objectives towards its purpose of existence, growth, and competitive status. Companies can compete at all levels of the marketplace through improved commitment not only through creativity, innovation, and research, but also human resource development (Truong, Heijden, & Rowley, 2010). In this regard, the human resource planning is needed to ensure a systematic analysis of human resource needs so that the right quantity and quality of employees are always available when required. Fundamentally, organizations are looking for the best people that would help drive them to their desired destination of achieving their missions. Therefore, it is important to develop human resource strategies to support organizational strategies, through measures such as forecasting human resource requirements, and effective strategic staffing. Technically, an organization 's mission, goals, and objectives drive its strategy and human resource (HR) and staffing strategy in an interactive manner. The purpose of this

Business environment is facing a rapid change that reminds the business management to focus on its core competencies to survive and sustain in the competitive environment. The core competencies can be developed by strategic human resource management. According to Armstrong (2006) employees are the valued assets for a company. The strategic human resource management is mainly developed in accordance to the fact that human resources need to be managed strategically for the company to enjoy sustainable competitive advantage.

Martell and Carroll (1995) stated that there are two types of human resources: strategic and operative. They went on to describe four characteristics of human resource initiatives: (1) They are long-term oriented; (2) They are connected with the corporate strategies; (3) They are connected with the organizational performance; and (4) The line managers are involved in the details of decisions regarding human resource management. Too often, both operations managers and human resource mangers forget that they are working toward the same goal. Often, human resources will adopt policies and procedures that are hard for line managers to implement, and line managers expect human resources to have an inherent understanding of the processes taking place on the plant floor. The relationship between the best human resource practices and organizational performance must always

Leaders have a profound effect on employee performance because they shape workers’ perceptions of the working environment. Consequently, some leadership styles are more effective with meeting particular objectives. Although personal attributes dictate a leader’s natural leadership style, effective leaders recognize the benefits and limitations of each style, understand the impact a style will have on the organization’s environment, and are capable of developing and incorporating a variety of styles to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.

Human Resources often begins as very tactical policies, records, compliance, discipline, compensation, benefits, job descriptions, hiring, performance management (). Taken to the next level, HR becomes strategic, connecting employees to the business mission, values, and vision, in order to drive business results (). Employee goals and metrics align to the business strategy and rewards tie into results. Additionally, careful consideration is given to developing talent pipelines, employee succession plans, and career planning in order to respond flexibly to the inevitable work flow and staffing changes that all businesses experience ().

While leadership seems to be the ideal, John Kotter says, “If you have to choose between leadership or management, choose management every time. Managers do.” While this is true, it is most applicable to measurable outcomes. When organizations are viewed as machines, management succeeds. The Newtonian view of organizations indeed calls for management, as people are seen as things. This works perfectly in theoretical practice. However, when introduced to reality, it begins to fall apart. Even though people can be treated like things, it won’t allow for creativity and growth. Managers attempt motivation through competitions and pressure, which can lead to employees using their creativity to refuse to

Schuler, R. S., & MacMillan, I. C. (1984). Gaining competitive advantage through human resource management practices. Human Resource Management, 23(3),

In the 1950’s the University of Ohio created the Model of Leadership program so corporations could measure standards, behaviors and plans used in various situations. In addition to this, Fernandez, (2008), states, the program also analyzes information from performance measurements so they can comprehend relationships between corporate supervisors and employees (P.1,).The Model of Leadership program compares corporate opportunities find the characteristics and behaviors of competent business leaders. This program uses diverse business opinions and employee performance to comprehend how these plans, behaviors and relationships influence the success and failure of organizations. Fernandez, (2008), also states, these facts influenced research on power, influence, managerial and ownership theories being used to manage corporations (P.1,). The Ohio State Model of Leadership program also enables authorities to produce competent appraisal opinions, techniques and requirements for current businesses.

This paper examines the leadership practices of managing change and employee development and how they support organizational innovation, analyze how discovery skills support innovation and successful innovators, and explore the author’s own strengths and weaknesses in using discover skills and the leadership practices of managing change and employee development. An organization that develops and fosters the right leadership culture has a competitive advantage over organizations that do not embrace the benefits of a strong leadership culture. Developing and fostering a culture of high performing, innovative leaders at all levels of an organization is more beneficial

Until a few decades ago, it was a commonly prevalent notion in the corporate sector that organizations are operated by capital and top leadership where as the employees are to follow the lead as they are told to. This meant that employees were simply expected to walk on the line given to them to attain the desired results without giving much of their own input. Under such circumstances, leaders were defined as commanders and controllers and were assumed to be people who held certain authority and position in the organizations, while the rest of the employees were treated as mere subordinates, whose only motivation was considered to be financial incentives.

Instead, human resource practices of ‘best fit’ are more effective when they are designed to fit certain contingencies in the organization’s specific context. Consequently, ‘best practice’ is perceived to improve performance within an organization when a select bundle of policies is implemented and the employees are managed more efficiently. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s (1994) work under this conception offers a list of seven practices assumed to be most beneficial to an organization for achieving competitive advantage ‘through people’. (1) The importance of employment security is emphasized because it is unrealistic to expect such hard work and commitment from employees without some expectation of security on their part. (2) Selective hiring is a source of sustainable competitive advantage through its “capturing” of particularly exceptional human talent (human capital). (3) Self-managed teams require efficient teamwork, and are seen as a route to achievement of more creative solutions. Employees deserve to be rewarded for

With today's workforce becoming increasingly diverse and organizations doing more to maximize the benefits of the differences in employees, organizations are relying on managers to get the people who get the job done. People have always been the central to organizations, but there strategic importance is growing in today's knowledge-based business world. An organization's success increasingly depends on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of its employees excluding there gender, age, ethnicity, and the differences in skill and abilities. When employees' talents are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and organize, an organization can achieve an advantage. Having managers or human resource departments that are superb for

A rapidly changing business environment due to technological changes and the impacts of globalization has resulted in shift of human resources paradigms (Khan, 1997). In every organization