The Leadership Quarterly 17 (2006) 559 – 576 www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua
Leadership and the organizational context: Like the weather? ☆
Lyman W. Porter ⁎, Grace B. McLaughlin 1
The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California–Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125, USA
Abstract This article reviews the leadership literature from 1990–2005 in twenty-one major journals in order to determine the nature and extent of attention to the organizational context as a factor affecting leaders' behavior and their effectiveness. Both conceptual and empirical articles were rated as having “moderate/strong,” “slight,” or “no” emphasis on the organizational context. Those articles classified in the moderate/strong category were analyzed
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Among those making this point are the following: • Tosi (in an article entitled “The organization as a context for leadership theory: A multilevel approach”): “Current [leadership] theory and research – which, we argue, is interpersonal and dyadic – in most cases may be near the limits of utility” (Tosi, 1991, p. 227). • Shamir and Howell: “The study of leadership needs to reflect not only leaders' personal characteristics and behaviors but also the situational factors which influence leadership emergence and effectiveness” (Shamir & Howell, 1999, p. 279). • Boal and Hooijberg: “Many of the new theories of leadership appear context free. That is, they do not consider how environmental and organizational context influence the process” (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000, p. 528). • Osborn, Hunt, and Jauch: “The purpose of this article is to explore a neglected side of leadership. The underlying idea is quite simple. Leadership and its effectiveness, in large part, are dependent upon the context. Change the context and leadership changes…” (Osborn, Hunt, & Jauch, 2002, p. 797); “Hence, ‘leadership’ is an emerging social construction embedded in a unique organization — it is contextual leadership” (p. 832). • “The context in which leadership is enacted has not received much attention” (Antonakis et al., 2004). Clearly, a number of
My leadership philosophy stems from my experience in the Army. As a leader, I believe in honesty, commitment, and respect for others. All responsibilities should be carried out in a timely manner. My main priority is the well-being of my Soldiers. My Soldiers can expect me a leader that is caring, dedicated, and upholds the standards.
From your perspective, based on the video and articles for this activity, how did GE
Leadership perspectives are very important when making decisions and strategies. A leader that only sees information on one side does not have the grasp on a situation. A leadership perspective such as understanding that there are more than one way to see things and it does not have to be what you see is what you get as a leader. When a leader uses their surrounding and employees the perspective may change and rather than seeing one side they see a variety.
I took something away from the different sources of power. Power is the capacity of potential to influence. Power can corrupt good leaders. Power, by its nature, it is powerful and tasteless like carbon monoxide. The more powerful one becomes, the more likely we are to overestimate our own mental virtue. There is position, power and personal power. Power can be more deadly than drugs. Many leaders allow power to go to their heads. They forget what and who was important to them. They allow power to consume them.
My Leadership Philosophy consist of three major parts that can be sub-divided into many smaller parts. As a Non-Commissioned Officer I know that the mission and the welfare of my Soldiers are my main priority and I will instill that. It is my responsibility to ensure that my Soldiers are also guided to success. I believe that there are three major parts of Leadership, dedication and hard work, honesty and empathy, and confidence.
My leadership philosophy is founded on trust, integrity, open communication, proactivity, and purpose. This view will enable you to understand my values and expectations as your leader. Trust and integrity: Integrity is paramount in building trust between individuals and teams. I believe that for faith to thrive within the organization, culture of integrity, openness and honesty should be cultivated and maintained. As a leader, I intend to earn your respect and trust by being a person of good character, hardworking, honest, and decisive.
This is why, Organizational renowned scholars have been studying of this very significant topic of leadership for literally hundreds of years. Because. It is very complex, not simple one.
Research on leadership is a subject that has been approached in many different ways. Theories on leadership can be classified according to the type of variable that is emphasized the most. Three types of variables relevant to these theories include (1) characteristics of leaders, (2) characteristics of followers, and (3) characteristics of the situation (Yuri, G., 2010). In the textbook Leadership in Organizations, Yuri, G. classifies these theories into the following five approaches: (1) the trait approach, (2) the behavior approach, (3) the power-influence approach, (4) the situational approach, and (5) the integrative approach. This paper briefly discusses the situational approach of studying leadership.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, leadership is the power or ability to lead other people, the act or instance of leading. I believe that Leadership is an art, the art to get others to follow and accomplish a common goal or task in a harmonic manner. A leader can be shown in all kinds of shapes and forms. To be a great leader many people believe it consists of modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. Over the course of me learning how to become a better leader and being in leadership roles, I’ve learned that all these are very necessary to be a great leader.
When analyzing the baseline leadership survey for the first cohort, we specifically looked at baseline frequency distributions of the “I feel like a Leader" scenarios, most Littles reported feeling more like a leader at home and with friends. On a scale of one to five, one being "Not at all like me" and five being "A lot like me", many girls indicated that they were less likely to feel like a leader at school. As seen in table 8 below, 14 percent of Littles reported that they did not feel like a leader at school, compared to that of 11.6 percent who did. Conversely, 7 percent of Littles reported that they did not feel like a leader with friends, compared to the 16.3 percent that did. Lastly, when assessing Littles who felt like a leader at home, 11.6 percent reported that they felt less like a leader, compared to the 23.3 percent who did.
Sociology's long tradition of examining the intersection between individual and group behavior suggests an obvious line of inquiry into the nature of leadership in both formal and informal settings. Indeed, sociological studies from 1935 through mid-century created a solid foundation for a distinctive, sociological approach. Surprisingly, that promise has yet to be fulfilled; sociology has instead often stood on the sidelines as more
In this topic we talk about many different forms of leadership and how it can affect relations between the corporate leadership entities and union leadership. Most often we see or read about in the news the break down between negotiations between the corporate leaders and the union leaders causing production to come to a halt while items are being negotiated.
One of the topics in organizational development today is leadership. Leadership is what individuals do to mobilize other people in organizations and communities. According to Kouzes & Posner, there are five practices and ten commitments of exemplary leadership. The five practices of exemplary leadership include: Model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart. In the Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner found similar patterns and actions of leadership that created the essentials to achieve success. Utilizing the research conducted by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, I have created a leadership plan that would apply to the Admission Department at Texas Wesleyan University.
Leadership has been a topic that has been researched for a long time in many disciplines. Leadership as a personality focuses on the characteristics of an individual that gives them power to act as leaders. There is leadership as an attribution this approach views leadership as phenomenon that causes group of followers to have outcomes.(Wu et al, 2010, 90).Researchers have used the following approaches to study leadership; they are mainly trait, behavior, power influence, situation and integrative approaches. Trait approaches focuses on the characteristics, values, skill and personality of leaders. Behavior approaches is focused on the leaders behaviors, differentiating between the behavior of ineffective and effective leaders. Integrative approach combines all the approaches to have a holistic picture of the process, outcomes and determinants of leadership. The approach that this paper uses is situational approach that is not leader centered but more on the significance of the context as an influence of leadership. Leaders should be able to choose the leadership quality appropriate to a particular situation.
I have learned many lessons from Jack Welch on leadership. Jack Welch has been with the General Electric Company (GE) since 1960. Having taken over GE with a market capitalization of about $12 billion, Jack Welch turned it into one of the largest and most admired companies in the world by the time he stepped down as its CEO 20 years later, in 2000. Jack Welch used his uncanny instincts and unique leadership strategies to run GE, the most complex organization in the world and increased its market value by more than $400 billion over two decades. He remains a highly regarded figure in business circles due to his innovative leadership style. Jack Welch demonstrated Kouzes and Posner’s five practices of modeling the way, inspiring a shared