Management Academic Essay

Purpose of Essay
The purpose of this essay focuses on the premise that leadership is moving away from the

traditional forms of control through supervision and domination towards artistry and

spirituality. This highlights clear and available explanations of the aesthetic outlook of

management as connected to the concepts of creativity, imagination, endurance, morality,

motivation, confidence, and ethics. Combining the technical with the aesthetic produces the

three elements of leadership which are manager, artist, and priest. The first face of leadership

focuses on the level head organizing which is the peculiar achievement of the 20th century.

The face of manager is what business leaders appears when they present in a chaotic world

with financial reporting systems, stockpile management systems and forms for improving and

observing profit and quality. The second face of leadership is more inclined towards ancient

beliefs and bringing imagination. Artists offers anarchy in both risky and profitable ways.

Grasping the face of the artist implies that leaders must occasionally welcome the

opportunities for an adjustment that chaos brings in the business world. The last face of

leadership is priest which intervenes order and disarray by motivating strength to grasp an

organization’s imaginative potential whereas giving the consolation required to conquer fear.

Appearing the face of a priest confronts organization individuals by guaranteeing them that a

vital adjustment will not annihilate cherished feelings, instead it will keep them animated

(Hatch, Kostera & Kozminski, 2005).

Thesis Statement

This essay will attempt to discuss on how the prominent CEOs; Monika Kostera, Mary Jo

Hatch, and Andrzej K. Kozminski present on how the current business leaders have made use

of aesthetical philosophy in a form of storytelling and dramatizing scenarios to effectively

steer their business organizations.

Discussion

Decision making

Leadership involve management aspects to ensure the organization progress well with

accordance to decision making. To elaborate on the effectiveness of decision making, the

management must consider other strategic management aspects mainly planning, organizing,

commanding, coordinating, and controlling (Robbins & Coulter, 2005). The cornerstone of

good leadership skills involves the ability to make a good decision and be consistent to the

decision. With all the relevant information gathered, the manager should be in the position to

analyse, explore the alternatives and decide the best amongst the options presented to

implement the solution. In the absence of these functional aspects, the effectiveness of

decision making will be compromised. In today’s challenging and volatile economic

situation, where businesses are surrounded by complexity and uncertainty, it is crucial for

leaders to exhibit good decision making with creative thinking process to motivate employees

to contribute more to the organization. An effective leader will become a catalyst to

organizational creativity and innovation to achieve constant innovation and desired results. A

successful leader must establish a conducive environment with work culture that encourage

creativity and innovation. On how to achieve this, effective leaders must inspire and motivate

managers and employees to take up challenges supported by vital aspects like right strategy,

resources, technology, attitudes, and right culture to make it happen. On the aspect of

leadership and decision making, effective leaders and managers must recognize the vital

components of decision making. The process of decision making starts with defining the

goals, evaluation, and strategy to attaining the goals, alternatives to selection implement and

monitor the outcome of the decision (Braunstein & Welch, 2002). Nevertheless, as described

by Barret, Balloud & Weinstein (2005), it is crucial to utilize critical thinking in the decision-

making process to optimize the desired outcome. With leaders making a good organizational
decision and providing favourable, trust and supportive atmosphere, this will boost the work

efficiency, performance, and productivity of the employees (Leiter & Maslach, 2002).

Undoubtedly, with necessary top down involvement , encouragement and empowerment,

when employees feel inclusive and trusted in the organization, this would bring out the

proactive attitude, innovative mindset and creativity in the employees to further strive with

new ideas for the best outcome. Whether the outcome is positive or negative, without

decision making, there will not be any progress in the objectives or realization of outcome in

any organization.

Creativity

Leadership with creativity plays an important aspect to generate novel ideas, usefulness of

thought process in contributing towards organizational success (Shalley, Zhou & Oldham,

2004). It has continuously been at the heart of business, but until today With psychological

empowerment, motivation and trust, leaders can gain support from employees on ideas

generation and solution-oriented outcome for the betterment of the business (Zhang & Bartol,

2010). However, when a strong leader exert overly pressure on managers or subordinates, this

could cause the unwillingness to suggest new ideas, hence this may impede the creativity in

the organization. Instead of being effective leaders that promote creativity, it could turn

destructive and consequently destroy the collaborative and creative thinking spirit amongst

the followers. Nevertheless, when a leader is unable to strike a balance of promoting ethical

behavioural with necessary resources, this could lead to overburdening of job tasks that can

cause deviance thinking and actions with negative consequences. For example, the non-profit

organization like World Wildlife Federation (WWF) has embarked on a project to rehabilitate

the reef in the ocean. As a non-profit organization, with limited fund and resources, leaders of

this non-profit organization need to formulate plans to deal with the environmental change.

This requires thoughts provoking ideas, collaboration, and innovation to device a way to
create a conclusive underwater artificial reef to promote marine life, improve and enhance

featureless ocean bottom. WWF makes use of ingenious and innovation to build the artificial

reefs for sustainability and conservation effort to save marine life and safeguard the

biodiversity. Using recycle items like old vehicle tyres and construction debris to build the

artificial reefs with the collaborative effort from volunteers and nature lovers to safe the

ocean from the danger of extinction of marine life (WWF.panda.org, 2019).

Ethics/Morality

Ethical leadership encourages employees to express novel ideas by enhancing the creativity

in thinking process in the organization (Tu & Lu, 2013). By enabling employees to be

proactive in contributing new ideas to consistently promote creativity, there is a direct

positive correlation in ethical leadership and creativity (Javed et al., 2018). Coupled with

two-way open communications, consideration, inclusiveness, and empowerment elements,

this would build trust and belonging within employees to strive for the benefits of the

company (Halpern & Clarisse, 2018 as cited in Northouse, 2016). When leaders are more

transparent in sharing organization’s vision and expectations, this will enable employees to

develop a deeper sense of association and commitment towards the organization. When a

company remarkably communicates the organization’s culture, values and expectations tends

to advance to high benchmarks for trustworthiness, judgement, and honesty. When leaders

construct the level of believe and companionship, colleagues can feel complacent sharing the

pros and cons. Ethical leaders ought to effectively energize candour, astute contradict and

diverse opinions from all sectors of the organization (Schindler, 2019). Ethical leadership

requires honest leaders because if leaders are honest, they can ensure that ethical processes
are carried through the organization. Leaders are normally in the position of control for both

on and off work so ethical management must be applied on how leaders use this control

within the choices that they make in the organization. For example, MERCY Malaysia, a

volunteered organization rendering medical relief effort, sustainable health related services in

providing humanitarian assistance to Malaysia and abroad. As a non-profit organization, they

solely relied on generous donations, charity funds from organization to be effective in their

specified functions. They have been truly transparent in the collection of donation and charity

to channel to the deserving crisis. The leader, Tan Sri Dr Jamelah Mahmud, a practicing

medical doctor who has been instrumentally active in delivering the mission and objectives to

the crisis centre. Her effective leadership has gained international recognition at the United

Nations and received several accolades and testimonial for her dedicated, commitment,

trustworthiness, and ethical conduct (Yap, 2014).

Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay has discussed on how the prominent CEOs; Monika Kostera, Mary

Jo Hatch, and Andrzej K. Kozminski present on how the current business leaders have made

use of aesthetical philosophy in a form of storytelling and dramatizing scenarios to

effectively steer their business organizations. With the present volatility and challenging

environment, many organizations are putting more emphasis on effective leadership that will

constantly harness creativity, innovation, and ethical conducts to remain sustainable,

successful, and competitive. To become a successful leader, the aspects of decision making,

creativity and ethical conducts are the vital components of leadership to foster a positive and

healthy organization. When a leader progress with decision making, this will open up the path

towards creativity that will inspire team members or followers to open up the problem-

solving thinking and conduct to embrace innovation towards objectives and goals.
As it has been highlighted earlier, creativity provides encouragement to the intellectual

challenge to think outside the box and as enabler to collaboration with diverse perspectives

for consideration. As such, with myriad of perspectives and alternatives of choices, ethics

will serve as principle guideline to the moral values when justifying the decision made to

progress to the next level. To be effective leaders, ethical conducts and decision of the leader

will enhance credibility, integrity and reputation of the organization, hence compelled

followers to develop trust, assurance, certainty, and determination to pursue the path set by

the leaders. As indicated, WWF and Mercy Malaysia have evidently been two organizations

that exhibit true effective leadership that transcend the expectation and remain consistent in

their mission and objectives. Hence, effective leadership combined with creativity,

trustworthiness, and ethical conduct, are the real drivers and enablers for leaders to capitalize

on the commitment and conviction of the followers and constantly remain successful in any

endeavour.
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