CHAPTER 7

LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS
Leadership in Organizations

“The leader must know, must know that he knows,

and must be able to make it abundantly clear to
those around him that he knows”.
-Clarence B. Randall
LEADER – is a person or thing that holds a
dominant or superior position within its field,
and is able to exercise a high degree of control
or influence over others.
A leader steps up in times of crisis, and is able
to think and act creatively in difficult situations.
LEADERSHIP – is the activity of leading a group of people or
an organization.
Leadership involves:
 establishing a clear vision
 sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly
 providing the information, knowledge and methods to realize that
vision
 coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members
and stakeholders
Types of Organizations
 Business and Industry
 Government and military agencies
 Universities
 Hospitals
These organizations recognize the
importance of the leadership function.
Psychologists play an important role in leadership.
They select . and train employees. They have
conducted considerable research on aspects of
leadership such as characteristics of successful
and unsuccessful leaders, effects of different styles
of leadership behaviour and techniques for
maximizing decision-making.
Changing Views of Leadership
1. Scientific Management – is the philosophy of
management in the early years of the twentieth century.
-established by an engineer, Frederick W. Taylor, was
concerned solely with ways to maintain or increase production
levels.
• Through the use of time and motion studies, representatives
of scientific management were interested in standardizing the
production process.
• Scientific management regarded workers as extensions of
the machines.
Changing Views of Leadership

• The goals of scientific management were to

increase production and efficiency, and it was
believed that the only way to accomplish this
was for workers to submit to the needs of the
machinery and to a dictatorial style of
leadership.
Changing Views of Leadership

• H. Goddard – is one of the pioneers of

intelligence testing, who argued persuasively that
people with low intelligence required close
supervision by people of more superior
intelligence.
Changing Views of Leadership

“We must learn, that there are great groups of men,

labourers, who are but little above the child, who
must be told what to do and shown how to do it.
There are only a few leaders, most must be
followers,”
-Goddard
Changing Views of Leadership
2. Human relations approach to management-
began in the 1920s and 1930s under the impact of
the Hawthorne Studies that focus on the workers
instead of production.
The workers were exposed to a different style of
leadership, one that allowed them to set their own
production pace and to form social groups.
3. Theory X and Theory Y were first explained by
Douglas McGregor in his book, “The Human Side
of Enterprise”.
They refer to two styles of management:
 authoritarian (Theory X)
 participative (Theory Y)
Underlying the Theory X approach to management
are three assumptions about human nature:
1. Most people have an innate dislike for work and
will avoid it if they can.
2. Therefore, most people must be “coerced,
controlled, directed, threatened with
punishment” to get them to work hard enough
to satisfy the organization’s goals
3. Most people prefer “to be directed,” have
“relatively little ambition,” and “want security above
all.”

Theory X is compatible with scientific management

and bureaucracy.
Theory Y is compatible with the work of Abraham Maslow,
who argued that the ultimate and overall goal of human
beings is to self-actualize, that is, to realize all of their
distinctly human capabilities.
McGregor’s Theory Y assumes:
1. Most people do not have an innate dislike for work.
Indeed, work may be a “source of satisfaction.”
2. Most people will display self-discipline in working for
goals to which they are committed.
3. If self-actualization needs can be satisfied through work,
employees will be highly motivated.
4. Most people, under proper conditions, are capable not only of
accepting responsibility but of seeking it.
5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of
imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution of
organizational problem is widely distributed in the population.
6. Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual
potentialities of the average human being are only partially
utilized.
Approaches to the Study of Leadership
1. Trait Approach
- sought those characteristics that good
leaders possessed in much greater degree than did
poor leaders.
- the emphasis is on the personal
characteristics of leaders.
2. Situational Approach
- it focuses on the dynamic interactions between
leaders and followers.
- it is concerned with the needs of followers and
with the problem or task confronting the group.
3. Leadership Behavior
- it is investigating what leaders do in addition to
what they are.
Theories of leadership
1. Contingency Theory
- was proposed by F. E Fielder, who argues that a
leaders effectiveness is determined by the interaction
between the leader’s personal characteristics and some
aspects of the situation.
“In extreme situations, the task-oriented leader will be more
effective. When the situation is moderately favourable, the
person-oriented leader will be more effective.”
In turn, control of the situation depends on the
three factors:
1. The relations between the leader and the
followers
2. The degree of task structure
3. The leader’s position power or amount of
authority
2. Path-Goal Theory
- focuses on the kinds of behaviour a leader
should exercise to allow subordinates to achieve their
goals.
Four Styles of leader behavoir:
1. Directive Leadership – the leader lets subordinates
know what they should do and how they should do it.
2. Supportive Leadership – the leader shows concern
and support for subordinates.
3. Participative Leadership – the leader allows
subordinate to participate in decisions that affect the
work.
4. Achievement-Oriented Leadership – the leader sets
challenging goals for subordinates and emphasizes high
levels of performance.
3. Normative Decision Theory
- focuses on one aspect of leadership, decision-
making situations.
Normative – refers to a norm or standard of behaviour
considered to be the correct one.
The most effective leader behaviour depends on three
components of the situation:
1. The quality of the situation
2.The degree of its acceptance by subordinates
3. The time needed to make the decision
Thank you!..