Leaders are BORN and Managers are MADE, REALLY?

Leadership and management are words that stick together in the business world, but it is important to understand the differences between these two, because managers have to be LEADERS, but not always managers behave in that particular way.

To manage is a way to conduct or represent a responsibility; managers are characterized by some attitudes as: a passive and functional manner, moderate taken risk, the avoidance of solitary work, the acceptance of their life and the encouragement of team work. And on the other hand, to lead is a way to influence others and basically to guide and leaders are distinguished by an active attitude, high levels of innovation and imagination, high-risk decision’s making and the making of fresh approaches to old problems. However, both characters make a healthy organization.

Across the time, in the literature have been developed many theories and cases about how to define a leader, but few generalizations have could be done. In the early years of analysis, the leadership was defined as a relationship between leaders and followers, which seeks for a shared, and leaders’ types were classified as: authoritarian which retains as much power and decision making power as he/she can, without consulting the staff; consultative which talks to everyone involved in the situation to reach to a decision; democratic that has a participative style, keeping employees informed about the changes and shares decision making responsibilities; and laissez-faire which gives employees a huge amount of freedom.

With the years many other theories were developed, creating a huge network of information. As were the Ohio State Studies which said that the leadership behavior is based in an initiating structure (How leaders made their activities), and a consideration (The building of work relationships); the Michigan Studies that divided the leadership in two types, production-oriented and employee-oriented, similar to the Leadership Gird developed by Blake and Mouton which describe the leader behavior according to their concerns, which can be oriented by the results or the people.

Then some theories were created taking into account the situations in which the leader were involved, as the Path Goal Theory that states that a leader's behavior is contingent to the satisfaction, motivation and performance of his subordinates; the Normative decision model notes that leaders follow a path of evaluations that help determine the type of effort a decision will require; and the Situational Leadership which affirms that leaders should adapt their style to follower development style, based on how ready and willing the follower is to perform required tasks.

Nowadays, other types of leaders have been determined by the contemporary cases that are showed in the world like the Transformational, the Charismatic and the Authentic leaders, bringing ethics and moral considerations to the leadership studies.

THINKING TIME!

What are the impacts of culture in terms of mixed-motive decision making?

“Culture” is defined as the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and which is transmitted from generation to generation through learning[1]. And as we know a person’s way of responding in front of a certain situation can be influenced by individual factors and the psychological personality, these factors are based on the values, morals and beliefs that the person has which represent the person’s culture. That’s why the culture impacts in the decision making process, because according to the cultural and social backgrounds that an individual or a member of a decision-making’s group has, it is reflected in the way how he/she react to different circumstances and how he/she reach to the decision. Also, the culture is an important determinative issue that influences the motivation variables in the work performance employees; one of these variables is the organizational commitment. There is evidence that the organizational culture and climate are positively correlated with organizational commitment—that is, a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values; a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization (Mowday et al., 1979; and Guzley, 1992). And taking into account that the national culture impact in the organizational behavior, this reflects how the culture can be a very important driver in the decision approach and in the organization as overall.

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[1] Bates DG, Plog F: Cultural Anthropology. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990, p 7

Please, DECIDE!

There are two types of decisions, the programmed one that is based on a simple routine matter and the non-programmed one which is based on a new situation that requires creativity. Both decisions have a process to their implementation that involves: Problem recognition, identification of objectives, evaluation of the situation, selection of course of action, implementation, feedback and follow-up. These steps describe the way how a decision is achieve and have to be taking into account to make an effective decision.

In the literature, many academics have created several models of decision-making, but there are three that have been more acceptable in the studies: the Rational model which is based on the behave to optimize the outcome, the Bounded Rational model that explains the limits in the decision making and the Garbage Can model arguing that the decisions are making randomly.

The decision making process includes different factors that determines the success of the choice. One of the most important factors is the risk, this have to be evaluated in the process because it can determine the scope and the consequences of the decision. Other important factor is the participation or the involvement of specific individuals in the making process, taking into account the persons that can be affected by the decision and can help to the success of the decision. In these cases we are talking about group-made decisions and there several issues that have to be aware in this process as the pressure on the group and the cultural diversity, and there techniques that are designed to avoid these issues like the Brainstorming, the Nominal Group Technique and the Devil’s Advocacy.

Talking about decisions making, other important factor to take into account are the ethics, these can determine the individual behavior. In the literature there are different theories that describe how people respond to a certain situations according to the ethics as the Consequential, the Rule-based and the Character theories. The ethical behavior plays an important role in the organizational decisions, because those are influenced by individual factors as the values, beliefs, morals and social responsibility of a person and the can represent a fundamental character in the decision making process.

THINKING TIME!

In this documentary, corporations are defined as “legal entities” and they meet the clinical definition of psychopathic behavior. Do you agree, why, or why not?

I agree, according to the Diccionario Terminológico de Ciencias Médicas, a psychopath is a person who has mental disorder characterized by deficient control of emotions and impulses, impulsivity, lack to adaptation the moral and social standards, association and he/she tends to acting and has an antisocial behavior. There many experts in the psychological field that has describe the behavior of a psychopath, but there is one specific work in which we can be the same as the psychopath behavior with the one of the corporations, that is the Hare’s studies. Hare propose 20 points that describe the psychopath behavior and those can similar to the behavior that a corporation applies to reach its goals, some of the points are[1]:

· Glib and superficial charm: A tendency to be easily soft, recruiters, charming, clever verbally speaking.

· High self-esteem: An extremely high view of their own abilities and their worth, confident, stubborn, conceited, boastful personalities.

· Stimuli’s needs: An excessive need for new, exciting and thrilling stimuli without taking into account any risks.

· Cheating and manipulation: the use of deception to cheat, trick or defraud others for personal gain.

· Lack of remorse or guilt: A lack of feeling or concern for the losses, pain and suffering of victims.

· Impulsivity: recurrent behavior unpremeditated and lack reflection or planning; inability to resist temptation.

· Irresponsible: Repeated failure to perform or comply with obligations and commitments.

· Failure to accept responsibility for their own actions: Failure to accept responsibility for their actions, reflected in a low realizes, in the absence of scruples, in the manipulation, denial of responsibility and in an effort to manipulate others through this denial.

· Criminal versatility: A diversity of types of criminal offenses, regardless of whether the person has been arrested or convicted of his guilt.

These characteristics can be reflected in the behavior that the corporations have in their actions, strategies and planning. And according to the Canadian documentary of 2003, The Corporation, these entities are many times related with terms as: Dominant institution, Public control, big results, bigger damages, Inter-generational tyranny, Bad used power, Machiavellism, Illegal enhancement. So as conclusion the corporations’ actions demonstrate a very detailed psychopath behavior in them.

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[1] Hare, R. (1991). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.

Hare, R. (1993) Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among us. NY: Pocket Books.

Hare, R. (1996) Psychopathy: A clinical construct whose time has come. Criminal Justice and Behavior 23:25-54.

The MNC’s Nativity?

The rise of MNCs in the international dynamics, nowadays, has become a very important issue in the international relations and the world is starting to be aware of the threats that the MNCs’ proliferation has brought.

Traditionally, politically significant contact across national boundaries was conducted by government officials, but nowadays the emergence of private MNCs seemed to challenge this state-centric construct with the propagation of MNCs around the globe that are attempting to the nation-state sovereignty.

The MNCs have a great direct impact on domestic production, employment and other important socioeconomic indicators that can complicate the regulatory execution of a national government’s policy. At the same time, the nation-states are exercising less control under conditions of globalization and the MNCs are taking this role.

But some governments aren’t taking actions against the MNCs growth, because these can be seen as helpers to the nations, specially the less powerful ones. The MNCs offer to national governments more options in pursuing their national interest objectives, and also, they are acting as levers in the host nations, particularly in areas related to human rights, labor relations and environment. Simultaneously, the nations are using the MNCs as instruments in government’s foreign policy and they are bringing direct services to the local communities.

In the other hand, the MNCs have difficulties in attempting to the sovereignty, because although the ability of MNCs to respond flexibly to the speed and magnitude of global economic change has increased, but the changes also made it harder to assign individual MNCs the attributes of a distinct political actor over any reasonable period of time. This increasingly changes and the lack of a stable identity in MNC composition and character alter their potential to challenge national government sovereignty.

As conclusion, despite impressive growth in financial, technological, and other resource capabilities, MNCs do not function effectively as independent, unitary actors that can challenge nation-state sovereignty, and the global community gives no sign of providing legitimizing assent to any formal MNC political authority.

THINKING TIME!

In multicultural organizational contexts what could be a good strategy to keep people motivated towards a common task?

We have to think that the world is divided in two types of work thinking: individualism and collectivism. Individualism stands for a society in which the ties between individuals are loose: everyone is expected to look after himself or herself and his or her immediate family only[1]. And Collectivism stands for a society in which people from birth onwards are integrated into strong cohesive in-groups, which throughout people’s lifetime continue to protect them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty[2]. These categories influence the way how people works and how they can be motive to reach a better performance, also are included in the characteristics of a national culture, being this one the origin of these categories’ selection. This is the strategy placed, in which the managers have to see the cultural backgrounds of his/her workforce and determine in which category the workforce fit, according to this, he/she select the best option to motivate the crew, if the people came from an individualistic culture, the best ways to motivate them is the individual recognition and promotions, but if the people came from a collective-based culture, the best motivation techniques to be applied are the creation of teamwork and the affiliation among them.

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[1] Hofstede, G (1994). Cultures and Organizations – Intercultural Cooperation and its importance for survival (p. 261). McGraw-Hill Companies

[2] Hofstede, G (1994). Cultures and Organizations – Intercultural Cooperation and its importance for survival (p. 260). McGraw-Hill Companies

Theories of Passion?

The motivation is one of the most important factors when we are talking about Organizational Culture. Along the years many academics have develop several theories about the role that motivation has in the business and corporation world. Here we would make a brief review of the most important motivation’s theories in history.

Starting with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in which people’s needs are divided in 5 categories: physiological needs, security needs, social needs, self-esteem needs and needs of self-actualization. This theory exposed that when a person satisfy a rank need, the next level becomes dominant, but when the person arrives to the highest level, he/she never satisfies it, because the man is a perpetually wanting animal.

Then we have the Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factors Theory that explains, based on the sources of professional satisfaction and dissatisfaction, that good periods are related to content elements of the professional activity and the frustration periods are associated with the work’s context. Also we have the Theory X and Theory Y created by Douglas McGregor that divides the workforce in two types of employees: the X employees which have lack of ambition, avoid the job and are negligent and the Y employees which work voluntary and bring all their physical and intellectual efforts to the work. The first ones are motivated by punishment and permanently control and the second ones are motivated by rewards.

Another theory is the Expectancy Theory arguing that the motivation is possible only when there I a clear relation between the work performance and its results and these results are means to satisfy a certain need. As well there is the Goal Setting Theory that states that the level of motivation and performance is higher when he individual has specific objectives established and when these objectives, even with a high level of difficulty, are accepted and are offered a performance feedback.

Finally, we have the Fifty-Fifty Rule Theory which says that a substantial part of motivation lies within a person while a substantial par lies outside and beyond its control, giving a 50% of our motivation lying without us.

Like these theories there are so many more that explains and see the motivation from different point of views which means that the managers have to be aware o the motivation because it can drive the work performance to the success or the failure.