Leadership Theories And Practice

Learning Logs

In this section, I am going to analyze various learning topics that stress real-life work experiences that are also compared to and evaluated against the formal in-class learning that has occurred within the undergraduate business degrees at the university. Some of the topics that I am going to discuss below include professional development and training, beyond budgeting, management practices, and theories and finally, the last topic I will discuss is leadership theories and practice.

I have realized that when a company fully supports professional development and training, the following achievements are obtained. Firstly, it leads to high standards of knowledge and expertise of the employees. Professional development and training help the staff to increase their level of experience as they are highly motivated to share information even though they are from different professional backgrounds. Employees are highly encouraged to take training in different software applications that they use in their organizations (Harper and Vilkinas 2005).

Through professional development and training, I have learned they increase the worker’s job satisfaction. An employee who does their work efficiently become more confident in themselves, allowing them to be sure of what they are doing and therefore making them remain for a longer time in the jobs which they are doing (Harper and Vilkinas 2005). Hence the different levels of experience that have should be well managed within an organization. This can be done by hiring a qualified professional to train other employees in both technical and soft skills that they would apply to achieve the company’s goals.

Another importance of professional development and training that an organization achieves is that it makes it look more attractive. Managers who offer training to their employees build a positive impact by caring about them and only want the best results from them. When employees attend conferences and meetings they attract the company’s name as they will offer better services to their clients (Armstrong and Baron 2005).

Also, this practice creates opportunities to attract only the best job candidates during an interview. Offering better wages and various benefits to the employees attracts better candidates to your organization when a job opportunity is posted. When they come to work with you, promise them how you will help them more to increase their skills.

Professional development and training encourage and keep the trust of the employees. When offered employees have carefully managed and frequently guaranteed various job training skills, they feel motivated therefore leading to improved long-term retention in the company (Armstrong and Baron 2005).

Another topic of interest is beyond budgeting. Throughout the course, I have learned how budgeting is important to the organization in achieving its goals. Beyond budgeting involves beyond command and control toward a management model that is more empowered and adaptive and involves freeing people from complicated control systems and having loyalty in them by providing them important information and giving them enough time to think, share, learn and improve.

Beyond budgeting involves twelve principles that entail both leadership and processor management principles for the adaptive performance management model (Murray and Libby 2007). The six leadership principles include:

• Customers: the management should focus on improving the customer needs but not struggles of personal interest.
• Accountability: A team should be created that is accountable for all outcomes and transparency of the budgets.
• Autonomy: Involves having loyalty to individuals with the freedom to act and not paying much attention to a plan.
• Governance; Establish leadership on clear values and legal judgment but not through very strict laws and budgets.
• Information: Encourage very open information sharing and do not restrict those who need to know.
• Performance: Inspire success in the company as the winning goal and not meeting internal financial targets.

I also learned the six management process principles that are needed to run an organization comprised of the following (Murray and Libby 2007);

• Targets; Goals to be set should be direct and easy to attain that are aimed towards the improvement of the organization, but not fixed annual financial budgets.
• Rewards: reward shared success based on competition, not against cascaded annual targets or contracts.
• Resource allocation: All resources should be made available as required and not through detailed annual budget allocations.
• Planning: Planning should be a fair process that is not biased. No annual meetings.
• Controls: Management should be done according to the organization’s rhythms and plans, not events against the plan.
• Performance evaluation: Performance should be evaluated as a whole by analyzing the reports for the development of the business, not on attaining annual budgets.

Beyond budgeting, principles help to organize the company’s strives to achieve its goals.

The third topic of discussion is management theories and practice. I have come to realize that management theory and practice are important to the organization. It involves solving different problems that keep rising from time to time in an organization. The major management theories are scientific management school, classical organizational theory school and behavioral school (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson and Scott-Ladd 2008).

The scientific management school is the first management theory that is commonly known as Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management. It advocates that the continuous training of the workers is the best practice rather than allowing them to carry tasks on their own. In this theory, the final goal was to ensure efficiency in achieving the organizational goals. He also recommended that each employee should be motivated to do personal work in preparation for higher levels and offer training to others who will come immediately after them.

The second management theory that I have learned is the classical organizational theory school. This theory involves the works of Max Weber’s bureaucratic theory and Henri Fayol’s administrative theory. The bureaucratic theory by Max Weber advocates that management involves keeping records for future use and training employees thoroughly in their area of specialization. Fayol’s main principle roles in administrative theory towards improving the organization’s goals include planning, controlling, organizing, commanding and coordination. All these principles are used today in running various businesses (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson and Scott-Ladd, 2008).

The last major theory is the behavioral school that was founded by Elton Mayo. In this theory, Mayo conducted experiments that included rest breaks or no rest breaks and more working hours or fewer working hours. He found out that when people are put back to their original and constant working conditions there is increased productivity than when they are overworked.

The last topic of discussion is leadership theories and practice. The leadership theories that I have learned towards improving organizational goals include trait theory (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson and Scott-Ladd 2008). In this theory, individuals are either born or not born with leadership qualities. Therefore, those qualities that some are born with, such as personality, are considered to be effective in leadership. Another theory that explains leadership is skill theory, where the learned and acquired knowledge is important for good leadership.

The third theory of leadership is a situational theory that states that various circumstances require different styles of leadership, leading to decision-making for a particular group. Next, leadership theory is the transformational theory, which suggests that leadership is the procedure by which an individual creates networks and engagement with others that leads to motivational behaviors for both followers and leaders. The last theory that I have learned is a transactional theory that takes into keen consideration exchanges that occur between followers and leaders. The transactional theory continues to be widely used amongst many business organizations (Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson and Scott-Ladd 2008).

In conclusion, from all the topics that I have learned from professional development and training, beyond budgeting, management theories, practices, and leadership theories are important in any business setup. All of them, when handled properly, help the organization in achieving its goals and attracting many investors.

References

Harper, S.& Vilkinas, D., Determining the impact of an organization’s performance management system

Armstrong, M. & Baron, A., Managing Performance: Performance management in action

Murray Lindsay, R. & Libby, T., Svenska Handelsbanken: Controlling a Radically Decentralised Organisation without Budgets

Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson, Scott-Ladd, What is management?

Bartol, Tein, Matthews, Sharma, Ritson, Scott-Ladd, Leadership