Literature Review: Effective Leadership

This chapter presents the theorists that support the literature review by showcase how important effective leadership is for an organization and the impact on employee performance and morale.

Effective leadership like any other function or component of human resource management is supported by theories that focus on specific triggers that influence it. The theoretical pundits that study these functions have realized that in order for organizations to be competitive in the midst of global revolution, it is necessary to constantly monitor and change the methods they utilize to lead and motivate their workforces. Additionally, today’s workforce is diversified and requires leaders that can manipulate these different personalities in order to achieve

Expansion into the study of leadership further encouraged after the World War ended in 1945, coming out of the war mobilization and the utilization of labour shifted the focus and function of the personnel departments in organizations. This shift gained the attention of the Human Relations Movement who realized that workers were no longer motivated by money alone but by recognition for work done as well. Because of this theorists in leadership studies began to consider task orientation and people orientation as two separate entities. They realized that employees were not only satisfied with extrinsic rewards but they were also empowered by intrinsic rewards as well. The focus was now on ensuring leaders understood their employees and were able to take that knowledge and translate it into working programs that centred on employee motivation and job satisfaction towards goal achievement and organization success.

Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton took into consideration these dynamics and created a Managerial or Leadership grid that highlighted different leadership styles. The authors in their writings The New Managerial Grid (1985) suggested that there were two facets of leadership behaviour, concern for production (focuses on producing on time) on the X axis and concern for people (focuses on the needs of the employees) on the Y axis, each dimension ranged

Impoverished Management (1.1) - This type of leadership suggests that the manager is both low on the concern production and concern for people dimensions. This type of management does not expend any effort on encouraging employees to produce and does not have a high concern for employee happiness or deadlines. This results in chaos and confusion within the organization. In actuality the manager main concerns is ensuring his own job security and.

2. Task Management (9.1) - This type of management is representative of a dictatorial style of leadership and draws on theory X of McGregor. Emphasis is placed on production and employee satisfaction is not a high priority as they are seen as a means to an end. This type of leader opines that an organization can only produce efficiently with strict policies and procedures that act as guidelines and utilizes elimination to deal with insubordination. This type of leadership is effective when it comes to increasing organization productivity but it is also effective when it comes to high employee turnover.

3. Middle of the Road (5.5) - With this leadership style, a manager tries to balance both employee objectives and employee satisfaction. Boundaries are not forced, this results in average organizational performance and unfortunately this leaves both production and employees dissatisfied as requirements for both are not