Custom essays on Applied Research Methods Assignment: Literature Review

Many specialists (Brown, 2003) argue that the role of leaders and managers has changed consistently in recent years compared to the past. In this respect, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that the development of the contemporary business environment stimulates managers and leaders to develop new, more effective approaches to managing organizations because of the process of globalization. As the matter of fact, the process of globalization affects consistently the organizational performance today. Modern organizations cannot remain closed organizations, where knowledge and experience are accumulated and kept in secret. In stark contrast, modern organizations need to expand their market share internationally. To reach this goal, many modern companies tend to introduce the strategy of the knowledge sharing management. The latter implies sharing knowledge and experience within organizations through special training courses or through other means within organizations. In such a way, sharing knowledge leads to the extension of the experience and diversity of management and leadership methods and approaches. In this respect, it is important to lay emphasis on the fact that modern companies need to have leaders capable to unite employees and to develop effective approaches to their management. In the contemporary diverse, multicultural environment, it is extremely difficult for companies to develop effective leadership and management styles because they need to adapt to new cultural environment in different regions (Howard, 2000). Nevertheless, modern leaders are flexible and they appreciate this quality in their subordinates because through flexibility it is possible to reach positive outcomes and improve the organizational performance consistently.
Unfortunately, nowadays there are still a lot of examples of organizations which suffer from low organizational culture but such a situation cannot last forever. In order to understand the ruinous character of the lack of healthy organizational culture caused by weak leadership or attempts of leaders to avoid responsibility for the development of organizational culture, it is necessary to point out that normal functioning of an organization needs proper and responsible leadership since a variety of people working within organization cannot organize themselves and establish some basic principles and norms of organizational culture (Hesselbein, et al., 1996). At the same time, an organization’s leaders should encourage employees to accept basic principles and norms of organizational culture from the moment they first enter this organization and this is the function of a leader to inform the employee about organization’s history, its traditions and culture before he/she agrees to employ a new person.
Naturally, the question concerning recommendations to leaders as for promotion of healthy organizational culture arises. In fact, on answering this question, partially it is possible to refer to the role of leaders in the formation of healthy organizational culture mentioned just above. To put it more precisely it is really possible to recommend to an organization’s leaders to become keepers of organizational culture and traditions (Benfari, 1999). It means that they really should be possibly close to the organization’s ideal of a perfect employee as possible.
In actuality, it means that there actions, behavior, and attitude to other people, including employees should fully correspond to basic cultural norms accepted within the company. At the same time, in order to make the existing norms and rules acceptable, leaders should carefully select the personnel. In such a way, it would be possible to create a team of people who share the same moral values, views, ideas that would naturally minimize possible conflicts and create healthy ambiance within the organization (Dessler, 2004). In this respect, leaders should be good psychologists to understand what kind of person they employ. On the other hand, they should also amply inform potential employees about their demands and cultural norms that exist within the organization.
Obviously, such a careful selection of personnel that would share the basic cultural values of an organization may be a very efficient means to improve organizational culture. Nonetheless, this measure is obviously insufficient since there remains room for frivolous interpretation of cultural and moral norms by leaders themselves that would naturally undermine healthy organizational culture.
In such a situation, it is possible to recommend establishing clear rules and norms that would be understandable and acceptable for all the staff working within organization. For instance, it may be some ethical code developed by the organization in order to standardize behavior and work of the personnel, including leaders (Dessler, 2004). At the same time, it is very important that this code, consisting of the set of basic rules and norms obligatory for all people working in the organization, was developed not only by leaders but by all employees that can be done by means of consultations or, else it is possible to stimulate employees propositions as for the future ethical code of the organization. Naturally, nobody can force people to act according to the demands of the code developed by leaders uniquely, while the contribution of every employee in the creation of such a code would make it more acceptable to every employee who would readily follow the rules he/she in person has suggested or agreed.
At first glance, it seems as if the role of leaders in this respect seems to be not very important but this is an erroneous view because it is the leaders who should initiate the improvement of the organizational culture and stimulate employees to contribute to the formation of high culture of the organization (Karakowsky, 2002). Moreover, it is leaders who should follow directly to the basic norms and rules developed in the ethical code. Anyway, it is very important that they remained democratic and were not in a privileged position compared to employees. Otherwise, no measures to make organizational culture really healthy would be efficient.



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