Leadership & Culture in Organisational Contexts Assignment Sample

Leadership & Culture in Organisational Contexts Assignment 

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Introduction 

Leadership and culture are two areas within an organization that can cause an impact on a change to occur. This is because leading change when understanding about organizational culture is not achieved can lead to a huge area of disinterest to be developed hence making it harder for leaders to implement change within the organization. There is both international and cross-cultural leadership that is present in which many challenges and risks can be faced accordingly. These are directly linked to the culture of the organization as the employees would be motivated from this area. To further understand this area, there has been a statement provided upon which there can be further comprehension of leadership and culture within organizational contexts to be developed.

'Leading through change can happen effectively only if a full understanding and appreciation of organizational culture are progressively developed'.

The above statement is going to be focused on throughout the report in which leadership theories will be discussed and it will also be seen what are the values, beliefs, and ethical dimensions that can be considered. Theories of motivation will help to make sure that there can be further employee engagement for the leadership role.

The practice of leadership in organizations

There are different styles of leadership that are present which can be adopted by a leader and this type of leadership is linked to the culture within an organisation. There are various leadership practices that come with these styles and it is through these practices that there is further importance that is given to the organisational culture. One of these practices that are present is that of mentoring relationships. Mentor relationships in an organisation are important as it is through this that opportunities can be provided to employees. This helps employees to realise what their potential is and how they can further increase their chances within the organisation. The leaders have to make sure that employees understand that they have better growth within the organisation hence making them want to stay within it (Pfund et al., 2016). A leader must go beyond what is being offered by the organisation to the employees because it is through this that there can be a clear articulation of increasing the performance level of the employees. Another practice that a leader should make sure to get done is that of encouraging employees to advance. This is a good practice because it helps when there is a change within an organisation. The change that is present within an organisation most of the time provides different areas of work to be altered or modified but if the personnel is ready beforehand then it can lead to better change management to occur. The leader would have the employees understand why it is important to adopt the change and what transformation it can cause within their job roles (Cheng and Yang, 2019). Employees might not want to adapt to such a change as it may change their job roles but this is where the leader would come into play and make sure that all of the employees give their 100% to make this happen. Being able to lookout for new talent and use it in accordance to achieving the organisational goals and making sure that a large number of profits can be achieved accordingly. Knowing people's strengths can help to increase the performance within the organisation hence creating a better idea of how to increase the performance. New talent means that there is further development that can be done within the organisational culture as there would be a better outline of the new skills that can be achieved.

Understanding Organisational Culture

The organisational culture is an important area for an organisation because this is what makes up the values, beliefs, and ethical considerations that have been set up. The organisational culture shows what behavior that is to be depicted by the employees. There is a high brand impression that is left by having an effective organisational culture and it is through this impression that there would be different trends within the market that can be further looked at. There are different areas for further development that should be criticized as it shows how there can be better management of how to get work done.

The other factor here is that organisational culture shows what the purpose of the organisation is. This is shown through values that have been set out. There is certain code of conduct that are present within an organisation that shows how an employee is to behave so that they understand how to perform within their job roles. It should however be understood that the values may differ from organisation to organisation as their objectives are different (Corfield and Paton, 2016). Amazon has values such as inventing and simply as well as learning and being curious. This is where it is able to provide proper services to its customers. On the other hand, Apple focuses on making sure that it has people seeing that people with passion should be highly appreciated hence making the employees feel valuable. From this, it can be seen that the values show what is wanted by the organisation and what the employees are supposed to do in order to achieve it. Companies can value the services that they are offering or focus on the employees hence making the difference in how much change can be made within the organisation. The level of flexibility matters here as if the organisational culture is not flexible then changes within the organisation itself would be hard to make. The leaders have to make sure that such a culture is followed by every employee as it is linked to the employees on what can be the different areas for further operations to occur (Odor, 2018).

Cultural leadership

This leadership is managing diverse personnel within an organisation. It seems that there is a different culture of employees that are present within an organisation and in order to make sure that all of them are working collaboratively. There are two ways that a culture can be managed because there are different ways that culture is present within an organisation. The first area is that managing the cultural sector within the organisation through which there can be legal policies that can be created. These policies would help to make sure that there would be a large number of policies created like the ethical policy which show how to maintain a well organised staff. On the other hand, leaders need to also focus on the various cultures that are present in the organisation. There are different cultures that are bought in by employees such as the Japanese can bring their culture while the Americans bring their own. All of such cultures would need to be respected and managed by the leader so that they can make sure on what can be the various tools that can help to make sure that all of the employees work in a collaborative manner (Stephan and Pathak, 2016). This is where the organisational culture come into play as it is through this that leaders can make sure that all of the employees are working in an effective manner.

There are however certain challenges that have to be faced by cultural leadership and can hinder the performance within the work area.

One of the challenges that is faced within this leadership is that making people from different cultures understand the value of the organisation is hard. The level of communication and understanding that is shown within this is very low as the young aged employees might be capable of understanding while old age employees prefer to stick with the old ways of conducting business. This is a major challenge because if the employees are not on board then there can be better work to be established accordingly. It is hard to make sure that there is teamwork that is achieved because people from different cultural backgrounds would not be working effectively (Lin et al., 2018). However, it should be understood that it is totally up to the leader to make sure that there can be a clear articulation of the values for the employees so that they know what type of environment they are working within.

The other challenge that is present here is that of implementing social work. There are a number of social areas that are present in the market and making sure that all of them are recognised within the organisation is not understood by the leaders. Cultural expression is hard to understand as the way of conducting work is not easily done hence making leadership harder to get done. Leaders would have to clear out what can be the different social aspects of cultural expression that need to be handled (Takeuchi et al., 2020). All of this needs to be added into the organisational culture hence creating a clear outline of how employees can be increased so that there is effective work done. Also, this can limit the amount of network and flow of information that is present in the organisation. If the leader is not able to understand the culture its employees have then the flow of information between all of the departments would be limited.

Cross Cultural Leadership

This leadership aspect has been developed in order to show how leaders manage in the globalised market. This is important because leaders now have to work within a diverse environment as employees from all over the world will be working for organisations. This is mostly dealt with in multinational organisations hence creating an outline of what can be the different areas of how to manage them so that their cultures do not get affected at all. Here the theory of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions should be applied by leaders. Through this theory there would be proper understanding of what the similarities that are present between the different culture and what the differences that can be looked at (Budur, 2020). This is important for a leader as it helps to build a better relationship with the employees hence motivating them.

There are certain skills that a cross-cultural leader has to adopt hence showing how a leader can manage the work being done. One of these skills is cultural awareness. A leader must have an understanding of the different cultures that are present within the organisation or even in the country so that they know how to deal with various employees that are present. Multicultural Perspective Taking is an approach that can be implemented within the organisation through which there can be proper cultural training provided not only for the leaders but also the employees that are present (Carroll and Patterson, 2016). There could be national and regional knowledge that should be provided to the employees along with showing what the values and ethics that are present within the organisation are. This is because though the employees might be from different cultures but they all should understand the organisational culture and make sure to behave in that area.

Motivation and employee engagement within the leadership role

In order to increase the motivation level of employees and provide further employee engagement and increase their performance levels accordingly. There are different motivational and leadership theories that can be looked at in order to see how the role of a leader is effective in making sure that the employee’s motivational level rises.

Situational theory of leadership

This theory takes into account that a leader will act in a certain manner when faced with a situation. This shows that whatever the situations is put in front of the leader, they will handle it by applying various solutions. There are leaders that only use one way to get work done from the employees which might be only bossing them around but on the other hand, this theory suggests that a leader should make sure to adapt to any situation so that they can make decisions according to it. There are times when cooperation’s for making a decision is to be done with employees but on the other hand, when a decision needs to be made quickly it is up to the leader to take them on the spot. So it can be seen that different situations would arise in the organisation hence showing that leaders must be able to tackle them effectively (Thompson and Glasø, 2015).

This type of leadership has been designed for leaders to adopt a leadership style according to the situation that is presented in front of them. This is necessary for the organisational development to occur because there would be a proper outline of providing better direction to the employees. This theory also focuses on the factor that there should be effective employee motivation given as without it there cannot be proper performance increased.Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory can be established here as it seems that it provides a clear outline of the needs that should be focused upon by a leader. The situational theory would also come into play here as the leader needs to recognise all of the needs of the employees that can help in further increasing the motivational levels. The leaders would have to look at safety needs through an organisational culture perspective meaning that what are the various rules and regulations that have to be established in order to show how employees can behave (De Vito et al., 2018). Employees are from different generations due to which there can be a number of collaboration issues to arise hence the safety factor come into play here as all of the employees from various races have to be working together. The other areas of motivation are linked to the normal culture of employees being physiological, social, esteem and self-actualisation factors. These factors within the motivational theory show that leaders should create a relationship with them so that such areas are understood. The social factor shows that leaders need to understand what cultural background an employee comes from so that they can build a better relationship with them and provide growth opportunities accordingly.

Two-Factor Theory of Motivation

This theory focuses on two areas where one are the hygiene factors. These factors are related to the seeing what are the areas that might cause dissatisfaction to occur for the employee. These can be the company’s policies that have been set out, relationships with the leader that have been established and also the working conditions that are present. All of these areas are relating to what makes the organisational culture that is present (Sanjeev and Surya, 2016). All of such need to be managed by leaders and they need to make sure that such areas are carefully managed. The leaders would have to apply communications skills here for further adaptation to occur. The behaviour theory of leadership plays an important role here as it shows how the employees should be treated according to their work area. The leader has to make sure to understand all of the factors that can cause disappointment to the employees and show what the strategies are that can be adopted for lowering them. The employees that might be feeling miserable at work need to be focused upon so that there can be proper areas established for effective work to be done. The other factor that is involved within this theory is that of motivators. These are areas such as achievement, having growth opportunities and making sure that the work being done is interesting. The leader has to make sure that there would have to be focus on these areas done within the organisational culture so that there would be a clear understanding of how to increase the motivational level. These motivators have to be looked at carefully because not every employee is having the same area for motivation. Hence, the leader would make sure that there is proper communication that is established within the workplace. It is through this that every employee’s motivation can be understood (Alshmemri, et al., 2017). This might seem to be a long process but it seems that if this is done then there would be a higher employee work satisfaction that can be achieved. The organisation should be able to provide employees with numerous opportunities for growth as in today’s business environment individuals want further growth to occur. This is an important area as without this a leader would not be able to keep in check with the employees.

Leading through change

Leading through change can be hard time for leaders as they need to take into account various strategies so that the employees are on board with the change. It can be considered that if only the organisational culture has effective work to be done then it would help to increase the amount of work that can be done. The leader should make sure that all of the employees are aware of why a change is to be implemented because without their understanding the change cannot be effectively done.

Conclusion

It can be seen that leaders play an important role for the development and maintenance of organisational culture. It is through leaders that the workforce can be managed and if there is any change that is about to occur then it should be first told to the leaders as they are the ones that would help to make sure that all employees agree with this. On the other hand, the organisational culture is responsible for showing what are the rules, regulations, values and ethics that should be followed by the employees. This helps to see that is a change is presented within the organisation then it is by looking at the culture that is present on how it can be implemented.

References

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