Ethical and Charismatic Leadership, Essay Example

Business organizations have expressed interests in analyzing the obligations of the management and the feelings among employees concerning their job and the magnitude of their dedication to the organization. According to the investigations that have been conducted in this field, the role of leadership, and most specifically the charismatic leadership is critically influential to the degree of meaningfulness of work to the employees that is evaluated on the basis of engagement to their duties (Strickland et al., 2007).

The responsibility of a leader in an organization is to positively impact on the behaviors of followers. Depending on the competency of the leader, it is possible to influence the followers towards achievement of organization goals, purposes as well as objectives. The achievements of these objectives is determined by the aptitude of the leader to motivate, direct and lead people and this is the best way to define leadership. Consequently, leadership can be defined as the ability a person to lead and direct other people in order to accomplish specific goals or purposes in the organization. According to Babcok-Robertson and Strickland (2010), leadership is characteristically perceived as a process that involves social influence to a group of followers, in which case one or more person, i.e. the leader(s) impacts significant influence to one or more followers through a clear elaboration of the needs and aspirations of the organization, and offering the necessary tools as well as motivation that are required in accomplishing the set goals in the organization(P. 314).

The field of leadership has been a center of interest among many researchers and different studies have revealed different concepts and ideas that try to analyze the effectiveness of leadership in addressing the needs of organizations. This paper posits to critically analyze some leadership principles and theories that are applicable in organizations to meet their goals and objectives. In this paper, we are going to refer only to the ones that we considered that are more relevant to the topic we are studying. Such theories include ethical Leadership, charismatic leadership, transformational leadership, and visionary leadership (Boniwell & Henry, 2007).

Ethical leadership

According to Weichun (2004), the implications of ethical leadership is a type of leadership that considers the ethical behaviors that guide the leader to determine what is morally right, just and good. Ethical leaders are concerned about enhancing the moral awareness of the followers coupled with the moral self actualization (page 16). An obvious expectation of ethical leaders is a fair and unbiased treatment of employees. This is achieved through the application of distribute and procedural justice. Distributional justice is concerned with issues such as pay, rewards, recognition and promotion, checking their fairness in comparison to employees’ contribution to the organization. On the other hand, procedural justice addresses the impartiality of the methods that the organization used to apply their managerial decisions. (Bond & Bunce, 2001).

In ethical type of leadership, the leader puts away his or her psychological egoism and does not attempt to give priority of his or her self interests. The most important consideration for this type of leader is the interests of the group, i.e. utilitarianism. The behaviors of an ethical leader are based on the moral principles which are the basis of respecting the rights of followers and other associates in the workplace and giving a fair treatment to all employees. In ethical leadership, the employees are given a chance to participate in decision making that consequenmployees.tly improves procedural justice as well as autonomy over the experiences as well as the work life of the employees (Coglise & Brigham, 2004). The involvement of employees in decision making is responsible for the improvement of the general well being of the staff members and promotes their growth as well. Ethical leaders account for the development needs of their followers and position them in situations that facilitate for experiencing proper work roles and derive meaning to their duties. The employees are treated with the relevant respect rather that merely as instruments for organization productivity. This kind of treatment results to satisfaction among the employees.

Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leaders are described as people who have power or influences, and serves as inspiration to subordinates helping them find solutions to their problems and motivating them to change. Charismatic leaders are people that are willing to make personal sacrifices and will serve as an example to all workers. The subordinates of charismatic leaders tend to have a high sense of meaningfulness of the role they play on their organization due to the fact that charismatic leaders tend to motivate subordinates by connecting their goals and ideas to the roll of the employee. Charismatic leadership falls under transformational leadership which is concerned with intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation as well as individualized consideration (Cartwright & Cooper, 2008).

Charismatic leadership takes care of effective communication and the vision of the organization. Charismatic leaders serve the subordinate in providing clarity in unclear circumstances, resolution of shortcomings and motivation of change in the organization through articulation of organizations strategic visions. A charismatic leader also takes the initiatives of communicating the high expectations of performance, taking risks as well as exhibiting confidence.

Visionary leadership

Visionary leaders have the aptitude of perceiving potential challenges and opportunities of growth that are inherent in the organization way ahead of their real occurrence (CIPD 2007b). This capability is used constructively to position followers in a situation of achieving extraordinary results for the benefit of the organization. They also have potentials of galvanizing followers and inspiring them towards achieving the vision of the firm

References

Bond, F. & Bunce, D. (2001). “Job control mediates change in a work reorganization intervention for stress reduction”, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 290-302.

Boniwell, I. & Henry, J. (2007). “Developing conceptions of well-being: advancing subjective, hedonic and hedonic theories”, Social Psychological Review, Vol. 9, pp. 3-18.

Cartwright, S. & Cooper, C., (2008). Oxford Handbook on Organisational Well-being, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

CIPD (2007b). What’s Happening with Well-being at Work?, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London.

Cogliser, C. & Brigham, H. (2004). “The intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship: mutual lessons to be learned”, The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 15 No. 6, pp. 771-99.