Content area
Full text
Keywords
Leadership, Leaders, Psychology, Management styles
Abstract
Leadership theory has little value if it cannot be applied to real world situations. A summary review of the literature on leadership theory is provided here first. A disguised real case concerning Ted Shade, a Vice-President at Galactic Chips, Inc. is then provided which describes a manager who is extremely task-oriented. The case analysis follows. It includes questions and answers which connect leadership theory to case specifics and requires learners to analyze the case using differing leadership models.
(Editor's note. Though this issue of Management Decision is intended to explore various issues related to leadership decisions, there are three reasons why this case study and the related discussion is included:
1 The case provides brief summaries of major groups of leadership theories for the benefit of readers who are not familiar with them.
2 The case provides insight into staff member reactions to a manager's leadership style and the manager's self-perception. It thus shows how the norms and other thoughts in a manager's mind influence leadership decisions and resulting behavior, and the influence they have on staff members.
3 Teaching leadership decisions can be enhanced with cases, even if the leadership behavior(s) are so bad as to be almost absurd.)
Introduction
There is an age-old debate that we, like many other management instructors, love to engage our students in; are leaders naturally born or can anyone be trained to become a leader? Although this discussion sometimes takes on a tenor similar to the question "which comes first, the chicken or the egg" it is an important discussion because it requires students to first define leadership, then to connect their definition to theories from the literature, and lastly to determine whether the theories have practical application. More specifically, students are confronted with the issue that if leadership is a competency, that is, if leadership can be learned, then which theories make the most sense to learn and how can these theories then be taught as foundations for decisions affecting leadership behavior and actions. Leadership theories would have little value if they could not be applied to real world situations.
An overview to leadership theory
Organizations are increasing their reliance on employee involvement because their success depends on the...