domingo, 5 de septiembre de 2010

Management styles + Leadership Styles







Management and Leadership styles being interrelated concepts are not the similar. Management Style is the ways of making decisions and relating to subordinates, and is closely linked with personality. According to Yukl (2002), The Leadership Styles are more focus on “traits, behavior, influence, interaction patterns, role relationships, and occupation of an administrative position (…) is defined as the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared objectives”. Management is more related to Decision Making and Leadership with motivating people, but they are related, indeed, leadership makes part of managers’ functions. Such functions are: Planing, Organizing, Staffing, Controlling and Leading.

Management Styles can be classified into 5 major categories:

1. Autocratic managers are in complete control of their organizations and make all or nearly all of the major management decisions.

2. Bureaucratic managers act much like autocrats, but derive authority from corporate management, organizational rules and regulations, and past practices. Bureaucratic managers implement decisions often made by others in a way that is generally autocratic.

3. Authoritarian managers make all of the decisions, although they also solicit and use input from other managers to reach their final decisions.

4. Democratic managers involve others in their deliberations and arrive at decisions through majority rule.

5. Participative managers let lower-level managers and employees make most of the major decisions. These managers function largely as facilitators. (Trask, K., Rice, R., Anchors, S., & Lilieholm, R. 2009)

The last Categories can apply to Leadership styles too, but those would be describe it in order to explain ways of persuade and motivate, and Managerial Attitudes. In this case, in the academic field have been identified 3 major categories: 1. Authoritarian or autocratic 2. Participative or democratic 3. Delegative or Free Reign. And not only the last three, a leader can be characterized as, task-oriented or human-oriented, depending on his inclinations in the ways of leading. It is important to underline, that interpersonal communication, is a core element, when it comes to leadership skills.


Both, Management and Leadership Styles show personality of the leader, and are influenced by the environment and the cultural background. That is why, when it comes to cross-national differences issues, there is wide debate about the flexibility of the categories and how those approaches applied to real life, are effective or not depending on the context, and also, how make a leader effective in motivating employees and obtain expected outcomes.

East Asia

1. Main similarities and differences of Japanese and Korean management styles.

Facts:

Japanese Management

- Importance to Market Share

- Long term value Maximization - Optimization

- Close relationship with suppliers: LT commitments, close cooperation

- Top Managing: Important Participation of Workers and Middle managers

- Consensus building and group loyalty as Principles

- Coexist in group

- Scan of environment: Both customers and competitors

- Flexible Manufacturing

- Corporate values as guidance

Korean Management

- Importance to Market Share

- Life time employment: workers tend to change jobs more freely

- Top Managing: Authoritarian, Centralized decision making

- Not emphasize group elements like group loyalty and consensus

- Individualistic and Hierarchical

- Managing Style: Nepotism, companies manage by the family members of founders

- Scan of environment: Monitoring rivals

“Korean firms are more “Japanese than the Japanese” in their pursuit of Market Share”






Japan and Korea have strong connections in culture, due to the past this nations share together, since Korea was actually a Japan colony back in 1910, some culture aspects are shared in their roots. Korea tends to follow Japanese Models that even Japanese already have passed and leaved, sharing finally so similar ways in the manufacturing sector and in the Internationalization policies and manners of incursion.

2. Explain the phenomenon of convergence in terms of management styles. What are the forces or factors pushing for convergence?

These two nations converge (share similarities) thanks to 2 forces:

- Firm size as measured by sales: Growth

- Globalization as measured by export ration: Internationalization

These two factors reduce the difference, being globalization/Internationalization the stronger of the last two.

The Convergence is about the Organizational characteristic, that compared across nations, are increasingly free from the particularities of specific cultures, and this convergence was found more in regional level than in a worldwide model. That outcome can be explained because: 1. Increasing managerial sophistication of the Korean firms as they grow and/or internationalize, is done by imitating the best practices of competitors, which grows similarity with its Japanese neighbors. And 2. The Isomorphic character of organizations, that helps them adapt inconsistent environmental demand, by creating a substructure in order to deal with the problem. So, Korean firms have capacity to adapt management to meet international competition requirements. Thus, Japan and Korea have to face similar challenges in the international environment.

Forces of international competition made both nations converge, but domestic factors, like cultural dimensions and level of development, make them to have certain consistent differences.


Watch Management Styles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymFmBLHn0Ao


References:

Oshagbemi, T. (2008). The impact of personal and organisational variables on the leadership styles of managers. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(10), 1896-1910. doi:10.1080/09585190802324130.

Trask, K., Rice, R., Anchors, S., & Lilieholm, R. (2009). Management styles of lumber mill managers in the northern United States. Forest Products Journal, 59(3), 29-34. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Keeffe, M., Darling, J., & Natesan, N. (2008). Effective 360° Management Enhancement: The Role of Style in Developing A Leadership Team. Organization Development Journal, 26(2), 89-107. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Getz, I. (2009). Liberating Leadership: HOW THE INITIATIVE-FREEING RADICAL ORGANIZATIONAL FORM HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY ADOPTED. California Management Review, 51(4), 32-58. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Lee Jangho, Roehl Thomas, Choe Soonkyoo, 2000, What Makes Management Style Similar and Distinct Across Borders? Growth, Experience and Culture in Korean and Japanese Firms, Journal of International Business Stuides, 31, 4: 631- 652

Ekaterini, G. (2010). The Impact of Leadership Styles on Four Variables of Executives Workforce.International Journal of Business & Management, 5(6), 3-16. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

De Vries, R., Bakker-Pieper, A., & Oostenveld, W. (2010). Leadership = Communication? The Relations of Leaders’ Communication Styles with Leadership Styles, Knowledge Sharing and Leadership Outcomes.Journal of Business & Psychology, 25(3), 367-380. doi:10.1007/s10869-009-9140-2.

Elizabeth B. Bolton 2007, Leadership Styles and Leadership Change in Human and Community

Service Organizations.

Standly J. Jadwinski, 2006, Leadership style for incident Command

Decision Making + Ethical Behavior and International Business


“A company’s value is just the sum

of the decisions it makes and executes”



Decision Making, simply defined as a mental process of selecting the course of action among several exposed alternatives, has been a focus on strategy about five decades. Noorderhaven (1995) defines it as “the process of selection of and commitment to a purpose or plan of action”. This process is becoming more vital to the everyday function of the organization, and the Decisions have to be made in an increasingly complex structure and turbulent world dynamic. No matter how complex this process turned, it is mandatory, being the concept that enables the organization to plan for the future while assessing the present through utilizing a number of systematic tools such as brainstorming, affinity diagramming, force-field analysis, flow charting, planning matrix, unilateral decision making, consultative decision making, voting decision making, and consensus decision making (Akdere, 2009)


Decision making is summated to 2 defining factors: 1. Complexity and 2. Time Presure. Complexity refers to the number and interdependencies of different components that exist in any decision-making process. And Time play a role when the clock is ticking, particularly when stress comes into the picture, sports are a good example for this. As DM is seen as a process, applied in every possible field, it is sensible to be adapt as is needed, that why we can find several models, created in the academic area. Those are models depending on how much de Decision Maker face the Complexity and Time pressure levels: Rational Model, Incremental Model, Boundedly-rational Model, Garbage can model, Delphi Method, Nominal Group Method, and The Environmental scanning method. There is another Method, frequently use, the Management science method. It uses sequential decision-making steps in a clear and precise way (procedure): 1) Define the problem. 2 ) Identify alternatives. 3) Develop some criteria. 4) Evaluate alternatives 5) Choose an alternative. 6) Implement the decision. 7) Analyze the results.


This Matrix graphically explain when to choose a method depending on the Complexity and the time pressure to take de Decision:



Rahman, N., & de Feis, G. (2009). Strategic decision-making: models and methods in the face of complexity and time pressure.

One important issue at DM, that is quiet sensible due to the multicultural differences, is the Ethics Reasoning when making decisions. It is stated that culture background may affect ethics perceptions. Thus, depending on cultural character, an individual can differ in his sensitive to ethical perception in different kind of situations. Cultural differences make people recognize an ethical dilemma depending on “the cognitive conception of what is good or right”.The Global Business environment faces a great challenge: Balance standardized policies with appropriate consideration of norms in diverse cultural context.

Case of Ehitcal DM

Ethics in international business: multinational approaches to child labor

The Case focuses on explaining the corporate codes of ethics in Child Labor Area, are use to enforce the treatment of this issue in the Strategic International Human Resource Management. This case paper studies how 50 multinationals adopt “Universal Ethical Norms”. This analysis attempt to show the adopting process of the norm and the ethical dilemmas that show up in the road, due to the diversity of the context were the case is presented (multicultural character of the companies)

The principal dilemmas were presented, for every context, in profitability and business wealth fare implications. As seen in the next table (see the table at Page 51: http://wase.urz.uni-magdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Ethical%20Management%20and%20Trust/Ethics%20and%20Child%20Labour.pdf)


This study concluded that a limited number of multinationals, indicated in the case material in this article, have adopted an active policy with explicit codes and policies, while others follow with rather general statements. External pressure, either on the industry as a whole or on individual companies, has sometimes played an important role in this regard. Clear examples are Nike concerning labor conditions from the early 1990s and Shell, forced to overhaul its overall ethical and environmental positioning following Nigeria and the Brent Spar.

Source: http://wase.urz.uni-magdeburg.de/evans/Journal%20Library/Ethical%20Management%20and%20Trust/Ethics%20and%20Child%20Labour.pdf

Wath: DM BP Petroleum Spill (Parody), Importance of DM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AAa0gd7ClM

Wacht: Explaining Ethics, Tangled?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-nz0kojLv8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENPHak5fuO0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vbI-P6mFbg&feature=related



References:

Fox, M., Tost, L., & Wade-Benzoni, K. (2010). The Legacy Motive: A Catalyst for Sustainable Decision Making in Organizations. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20(2), 153-185. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Blenko, M., Mankins, M., & Rogers, P. (2010). The Decision-Driven Organization. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 88(6), 54-62. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

(2010). How we do it: Three executives reflect on strategic decision making. (cover story). McKinsey Quarterly, (2), 46-57. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Akdere, M., & Altman, B. (2009). An Organization Development Framework in Decision Making: Implications for Practice. Organization Development Journal, 27(4), 47-56. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Rahman, N., & de Feis, G. (2009). Strategic decision-making: models and methods in the face of complexity and time pressure. Journal of General Management, 35(2), 43-59. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Burciu, A., & Hapenciuc, C. (2010). Non-Rational Thinking in the Decision Making Process. Proceedings of the European Conference on Intellectual Capital, 152-160. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Amber Levanon Seligson and Laurie Choi, 2006 Ethics Resource Center, Critical Elements of an Organizational Ethical Culture

Salvador, R., & Folger, R. (2009). Business Ethics and the Brain. Business Ethics Quarterly, 19(1), 1-31. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Organizational Communication + Virtual Teams






Communications is inherent of human behavior, and no matter how frequently this word is use, get to a particular conception that exactly defined it is quite a hard job. Then, in the social field, Communication is defined as an important key of the social structure. Many scholars take communication as the “act of transmitting information from one person to another” and see it as a working definition. Due to the human evolution and the development of technological tools, the communication has to be seen from 2 dimensions: 1. The Interpersonal communication, and 2. The Technological communication. Being the first one a society core, since it help o the building and the maintenance of relationships. The dynamic of communication is structured by 4 key elements: 1. The Communicator, 2. The perceiver, 3. The perceptual screens and 3. The message, all those elements are continuously intervening in the interpersonal communication process. Other important elements to have in account are the channels of communication, the fields of experience of the communicating parts, the noise, and the feedback. There is other kind of classification, important in matter of analyzing the exercise of communication: defining if we are talking of Verbal Communication or Non Verbal Communication. One concerning issue in the studies of this field is the communicators and the perceivers’ backgrounds, that determines the dynamic, the quality and the effectiveness of this process. The interpretation that the communicator gives to the receiver’s feedback or response is also an important element to have in consideration when determining the communication process.

The Communication, as being important part of human behavior, it is also for the organizations by default. Some defined communication attitudes can show features of the type of communicator or listener that people are. If the person is open, empathetic with others, persuasive, or if he is able to keep people around informed. Communication, being a natural process, is sensible of subjectivity and therefore, creation of barriers and preconceptions, so, there are concepts that define how the process can be effective and successful, such as clarity when communicating, understanding and having feedback.

Due to the Technology advances, there is another important dimension in communication: Technological. This one appears one technologic tools show the benefits of their use, like reduction of cost, no barriers in space, saving time, among others. A very good example to show this dynamic that came up with globalization and an outrageous development in the human world is Virtual Teams concept. This tendency was born in the mid 90’s, when the team work models are exported and there is a clear need of avoiding bureaucracy, reduce time and improving service. A Virtual Team is a “group of geographically and/or organizationally dispersed coworkers assembled using a combination of information and communication technologies for accomplishing and organizational task” (Kuruppuarachchi, 2009), and it is known for improving productivity, reduce cost, flexible working hours, and having a cross-cultural character. But what sounds like benefits also can turn in a drawback, that is why, some experts advice to mix some face-to-face characteristics, like meet before start working, and then mitigating the negative effects of VTs and take a real advantage of this model.



If InterContinental were a sound…what would it be?

Positioning a brand through sound, an ambitious project from InterContinental present more challenges than advantages and disadvantages itself. First implication: Totally new proposal of how to create a bond with the client. This brings several issues to the scenario, being a global brand with 160 properties worldwide; the main concerning is their diverse audience, the level of subjectivity that may create preconceptions that InterContinental will have to face (cultural issues, values, believes, backgrounds that determine perception) and how to tell the same story to all of them, touching the adequate senses. And the last one, comes with another serious implication, how to manage a sensorial experience that stimulate the right memories? One that makes every listener to remember InterContinental?. Dealing with the emotional impact that a soundtrack can cause, more difficult, due to the little research made for supporting studies of how music is actually processed in the brain.

Another important implication is the process of creating the sound itself. The coordination of managers, employees and all kind of shareholders was a total challenge for the companies involved in the project. Putting together the ideas of which are the core values of InterContinental and allowing every individual of the company make part of the process, is a first exhausting task, but as was showed in the case, with real positive outcomes, since it help to know how employees and other companies working with InterContinental actually perceive the company.

How to measure the effectiveness of the strategy, and make it quantifiable data? Even if it is perceived as an intangible asset, getting the feedback and the results of the impact is an important challenge too.

Finally, making the strategy fits with the global requirements of differentiation in order to remain in time and in the clients mind, and recognizing that the project is not isolated from the external influences.

VT, new field, fresh ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbOu5PJ66P4

Perceptions! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEPjpHfL4Y0&feature=related

References:

Communications: Process and Leadership, Cooperative Extension Service, Iowa State University

A. Winbow, International Seminar on Maritime English, 20 to 22 March 2002, The importance of effective communication Maritime Faculty, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Jeffrey Froyd, Effective Interpersonal/Intrateam Communication

Merrill E. Warkentin, Lutfus Sayeed, Ross Hightower, 1997, Virtual Teams versus Face-to-Face Teams:An Exploratory Study of a Web-based Conference System

Politha R. Kuruppuarachchi, 2009, Virtual Team Concepts in Projects: A Case Study, Project Management Journal, Vol 40, No. 2, 19-23

Mohammed Shahedul Quader , A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF HIGH PERFORMING TEAMS: A CASE STUDY BASED ON THE BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATION, Journal of Services Research, Volume 8, Number 2 (October 2008-March 2009)

Richard D. Arvey, Ph.D. “Why Face-to-Face Business Meetings Matter” Business School, National University of Singapore

Gergana Todorova, WORKING ALONE OR TOGETHER? INDIVIDUAL MOTIVATION, GROUP IDENTIFICATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF TMS Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Anne Powell, Gabriele Piccoli, Blake Ives, Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Literature and

Directions for Future Research, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems - Winter 2004 (Vol. 35, No. 1)

Steve W.J. Kozlowski and Daniel R. Ilgen, 2006, Enhancing the Effectiveness of Work Groups and Teams, Michigan State University

Luis L. Martins, Lucy L. Gilson and M. Travis Maynard, 2004, Virtual Teams: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go From Here? Journal of Management

Image: neuroanthropology.net

Motivation




From stimulating an individual, to creating an environment that fosters adequated performance, the motivation is known as a key factor for reaching common goals and objectives in every project or organization. When is somebody motivated? The simple answer to that question is: When somebody is willing to do something, in technical words it is defined as “the prcess that initiates. Guides and maintains goal-oriented behavior. Motivation is what makes us to act” (Cherry, 2010). Besides it is an intrinsic phenomenon, “an internal driver that causes us to consistently direct high levels of effort toward completing their project assignments” (Hierstetter, 2009)

Understanding this factor, and creating motivational theories, is an attempt to explain, predict and try to influence this area from the human behavior. This is when internal and external elements come into the field. Academics have made their approaches taking into account those sources of internal and external influences, thus, the must known theories can be classified in two general categories: 1. Internal needs and 2. External incentives. Other way to categorize theories is “content” and “process”. The Content theories examine factors within individuals that stimulate, inspire, and stop behavior. The Process theories, consider how individuals make decisions and how rewards influence future performance (Hierstetter, 2009) (Evolution of a Motivation Theory, 2009).The most popular about motivation that are recognized in an international level, are:

1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: 5 classification of people’s needs ( physiological, security, social, self esteem and self actualization needs)

2. Fredericks Herzberg’s two factor theory: Work satisfaction, Hygiene factors

3. Theory X and Theory Y, from Douglas McGregor: Employees categories, X: Lower order of needs, Y: Higher order of needs

4. The Expectancy Theory, elaborated by Vroom, developed by Porter and Lawler: connection between work performance and results

5. The Goal Setting Theory, by Lotham and Locke: accepted objectives, and provided of performance feedback

6. The Equity Theory by John Stacey Adams: Perception that an individual has of how they are treated in comparison with others.

7. The Theory of group personality and group needs by Adair: working groups resemble individuals, with personality and needs.

8. The Fifty-Fifty Rules by Adair too: part of motivation lies within the person, and another part lies outside and beyond its control

9. McClelland’s Need Theory: Acquire needs, like achievement, power and affiliation, are motivated by external situations and opportunities.

The last theories shown how complex is motivation, and also, that is the result of many related factors. Those are made for illustrate management and academic field, can be applied to make a pictures of individual’s motivators in real companies, but the successful apply of those models, require inquiring and understanding group and individual wants when designing a Motivation Program. In the real life, an study found that, a conducive work environment results in 80% willingness from employees to do a good job(Evolution of a Motivation Theory, 2006).

Hawthorne Studies

The Hawthorne studies were experiments that took as subject of research the effects of the physical environment on their workers. All this began in the 1920’s, when the Western Electric company decides to make a research at its Hawthorne plant, outside of Chicago because American companies were influenced by Scientific Management, widely developed by F. Taylor and other several scientific management theories at that time. The Studies were lead by Fritz Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, with the purpose to measure the impact of diverse working conditions on the results given by the employees (some like payment, working hours, and lighting levels). Curiously, the productivity increased while the researched was carried out, even when some of the quality of some conditions was decreased (more specifically in the lighting levels). This was called the “Hawthorne Effect”, the experiments themselves were making positive impact on the workers’ productivity.

The situation created for the experimental participation, made workers think that the managers had interest in them, raising moral and thereby, increasing levels of productivity. The last concept is widely used nowadays referring to the “behavior-modifying effect of being the subject of social investigation” (Marshall, 1998), in the Macefield review, Hawthorne Effect is explain as the popular understanding of the concept, that states: it is an experimenter effect whereby participants, in any human-centered study, may exhibit atypically high levels of performance simply because they are aware that they are being studied. The first one in make a critique to the studies was Mayo (1933), who was member of the research team at the Hawthorne Works. Later Parsons (1974) provide detailed analysis of the studies and gained widespread support by the academic community. In his analysis Parsons stated that the performance improvements were easily explainable by mechanisms other than those proposed by Mayo. For example, changing the length of breaks that were given to the workers, and concluded that this effect was better explained by learning and feedback mechanisms, no obtained in a normal working day (Macefield, 2007).

This theory inspired Mayo, Parson and other academics to work and generate knowledge in the Human Relations Movement, that in general terms, have concluded that supervision had a great impact in workers’ productivity. Making them get into a predicament, when is about research, it is supposed to show the picture of the reality and provide helpful diagnosis for identifying and solving problems, but instead, it may generate changes in the environment and subject of research, giving misleading results of what is the actual situation.

Watch a Motivation lesson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSM1mvMypWU

Use of Motivation for commercial purposes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfWTQA6QPk4&feature=related

References:

Stewart Watkiss, Rugby St. John, 2004, Motivation, A Study of the Motivations for Members of a Volunteer Organisation

Tonya M. Peterson, 2007, Motivation: How to Increase Project Team Performance, Project Management Journal, Vol. 38, No. 4, 60–69

Clark Dorman and Paolo Gaudiano, Motivation, Boston University, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems

Result Plus Pty ltd, 2006, Evolution of a Motivation Theory

Sarah Rees, 2007, The Art of Test Team Management and Motivation

Brad Hierstetter, 2009, The Motivated Project Team

Ritch Macefield, 2007, Journal of Usability Studies, Usability Studies and the Hawthorne Effect

Gordon marshall. "Hawthorne studies." A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998.

About.com, Pshycology, Kendra Cherry Articles: What is Motivation?