Management And Leadership

Management and Leadership

Introduction

What is management? What is leadership? Which has more impact on employee performance? Which role contributes most to a healthy organizational culture? Can roles overlap? This paper examines how management and leadership effect today's organizational culture. Effects of leader behavior on employees will also be discussed.

Management

Management writes the rules and sets the goals for the organization. Management is often critical of failures and expects only success" (Kumle & Kelly, 2006, p. 11). Management handles the day-to-day complexities of organizations. Budgets, planning, meeting with investors, organizing, and maintaining company traditions all fall under management responsibility. As an organization grows managers tend to lose touch with employees. Managers think in terms of profit, goals, and company growth. Management operates on a need-to-know basis and can easily incite fear in their subordinate employees. Rumors of downsizing or a change in an organizations direction can often be eliminated by managers being more open with employees. Management has a tendency to protect itself at the expense of others. According to Kumle and Kelly (2006), " many managers are overly concerned with fitting in and not rocking the boat, those who emerge as leaders are more concerned with making important decisions that may break with tradition but are humane, moral and right" (p. 11). Good managers are also good leaders and tend to hire good leaders to represent them.

Leaders

Leaders provide a vision and help employees turn the vision into reality. Good leaders believe in open, honest communication and care about the welfare of the employees. "People are important and come...

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...ormer employee often referred to the company as a jail, because employees could not get out of the building before closing time without a pass. Incidents like this have resulted in the organization promoting an unhealthy culture where many are unwilling to work.

Conclusion

Healthy organizations require good leaders. Managers can fulfill the role themselves or hire other individuals to fill the role for them. Good leaders create loyalty by providing a vision and helping employees to reach it. Mark Leslie once stated, "If there is no vision, there is no business" (as cited in Over Processed, 2006, p. 394).

References

Kumle, J., Kelly N. (August 2006), leadership vs. management, Supervision 67(8), 11, Retrieved January 9, 2007, from ProQuest database.

Over Processed. (Nov 2006). PM Network 20(11), 42-47, Retrieved January 02, 2007, from EBSCOHost database.