SW645 – Week 1
Management and Leadership
What is the difference, if any, between management and leadership?
Warren Bennis said, “Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people
who do the right thing.”
What’s the difference?
Ideas about management and leadership are interwoven with each other.
Is leadership required? (Do groups require leaders?)
What are the biological roots of leadership?
The best available evidence suggests that leadership has been around since before we
were human, and organizational divisions with identified leaders have been documented
for thousands of years. Leadership and management are evident throughout recorded
history. Think about the twelve tribes of Israel, the Pharaohs of Egypt, the various
Chinese dynasties, and ancient Mezzo-American civilizations, and you’ll realize that
leadership and management have been around for much longer than there has been body
of literature on the subject.
Traditionally, there have been several ideas about what makes leaders or how individuals
become leaders. Some of those are summarized here:
Great Person Theory – Some individuals are born with the qualities necessary to
become leaders.
Charismatic Theory – Some individuals are leaders because the possess charisma,
which influences people to follow them.
Trait Theory – Some individuals possess traits that equip them for leadership.
Some of these include energy, drive, ambition, decisiveness, self-assurance,
friendliness, fairness, and dependability.
Situational Theory – The traits needed to be an effective leader vary from one
situation to another, so someone may be a leader in some situations and a follower
in others.
The management literature begins about 1900, and Frederick Taylor is often cited as one
of the first to write on the subject.
Taylor – Scientific Management
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Pay high wages
Use research to develop the best standard procedures
Achieve low per-unit costs
Design materials and working conditions to meet standards
Match employees to jobs based on their qualities
Train employees to meet standards
Build a cooperative atmosphere between employees and managers
Henri Fayol – Management Tasks
Fayol is one of the first to study management. He identified five things that managers do:
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Planning
Organizing
Commanding
Coordinating
Controlling
Max Weber – Bureaucratic Theory
Weber’s work was an attempt to bring organization and structure to a field that was
chaotic. For example, leadership was often inherited, and policies were often made on a
whim.
1. Authority is tied only to official positions
2. Individuals are organized into hierarchies
3. Each position has a clearly defined sphere of competence
4. Each position is filled via a contractual agreement
5. Positions are filled based on qualifications
6. Pay is associated with position in the hierarchy
7. The individual has no other primary occupation.
8. There is a system of promotion up the hierarchy
9. Positions are not tied to ownership
10. Individuals are subject to systematic discipline
Elton Mayo – Human Relations Theory
Mayo is associated with the famous Hawthorne effect, which found that social factors are
more important predictors of productivity than factors related to the physical
environment.
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Productivity is influenced by social norms.
Noneconomic contingencies affect worker behavior.
Workers behave as members of groups.
Effective leadership requires acceptance by the group.
5. Communication is important to understanding behavior and managing production.
Douglas McGregor – Theory X and Theory Y
McGregor criticized a traditional management approach, which he summarized as Theory
X, and proposed what he considered a more realistic approach: Theory Y.
Theory X
1. Management is responsible for organizing things to meet economic ends.
2. Management is responsible for directing, controlling, and motivating employees.
3. Management must persuade, reward, and punish employees to get them to be
productive.
He said that these ideas are consistent with certain assumptions about the nature of
employees, which are wrong.
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People tend to work as little as possible.
People lack ambition, dislike responsibility, and prefer to be led.
People are inherently self-centered (not organization-centered).
People naturally resist change.
People are gullible, not bright, and easily misled.
Theory Y
1. Management is responsible for organizing things to meet economic ends.
2. People are not inherently passive or resistant to organizational needs.
Organizations have taught them to become that way...
3. Management is responsible for developing the capacity to develop, to accept
responsibility, to lead, which are present in all people.
4. Management is responsible for organizing things so people can achieve their own
goals by directing their own efforts toward organizational goals.
Peter Drucker – Management by Objectives
McGregor acknowledged that his Theory Y was consistent with Drucker’s Management
by Objectives in contrast to Management by Control. Management by Objectives
focuses on identifying desired outcomes and working together with employees to devise
strategies in contrast to focusing on strategies, assuming that they will lead to desired
outcomes.
Management by Objectives requires clear specification of goals, objectives, activities,
and measurement systems. (The logic model is a tool that fits well with MBO.)
MBO was revolutionary in that it put goals and objectives on the table for discussion
rather than assuming that they were obvious. Drucker has written about “mission,” and
his thinking on that topic can be revolutionary. For example, a company that intends “To
sell high-quality watches while providing a high return to investors,” has a significantly
different mission than a company that intends “To provide customers with premier status
symbols.” This is similar to the difference between “providing a full spectrum of quality
healthcare services,” and “giving comfort to the afflicted.”
A mission statement has to be operational, otherwise it's just good intentions. A mission
statement has to focus on what the institution really tries to do and then do it so that
everybody in the organization can say, This is my contribution to the goal.
According to Drucker, a good mission statement
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Is short and sharply focused
Is clear and easily understood
Defines why we do what we do; why the organization exists
Does not prescribe means
Says what, in the end, we want to be remembered for
Drucker likes these:
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Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.: to help girls grow into proud, self-confident, and selfrespecting young women.
An Episcopal church: making Jesus the head of this church and its chief executive
officer.
The Salvation Army: to make citizens out of the rejected.
William Ouchi – Theory Z
Theory Z is often associated with McGregor, but it is not part of McGregor’s work, nor is
it really conceptually consistent with or an extension of his work. It is actually more
consistent with Deming’s work, which developed in America, was exported to Japan,
where it worked well enough for Japanese companies to scare American companies, and
it came back to America as “Japanese management.” But that gets ahead of the story.
Theory Z believes that people are innately self motivated to do their work, are loyal
toward the company, and want to make the company succeed. The manager's
effectiveness comes from the worker's trusting management to take care of them and
allowing them to do their jobs. The workers have a great deal of input and weight in the
decision-making process.
W. Edwards Deming – Total Quality Management
Deming saw variation as the disease that threatened US manufacturing. The more
variation - in the length of parts supposed to be uniform, in delivery times, in prices, in
work practices - the more waste, he reasoned.
From this premise, he set out his 14 points for management:
1. Create constancy of purpose towards improvement.
2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection: build in quality.
4. End lowest-tender contracts: Require quality and price.
5. Improve constantly and forever.
6. Institute training on the job for everybody, including management.
7. Institute leadership aimed at helping people do a better job.
8. Drive out fear, and encourage two-way communication.
9. Break down barriers between departments.
10. Eliminate exhortations.
11. Eliminate quotas and numerical targets. Substitute aid and helpful
leadership.
12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship, including annual appraisals and
Management by Objectives.
13. Institute education and self-improvement for everyone.
14. Define top management’s permanent commitment to ever-improving
quality and productivity and their obligation to implement all these principles.
Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn – Systems Theory
Katz and Kahn applied systems theory to organizations. The following ideas from
systems theory are relevant:
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Importation of energy
Throughput
Output
Systems are cycles of events
Energy is necessary to prevent entropy
Information provides feedback
Homeostasis is sought from a balance of inputs and outputs
Systems gradually differentiate themselves from other systems
Equifinality – many paths can lead to similar outcomes.
The logic model fits with systems theory.
Systems Theory also leads organizations to look at the environments in which they
operate – clients, community, funders, competitors, regulatory bodies.
Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard – Situational Leadership Theory
The appropriate leadership style depends on the maturity of the followers. Two
dimensions influence leader effectiveness, attention to task and attention to relationship.
These can be plotted in a two-by to matrix to identify four leadership styles. One who
gives low attention to task and to relationship uses what Hersey and Blanchard call a
delegating style or what others call a laissez-faire style. One who gives high attention to
task and low attention to relationship uses a directing style or what others call an
autocratic style. Someone who gives high attention to relationship and low attention to
task uses a supporting style, and someone who gives attention to both task and
relationship uses a coaching style. One might make the argument that over time, a leader
can change styles, moving from directing to coaching to supporting to delegating.
Various Authors - Contingency Theory (Which means different things to different
people)
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There is no best way to manage.
Organizational structure must fit the environment.
Organizational subsystems had better fit with each other.
Organizations work best when management style fits the nature of the work and
of the work group.
Organizations tend to be “organistic” or “mechanistic,” which correlates loosely with a
focus on outcomes or a focus on processes. Manufacturing companies tend to perform
better if they are mechanistic, while service companies tend to perform better when they
are organistic.
James McGregor Burns and Bernard Bass – Transformational Leadership
The idea of transformational leadership was first developed by James McGregor Burns in
1978 and later extended by Bernard Bass as well as others. The transformational leader
does three things: raises the level of awareness, and the level of consciousness about the
significance and value of designated outcomes and ways of reaching them; gets
employees to transcend their own self-interests for the sake of the group; and alters the
need level (after Maslow) to expand the range of wants and needs.
Edgar Schein – Organizational Culture
Each organization has a set of assumptions that has come to be accepted as valid and that
is therefore taught to newcomers. The manifestations of these assumptions produce the
organization’s culture. The culture can change only as the assumptions change, and the
assumptions are likely to change only in response to new experience. Good managers
recognize the culture of their organizations.
Chris Argyris and Donald Schoen – Theories in Action and Double Loop Learning
Argyris and Schoen argue that people have mental maps that guide their actions and that
those mental maps are not the same as the explanations or theories that they would give
to explain their actions. The former are called “theories in use,” and the latter are called
“espoused theories.”
They argue that effectiveness results from developing congruence between theory-in-use
and espoused theory. Reflection is required to reveal the theory-in-use and to explore the
congruence between the two.
To illustrate a use of this idea, let’s look at a model. We have assumptions that lead to
interventions that lead to outcomes.
Assumptions
Interventions
Outcomes
If the outcomes are what we predict, then our assumptions tend to be confirmed. In the
terms that Argyris and Schoen use, our theory-in-use is confirmed. This brings us to the
idea of single-loop learning and double-loop learning. Learning involves the detection
and correction of errors. When interventions don’t lead to desired outcomes, people often
change their interventions. Unfortunately, the change of interventions may not lead to
changed outcomes. This is single-loop learning. The alternative is to question the
assumptions, which is likely to lead to changes in the interventions, which is then likely
to lead to improved outcomes. Here’s an illustration with the technical jargon replacing
the simple language used above.
These ideas are then expanded to what Argyris and Schoen call Model I and Model II,
but what have been revised by Roger Schwarz and called the Unilateral Control Model
and the Mutual Learning Model.
Peter Senge – The Learning Organization
Peter Senge was influenced by and built upon the work of Argyris and Schoen. His bigselling book is The Fifth Discipline. Learning organizations are organizations where
people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new
and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free,
and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.
Five disciplines distinguish learning organizations from more traditional organizations:
Systems thinking
Personal mastery
Mental models
Building shared vision
Team learning
These ideas are consistent with the mutual learning model outline above.
Karl-Erik Sveiby – Knowledge Management
Karl-Erik Sveiby, David Snowden, and others have built on the work of Senge, Argyris,
Schoen, and others to develop Knowledge Management, which incorporates the idea that
an organization’s intellectual assets are tied to its performance. This is related to
Drucker’s idea from the 1960s of the knowledge worker. Knowledge management
overlaps with many different areas such as artificial intelligence, information
management, decision support, and library science. This may be one of the new waves,
or it may be another fad that passes.
Robert K. Greenleaf – Servant Leadership
I’ll finish with one additional set of ideas. These do not constitute a theory or model, but
they are more of an approach to leadership.
Greenleaf says that management is “the ability to state a goal and reach it, through the
efforts of other people, and satisfy those whose judgment one respects, under conditions
of stress.” He places a major emphasis on ethical behavior and accountability. A person
who “has chosen an aim thinks, speaks, and acts as if personally accountable to all who
may be affected by his or her thoughts, words, and deeds” engages in “responsible
pursuit.”
He identifies ten critical characteristics of the servant-leader:
1. listening
2. empathy
3. healing
4. awareness
5. persuasion
6. conceptualization
7. foresight
8. stewardship
9. commitment to the growth of people
10. building community
[Discuss which of these ideas fit best with social work values.]
Does any of this matter? [Discuss]
Barbara Kellerman has written a book called Bad Leadership: How it Happens, Why it
Matters. She identifies two categories of bad leaders: ineffective and unethical. She
identifies three types that fit the first category—incompetent, rigid, and intemperate—and
she identifies three that fit the second—callous, corrupt, insular, and evil. She uses
examples to illustrate her contentions. Here are some of them.
Incompetent – Juan Antonio Samaranch, head of the International Olympic Committee
during the era that led to the infamous Salt Lake City scandals involving blatant
corruption. Kellerman says that this happened because Samaranch turned “a blind eye
and a deaf ear” to what was going on.
Rigid – Mary Meeker, a financial analyst on Wall Street, whose rigid adherence to a
model that fit with the tech stock bubble led to the tech stock burst and losses of millions
for many of her clients.
Intemperate – Marion Barry, Jr., mayor of Washington, D.C., whose addiction to drugs
likely contributed to his inability to avoid the financial crises and corruption scandals that
marred his city during his tenure.
Callous – Al Dunlap, CEO of Sunbeam, who laid off 40% of the workforce without
improving shareholder value.
Corrupt – William Aramony, head of the United Way of America, who was forced to
resign after evidence of gross corruption and who was eventually convicted on twentyfive counts of charges such as conspiracy to defraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud.
Insular – Bill Clinton, President of the USA, whose disregard for the well-being of the
Tutsi minority in Rwanda, contributed to the killing of hundreds of thousands.
Evil – Radovan Karadzic, President of the Bosnian Serb administration, whose policies
promoted systematic rape as a weapon of war and who promoted killing thousands of
Muslim civilians.
Kellerman wisely points out that bad leadership occurs in a context, and that part of that
context includes people who are willing to follow. She advises us to take responsibility
for our followship.
[Discuss implications for followship.]
Kellerman also offers advice to leaders to help prevent bad leadership:
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Limit your tenure
Share power
Don’t believe your own hype
Get real, and stay real
Compensate for your weaknesses
Stay balanced
Remember the mission
Stay healthy
Develop a personal support system
Be creative
Know and control your appetites
Be reflective
I think that’s good advice.