Submitted by: Submitted by salmashaikh
Views: 781
Words: 4080
Pages: 17
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 07/06/2010 12:38 PM
Introduction
Leadership, according to Chemers (1997), is a process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. Quirk and Fandt (2000) view leadership as fundamentally a social influence process that culminates in reaching mutual goals with the leader’s constituents. It involves making sense of a situation, determining the team’s objectives, motivating people to work together to accomplish these objectives, and influencing team culture. Leadership is not linear because there are no leaders without followers, and a leader will not be successful unless there is substantial collaboration and coordination with team members (p. 15). Organizational leadership involves processes and proximal outcomes that contribute to the development and achievement of organizational purpose. Organizational purpose is operationalized as a direction for collective action. Leadership processes are directed at defining, establishing, identifying, or translating this direction for the followers and facilitating or enabling the organizational processes that should result in the achievement of this purpose. Organizational purpose may be defined through mission, vision, strategy, goals, plans, and tasks (Zaccaro and Klimoski 2001). Yukl (1997) has defined leadership broadly in terms of mobilizing human resources toward the attainment of organizational goals. More specifically leadership is an influence processes affecting the interpretation of events for followers, the choice of objectives for the group or organization the organization of work activities to accomplish the objectives, the motivation of followers to achieve the objectives, the maintenance of cooperative relationships and teamwork, and the enlistment of support and cooperation from people outside the group or organization.
Power is a process by which a person induces change in another’s behavior or attitudes. Power is considered as the basis of...