Practical Issues Motivating Employees

The past few weeks have focused on describing classic and contemporary theories of motivation. This week, you will put those theories and principles into action by exploring some popular interventions that are used to enhance motivation in organizational settings. In addition, this week will investigate the practical issues involved in measuring motivation. Rewards and incentives are very important to the concept of motivation. Notably, they are the most widely used method of motivating employee behavior. The notion of utilizing contingent rewards to drive employee behavior stems from the reinforcement theory. Organizational rewards systems include a wide variety of rewards, and these rewards are generally classified as either tangible or intangible. Tangible rewards include salary, benefits, and bonuses or incentives; however, intangible rewards include praise, recognition, awards, or increased autonomy. Often a combination of tangible and intangible rewards is used to enhance motivation. In particular, Stajkovic and Luthans (2003) found that a combination of feedback, social reinforcement, and money had the strongest...
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Leadership Development

Leadership Development

In organizations across the world, the need to design and implement evaluation systems as a means of improving leadership performance is growing. Such interest has been fueled in part by an increase in unethical leadership behavior in public, private, and academic settings, but also due to the impending surge of senior executive retirements expected in the next several years. Faced with a real crisis of available leaders, many organizations have implemented leadership development systems. Such programs hold much potential to support leader and managerial self-development efforts, increase succession-planning programs and provide a tangible measure of leader accountability for organizational performance and employee engagement. Given that the development of effective leaders is a significant concern in organizations, I/O psychologists have been at the forefront of determining leaders and leadership development methods. Leadership development is “a process that concentrates on the leader-follower relationship and on developing an environment in which the leader can build relationships that enhance cooperation and resource exchange” (Landy & Conte, 2013,...
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Exploring the Negative Side of Leadership

Exploring the Negative Side of Leadership

As you learned during the first few weeks of the course, there have been a multitude of approaches proposed to study leadership, each one focused on a different rationale for what makes leaders effective (i.e., their traits, their behaviors, their relationships with subordinates, their ability to handle different situations, their authenticity, their focus on service to followers). Regardless of theory, one fundamental component of organizational leadership is that leaders are expected to influence others (e.g., subordinates, peers, higher-level leaders) to achieve goals in line with their objectives. Notably, a leader’s ability to influence others will be based in part on the type of social power they have and choose to use (Jex & Britt, 2014). Leaders obtain and wield power over subordinates in many different ways. The most popular model of power was proposed by French and Raven (1959) and describes six bases of power including coercive power (i.e., the power to punish), reward power (i.e., the power to reward), legitimate power (i.e.,...
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Leadership Challenges in a Changing Workplace

Leadership Challenges in a Changing Workplace

Regardless of the theoretical foundation, it is clear that the process of leadership is complex. Within the world of work, leadership effectiveness is affected by numerous factors such as the type of organization, work relationships, task demands, employee and leader personalities, and organizational culture and design. This week, you will explore leadership challenges that have emerged due to the constantly changing nature of the work environment – namely, how do issues like technology, greater reliance on teams, and changing workforce demographics influence leadership? Technology is a key component of the world you live in today and it has a major impact on organizations across the globe. Importantly, as technology evolves it changes the way in which organizations communicate and accomplish their goals. For instance, technology allows for a greater number of employees to telecommute on a part or full-time basis. While telecommuting provides cost savings for employers and flexibility for employees, it also provides a number of challenges for leaders. Namely,...
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Culture and Leadership

Culture and Leadership

At the turn of the 20th century, unprecedented advancements in technology ushered in the most significant transformation of the modern workplace in years. For the first time, a single, global labor market emerged, fueling an unforeseen corporate war for talent and a demand for a new style of workers who were more adaptable to rapid changes in a fluid organizational environment. As organizations began to expand globally, the need for understanding leadership as a cross-cultural concept intensified – that is, it is important to recognize how leaders in today’s global organizations lead across different cultures. In order to enhance professionals’ comprehension of cross-cultural leadership, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study were initiated (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). The goal of the study was to address how differences in culture were related to organizational and leadership practices (Muchinsky & Culbertson, 2016). During the early 1990s, House and colleagues launched a major research effort which to date has...
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Modern Theories of Leadership (Part 2)

Modern Theories of Leadership (Part 2)

Given the current need for more principled, people-focused leadership, leadership research has begun to move away from its traditional emphasis on transformational and charismatic leadership toward a greater focus on a more universal, interpersonal perspective where the interface linking the follower and leader is the key factor (van Dierendonck, 2011). This perspective has inspired several new leadership theories. One of the most recent approaches to studying leadership is authentic leadership. Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, and May (2004) have defined authentic leaders as individuals “who are deeply aware of how they think and behave and are perceived by others as being aware of their own and others’ values/moral perspective knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and high on moral character” (p. 802). In particular, authentic leaders connect to their followers by believing in who they are and by displaying a strong, confident moral character. Authentic leaders encourage authenticity in...
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Modern Theories of Leadership (Part 1)

Modern Theories of Leadership (Part 1)

What is the difference between a manager and a leader? Across the field of leadership, the answer to this question remains a topic of considerable debate and study. While we often may use management and leadership interchangeably, it is clear that they are not the same thing. The biggest difference between management and leadership revolves around the manner in which each motivates employees or followers. While managers and supervisors often have a team of employees to coordinate, the individuals filling these managerial roles may not necessarily be considered leaders. The terms manager and supervisor are considered job titles that describe what duties are to be done (e.g., manage, supervise) by the individuals holding those positions (Jex & Britt, 2014). Leadership, on the other hand, deals with how these duties are carried out and how, in doing so, subordinates are affected. In particular, managers are characterized by their ability to delegate, communicate, coordinate, and solve problems, where leaders are expected to share...
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