Effective leadership is about creating reciprocal relationships between the leader and followers, subordinates, or constituents that in turn creates the foundation for organizational and group success. The Kouzes and Posner’s Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Model has been noted for its contributions to the Relational Leadership paradigm. Kouzes and Posner (1987) conducted research in the area of “personal best” leadership experiences. They developed a “Personal-Best Leadership Experience” questionnaire, asked thousands of managers to complete the questionnaire, and conducted many follow-up interviews to gather additional information. The personal-best questionnaire asked managers to pick a project, program, or event that they characterized as their “personal-best” leadership experience. After analyzing the data collected from questionnaires and interviews, Kouzes and Posner found that despite the variety in situations and types of leadership experiences, similar patterns were identified related to actions taken by the leaders during the experience. Through the analysis process they identified “Five Continue reading
Modern Management Concepts
Three Key Elements of Six Sigma Process
Six Sigma is a widely used Operational Approach towards Operations Management and is frequently applied within Manufacturing Businesses, however the fundamental processes also apply within businesses operating within the Service Industry. The Purpose of Six Sigma is to reduce process variation so that virtually all the products or services provided meet or exceed customer expectations. Six Sigma adopts a very data driven, disciplined method for eliminating defects within processes and promoting business improvement within organisations. Six Sigma is able to show quantitatively how a process is performing and to achieve ‘Six Sigma Status’, a process must not produce more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Six Sigma is dissected into three core elements including: Process Improvement, Process Design/Re-Design & Process Management and will be explored below. 1. Process Improvement The Process Improvement aspect of the Six Sigma Model addresses the concept of improving existing processes with the ultimate objective of Continue reading
Sustaining and Disruptive Technologies
In 1997, the best-selling book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen came up with two basic categories of technologies: sustaining and disruptive. Christensen in his sequel, “The Innovators Solution” has changed the term disruptive technology to “disruptive innovation” to accentuate that it is not exactly the technology that is disruptive but the strategy of the innovation that leads to disruption. Read More: The Innovator’s Dilemma Sustaining Technologies Sustaining Technologies is an incremental increase in the features or performance for an established product. Some sustaining technologies can be discontinuous or radical in nature, while others are of incremental nature. They basically rely on improvements along with the dimensions of performance in an already established technology. We can see some significant percentages of the innovations we come across are sustaining innovations. We can consider an example of desktop computers. The significant natures of computers have not changed since Continue reading
Approaches to Organizational Change
Organizational Change simply refers to alteration in the existing conditions of an organization. Even in most stable organizations change is necessary to maintain stability. The economic and social environment is so dynamic that without adapting to such change even the most successful organizations cannot survive in the changed environment. Therefore, management must continuously monitor the outside environment and be sufficiently innovative and creative to implement these changes effectively. Two Approaches to Organizational Change As organizational change is a complex process, therefore managers must approach it systematically and logically. Some organizational changes are planned whereas other changes are reactive. Planned change is designed and implemented by an organization in an orderly and timely fashion in the anticipation of future change. Reactive change results from a reaction of an organization to unexpected events. In contrast to planned change, it is a piece-meal response to circumstances as they develop. External forces that the Continue reading
Responsibility Centers
Responsibility accounting focuses attention on responsibility centers. A responsibility center is a sub-unit of an organization under the supervision of a manager who has the responsibility for the activities of that responsibility center. Each sub-unit has certain activities to perform and its manager is assigned the responsibility and / or authority to carry out those activities. Responsibility center is the segment of business with reference to which information will be communicated to pin point responsibilities. In the words of Anthony and Races, “A responsibility center is like an engine in that it has inputs, which are physical quantities of material, hours of various types of labor, and a variety of services; it works with these resources usually; working capital and fixed assets are also required. As a result of this work, it produces output, which are classified either as goods, it they are tangible or as services, if they are Continue reading
What is Value-Based Management?
Today’s work life has become so demanding, fast paced, stressful, ambiguous and chaotic due to our lifestyle that we are forced to seek Value-based answers and ways of achieving personal stability within. We have come to realize that our inner wisdom is the only source that will sustain our adaptation and stability in the long run. More specifically, it has to do with how we define ourselves, view the world, relate to others, and make ethical/ moral decisions. Introduction of spirituality in an organization culture will help employees desire, to integrate personal life values with professional life. What is Value-Based Management? Value management is distinct from other management approaches in way that it is simultaneously includes attributes which are not normally found together. It brings together within a single management system. Alignment of business vision, goals, strategies, policies and practice has always been the key to the effectiveness and success Continue reading