Leadership and Management

What is the difference between leadership and management? Not many people understand what the “leadership” or “management” term means. Many people thing that they are similar or interchangeable. I was one of those a few years ago. Honestly, it was not easy to understand and recognize the roles of a leader and of a manager because both exist within the same department or organization. In fact, the leadership and management roles need to be differentiated and clarified. The roles’ clarification not only helps the employees to address their concerns to the appropriate higher-level “boss”, but also is crucial in making the organization’s strategies successful. This paper presents the historical definition of leadership and management as well as the differences between the two.

Historical definition of leadership

There were many conceptions in the past that have described the leadership. To many people, a person that could change the world by inscribing that world with his/her own human action and an imagination fraught with struggle of the inner voices is considered “leader” (Boje, 2001). For a deep understand of leadership, I present some viewpoints of Dr. James R. Bean from the Lock Haven University. Dr. Bean discusses four conceptions of leaders and leadership in his book, “Leadership Theories and Skills”, that was published in 2001. Those four concepts are: 1/ Hero theory; 2/ Puppet of Historical Forces; 3/ Cultural Symbol or Totem; and 4/ Cybernetic. According to Dr. Bean, these concepts are considered the historical definitions of leadership. The four concepts are briefly discussed in the next paragraph.

“Hero” theory is maybe the most commonly visualized by many people and attached to the term “leadership” where “leaders are seen as major forces in society, able to make changes for good or for bad and leave indelible marks on history”. However, it depends on the views of the followers that the leaders could be heroes or devils because these leaders have the ability to move or convince the reluctant followers into their ways of doing or thinking. Examples of these leaders are Napoleon, Gandhi, Martin Luther, and many others. According to the “puppet” theory, the leadership came from the inevitable development of social institutions through many stages of the history. Those stages started with the primitive groups in the human-being history, then, were led to the tribal chief leadership, to feudalism, capitalism, and socialist democracy. Leaders “are not the true causes of these historical events”. They “respond to the forces” of each stage. In other words, the forces of history shape what the leaders do. The “Totem” theory symbolizes the leaders as group leaders who are seen as “carrying the royal line or genetic perfection of that group (i.e. monarch descendants) or maybe the “reincarnation of a dead anchestors (i.e. the Dalai Dama or other spiritual leaders). Finally, Dr Bean explains that the last theory, Cybernetic, suggests the “leadership is major part of the control system group, a kind of guidance system.” Those leaders lead the groups on the track what they have pointed out and guide the group members to succeed the adaptability and survivability (Bean, 2001). “Aristocratic thinkers have postulated that leadership depends on one’s blue blood or genes” (Gerotaxas, 2007). Tim Barnett also introduced his research about historical development of leadership. According to him, there were three types of approaches: trait approach (1930s and 1940s), behavioral approach (1940s and 1950s), and contingency or situational approach (1960s and 1970s). The main or universal definition is still a topic for many people who choose to pursue the leadership theories and studies. Nowadays, the theory or definition of leadership has changed as results of the social, economic, and political changes. Leadership is now seen as “transformational.” It means, “Once the transformation is established, the leaders relinquish their status based on ranks and maintain their status by adhering the principles of emergent” (Ehin, 2005).

Historical definition of management

The verb “manage” comes from the Italian manegiare (to handle), which in turn derives from Latin manus (hand). The French word menagement (later management) influenced the development in meaning of the English word management in the 17th and 18th centuries (Wikipedia, 2007). Management can also refer to the person or people who perform the acts of management. If leadership is the evolutionary mechanism that gear organizations towards future prosper, management is “the function that organizes the execution of today’s business” (McCrimmon, 2007). Management