Leadership

EXCUTIVE SUMMARY

The theories of chrismatic and transformational leadership are dominant in the leadership area from the years of 1980s (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1987, House, & Arthur, 1993).The nature of effective leadership is analysed in those theories but there is the fact that those theories focus mainly on the skills and activities of the individual leaders. They give us important ideas about the leadership effectiveness. However, they have weaknesses of leadership measurement and conceptualisation (Gary Yukl, 1999). The limitations of the two theories are many that include the rely too much on early theories such as contingency theory of leadership, too much focus on dyadic processes together with the assumption of heroic leadership that dominant the effectiveness of leadership.

Yukl, G (2010) said that "The assumption that effective leadership can explained in terms of dyadic influence by a heroic leader limits the scope of research and theory and discourages exploration of shared leadership, collective processes, and reciprocal influence"

In this essay, I will analyse some weakness in the conceptualisation of effective leadership process that include the neglect of other important leader activities, the omission of group work, collective processes on organisation level.

TABLE OF CONTENT

I. The assumption of effective leadership..........................................................................................

II. Weakness in the conceptualisation of effective leadership..........................................................

1. Dyadic influences processes..........................................................................................................

2. Biases assumptions related to heroic leader..................................................................................

III. New theories of effective leadership...........................................................................................

IV. Conclusions.................................................................................................................................

V. References...................................................................................................................................

I. THE ASSUMPTION OF EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Almost researches on leadership effectiveness are based on the implicit assumption that effective leadership can be explained in terms of dyadic influence by a heroic leader (Gary Yukl, 2010)..

A heroic leader is person who should do ideally actions. The model of heroic leadership contains some idea dimensions to build a heroic leader. For example, in Characteristic dimemsion, a heroic leader holds bravery, honesty, principled, inspires trust. In work orientation, a heroic leader should take action, work hard, does it first, shares tasks and delegates authority (Morrow, Ira J., 1999).

However, it is the fact that very few people have ability to achieve thia ideal model of leadership or able to perform those dimensions over long time priod. This model of heroic leader bring leaders a frame to improve themselves in work by trying to do follow the guides in the model.

The second term of this assumption is the concept of dyadic relationship. This is important to clarify the dyadic influence process by the leaders. That influence process is put within the dyad relationship between leader ad a single follower only. This concept focus on the interpersonal influence process of a single heroic leader.

The theories of transformational and charismatic leadership relied a lot in this type level of relationship but this is a conceptual weakness of those theories. Organizations today increase the rely on teams such as cross-functional teams, self-managed teams or self-defined teams to improve efficiency, product and service quality, employee sastisfaction, and adapt with environmental changes. To fully inderstand the long term effectiveness of leadership, there is need to understand the leadership in group level as well as organisation level.

The assumption based on of heroic leader and dyadic influence to build a