Generally, academic writing is a scholarly literature covering any topic and organized by the author(s) from an authoritative point of view (Kumar, 2010). In any field, academic writing should have an objective or purpose of writing, a clear explanation of the topic, well organized and have referenced or supported ideas from other scholarly works.
In organization leadership, academic writing is used to convey a body of information about particular subjects with target audiences comprising of the managers, employees and labor unions amongst others (Martin, 2008).
The question of what an academic paper must meet in this field has remained a subject of debate since there is a wider scope of topics to be covered. However, the primary requirements such as the purpose of the writing, ideological or rational explanation of issues, proper structure, and a detailed explanations of the findings are necessary to prevent other scholars from coming up with replicated results.
Commonly used primary Media by writers in in this field are the print media, namely, books, journals, and newspapers. Other common characteristics of scholarly writing in this field include use of economic theories, economic models, economic assumptions, and mathematical analysis of data (Daft & Marcic, 2010).
Commonly used rhetoric structures include symbolic motives, value language, narratives, and statistical or quantitative explanation of findings (Mary & Debra, 2009). In order to give a better understanding of this topic, the author chose to analyze an example of an academic writing in organizational leadership. The article was titled “Fringe Benefits on Employee Compensation” and was written by Arleen Leibowitz and published by the University of Chicago Press.
In the scholarly writing under analysis, the purpose of the text was clearly brought out. From the topic, we understand that the text specifically discuses the remuneration or compensation of an organization’s employees.
In the introduction, Leibowitz (1983) explains that in most organizations, employees are remunerated using money wages i.e. employees are remunerated using money but subject to the time spent in the workplace. He further explains that employees received other fringe benefits such as insurance covers and other allowances. The author seems not to like these forms of compensation and therefore moves ahead to criticize them by referring to well thought out models and economic theories.
This text has a proper structure and used argumentative ideas to communicate the intended message. For instance, in the introductory bit, Leibowitz gave a brief narrative on the structure of the paper.
He explained that section 11.2 used a simple model to explain the division in remuneration between benefits and wages, section 11.3 dwelt on findings of the BLS survey conducted in 1972, section 11.4 gave a description on HIS data, and section 11.5.1 a comparison between the HIS data and the national sample. The author used the wage benefit theory and other economic models to support his arguments on the topic.
He used the labor market model to critically analyze the gains that an employee should get directly from the employer in addition to the normal wages. The explanations given were that if the wage model, which is used only as a part of compensating for the labor offered, has a negative relationship to other benefits, then using wages as a compensation measure is error-prone (Kumar, 2010).
The text has also discussed its findings in an elaborative manner. Leibowitz used data from various sources to support the findings of the text. For instance, table 11.4 showed the wage regression trend for full time employees. The table in itself did not bring out the intended meaning. The researcher therefore, went ahead to give well explained narrative intended to help the targeted audience understand it better.
In writing this text, Leibowitz (1983) used various rhetoric structures that are commonly used in academic literature covering organization leadership. For instance, the author made use of good reasoning to give his explanation. In the first place, he pointed out that there is relationship between wages, other benefits, and labor supply. He proved this argument by using a well explained wage benefit theory to bring out the relationship.
The theory had convincing arguments to support what the author was arguing. According to Mary & Debra (2009), academic writings on organization leadership should make use of symbolic motives. Leibowitz (1983) makes use of economic terms such as trade-offs, fringe benefits, wages, supply model, tax rates and several others to give a well thought out argument. Other rhetoric contexts commonly used in academic writing in this field include good descriptions and making references to past events (Martin, 2008).
In conclusion, I selected this text because it covered a very important topic in organization leadership. Good pay is the basic reason as to why people supply labor to any organization. This text is a good example of academic writing in organization leadership since it meets most of the primary requirements of scholarly writings in the field.
In analyzing this text, I realized that the format or structure of a scholarly writing in this field is fully dependent on the topic being discussed. For instance, this text covered economic issues and thus had to make use a mathematical or statistical analysis of data to present its facts.
References
Daft, R. & Marcic. D. (2010). Understanding management. U.S.A: Nelson Education Ltd.
Kumar, K. (2010). Human resource management: strategic analysis text and case. New Delhi: International Pvt Ltd
Leibowitz, A. (1983). Fringe benefits in employee compensation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Web.
Martin, J. (2008). Human resource management. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Mary, F., H. & Debra, J., F. (2009). Organization rhetoric: Situation and strategies. California: SAGE Publishers.