Introduction
This assignment is an article review and analyses the article based on facts about leadership and innovation in the business or organisational context. The article being reviewed is titled ‘Charismatic leadership, change and innovation in an R&D organization’.
The authors of the article are Neil Paulsen of the University of Queensland Business School; Diana Maldonado of the Sugar Research and Development Corporation, Brisbane, Australia and Victor J. Callan and Oluremi Ayoko of the University of Queensland Business School.
In the article, the authors focus on the relationship between the charismatic element of transformative leadership, team work and innovativeness in research and development (R&D) organizations.
Article Analysis
As per the article, leadership can be defined as the ability of a person to influence other people to do things which they would not have done without the influence.
People with this ability are referred to as leaders and can be found in different settings and contexts ranging from the family, school, government and organization; formal and non-formal, as well as profit and non-profit organizations.
In an organisational setting, leaders are responsible for showing others “the way”. The leaders may have or may not have executive powers in the organisation and they may be or, may not be managers (Northouse, 2009).
In the context of the article, leading in an organisational setting entails the leader consolidating the efforts and resources of the organisation and focusing on the future by setting up a vision for the organization; which it intends to achieve in a given period of time using the consolidated efforts and resources.
According to Russel Consulting, leading entails some distinct elements which include building and sustaining teamwork, strategic thinking, managing conflicts, coaching, inspiring a shared vision, problem solving, performance management and accountability, decision making, delegation, systems thinking, leading change, dealing with ambiguities, developing trust, employee development, customer service, innovation and creativity, emotional intelligence, servant leadership, quality and productivity improvement (Russell Consulting, 2011).
According to the authors of the article, transformative leadership involves various aspects, one of them being charisma, which involves among other things developing motivation, morale and performance of teams through variety of mechanisms.
The charismatic leader connects to the follower’s sense of identity, challenges the team to take greater ownership for their work and understanding the strengths and weakness of the team so that he or she can align it with tasks that it can perform well. Transformative leadership, through the charismatic aspect helps in realising positive change.
This is because charismatic leaders are energetic, enthusiastic, inspiring, motivational and passionate about their organisational success and development. In this sense, the leaders are concerned, involved and also focused on helping every member of the group to succeed (Ojo, 2008).
Charismatic leadership has got multiple routes to innovativeness in an organisation. The first one is that it leads to establishment of teams which work together. These teams give themselves a social identity which bonds them (Ashforth and Mael, 1989.pp.20-39).
This social identity and bonding leads to cooperation among the team members in all aspects, which leads to multiplicity of ideas about how to undertake the tasks, consequently leading to innovation within the team. The other route to innovation is that charismatic leadership directly leads to cooperation within an organisation whereby the employees do not personalise problems or success.
This leads to innovation because the employees are more committed the success of the organisation and to them, motivation comes as a result of organisational success not individual success. Every employee therefore brings his or her ideas in the organisation. These ideas are combined and transformed into new ways of doing things in a more efficient and effective manner (Avolio and Bhatia, 2004. pp.951-968).
Lastly, charismatic leadership may directly lead to innovation because the charismatic leaders are knowledgeable and possess high technical know-how especially in research and development.
This knowledge and technical know-how by the charismatic leaders when coupled with their other charismatic characteristics directly provokes employees’ thinking on how to improve the functions, processes and procedures of their organisation, thus leading to innovation (Avolio and Bhatia, 2004. pp.951-968).
Reference List
Ashforth, B.E. and Mael, F. (1989), “Social identity theory and the organisation”, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 20-39.
Avolio, B.J., Zhu, W., Koh, W. and Bhatia, P. (2004), “Transformational leadership and organisational commitment: mediating role of psychological empowerment and moderating role of structural distance”, Journal of Organisational Behaviuor,Vol.25 No. 8, pp. 951-968.
Northouse, P.G.,(2009). Leadership: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: SAGE.
Ojo, A., (2008). Leadership Style and Leadership Power. Farmington Hills, MI: ProQuest publishers.
Russell Consulting. (2011). Leadership in Organisations: What Does it Mean to Lead?. Web.