Leadership in Business: A Critical Analysis of Theories and Models

This report critically analyzes the literature on leadership by emphasizing on theories and models. It explores the nature of leadership, assumptions and values presented in the articles, and their relationship to leadership practices. The report also provides real-life examples and discusses the impact of ethical leadership on organizational development and success.

Leadership in business

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Personal Reflection..........................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11
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Introduction
The report is carried out to critically analyze the literature on leadership by emphasizing on
theories and models. Two articles of leadership are going to be analyzed in this report and the
analysis is performed on the basis of the nature of leadership, assumptions and values presented
in the articles and relationship to the leadership practices. The report also explains the examples
of the real life world. The purpose of writing this report is to understand the concepts of
leadership in the organizations. Leadership is one of the most important concept that helps an
organization to achieve success and high profitability levels. The report analyzes theoretical
perspective of the leadership and also underlines the assumptions and arguments that presented
in the articles this research is based on two articles “Transformative Leadership: Achieving
Unparalleled Excellence” and “Embedding Ethical Leadership within and across Organization
Levels” (Gordon, 2015). Comparing both the articles, it is observed that the conclusion drawn
from the analysis of the authors, one thing is clear that the ethical leadership has a great influence
on the development of the organization and its success. The findings of the research articles are
different. From the first article, it was concluded that the transformative leadership model will
have the positive impact on the organizational excellence as it is suggested that today's
leadership standards are inadequate as per the organizational requirements or demand of
tomorrow.
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Literature review
Overview of articles
The first article titled as transformative leadership: Achieving unparalleled excellence explain
the concept of transformative leadership which is considered as the new standard of ethical
leadership. There are basically six well regarded leadership perspectives that have been
explained under transformative leadership model which combines the instrumental elements as
well as normative elements of each six perspectives (Adler, 2014). Transformative leadership
basically respects the government obligations of leaders and focuses on the long term wealth
creation as well as committed towards the welfare of all stakeholders. There are six leadership
perspectives that build the transformative leadership. The Article suggested that all the leaders
should perform ethically. This article reflects a new model related to transformative leadership
which may assist all the leaders for attaining the employee’s trust by incorporating its principles
and ethical standards. There are three sections in the article. First section is about defining the
transformative model of leadership in which the model is defined as ethical standard of
leadership that involves into the benefits of respecting the employees in society. Second Section
is about features of leadership that explains how the transformative leadership integrates all the
important six elements or perspectives which enables all the leaders to organizations and
achieving the excellence. The last section is about Contribution of paper that identifies four
contributions towards academic and practitioner literature. In this section the challenges that
faced by the organization also explained by applying the transformative leadership. The six
perspective that has been explain under the transformative leadership includes charismatic
leadership to create personal relationships, transformational leadership, covental leadership,
servant leadership, principles centered leadership and level 5 leadership (Mihelic, Lipicnik, &
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Tekavcic, 2010). All the six perspectives of leadership are playing a very important role in
creating wealth as well as commitment to the Welfare of the stakeholders.
Moving to second article titled as “Embedding ethical leadership within and across organization
levels” which also explains about the ethical leadership and its incorporation in the
organizations. The main purpose of this article is to develop and explain the ethical leadership
within the ethical culture. This article examines the relationship between leadership and culture
of the organizational levels. The article mainly discussed about the practical implication for
understanding how the leaders transmit ethical influence within the organization levels. In this
article, three organizational levels have been identified by the author and its impact on the ethical
culture to identify the ethical and unethical cognitions and behaviors that available within the
organization (Schaubroeck, Hannah, Kozlowski, & Treviño, 2012).
Theoretical perspectives
There are many theoretical perspective has been explained in both the articles. In the first article,
different types of leadership perspectives have been explained on the basis of the theoretical
frameworks. The new standard of ethical leadership is recognized as a transformative leadership
in the first article that integrates all the perspectives of leadership style, which are
 Transformational leadership,
 Charismatic Leadership,
 Level 5 leadership,
 Principle-centered
 Servant Leadership and
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 Convental leadership.
There are many prepositions offered in the article on the basis of the different types of
leadership. One of the article focus on the importance of leadership as ethical activity. It is also
emphasized in the article that the relationship between the leaders and stakeholders is effective
and direct relationship. Virtuous leadership importance also has been addressed in the article
(Caldwell, Dixon, Floyd, Chaudoin, & Cheokas, 2012).
The second article includes the theoretical perspective in relation to the ethical culture in the
formal or informal. The multilevel model in relation to ethical leadership has been developed in
the article which explains about ethical culture and ethical conduct. The main focus given by the
author in this article was on the shared understanding of the ethical conduct in ethical culture.
Arguments
The article presented by Cam Caldwell argues that the ethical focus of transformational leaders is
on the welfare of the organization, employees and society. According to the author,
transformative leaders are the one who seek the benefits within the organization and influence
the organizational profitability by focusing on the principles of transformational leaderships
(Caldwell, Dixon, Floyd, Chaudoin, & Cheokas, 2012). The author also emphasized on the fact
that the transformative leaders are more ethical and trustworthy. An author believed that the
charismatic leadership creates a strong leader follower relationship through its personality traits
as they inspire the people to achieve better outcomes. Charismatic leaders have the great
potential to encourage its stakeholders for the wealth creation. According to author, the level 5
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leadership have the characteristic of combining leader’s humility with resolve to achieve the
unachieved results (Ahmad, Gao, & Hali, 2017). The principle centred leadership also focus on
the principles and values to achieve the organizational goals. Servant leadership is all about
providing services to all the stakeholders. However, author explained all the features of six types
of leadership as the company and its contribution towards the creation of wealth and business
excellence. Some of the other benefits of leadership models are high profitability, better quality,
low turnover and high customer satisfaction. The author at the end of the article argued that there
are many challenges faced by the organizations while applying the transformative model in the
organizations. Some of the author argued that the organizations need to revisit and revise the
mind-sets about the assumptions on which the leadership of the organization is based upon. The
crisis of leadership may be faced by organizations as per the viewpoint of Bennis and Nanus.
The changing demand of the stakeholders, business environment as well as the organizational
expectations is the biggest challenges. It is also observed and argued by some of the authors like
Quinn that the organizations lack of talented and expert leadership that affects the overall
profitability levels in a negative way (Musa, 2016).
In the second article written by John M. Schaubroeck, the company argued and viewed that an
ethical leader has to show the pool of personality traits which stands common irrespective of the
culture of the industry in which they have operations. The ethical leader needs to be careful and
calculative in taking risks whenever it is required and also understand when they are ready to
take it. Any person who is representing these qualities are perceived as an ethical leader by the
people around them (Buren, 2017).
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Findings of articles
Comparing both the articles, it is observed that the conclusion drawn from the analysis of the
authors, one thing is clear that the ethical leadership has a great influence on the development of
the organization and its success. The findings of the research articles are different. From the first
article, it was concluded that the transformative leadership model will have the positive impact
on the organizational excellence as it is suggested that today's leadership standards are
inadequate as per the organizational requirements or demand of tomorrow. The conclusion
drawn from the second article is based on the multilevel model of leadership that studies the
effects of ethical leadership and shared understanding of the ethical conduct on the ethical
conditions and behavior. This article and its findings indicated that the ethical conditions and
conduct are highly affected by the informational and normative influences (Heres & Lasthuizen,
2010). The article found that the US army is the unique organization that involve into the high
ethical leadership and perform all its activities by focusing on the ethical organizational
behavior. Some of the authors argued that there is need to conduct the additional research to
generalize the findings and interpret the findings of this research in ore deeper. The author did
not argued about the different types of leadership as its main focus is on the organizational levels
and ethical cultures and analyzing the impact on the overall ethical and unethical behaviors.
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Personal Reflection
After analyzing the literature review on the ethical leadership models, I have realized that the
authors are saying right about the influence of the leadership models on the overall performance
of the organization. I also believed that leadership has the great impact on the profitability,
customer satisfaction, organizational ethical behavior and business excellence. I have identified
that there are two theories of leadership which can reflect and exemplifies the ideas such as trait
theory and behavioral theory. In first article, the author discussed about the different personality
traits of the leaders and explained about how they inspire and encourage the other people. The
six perspectives of the leadership demonstrate six different personality traits of the leaders that
influence the followers and society as a whole. I found that in second article of John, the impact
of leadership and culture on the ethical and unethical behaviors of the organization has been
studied. Therefore, the behavioral theory can exemplify the ideas that presented by authors
(Barkhordari-Sharifabad, Ashktorab, & Atashzadeh-Shoorideh, 2017).
The practical examples that I have identified is the leader of Apple Company Mr. Steve jobs.
Steve jobs had the ability to perform extraordinary and he made the company successful because
of its ethical leadership qualities. Steve Jobs has transformed the business and achieve business
excellence because of its charismatic and transformational personality traits. From above articles
and its analysis, I have learnt that the leadership is playing important role and it has great
advantage within the organizational levels (Ahmad, Gao, & Hali, 2017). I have learnt that the
ethical leadership is important for the creation of wealth and business excellence and also
improving the ethical culture. The experience that I have gained from the analysis of these
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articles is very useful for me as it helps me to enhance my knowledge and understanding. I can
utilize my skills and learning experiences in future career.
Comparing both the articles, I have observed that the conclusion drawn from the analysis of the
authors, one thing is clear that the ethical leadership has a great influence on the development of
the organization and its success. The findings of the research articles are different. From the first
article, it was concluded that the transformative leadership model will have the positive impact
on the organizational excellence as it is suggested that today's leadership standards are
inadequate as per the organizational requirements or demand of tomorrow. The conclusion
drawn from the second article is based on the multilevel model of leadership that studies the
effects of ethical leadership and shared understanding of the ethical conduct on the ethical
conditions and behavior (Gordon, 2015). This article and its findings indicated that the ethical
conditions and conduct are highly affected by the informational and normative influences. The
article found that the US army is the unique organization that involve into the high ethical
leadership and perform all its activities by focusing on the ethical organizational behavior.
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Conclusion
There are many theoretical perspective has been explained in both the articles. In the first article,
different types of leadership perspectives have been explained on the basis of the theoretical
frameworks. A new standard of ethical leadership is labeled as a transformative leadership in the
first article that integrates all the perspectives of leadership including
transformational, charismatic, level 5, principle centered and servant and convental leadership.
There are many prepositions offered in the article on the basis of the different types of
leadership. An Article Focus on the importance of leadership as ethical activity. It is also
emphasized in the article that the relationship between the leaders and stakeholders is effective
and direct relationship. Virtuous leadership importance also has been addressed in the
article. The second article includes the theoretical perspective in relation to the ethical culture in
the formal or informal. The multilevel model in relation to ethical leadership has been developed
in the article which explains about ethical culture and ethical conduct. The main focus given by
the author in this article was on the shared understanding of the ethical conduct in ethical culture.
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References
Adler, N. (2014). Leadership, Power, and Influence The Art of Leadership. pp. 1-5. Retrieved
from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242255428_Leadership_Power_and_Influence_
The_Art_of_Leadership
Ahmad, I., Gao, Y., & Hali, S. (2017). A Review of Ethical Leadership and Other Ethics-
Related Leadership Theories. European Scientific Journal, 13(29). Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320941661_A_Review_of_Ethical_Leadership
_and_Other_Ethics-_Related_Leadership_Theories
Barkhordari-Sharifabad, M., Ashktorab, T., & Atashzadeh-Shoorideh, F. (2017). Exploration of
pioneering as a major element of ethical leadership in nursing: A qualitative study. 9(7),
pp. 4737–4745. Retrieved from
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5586987/
Buren, J. (2017). Ethical Leadership. Retrieved from
https://www.uvm.edu/sites/default/files/ethical_leadership_factsheet.pdf
Caldwell, C., Dixon, R., Floyd, L., Chaudoin, J., & Cheokas, G. (2012). Transformative
Leadership: Achieving Unparalleled Excellence. pp. 175–187. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/20563922/Transformative_Leadership_Achieving_Unparallel
ed_Excellence
Gordon, M. (2015). A guide to developing enlightened leadership - 26 lessons from A to Z.
Retrieved from https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/Leadership%20Guide%20(Roffey
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%20Park).pdf
Heres, L., & Lasthuizen, K. (2010). Ethical leadership: a variform universal phenomenon.
Retrieved from https://www.law.kuleuven.be/integriteit/egpa/egpa2010/heres-
lasthuizen_ethical-leadership-a-variform.pdf
Mihelic, K., Lipicnik, B., & Tekavcic, M. (2010). Ethical Leadership. International Journal of
Management & Information Systems, 14(5), 1-12. Retrieved from http://www.ef.uni-
lj.si/docs/osebnestrani/MIhelic_Lipicnik_Tekavcic_2010_clute.pdf
Musa, S. (2016). Five Ethical Leadership Attributes that Leaders Should Role Model to
Employees. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/27536411/Five_Ethical_Leadership_Attributes_that_Leaders_
Should_Role_Model_to_Employees
Schaubroeck, J., Hannah, S., Kozlowski, S., & Treviño, L. (2012). Embedding ethical leadership
within and across organizational levels. Academy of Management Journal, 55(5), 1053-
1078. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-30916-003
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