Principles and Practices of Leadership and Management: A Critical Analysis of Leadership Theories and Skills

Principles and Practices of Leadership and Management
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Table of Contents
Coursework 1 Report.......................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
Course work 2 Report......................................................................................................................9
Introduction......................................................................................................................................9
Critically evaluate the most important leadership skills and competencies that you think will be
required for this organization...........................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
Reference list.................................................................................................................................13
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Coursework 1 Report
Introduction
Practice of management and leadership along with the classical enunciation of management
theories can be draw back to the 19th century. Leadership, management, organizational culture
and philosophies are inextricably connected resulting to the organizational effectiveness.
According to various theories and principles, it have been understood that management can be
defined as maintaining the status and profitability of an organization by a transactional approach.
On the other hand, leadership reflects dynamic and visionary approaches through and
transformational procedure. This section of the entire study will be exploring benefits and
specifications of contingency leadership theory along with comparing it with more two
leadership theories. At the end, this report will be discussing recommendations related to the
requirements.
Critical comparison of different leadership theories
As per the case study, the sales manager of a leading organization wants to develop
communication between all the team members and create an organizational culture in which all
the team members will have equal right to state about their preferences and participation in
decision-making process could be enhanced effectively in future. For this purpose, sales manager
has decided to implement the contingency leadership theory in the team management process
and aspire to combine it with other effective leadership theories to get a more fruitful result. For
fulfilling these purposes below contingency theory and its evaluation with other theories will be
discussed.
Contingency theories of leadership
Fiedler’s leadership theory is one of the contingency leadership theories, which states the fact
that an efficient leadership depends not only on the method of leading but also on the
understanding and management of the current organizational situation. According to Chemers
(2014) each organization needs to be a good leader-member relationship with tasks that have
clear aims and processes as well as capability for a leader to reach out all punishments and
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rewards. Traits and principles involve in the contingency leadership approach addresses that
lacking these three above-mention perspectives in the right collaboration and context will affect
on leadership effectiveness. Contingency leadership theory gives trace on leader’s psychological
and personality disposition and reflects factors with which leaders could manage tasks involved
and whether leaders could exert control over their teams (Antonakis and Day, 2017). Application
of this theory of leadership in managing human resources and teams is described below.
Critical analysis of contingency leadership theory
This theory attempts to co-relate research on various management variables for instance,
investigation on professionalism and integrated decision-making process or employee education
along with task complexities. The theory allows leader to evaluate a specific situation and
determine what specifications impact core decision-making through which organization is
concerned. The “management contingency model” is cited below.
Figure 1: Management contingency model
(Source: Antonakis and Day, 2017)
Centre of the circle from above figure represents an organization. One can notice from the figure
that main internal contingency on which organizational management relies, is the company’s
objective or purpose. The people management, technology applied, tasks performed along with
organizational structure are all greatly influenced by an organizations’ objectives. This model is
influenced by Anderson et al. (2018), “Management Concepts and Situations, Science Research
Associates Inc”. Apart from these there are internal contingency needs of an organization and the
external organizational contingencies that a management or leader should keep in mind while
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