Contemporary Management Issues: Leadership and Motivation

This essay delves into contemporary management issues, examining the roles of managers and leaders within organizations. It explores the key components of effective management, including leadership qualities, communication, and employee motivation strategies. The essay also highlights the importance of a good leader, emphasizing the need for vision, integrity, and the ability to empower employees. Furthermore, it discusses the concept of self-managing organizations, where leadership is distributed, and employees collaborate to make decisions. The essay analyzes the benefits of self-management, such as increased employee engagement and collaborative working environments, while also acknowledging potential limitations and highlighting the importance of psychological safety and clear guidelines. The essay provides a comprehensive overview of essential management concepts and their practical applications in modern organizations.

Running head: CONTEMPORARY MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Contemporary Management Issues
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Introduction
The role of manager defines leadership skills that are required to manage the staffs
and ensure smooth business functioning. A good manager is the one who can make a
difference within the workplace and keep team members happy. A manager has a lot of job
roles and responsibilities, which is critical to the success of any organisation in terms of
performance and positive business outcomes derived (Ferlie and Ongaro 2015). The topic
will shed light on the various aspects of a leader and a manager role within the industry. It
will also focus on the various components that are required to become a good leader or
manager of the organisation. It will also illustrate about the ways a manager can motivate the
employees while at the same time, provide information about the absence of line managers
and leaders in an organisation. In such cases, the self managing organisations are the only
way where people work collaboratively to make decisions as well as share or exchange ideas
among themselves to facilitate the process of decision making.
Body
Components of a good manager
According to Griffin (2013), a manager must be a leader, who hold the leadership
skills and qualities to manage a workforce while a leader must not be necessarily a manager.
a manager should possess good quality leadership skills to perform to the potential and make
sure that any projects undertaken could move towards with the end goals and objectives of
the organisation in mind (Griffin 2013). A manager is actually the person, who has been held
accountable for managing the business operations and at the same time, use his project
management skills and knowledge to meet the project manager responsibilities and roles,
furthermore generate enhanced business performance all throughout (Kruse 2013).

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There are various aspects that are required by an individual to become a good
manager and serve the role of a leader within the workplace. A good leader should always
communicate appreciation of employees so that they can be empowered to deliver their best
towards the achievement of business goals and objectives. As stated by Gherardi and Murgia
(2014), Communicating about their efforts and providing rewards could also keep them
motivated to perform to their potential for the organisation (Gherardi and Murgia 2014). On
the other hand, Meng and Boyd (2017), argued that a good manager should always remain
results oriented, which could keep the manager as well as the employees encouraged and
motivated to meet the goals and objectives. Considering the competitive business
environment, the manager must also be assertive to influence the other organisational
members and use the negotiation skills to facilitate bonding between people (Meng and Boyd
2017). A manager should be able to set a global vision and communicate the shared vision
with everyone, furthermore delegate the right roles and responsibilities to the team members
to manage great accountability. Keeping the employees motivated could be essential for
enhancing the level of trust and loyalty of employees on the manager, which should further
assist in allowing the employees to share their views, ideas and opinions required for
effective decision making by the manager too (George 2015). Therefore, these are required to
be a good manager and make sure to maage the organisational functioning properly.
Components of a good leader
A manager could be a leader but it is not always essential that a leader can be a good
manager. According to Daniel (2018), a good leader should possess good knowledge about
the ways of managing a workforce and at the Same time, have a clear vision and mission to
achieve with honesty, integrity and with a clear focus in mind (Daniel 2018). A good leader
could accomplish the organisational goals effectively by managing a group of people and
ensure that they should work hard with the aim to achieving the desired goals and objectives

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with ease and efficiency.Nancarrow et al. (2013) Stated that the leader not only guides the
team member in the right direction but also clarifies their roles and responsibilities and how
much effort should be put to manage the organisational functions (Nancarrow et al. 2013). A
good leader must communicate the vision and goals to the employees and empower them to
achieve the targets, which can be possible through motivation, furthermore lift their morale
and ensure working with dedication and commitment (Carnes and Lupu 2016).
To become a good leader, it is important to be honest and conduct the roles and
responsibilities with integrity and make the employees believe what they can do and make
them understand about their potential. A good leader does not force employees, rather
encourages them so that they can be empowered to perform to their potential with ease and
efficiency (Carnes and Lupu 2016). A good leader must consider the ideas, views and
opinions, which can be the traits of democratic leadership and are essential for decision
making, furthermore manage accountability and delegation of roles along with facilitating
creativity and innovation as well. A leader must possess honesty and integrity by sticking to
the values, ethicsandbeliefs and also remain confident to make sure that the subordinates
follow the commands (Katila and Eriksson 2013). Confidence is also integral to the making
of decisions while a good leader must also be able to communicate with the employees
frequently, keep them motivated and encouraged, furthermore, overcome issues and
challenges that may arise at present and in future as well. A good leader must promote
creativity and innovation by inspiring others to share their views and opinions, which is
important for enhancement of decision making capabilities too (Goleman 2017).
Motivation of manager by the leader
A manager holds the responsibility of keeping the staffs motivated and encouraged to
perform to their potential. There are rewards system, incentives and bonuses that can be

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provided to the staffs for keeping them motivated while at the same time, communicating the
appreciation of efforts put by them for the organisation (Chan 2014). Based on the statement
of Guay (2013),a great manager should motivate and encourage the employees by providing
them with enough growth scopes and opportunities for developing their skills, knowledge and
expertise while at the same time, communication should be managed with the staffs for
informing them about the values, beliefs and ethics of the organisation (Guay 2013). It could
establish a positive work culture and allow for trusting the employees and making them
understand about the mission, vision, organisational policies and strategic framework of the
organisation where they should work. Vogelgesang, Leroy and Avolio (2013), believed that
the monitoring of performances of the employees and providing regular feedbacks based on
their performances could be useful for engaging employees and keeping them motivated. The
manager should act as a leader more to ensure that he gives enough time to each of the
employees, furthermore prioritise on the strengthening of skills and knowledge for delivering
better results (Vogelgesang, Leroy and Avolio 2013).
It has been recommended that the manager follow the democratic leadership style for
gathering the ideas, views and opinions of the valuable staffs and then make a decision. This
not only make the employees feel valued, but also raises their level of trust for their manager,
whose is responsible for keeping the staffs engaged together, as an unit, to form a dedicated
workforce. The manager could also integrate an open door policy with the organisational
goals so that the employees can feel free to talk, share their ideas and discuss concerns
(Joseph et al. 2015). The manager would find it convenient to understand the problem and
then make decisions, which should turn the events positive for the organisation. The
recognition of employees for their contribution and providing rewards and incentives are
other ways or motivating the employees and produce a motivating work environment
(Kennedy et al. 2014).

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Self-managing organisations without any leader or manager
An organisation where people are working without any presence of leaders or line
managers can often look as an immense problem associated with the business functioning.
But nowadays, its actually not might be the case. There has been no doubt that the leadership
and managerial involvement are critical to the success of any businesses. But there are other
aspects as well, which may benefit for a business without any support provided by excellent
managers and leaders within the workplace (Bell and Harrison 2018). Without the managers
or leaders, the self-management often come into place where the organisation allows for
owning the organisation collectively and taking part in the process of decision making
collectively as well with equal contributions by each one of them. A business can only be
successful for people who do not have any managerial or leadership support when the
communication is outstanding (Gouveia 2016). The communication skills not only strengthen
the relationships between the employees, which facilitate decision making, but also has
helped in clarifying various questions required to manage accountability and responsibility.
The management of a workplace where people work without the involvement of line
managers and leaders is mostly supported by self-management organisational philosophy,
which enables the staffs to perform autonomously the various functions and manage
unilateral command or authority over others within the workplace (Ramchunder and Martins
2014). The self-managing organizations are also known for the management of collective
decision making, sharing individual opinions and ideas, furthermore ensure engaging all the
employees together to resolve issues faced during the absence of a manager or leader within
the workplace. It has also allowed for making the employees work as an unit rather than
pressurised by power and authority by the senior leaders and managers of the company.
The self-management within an organisation is based on two major principles, i.e., the
employees must not use any force or put pressure to another employees or damage property

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within the workplace and at the same time, fulfil their commitments promised to others. This
has allowed many of the businesses to flourish without any manager or leader and the
employees have acted in accordance with each other in a peaceful way, respecting each
other’s opinions with honesty and integrity too (Goleman 2013). The staffs’ engagement
level is also high, which promotes better collaborative working and producing a high
performance workplace.
While in a regular organisation, the leaders or managers mostly engage the top most
executives for decision making, here, mostly, decisions are made collectively with each and
everyone’s opinions and views taken into consideration. For example, Morning Star is an
organisation that has been very successful with people working together as an unit. The
company is one of the major tomato processing companies and has a net revenue of more
than $700 mission each year (O'Cass and Sok 2013). The self-management must not be
compared as an actual structure of the organization, rather it should be supported by top down
organisation hierarchy, which could be more related to structures that represent various
principles and behaviours.
According to Rusu and Avasilcai (2014), there are various limitations associated with
the traditional hierarchy such as inappropriate politics within the workplace along with poor
level of engagement of motivation of the staffs and also lack of maintaining a proper
organisational structure. Due to this, the self-organising organisations can allow properly to
communicate with each other frequently and enable proper management of shared views and
opinions required to facilitate the process of decision making within the organisation (Rusu
and Avasilcai 2014). within the self-managed organisation, the psychological safety is an
important thing that needs to be managed for the development of trust, loyalty and at the
same time, set robust rules, regulations and policies to protect the spaces of individuals gain

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power and authority to fulfil individual roles and responsibilities with ease and effectiveness
(Hassan and Hatmaker 2014). The development of this kind of space among the employees
helps in making the employees feel empowered, furthermore develop good, effective and
creative solutions to ensure innovation and creativity all throughout the business operations
and processes.
Advantages of a self-managing organisation
The most important advantages are that none of the employees within a workplace
can put any pressure or power to influence others and also they must remain committed to
their promises made for individual as well as other responsibilities. Often it has been seen
that an actual organisation’s functioning gets affected by top down hierarchy, which also has
increased the complexities and made the organisations think about something innovative and
unique (Ganta 2014). To resolve these issues and complexities, the organisations must
manage the self-management principles to think about new ways of working and work as
own leaders without any pressure put by higher authorities. The self-management
organisation, i.e., organisation functioning without any manager or leaders also come up with
greater responsibilities such as new ideas and information exchanged between employees and
finding ways to implement those into the business approaches (Carnes and Lupu 2016). For
the organisations like Morning Star, every employees are considered as managers and
leaders, where everyone have decided to lead with own terms and influenced others too, thus
final coming up to a major decision. Not only are these major advantages lf this self-managed
organisations, but also it has encouraged true leadership like never before, It has allowed for
finding new ways to promote the leadership skills and capabilities of individuals (Nancarrow
et al. 2013). The self-managing organisation has several benefits as well such as the
empowering of individuals and keeping them motivated to work with commitment and
dedication for the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. Not only does this kind

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of organisation empowers individuals, but also liberated them by providing he employees
with freedom to do things on their own through with shared understanding of individual roles
and responsibilities. Another major benefit of self-managing organisations without the
involvement of managers and leaders could be the prevention of relying on them and bosses
who often exert pressure and show power or authority over the employees within the
workplace (Daniel 2018). It allows the employees to become their own managers and leaders
and focus more on communicating with each other by recognising the functions managed by
traditional managers and leaders, furthermore develop robust systems for the achievement of
functions and processes that could bring desirable results for the organisation (Katila and
Eriksson 2013).
Due to the absence of a proper leader or manager, the self-management within the
organisation has made them understand about their roles and responsibilities, which can
facilitate management of activities with much ease, dedication and commitment as well. Not
only does this make them not face pressure due to power and authority by the higher
management, but also has helped in giving the employees ample space, thus, allow them to
work with freedom. The self-managing organisations are also responsible for making
decisions collectively and also engage the employees and staffs altogether, which improves
the effectiveness of decision making and collaborative working too.
Issues and challenges of self-managing organisation
There are multiple issues and challenges that are related to the functioning of an
organisation where the employees work without any presence of leaders and managers of the
organization. One of the most important challenge could be the lack of management, conflicts
and misunderstandings along with lack of clarification of certain things, which might also
hinder the performances and efforts put by the employees within the workplace. With the

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absence of a line manager, manager or even a leader, the organisation might face issues like
lack of vision and mission statement understanding (Gouveia 2016). The vision is considered
as a major leadership trait possessed by managers and leaders to execute a particular vision.
With the lack of understanding the vision and mission statement, the organisations might be
unable to maintain a good mix of strategy, culture and operational effectiveness.
As statedbyRamchunder and Martins (2014), there should be a major gap formed
between the strategies’’ development and excretion of such strategies, which might in turn,
result in not being able to attain the desired outcomes. When there is absence of a manager or
leader, the organisation should lack consistency in attracting major talents and even fail to
retain the existing talents, whichcould also increase the staff turnover rate (Ramchunder and
Martins 2014). There are various growth opportunities within the workplace that allow
people to grow with time and develop their skills and knowledge and in such cases, it could
not be possible without the engagement of a supportive leader or manager of the organisation.
This often demoralises employees and de-motivates them to achieve the performance that
they aim to achieve (Goleman 2013). Not only does the operational efficiency could get
affected. But also the lack of investment decisions in business should lead to inappropriate
financial management and performance, furthermore, result in lower growth and production,
poor synergy in sales, ineffective strategic implementation and lower productivity too. There
will also be lesser control on the human resources and this can reduce the level of
commitment from the employees and even make them unable to work in coordination and as
an unit (Meng and Boyd 2017). The other issues and challenges include lack of proper
direction, poor management of human resources and inability to understand the shared vision
and objectives properly. Not only does the organisational performance is affected due to the
lack of manager or leader, but also the organisational memebrs fail to understand the scope
and nature of business, which creates complexity to manage the business functions and

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processes properly. The employees can be less motivated and encouraged, which shall reduce
their morale and hinder their ability to perform with full commitment and to their potential
with ease and efficiency. There are also poor decision making skills and abilities, which may
further affect the business performance and make it unable to achieve the desired sets of
goals and objectives. The emergence of risks could also become evident which might be
another problem associated with the absence of a leader or manager within the workplace.
There are no such leader or manager who can motivate the employees to perform to their
potential, which can be a daunting task as well and raise the scopes for poor performances by
the workers of the organisation. Lack of good leadership and managerial skills could be one
of the major causes of poor organisational performance, furthermore, should affect the
business functioning by preventing the individuals working at the organisation to understand
what actually needs to be done and how. The lack of strategic focus and difficulty in setting
the right goals and objectives to be achieved are other issues nd challenges associated with
the absence of line manager or leader within the organization’s workplace.
Though these problems are common and may not be entirely solved, still there are
ways and approaches that are undertaken to resolve these kinds of issues and to ensure
smooth business functioning. The people within the self-managed organisations must learn to
undertake some additional roles and responsibilities with the aim of filling the gap that might
be experienced due to the absence of manager or leader (Gherardi and Murgia 2014). The
employees must develop trust among each other and learn to respect each other’s values and
welcome their views, ideas and opinions for acting in the interest of the company. The self-
managing organisations’ key benefit is the empowering of people, which has been an
essential aspect too for the purpose of managing the opportunities’ of growth properly and
keep individuals motivated and encouraged to do the right things (Nancarrow et al. 2013).
Rather than getting into conflicts, the employees working within the organisation without any

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leader or manager must focus on better communication process, work collectively towards a
shared vision and goal and furthermore make decisions for the betterment of business
functioning too. Goleman (2017) also argued the fact that forming mutual trust reduces stress
and emergence of conflicts within organisations and also ensures undertaking added
responsibilities required to manage business processes during the absence of managers or
leaders within the workplace(Goleman 2017). There also must be focus on empowering
distributed decision intelligence where every employees should be managed together to
improve the quality of decision making, furthermore foster own ownership and autonomy to
increase the business performance and strategic implementation effectiveness (Vogelgesang
et al. 2013).
Conclusion
Each and every employee of the organization where there is no leader or manager
must liberate, that is, focus on playing their individual part with freedom and ensure gaining a
proper space to use that power, furthermore, gain a mind-set that the business can function
without the manager or leader but not without them. Setting robust rules, regulations and
organisational policies could also reduce the challenges associated with the business
functioning for the organisations aiming to survive in the competitive business environment
without the presence of a leader or manager (Joseph et al. 2015). From the analysis of
findings, the thesis statement presented an idea about how the various questions were
answered, which represented that good leadership qualities and interpersonal skills as well as
decision making skills had been critical to the success of any business. The topic did not only
focus on the managerial and leadership concepts but also prioritised on the ways an
organisation should be managed without the presence of a leader or manager. This would be
helpful for making employees commit fully by working as an unit and at the same time, make

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collective decisions and share or exchange information among themselves to make the
decision making process successful and noteworthy. All these aspects had been covered here
for deriving a good and effective conclusion in the end of the report.

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