Thursday, August 15, 2019

Leadership and multiple ways of looking at the world

Human nature is not an easy term to define, but every day’s activities of an individual revolve around the human nature of that person. The nature of a person may dictate such things as, how to handle various situations, how does one relate with others etc. Therefore human nature is both a product of physical environment of an individual and the biological aspects that a person might have inherited from the ancestors. A good person There are varied viewpoints on how one should be a good person. This is affected by the moral obligation of a person on how they perceive a good person to be and how they can achieve that. The society has got some moral standards that have been set which happens to be static and rigid (Schein, 1992). But with the gestalt that guides a good person, they happen to be flexible and dynamic. A good person will first envision a certain behavior, perform it and compare its outcome with what is the standard of the good. The outcome of the comparison will make the person consider whether taking the behavior or not. The choice is then made according to what fits the goodness described. Therefore, the judgment of a good person depends on how the individual takes that judgment. Moral behavior is an important concept of identity of a good person. Apart from moral uprightness, good character also is part of a good person. Within good characters, will obviously lay good moral behavior. To increase some good personalities in the organization, it is good to give rewards to those considered to be of good quality character. Many of the things that might come in mind when a person is asked about qualities of a good person are those who are kind, helpful, caring, understanding and patient. In most cases a just person will really try as much as possible to do to others what he/she might also want it done to them. This implies that rewards and punishment should be given where it is due supposed to be. Therefore people in a group who will show kindness and understanding to others deserve reward. These are people who in most cases will also be helpful to others and show patience whenever they feel that something is not going as much as they like. With rewarding this, it will increase the development of good characters as the physical environment rather than only depending on the inherited traits can also influence human nature. According to Schein (1992), rewards acts as an incentives of making people to learn. Therefore, people who show kindness to others and obey law also deserve reward. In many organization people have been subjected to reprisal actions because of being whistleblowers.   In any organization, if the management does not follow the laid down procedures and ethical behaviors there are high chances of employees with good characters to disclose such wrong doings. Many managers have developed the art of bureaucracy and autocracy in the organization that they don’t give room for the employees to give their views. But many people do not want to talk about their organizational problems in public due to the fact that they feel that it is dirty politicizing their organization (Morgan, 2004). There can be cases such as embezzlement of funds, mistreating of employees and favoritism in the organization. Such behaviors, especially fund embezzlement requires employees with a strong character who believes in upright morality to disclose the information or else, it may remain a silent matter and thus at the end hurt the organization. High & Low context Culture in the organization. High context culture refers to a situation where by a group of people in the society have had a close relationship spanning for a long period of time. In this culture, there is high emphasis on interpersonal relationships. With this kind of culture in place people develop a high sense of trust among themselves, putting personal interest aside and concentrating on the general interest of the group or society. The events in this culture can only can ony be understood in context, (Schein, 1992). On the other hand low context culture represents a society of people with so many connections but only spanning for a short period of time. In this culture, logic, factors and directness are highly valued. Therefore problems in the organization have to be lined up and then solve one after the other. Decisions concerning problems have to be based on the factors rather than intuition. There are various differences between the high and low context culture. In the high context culture, the group members have a long-term relationship with strong boundaries. They consider the relationship to be more important than the tasks performed. Contrary in the low context culture, it is characterized by shorter relationships with no strong boundaries, putting the tasks ahead of the relationship. According to Schein, group leaders sets the boundaries while the group members are the one to test the effectiveness of the boundaries. Another different between the two is the barrier to enter. High context’s strong boundaries create a big problem for any outsider to enter the relationship as compared to the low relationship, which allows for outsiders to enter easily. This is because the low context culture has a unidirectional culture as compared to the mutual casualty of high context. My workplace is an example of a low context culture. This is because of the following, it is not difficult to enter the organization as long as one has the required qualification and there is a vacancy, then equal chances of employment are given to all; the individuals output is highly considered than his/her relationship with the organization; there are objectives that the organization has to achieve, one after the other starting from the immediate objectives to long term; any decision made or arrived at has to be based on facts of the business environment. Social construction Reality. When people come together and interact for a certain period, they form a culture that arises because of the mode they decide to behave or influences certain behavior. In such cases, the behavior might lead to certain conventional rules of behavior differentiating this group from the other groups in the society. According to Morgan (2004), â€Å"when we talk of culture, we are usually referring to the pattern of development reflected in a society’s system of knowledge, ideology, values, laws, and day-to-day ritual†, (pp 116). In constructing the social realities, there are factors about certain behaviors that have been put in place, these have consists of objective factors. The constructing of social realities depends on both the physical and social realities. In physical reality, it represents a certain organization, for instance a workplace, school, or churches, while the social reality will consist of the inhabitants of the physical reality. The rules that are formed and followed by human being in the physical reality ends up affecting the whole original physical reality. For instance, when an organization puts down certain values embedded in the organization’s motto, it is not that it is the physical organization that brought about the motto, but rather that the humans just came up with the belief and have made it a universal belief. All those who will be coming after the original thinkers and proponents of the motto will also have to follow same suit and behave in the same manner. This kind of values of the organization governs its members. In continued development of the values, it forms the basis of the organizational culture. There is no any correct culture, as many organizations happen to compete each other.   Therefore, the correct culture is only that which helps the organization to achieve its goals and objectives (Schein, 1992). When an organization finds certain means of doing its duties to achieve the objectives it becomes now a habit for all of that community to follow same suit. This implies that it will be a habitualization of the organization to be performing those activities in that manner in future. The problem with habitualization in the organization is that it narrows down the other means of doing the same job in a different way that may be beneficial to the organization. Reference: Morgan. G (2004): Images of the Organization, Sage Publication Inc, ISBN 1412939798 Schein E. H (1992): Organizational Culture and, Leadership, Jossey-Bass, ISBN 1555424872.

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