Organisational Culture and Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organisational Culture and Leadership - Essay Example The definition of leadership is founded on the possession of a distinctive skill to influence people towards attaining set goals and objectives (Tsai, 2011). Since each organization has its own culture that governs it, the result is that there is no universally acceptable leadership style or leader. However, it is believed that provided a leadership takes into consideration the culture within the organization, the results will be great (Tsai, 2011). The first dominant framework on leadership was the Trait Theory or the â€Å"Great Men† Theory which was proposed in the early twentieth century. The theory considers â€Å"personality, social, physical or intellectual traits to differentiate leaders from non-leaders† (Shoup, 2005, p.2). This theory ascribes conventional qualities like ambition and energy, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, and knowledge to leaders and holds that leaders are born, not made. Mid-twentieth century saw the rise of the Behavio urist school of leadership which emphasized on the actions and dominant behavior of the leaders and highlighted the leaders’ behavior on the job, use of authority and task-relationship orientation. Later, scholars such as Fred Fiedler realized that a leader must match his/her situation and leadership style should vary depending on the situation and context. This gave way to the third phase of leadership studies, known as the Contingency school, which focussed on job constitution, leader-member association, and power position.