Fast et al. (2012) – Power and overconfident decision-making

Discuss About The Ethical Leadership Core Job Characteristics.

A business organisation runs operates on the values and principle that has been established by the owners or the management. The strategic management policies or decisions of the business are all based on these values and principles. Organisation behaviour is the way people in an origination interact with each other. Individual behaviour impact the performance of the organisation and therefore understanding the concept will help and guide the organisation in improving the performance. The three articles that are selected are based on the organisation behaviour theme. Leadership, power, innovative behavior and decision making are all attributes associated with organisation behaviour. This assignment will be divided in four introduction discussion, recommendation and conclusion part. The discussion part will include article summary and analysis of three articles that is chosen in three sub sections.

Fast, N.J., Sivanathan, N., Mayer, N.D. and Galinsky, A.D., 2012. Power and overconfident decision-making. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 117(2), pp.249-260.

Decision making is an integral part of leadership in an organisation based on these decisions the company strive to achieve the objectives of the business.  This article analysis the relation between power and overconfidence, the article is based on three theoretical and empirical contributions they are as follows: with power there is overconfidence which may lead to over powering the knowledge and judgement ability of an individual. There is also a decline in the performance of the people due to overconfidence which is a result of power in the organisation. Furthermore, the authors have concluded that the sense of power reconciles the relationship between power and overconfidence. The dynamics between power and overconfidence is analysed with the help of the information gathered by 5 experiments that are held by the authors (Fast et al. 2012).

With the help of five experiments the authors have concluded that the sense of power make the sense of overconfidence worse. The findings indicate that a pattern in the behaviour of the individual who is in power. Overconfident people are likely to obtain responsibility of a role that afford power and but the subjective sense of power that these roles carry makes an individual even more overconfident this in turn makes the situation worse. The authors agree on the fact that power and overconfidence is directly relatable and the fact that financial loss is also directly responsible for over confidence (Fast et al. 2012).   The fact that the authors do not agree by the end of the experiment is that the making the people feel that their role and their capabilities are not sufficient will reduce the impact of power and overconfidence, this point can be further synthesised as the subjective sense of power does not only depend on the competency of a person therefore other aspects should also be considered in order to make the hypothesis more relatable. One of the biggest flaws that has been observed in the assignment is that it talks about power but the sample size that the authors have chosen to conduct the assignment is based on the observation of students, this generalises the power perspective and based on a hypothetical situations (Pettigrew 2014). This makes the analysis more psychology based than being based on management dynamics. The experiments are appropriate to understand the dynamics of power play but it is insufficient to understand how power influences an individual who is in a position to afford power in an organisational situation (Pettigrew  2014).

Piccolo et al. (2010) – The relationship between ethical leadership and core job characteristics

The importance of the research is explained in the examples stated in the concluding paragraph of the article, in order to avoid such situations power dynamics and organisation structure should not have concentrated power in the hands of an individual. There is also future scope of research in the topic as discussed by the authors they indicate that the article successfully establishes a relation in between the two variables but there is scope to identify a solution to the issue (Trianni et al. 2016).

• Over confidence leads to faulty judgement and wrong decision making, thus leading financial loss
• Many times organisations do not understand the reason the failure of its certain decisions sometimes the higher management have an idea of the misuse of power within the organisation in that case this research can be applied in real work setting as in order to understand the issue and to deal with the problem in a strategic way
• The organisational behaviour of an individual is based on the values and culture of the organisation and therefore a real life situation will be different from that of a hypothetical situation that a student is being asked to analyse.

Piccolo, R.F., Greenbaum, R., Hartog, D.N.D. and Folger, R., 2010. The relationship between ethical leadership and core job characteristics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(2?3), pp.259-278.

The theory that has been discussed in this article is the concept of ethical leadership. The role of a leader is essential to understand the performance of the company and the employees. It is the responsibility of the leader to motivate and encourage the subordinates to improve their efficiency and develop commitment towards the organisation. But the concept of ethical leadership deals with sensitive situations of organisational dilemma and understanding of the perspective of the impact of an action (Piccolo et al. 2010). 

Another important model that is used in the assignment is job characteristics model (JCM) (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) the idea of the article is to establish a relation between the following variables: performance efficiency, ethical leadership, job autonomy, effort, and importance of the job (Ali et al. 2014).

Apart from the above mentioned concepts the concept of motivation is also include in the articles as it tries to establish a relation in between two of the factors in JCM and ethical leadership indicating that it leads to improved motivation among the employees. The two factors of JCM are: task significance and task autonomy.

The authors conducted a survey in order to gather relevant information form a number of organisations and the conclusion of the study indicates that there is a certain dynamics in between the attribute of task significance and effort and relationships between ethical leadership and the performance of the employees and the subordinates (Piccolo et al. 2010).

The hypothesis drawn by the authors are:

1. There is a positive relation in between job autonomy, task significance and ethical leadership (proved)
2. Effort is positively associated with Task significance and job autonomy (partially true as the second part of the hypothesis which states a relation in between autonomy and effort is not established).
3. Task significance and job autonomy creates a relation in between effort and ethical leadership (partially agrees with the hypothesis as the relation with job autonomy was not established)
4. There is positive relation in between task performance and organisational citizenship (proved and agrees with the authors)
5. Effort mediates the relationships between task significance and task performance, OCB and effort establishes a relationship between autonomy and task performance (partially proven as the particulars are like the H3 that has been discussed above) (Piccolo et al. 2010).

Autonomy is the degree of freedom that employees have to accomplish the goals and to fulfil the job responsibilities, which is dependent on several factors both from the end of the employee as well as from the organisation therefore it is difficult to pin an established relation (Bouckenooghe et al. 2015).

Pieterse et al. (2010) – Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior

The authors conclude that using inputs form the employees in the process of decision making, using rewards to support ethical behavior among the employees and establishing values and principles in the operations of the organisation help in developing the concept of autonomy and provide importance to the job. The role of an ethical leader helps in supporting the objective of the business operation with the help of creating a clear vision of the process of job and the importance of the job role (Bouckenooghe et al. 2015).

The is relevance to real world is significant as there are issues observed in organisations regarding job satisfaction and employee retention in that case the findings and the result of the study will help in understanding the issue in the organisation and tackle with the situation in a strategic manner (Bouckenooghe et al. 2015).

• Ethics is more than just what is right; therefore the leaders of the organisation should act responsibility towards the employees or the subordinate in order to understand the issues and grievances of individual employees.
• Ethical leadership should be introduced in the CSR aspect as well
• Commitment of the employees towards the organisation help in aligning the interest of the organisation along with the interest of the employees this further motivates the employees to improve the efficiency and performance.
• The leader in an organisation is responsible for establishing an inspirational work environment which improves and impacts the efforts that is presented by the employees

Pieterse, A.N., Van Knippenberg, D., Schippers, M. and Stam, D., 2010. Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior: The moderating role of psychological empowerment. Journal of organizational behavior, 31(4), pp.609-623.

Transactional and transformational leadership styles are important in organisations whose business model is based on innovations. The process of innovation initiates changes and development in the organisation based on the trends of the industry as well as the requirement of the customers.  The concept of innovative behaviour is discussed in the assignment; it establishes a positive correlation in between Transformational leadership, in contrast to transactional leadership (Pieterse et al. 2010). Innovative behaviour in organisations is encouraged in order to improve the performance of the employees as well as in the long run improve the product or service offered to the customers. In order to keep up with the dynamics of the industry of operation the company has to keep on changing and evolving with the help of innovation. Another most important aspect of adopting innovation in the business model is that it assures that the company will maintain competitive advantage over the other organisation operating in the same industry (Wu et al. 2014)..

Transformational leadership is the style where the leader encourages change and welcomes new and innovative idea not only in the product but also in the process of business operation (F. Vito et al. 2014).

Transactional leadership is the style where there is a give and take relation in between the subordinates and leader, in order to do something the leader has to offer something in return (F. Vito et al. 2014).

Conclusion

Psychological empowerment can be defined as the motivation that employees have from within in understanding the responsibility they have and the significance of their job.

These are the theories which are significant in the article, the authors tries to establish relation in between the variables in a positive and negative way. They conclude that there is positive relation in between transformational leader in the organisation and innovative behaviour provided there is high rate of  Psychological empowerment, on the other hand they establish that the transactional leadership style have a negative impact provided the circumstances are kept unchanged(Pieterse et al. 2010).

The study indicates that both the types of leadership impact the innovation behaviour when there is psychological empowerment. The attribute of a transformational leader of being inspirational and encouraging attitude positively impacts the innovative characteristics of a person who is innovative in nature. The leaders who follow this style align the interest of the employees along with the objective of the organisation in order to motivate the people and help them in enjoying their work with the organisation. Creation of innovative ideas require a work place and work culture that permits creativity and allows the employees to work in freedom this is not possible without the motivational support of the leaders in the organisation. The authors state that the involvement and the identification of the responsibilities of the employees along with transformational leadership are identified as a positive situation to foster innovation (Wu et al. 2014). On the other hand, transactional leadership style is identified to have a negative impact on the innovative behaviour as the people with high psychological empowerment deem transactional leadership as controlling and de-motivating (Slåtten and Mehmetoglu 2015).

The relevance of the study is prevalent in the real world as the innovation is one of the major challenges in the organisational scenario. Correct implementation of innovation will lead to a profitable situation. The companies emphasise on innovation but do not understand the prerequisites of the system, thus this study is important (Wu et al. 2014).

• Accept changes in the industry and view these as the opportunity for improvement rather than threats
• Market analysis is an important part of growth
• Motivation of the team is important but it is also important to encourage individuals based on the force that drives the individuals motivation

Conclusion

It can be concluded form the three articles that organisation behaviour plays an important role in strategic management. It ensures a healthy relation with human resource and the objective of the business. Power, leadership styles, innovation, decision making are some of the aspects that are intangible but have a significant impact on the operations of the business. There are situations that the management of the company cannot explain thus; there is relevance of all the three articles in the real world.

Reference List:

Ali, S.A.M., Said, N.A., Kader, S.F.A., Ab Latif, D.S. and Munap, R., 2014. Hackman and Oldham’s job characteristics model to job satisfaction. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 129, pp.46-52.

Bouckenooghe, D., Zafar, A. and Raja, U., 2015. How ethical leadership shapes employees’ job performance: The mediating roles of goal congruence and psychological capital. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(2), pp.251-264.

Vito, G., E. Higgins, G. and S. Denney, A., 2014. Transactional and transformational leadership: An examination of the leadership challenge model. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 37(4), pp.809-822.

Fast, N.J., Sivanathan, N., Mayer, N.D. and Galinsky, A.D., 2012. Power and overconfident decision-making. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 117(2), pp.249-260.

Pettigrew, A.M., 2014. The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.

Piccolo, R.F., Greenbaum, R., Hartog, D.N.D. and Folger, R., 2010. The relationship between ethical leadership and core job characteristics. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31(2?3), pp.259-278.

Pieterse, A.N., Van Knippenberg, D., Schippers, M. and Stam, D., 2010. Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior: The moderating role of psychological empowerment. Journal of organizational behavior, 31(4), pp.609-623.

Slåtten, T. and Mehmetoglu, M., 2015. The effects of transformational leadership and perceived creativity on innovation behavior in the hospitality industry. Journal of Human Resources in Hospitality & Tourism, 14(2), pp.195-219.

Trianni, A., Cagno, E. and Farné, S., 2016. Barriers, drivers and decision-making process for industrial energy efficiency: A broad study among manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises. Applied Energy, 162, pp.1537-1551.

Wu, C.H., Parker, S.K. and De Jong, J.P., 2014. Need for cognition as an antecedent of individual innovation behavior. Journal of Management, 40(6), pp.1511-1534.

Conclusion