Managerial styles and their impact on organizational productivity and employee satisfaction

¶ … Management on Productivity and Efficiency Within the Organization

Shaunna Cook

Craig McCoy

Applied Research Project

APPLIED RESEARCH PROJECT

APPLIED RESEARCH PROJECT

In all organizations, the managers and the employees play an important role. In the present day, organizations experience and go through rapid technological changes, continuously, decreasing product life cycles, globalization, international global economic setting and also the extensive accessibility to information. As a result, in order for these organizations to continue surviving and being relevant in the market, style of management becomes a significant element in the success of the organization. The role of a manager as a leader within an organization can result in different styles of management. The different styles selected by the managers have an influence on the behavioral patterns within the organization, which in turn impacts the morale and motivation of the employee. As an overall effect, the managerial style influences the level of satisfaction of the employee, which in turn, influences the level of productivity. Managers utilizing the fitting style of leadership can increase employee job satisfaction, productivity and commitment towards the organization in the long-run. Therefore, style of management, strategies employed, attitudes demanded and the culture nurtured are all elements that govern and largely impact the level of success of the organization. In essence, managerial styles can act as a form of security for the organization.

Statement of the Problem

One of the most significant issues that result in the development and advancement within an organization as well as their managers is the styles of management. There are different managerial styles, which include authoritarian style of management, participative managerial style, and benevolent authoritarian, as well as consultative style. These different styles of management can have disparate impact on the productivity and efficiency within the organization. In particular, in the present day, productivity plays a significant role in advancing the organization. For this reason, plenty of attention and emphasis is placed on the managers with regard to the level of concentration and consideration they have on their agents. The managers and their style of conduct and command can instigate increased productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency of their labor force.

In the present day, contemporary organizations are designated by incessantly changing dynamics such as the intricacy of personalization, and rivaling requirements of individuals rather than methods, dependence upon technology, and the increase of the understanding economy amongst a number of other aspects. Considering this, we can understand why managerial styles become a vital element towards not only the success, but also the survival of the organization in the present compared to the past. In present times, the mission for proper organization managerial style encompasses different aspects such as educating, encouraging, strengthening and enabling the followers or workforces to become better. The essence of management and leadership in contemporary organizations these days is the fact that leadership ought to be for the benefit of the followers and under no circumstances constantly for that enhancement from the leaders (Karimi et al., 2011.)

Intended Audience

The applied research project's intended audience includes managers of different organizations across different business sectors. This research is critical to organizations and their management team as it explores the existing relationship between the styles of management and the level of productivity from the work force. It is imperative to take note that this does not just encompass organizations such as those in the manufacturing and business industries alone. It also includes organizations such as hospitals and schools with the latter being assessed in the productivity of the teachers and the students as well. In particular, organizations as a whole are intended audiences as the paper offers a framework in which the entities can assess to improve their general level of productivity.

Value to the Audience

The applied research project will have great value to the intended audience. In particular, managers of organizations across different business sectors will be able to ascertain the different styles of management that are required to attain employee productivity and in turn steer the organization into success. In particular, the managers as well as the employees will be able to have an understanding of the suitable and appropriate relationship that is there between the style of management and the level of productivity of the personnel. Organizational commitment from the employees is determined by different elements such as job satisfaction, organizational culture as well as attitudes and behaviors necessitated within the entity. These aspects are influenced by the style of management and this project advances the knowledge of understanding how the leadership style influences productivity (Dorgan et al., 2006).

Identify and describe key lessons the reader of this paper will take away

The audience and readers of this paper will take away a number of key lessons. For starters, one of the main lessons will be the corresponding relationships between the style of management and the level of employee productivity and efficiency. For instance, what is the relationship between autocratic managerial style and the level of productivity? Another key aspect to be learnt from reading this will be how to relate and manage the different behaviors and attitudes of the employees or workforces. For instance, what style of management is effective and goes in tandem with gracious or stubborn followers? Therefore, this will enable the reader to ascertain the kind of relation and style to employ in order to relate with the manager or the employee in order to have effectiveness and greater level of productivity.

Brief Review of the Literature

The endeavor to choose an 'effective management style' in an industry can be taken up only after understanding the concepts of different styles in different contexts thoroughly. Thus, an effective literature review would require analyzing each concept and style through independent percepts and parameters. It then becomes important to understand the term 'Effective management style' relative to goals sought under contextual perspectives.

Effective management style is the degree to which leader/manager directs his or her followers in a particular envisaged direction. It is the strategy that leaders use to achieve organizational goals and objectives through the alignment and realignment of resources so as to bring about the desired outcome. A management style is the unique way in which the leaders run organizations i.e. how they make decisions about day-to-day operations, how they deal with their stakeholders, how they build their brands, the setting of goals and implementation of strategies (Nwadukwe & Court, 2012). The most common management styles are defensive, bureaucratic, visionary, pacesetting, coaching, indifferent, permissive, affiliative, democratic, authoritative, coercive and authoritarian styles of management. In his study of leadership and management styles in the pharmaceutical companies, McGuire found that the most common management styles in the industry were delegating, transformational, transactional, consultative, persuasive, and charismatic. In another study by Worrall, it is reported that leaders in the U.K. were mostly restrictive and bureaucratic in their styles of management and that these two leadership styles were not conducive or facilitative for innovation or creativity. Another researcher Blandchard agreed that there were many different styles of management but said that there are only four major ones, namely delegating, coaching, supporting and directing. Finally, in his study, Khandwalla reported that there are ten styles of leadership, namely: altruistic, professional, visionary, entrepreneurial, organic, authoritarian, paternalistic, bureaucratic, participative and conservative.

The best leader is one that meets the goals he has set for the organization and inspires his followers to get to their maximum potential (Lee and Chuang as cited in Obiwuru, et.al, 2011). This is why many people perceive effective leaders as a source of competitive advantage with regards to performance improvement. For example, an effective management style is transactional leadership. A leader with transactional management style will help the organization to achieve its goals more quickly and effectively by linking employee performance with rewards and ensuring that workers have what they require to get work done. Another effective management style is the visionary style. Visionary leaders are good at envisaging destinations (e.g. a desired financial or performance level), communicating the vision to all the major stakeholders including employees, and then acting according to a strategic plan to achieve the said vision. It has also been found that visionary leadership helps create very high levels of motivation, trust, and commitment among employees resulting in higher performance levels.

There are three things about knowledge in organizations; they are generated by employees, embodied by individuals and taken advantage of by the leaders / managers of the organizations (Agbim, 2013). Apart from knowledge, several other factors have been found to affect innovativeness in businesses. As was stated earlier, the most important factor is the leader's management style. Thus, for a business to survive in a highly competitive industry there is a need to have a leader who has an adaptive management style. In adaptive management style is a transformational style that greatly increases an organization's ability to innovate (ability to generate new ideas). Transformational leadership has five key components:

(1) Individualized consideration: the leader behaves in a way that impresses subordinates to follow;

(2) Intellectual stimulation: the leader challenges his or her followers in word and in deeds to be creative and constantly strive to improve their work processes;

(3) Inspirational: the leader has various techniques that he or she uses to motivate their followers to increase their performance;

(4) Attributive charisma: transformational leaders are individuals who have great interpersonal skills and they can easily interact with their followers. This oft increases the perception of power that the leader holds;

(5) Idealized influence: this refers to a leader's charismatic abilities that can help inspire followers to believe and follow his or her mission (Agkin, 2013).

Thus, having an adaptive or a transformational management style is important as it helps bring about changes not only in the work-life of employees but also in their personal lives. A transformational leader can inspire an entire workforce to increase its performance and to generate more ideas to help an organization to achieve its goals.

A few years ago, researchers Pascale and Athos, studied Japanese styles of management in a bid to explore the reasons of the economic success of thousands of Japanese companies. They realized that the general Japanese management style emphasized on continuous adaptation, continuous improvement, co-operation ethics, hard work, collective decision making, lifelong learning, seniority, lifetime employment and paternalism (Nwadukwe, & Court, 2012). In contrast, the American style of leadership focused on innovation, interactivity, business unit autonomy, high flexible structure, and core values. Thus, the studies on these two major world economies show that different forms of management styles are effective in different countries and cultures. Thus, to find the right management style, one has to know what works in a country and what does not work to adopt the right and most effective management style in place. It is only through assessing what works, that a company can get the right kind of leader to help it achieve its strategic goals.

Conclusion

Managerial styles have come to be one of the most important elements that influence the level of success for contemporary organizations. There are different styles of management such as autocratic, participative and benevolent styles. The following proposed applied research project will analyze the relationship that exists between the style of management used within an organization and the level of productivity and efficiency that comes about. The applied research project will be advancing the investigation of the organizational problem by evaluating the different managerial styles that can be utilized within the organization to improve and increase the level of productivity and efficiency. This will enable organizations to tackle the problem of harmony between the managerial style and the productivity of the employees within the organization.

The next steps of the research process will include the literature review. The section will evaluate the preceding researches that have analyzed the impact of managerial styles within the organization across different industries. The subsequent phase will include the methodology section, which will detail the way one plans to tackle the research problem. The overall design of the project will take a quantitative methodology approach. The independent variable will be the style of management while the dependent variables will include the level of productivity of the employees and also the level of efficiency. Thereafter, there will be the data collection procedures. The method of data collection used will be questionnaires handed to the population. The sampling unit will include employees and managers from six different organizations in different industries. This method will be employed to ascertain that the research encompasses the whole organization and not biased on one particular sector.