Leadership and multiple perspectives on the world

Leadership and Multiple ways at looking at the World.

LEADERSHIP

LEADERSHIP AND MULTIPLE WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD

SENTENCE OUTLINE

The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions.

Social constructionism and social construction of reality

Social constructionism refers to the development of phenomena relative to social contexts while social constructivism refers to an individual's making meaning of knowledge within a social context.

The study of how social construction is created even within the organization has been a major achievement in trying to solve and understand internal or external conflicts in an organization.

Rules that define an organization and why they emerge

Four primary concepts provide insight into the underlying personality of most organizations: history, mission, culture and incentives.

High-context culture and low-context culture

In some cultures communication occurs predominantly through explicit statements in text and speech.

High-Context communication involves implying a message through that which is not uttered.

Introduction

Several thoughts have crisscrossed my mind about how the current American corporate and there leadership types are pegged. The experience I have gathered working as a business development consultant to help the local business increase their sales over a long period of time have made me think about the things that constitute a good man; what qualities of a person deserve reward; which actions result in the reprisal or out-grouping; and the basic assumptions about human nature. For instance my co-workers felt that since I was very 9 young compared to their 20-year experience I was "not-in" and there was nothing new that I could possibly offer. I was "let in" only after they realized that we had a commonality of taking the best care of the clients.

Within any organization such as the company that I work with, tend to sustain the culture through various practices as well as evaluate the cultural fit between the employees and the organization. The TV marketing sphere is competitive and it's imperative for a company in this field to develop a culture which will breed success and incessantly ingratiate into the employees. The most sought after qualities is innovation through the solutions offered by us to the local businesses. This is always developed through communication both in the boardroom and in the hallway where well crafted wall hangings with words such as "Innovation is power" act as a constant reminder. The solution provided has to have a clear and measurable result of incremented sales not just in concept. Therefore a good person is one who has these qualities of innovativeness in my company. Innovation is hugely related to creativity, and most of the people tend to be creative at different situations. Therefore in our TV marketing company, the employees have freedom such as reporting or leaving time and there is little supervision on how you use your time. However performance is always sought after and those individuals who say can bring into the company a lucrative client or come up with solution that are not just targeted but highly effective will therefore be well rewarded. Through various reward schemes such as bonuses for the best performer and a percentage increment on the salary, the culture of the company can be sustained through these means.

However there are several demeanors that result in reprisal in the cases where the employee acted contrary to the company culture. For instance if an employee uses deceit in the production of an advertisement campaign then this was unacceptable and can result in the out grouping of the individual. This is because one of the dominant norms characterizing my company is that of integrity. Most of the activities undertaken by the organization are aimed at sustaining the culture in the company. For instance many practices in the human resource such as selection, training, performance appraisal and career development bolsters the culture of the organization. New employees are adapted to the culture of the company by a process known as socialization.

The central concept of The Social Construction of Reality is that persons and groups interacting together in a social system form, over time, concepts or mental representations of each other's actions, and that these concepts eventually become habituated into reciprocal roles played by the actors in relation to each other. When these roles are made available to other members of society to enter into and play out, the reciprocal interactions are said to be institutionalized (for example in the case of the business consultancy that I work on). In the process of this institutionalization, meaning is embedded in society. Knowledge and people's conception (and belief) of what reality is becomes embedded in the institutional fabric of society. Social reality is therefore said to be socially constructed (Stanley, 1984, p.43).

A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans. The social construction of reality is an ongoing, dynamic process that is reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. Because social constructs as facets of reality and objects of knowledge are not "given" by nature, they must be constantly maintained and re-affirmed in order to persist. This process also introduces the possibility of change: that is, co-workers got to understand that I was an optimistic person and had no intention of changing the corporate but to just fit in and bring positive additions (Stanley, 1984, p.58).