Transformational Leadership
The data set in the scholarly sphere that pertains to transformation leadership and what goes into the practice thereof is quite voluminous and massive. As such, pinning down one theorist or idea is not the easiest thing to do when trying to select something to focus on for a report like this. However, the author of this report chose the work that is cited in this report because making the changes needed for a firm are important but maintaining business operations and continuity as the changes are made is even more important. Indeed, making needed changes will pale in comparison to if those changes wreak havoc and cause a slow-down (or dead-stop) with the operations and efficacy of a firm. While improving and evolving a business and its processes is important, it is even more important to maintain business continuity and cohesion at all times regardless of what is otherwise going on.
Analysis
The main source form which the author of this report will make the point espoused and asserted in the introduction as written by Kaplan and was published in 2006. Kaplan starts off his treatise by asserting that expensive restructurings, in addition to being expensive, can be a shock to the system that makes up the business. Indeed, he asserts that it is far more effective and efficient to design a system that works reasonable well and then slowly attune and shape the business to meet the strategic ends identified and shown from the strategy in question. When it comes to businesses in modern history trying to pull off one of the two of those approaches, the overall outcomes are decidedly mixed. Regardless, the stated aim of many to most of those changes have been to "unlock value" in the business and trying to match the pathways and procedures of a business to the strategies that are crafted and developed. A sterling example of this in motion, as explained by Kaplan, was realized when mass production...
Indeed, businesses started to centralize and coalesce key functions like operations, sales and finance. They would also generate rather substantial economies of scale to accomplish what they were after. However, that general strategy took a major shift when strategy and setup became more regional and disparate in nature. This was seen as a bit of a downside from the centralized model in some ways but allow for more regional flexibility when the situation and geographical area called for it. Both of the structures mentioned above remained quite strong for a number of years with the latter clearly being the more dominant one in place. However, fundamental flaws emerged in both models in more recent years. This has led to many firms engaging in consistent restructurings to realize an ostensibly better business model but some of those changes have led to chaos and a disconnect between what was expected to be realized and what actually ended up happening (Kaplan, 2006).
One way to supposedly mitigate the dilemmas with the aforementioned business models was to use more of a matrix-based hierarchy rather than relying on the conventional and tradition chain of command. However, this led to new problems as there would often be conflicts between two people or managers at the same power level in said matrix structure. As such, there was no single way to proceed without failing to meet the demands of at least one of the people involved. Further, the assets that must be leveraged and created to take advantage of market opportunities have shifted from the literal to more abstract and cebebral endeavors. In other words, there is less of a focus on the financial and physical assets of a firm and more focus on working with the knowledge workers, research and development and information technology resources to help realize the opportunities that exist and meeting the…
