Leadership Management and Research (Research Paper Sample)

Leadership Management and Research
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Question 1
Introduction
Effective administration is usually comprised of two major functions; management and leadership. The objective of Question 1 will be analyzing leadership theory, analyzing ethical and reflective decision making, and analyzing administration and management skills for schools and school systems. This will be done through answering sub-questions under Question 1.
Define both leadership and management while comparing and contrasting their key features
Leadership is defined as a process through which a person influences a society or group of people, whereby the influence leads to maximizing efforts of others towards realizing a certain goal, vision, or objective (Kruse, 2013). This means that in order to be a leader, such a person requires having followers. The person would also have to possess the capacity of translating visions into reality. This definition also shows that leadership is based from social influence and not necessarily power or authority. On the other hand, management can is defined as working through and with other people to meet objectives of an organization (Montana & Charnov, 2008). From this definition, management means planning, staffing, controlling, leading, and coordinating people in an organization in order to get desired results.
From definitions of leadership and management, contrasting and similar features of the two appear. For instance, leadership and management share a similarity of activities that can lead to realizing objectives or goals of an organization. Leadership is done to achieve objectives, and so does leadership. Leadership is of uttermost importance in running organizations, most notably schools and school systems. School leadership is defined as a process of guiding and enlisting talents to energize parents, teachers, and students towards achieving educational aims that are common (Fullan, 2001). This means that without having positive educational results, or say outcomes, both leadership and management would not be effective in a school system. Another key similarity is that both leadership and management involve having a group of people behind. For instance, leadership requires having a following of people to lead, while management requires having a group of people to manage. In this context, students, teacher, and pupils are followers of a school leader while at the same time they are managed by school management.
On the other hand, definitions of the two terms show that leadership and management share many differences. For instance, school leadership can be seen as a calling or say an art, while school management can be seen as a career, or say a science. This means that school leadership involves being followed naturally as a result of having desired qualities loved by many students, teachers and parents, while school management involves being obeyed as a must-do condition by teachers and students. These instances raise another difference between leadership and management, where school leadership can be seen as having followers while school management can be seen as having subordinates. This means school leaders are followed willingly, or say voluntarily, by their followers while a school manager has to be obeyed authoritatively by subordinates. School leaders do not thereby have to necessarily be superior to their followers, but school managers have to be superior to subordinates.
This contrast between leadership and management shows that school leadership involves multidirectional influence to produce movement, change, and innovation. On the other hand, school management involves unidirectional authority to produce consistency, order, and achievement. This means school leadership is basically focused on leading students and teachers or staff while school management is focused on managing students and teachers or staff. Leadership can be seen as having a horizon subject oriented towards long-term effects while management can be seen as having a horizon subject oriented towards short-term effects. This means that school leadership seeks vision while school management seeks objectives, both of which are results or say outcomes.
More so, leadership can be seen as having a strategic approach while management has an operational approach. This means school leadership requires having a plan that is not necessarily predefined while school management requires a predefined or ready for use plan. Also notable is that school leadership involves having an appeal to the heart while management is more of having an appeal to the head. In school leadership, energy is more of a passion while in school management it is more of control, whereby school leadership shapes while school management enacts.
Discuss advantages and disadvantages of both leadership and management especially with respect to need for an organization to continuously transform itself internally as an adaptive response to constant change within the external environment
Leadership and management have a number of advantages and disadvantages with respect to need for organizations to transform themselves. To start with, effective school leadership skills usually enhance success of a school and school system towards transforming itself in a constantly changing external environment. This means that effective school leadership skills have the advantage of influencing change in a school system, without really attempting to control change. According to Fullan (2001), change is a journey where every person in that journey is a change agent (2). This means that students and staff are influenced to change under a certain school leadership, meaning there would be overall transformation of a school and the school system.
As such, school leadership offers the benefit of raising awareness about nature of transformation and benefits associated with meeting certain goals. This offers the benefit of ensuring that students and staff being led become committed towards change willingly, thereby enhancing their productivity in a school system. Successful transformation of a school system usually calls for consistent and clear directional initiatives on a long term basis, which are the some of the key features of school leadership. This makes school leadership have the benefit of creating energy, clarifying priorities and signaling commitment to transformation in behavior and performance.
On the other hand, effective school management skills also have advantages on a school system transformation. To start with, transforming an organization to meet changing external environment requires proper administration. School management comes in to facilitate school administration. Effective school management and administration facilitates achieving objectives of a school by controlling and coordinating school systems and functions. More so, transforming an organization to meet changing external environment requires diversification and growth. School management comes in to offer practices that enable school systems to expand and grow. School management and administration skills offer a structural framework within a school system that facilitates it to meet new demands, and thereby grow as there is flexibility for transformation without losing control, as management offers the advantage of control.
In order to influence change, employees should be loved, capacity building should prevail, learning should be the key work, and transparency the key rule (Fullan, 2001). This means that in order for an organization to transform itself, it requires encouragement of good human relations. Effective school management offers good human relations. For instance, school management requires the right person to be offered a managerial position as per academic and experience qualifications. Clear authority lines and responsibilities are thereby set to ensure relations between school managers and staff is cordial. Effective management also has the advantage of offering an organization with more avenues for promotion and development through extensive decentralization and delegation of authority.
For an organization to be transformed to meet changing external environments there has to be cohesiveness and order in an organization. This is a key advantage that school management offers to a school and the school system. This assists in ensuring quality and efficiency of work and academics are improved through proper school management, thereby realizing change in a school system.
For schools and school systems to be transformed, technology is an input that any successful school leader should consider in implementing change. As a school leader and manager tries to transform a school, technology that can assist in improving student outcomes and teacher input such as internet, graphing calculators, simulated dissections, virtual field trips, should be introduced.
Leadership and management, despite having several advantages, they also have some disadvantages with respect to transforming an organization to be transformed in changing environments. For instance, future of both leadership and management cannot always unfold as anticipated. Leadership and management require anticipating future environments for plans to be developed. This is a major disadvantage as predicting the future is a hard task. This means that a strategy taken by either a leadership or management plan may be invalidated whenever the future fails to unfold like anticipated. Management has the disadvantage of being likely to be expensive. Organizations require hiring a manager for management roles. Both leadership and management also have the disadvantage of lacking capability in addressing immediate crises. This is because they are usually designed to offer benefits that may not be seen instantly but in the future, either short-term or long-term. However, good leader...