Managing Leading and Stewardship Business

Question: Discuss about the Managing Leading and Stewardship Business. Answer: Introduction Background With the introduction of ethics, values, or principles in organizational and business courses, Enron is one of the first businesses to be thought about. This is due to a complete breakdown of values on the behalf of its leadership. The ramifications for Enrons employees, stockholders, and internal and external stakeholders owing to its leadership, introduced an era of increased attention to the goings-on of organizations (Cunliffe, 2014). This change in how businesses are viewed by the public and government entities alone is reason enough for leaders to place a high level of importance on how they are viewed regarding their communication of organizational values. Leaders today have grown from the time seminal leadership research was presented by Burns in 1978 and Bass in 1985 (Copeland, 2014). Ample information exists to reinforce the need for leaders to communicate their organizations values inside and outside their organization. The objective of this paper is to discuss the case of Enron and analyze the questionable management practices. The Enron scandal occurred in 2004. However, the case of Enron is still significant today. The paper would analyze the role of managers and leaders to avoid the compromised business practices. The reasons for the questionable management practices can be discussed as: Issues Identified and Analysis The sheer profit making is the major driver of the compromised business practices used at Enron. Encouraging value-based decision-making in an organization supports the development of an organizational culture that becomes contagious in formal and informal situations. However, the leaders of Enron were not able to inculcate the value-based leadership at Enron. The organizational theory of leadership suggests that the leaders role is to expect followers to maintain ethical behavior and develop followers into leaders who exhibit ethical behavior. Leaders must consistently inspect what they expect and guide change where necessary to ensure that the organizational culture remains positive and ethical. The stakeholder theory suggests that the leaders and managers should take the decision that is best for all the stakeholders of the organization. However, the leaders of Enron ignored the interest of important stakeholders of the organization like customers, and investors. Values define the organization and how internal and external stakeholders view it. Another way to look at the definition of values is that they are synonymous with ethics, morals, and principles. From the analysis of Enron case, it can be said that the senior leadership team of Enron was responsible and accountable for the complete financial debacle. The stakeholder theory suggests that it was the duty of leaders to take care of the interest of all the stakeholders. However, the leaders of Enron failed in this. Fox (2013) provided some steps to improve the process and even argued that accountability and efficiency are important elements. The article provides the normal thoughts - employee empowerment and that leadership is important. However, the one that caught my attention was the idea that the leader needs to select the right staff - a small team (Fox, 2013). Recommendations for Enron It is recommended that Enron should focus on value-based leadership. Actions, Daft (2015) noted, speak louder than words, and employees tendto take their cues from what their leadership does more so than from what itsays. This is certainly not to say that leaders and followers who practice values-basedleadership are immune to mistakes and moral failures. Rather, they strive to be honest, ethical,humble, and tolerant of others mistakes.When they do fail, as all people do from time to time, they are open abouttheir mistakes and accept the responsibility for them (Daft, 2015).The goal ofvalues-based leadership is to create an organizational culture that is healthy,positive, and supportive of organizational goals by always doing what is right. This seems to me to be a goal allorganizations should strive to reach. They are two possible answers, depending on whether the leaders personal values fusion with the companies expressed culture or not. The first one may result in the development of greater employee loyalty and respect for the organization inside and outside. Inside the organization, i.e. the leader will communicate to the employees his values, which in turn are the organizational values (Foss, 2015). And the same values will be communicated to the customers, the community and the governments. In the case the leaders values do not match the organizational values, the leaders need to rebuild first his own values and second the employees values. To put the World in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must set our hearts straight. It is recommended that the leaders at Enron should focus on contemporary view of performance management system. The performance management process is a dreaded requirement (Foss, 2015). The reason it is a dreaded requirement by employees and supervisors alike is because of perspective and the way it is utilized. There needs to be a change in the stigma surrounding performance appraisals. I have seen the process dreaded from the supervisor process because if it is only truly mechanistic and transitional, an employee will always disregard its importance. On the other hand, if a leader looks to be transformational rather than mechanistic and incorporates the performance management process in an everyday and routine feedback routine; it will not be despised (Luhman, 2012). A leader must look to build a true relationship with their followers and they should not only see their leaders when there is something wrong. It has to do with building productive and meaningful relationships with you r employees. Employees actually do look for meaningful feedback on a day-to-day basis regarding their responsibilities and want a leader that is interested in their long-term goals, aspirations, and development (Fox, 2013). People want to grow and get better at their activities but can only do so with effective, adequate, ongoing feedback. The control theory of leadership suggests that senior leaders should create policy and structure that influence the patterns that become imprinted within the climate in the formation of the culture (Fulmer Ostroff, 2016). The behaviors of leaders drive that climate through which the behaviors through role modeling and communication which in turn provides the motivation for subordinates to achieve the needed tasks to meet the objectives and goals for the organization. The institutional theory considers the processes by which structures, including schemes; rules, norms, and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior. Conclusion As a conclusion, it can be said Leaders are essential in communicating organizational values inside and outside of the organization because by this being done, followers can hear and see the importance of organizational values straight from leadership (Hopkins, 2016). This is important because it is a clear indication that leaders are setting the tone for subordinates. In addition, Values are important to understanding leadership because they explain the focus and direction of people's actions (Fernandez Hogan, 2002, p.25) In order for leaders to fully understand the importance of setting the tone, Hopkins and Scott (2016) indicates that culture should play a major role in determining values. The most effective leaders understand that people come in all shapes and sizes and one type of leadership many not serve well in every situation. For these reasons and others leaders have to remain true to their core values so that the message sent to others below can follow the same path. References Copeland, M. K. (2014). The emerging significance of values based leadership: A literature review. 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