Leadership in organizations: Looking ahead to the 21st century.

Abstract

The paper highlights four major changes in the corporate environment that pose future challenges for Canadian organizations. It is argued that in order to meet these challenges, organizations need to develop adaptive capabilities. Specific leadership strategies necessary for developing such capabilities are identified. A brief review of extant leadership theories suggests that for developing adaptive capabilities, Canadian organizations would benefit most from charismatic/transformational leadership of their executives. An agenda for future research is outlined by drawing attention to a number of emerging trends in leadership research that could have significant impact on management practice in the 21st century. An individual's behaviour is a function of the person's disposition and his/her environment. The same is true of organizational behaviour. Like individual behaviours, organizational responses are determined by both the environmental demands and the capabilities of the organization to meet such demands. In fact, the start-up, survival, and growth of an organization depend upon successfully meeting the challenges posed by its environment. When the organization looses its capability to meet environmental demands, it simply dies.Organizational responses to environmental challenges are largely reflected in the type of leadership practiced by corporate executives (Hambrick &: Mason, 1984). It is the task of a leader to identify the demands of the environment through environmental scanning, and then to provide direction and support to organizational members by exercising adequate control and influence over them. Generally, the leader executes such functions that are necessary to meet the environmental demands. Schein (1992) has convincingly argued that when an organization "encounters adaptive difficulties, as its environment changes to the point where some of its assumptions are no longer valid, leadership comes into play... "(p. 2).Canadian Psychology/Psychologic canadienne, 39:1-2 Changes in Corporate EnvironmentThe business environment of 1990s is characterized by a number of changes. Compared with the 1970s and 80s, Canadian business is experiencing radical changes at a rapid pace. Specifically, changes are noticed in four areas that are going to have increasing impact on business in the 21st century. Rapid changes are taking place in (a)

Testing the Role of Charismatic Leadership, Psychological Climate, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior on Resilience

“…Data was collected using the survey method, with 4 (four) Likert Style Questionnaires, namely: 1) Charismatic Leadership Questionnaire (the C-K Scale) based on their charismatic leadership theory [28], [29], [39] [42]. All the questionnaires score of Cronbach Alpha were above 0.9, which is reliable according to Anastasi and Urbina [43] and all items were valid as internal validity score were above 0.2 [44].…”

Does organizational culture mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment

“…Transformational leaders, through Idealized Influence and Inspirational Motivation, impart a sense of mission and bring about changes in the attitude in forms of enhanced organizational commitment (Bass & Avolio, 1994;Kanungo, 1998). These leaders provide employees with greater opportunities for decision latitude, challenges, responsibility, as well as self-determination using individualized consideration.…”

How Leadership Practices Impact Job Satisfaction of Customer Relationship Officers’: An Empirical Study

“…Although the sensitive issue of ethics and integrity, which Kanungo (1998) argued is an integral aspect of the qualities of a transformational leader, was a topic of review, such a review addressed only existing literature to present a balanced discussion on the subject matter. Although the focus of the study was on the relationship between leadership styles and employee job satisfaction in Nigerian banks, participants were from only the full-time customer relationship officers of a bank, which limits the ability to generalize study result.…”