Along with the development of business, management becomes more and more important in modern commerce. An effective manager becomes the key element for the successfully of company. This essay is going to discuss the main factor that influences the effectiveness of managers. Although there is not an exactly defining of management, the managers are still regarded as a ‘responsibility of getting things done though other people (Hall, 1993).’ According to Hall, it is clear that manager’s job is involving dealing with other people. Also, Henri Fayol(Fayol,1993,P412)suggest that: ‘Management is about planning, organizing, coordinating, commenting and controlling.’
Therefore, there is no doubt that in normal cases, management is not only a linkage to people but also to particular situations. An effective manager should have a genuine ability, passions for work and have knowledge in a wide field also have a specialized knowledge, these are argued by most people. Fiedler,(Fiedler,2004,P447) makes an important defining: A business should attempt what he called leadership match-to Choose a leader to fit the situation It’s indicate that an effective manager should dealing with different situations and people effectively, which means that an effective manager should adapt their leadership style to different situation and people. The defining of leadership is given by Dave Needham (Needham, 1999, P236): ‘Leadership is the process of motivating other people to act in particular ways to meet organization’s objective.’
Managers always examine four styles of leadership, which are autocratic, democratic, paternalistic and laissez-faire. As society develops, the best style of management begins to depend on several external factors, such as personalities of staff (Marcouse, 1999).’3 Business needs different type of employees. The difference of their backgrounds leads that different subordinates respond different leadership style. Imaging there is a manager who is generally democratic. If subordinates are good training, the manager would always discuss with them or even ask for their ideas as decision making.
This manager would like to keep democratic style, otherwise, he will lost several valuable idea from those self-motivated staff. If the subordinates are lazy, the manager would just tell the staff what to do in order to improve the efficiency of business. It is see that the manager must change leadership styles from democratic to autocratic in case of staff don’t work hard enough. Change will take place if employees work without confidence as well.
To suit this particular employee, the manager would like to treat them as family members and tries to guide them. The manager changes the leadership style into Paternalistic to try to contribute the confidence for subordinates. If the subordinates are hard-working, the manager will prefer to give them more freedom to do decision making. The manager must change democratic to laissez-faire, because hard-working employees will word more effective with enough freedom.
Situation is also an important factor to change manager’s leadership style. Along with the rapid development of society, globalizations have taken place all over the world. The business begins to meet so many different customers that face to different problems in recent years. Compared with a few decades ago, the situation become remarkably changes. In modern society, the situation of enterprise changes all the time.
Assuming a business has a manger who is democratic, and almost every subordinate respond his leadership style. If in a period of time, the sale of products sharply decline, the manager have to set up specific objective in order to pull up the sale of products, in this special situation, the manager must adapt has leadership style form democratic to autocratic in order to business can be completed effective(Whitcomb, 1986). If, however, the sales of products increase in a period, the manager would release more rights to employees. As a result, manager should changes his leadership style into laissez-faire, which means subordinates make almost all the decision.
Different product would lead to the change of leadership style as well. For instance, a company, which produces medicine, should be autocratic. The major reason is that the products are exactly the same so that there is totally no need for manager to discussion with staff. However, if the company tent to produce toy, the manager should turn their leadership style into democratic due to predict the variety market.
Therefore, it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the leadership style should be changed to suit the variety situation in modern society. On the other hand, despite the many evidences which confirm that the leadership style should be adapted to satisfied particular situation and people, there are still some reasons that the manager shouldn’t change the leadership styles. F. Fieler(Fieler,1999,P447)argued that.
