Community Leadership
Community leadership is a vital consideration by most organization management. For an organization to survive in today’s ever changing environment, both internally and externally, it has to be ready to respond to these changes appropriately. The module of community leadership focused on leadership theories based on learning efforts to breed leaders who will be responsible in creating, formulating, and making decisions that develop not only the company but also the social well being of the community dwellers.
According to (Stacy, 2011), an organization moves will experience difficulties in its entire operation; production, processing, procurement, supply and sale if its leadership does not incorporate a culture of community leadership in its managing. For example, an organization should make efforts to involve other companies in the industry, its supply chain, its employees behavior both at work and home as well as all its stakeholders towards actions that the planets important resources, improving the surrounding physical state as well as dealing with the social problems of people living around that environment such as poverty.
According to Stacey (2011), community leadership starts from the down level of micro organizational behavior. It deals with individual employee’s behavior examining what motivates or de motivates him. Micro communities also looks at how an employee’s differences in the ability affects his productivity and how they view their work as well as the effect of the perception of their job on their behavior(Stacey, 2011). She concludes that Different personality features of employees have a significant impact on the organization just the same way different people have on each other.
A leader should also consider the Meso community of the organization. According to Stacy (2011), meso organizational behavior deals with people’s behavior when working together or general human behavior in groups. She emphasizes that knowledge of meso organisational behavior enables a leader to determine a combination of skills among group, members that raise their performance, what kind of socialization motivates staff as well as how managers can determine the potential leader when dealing with promotion.
Macro community is aimed at comprehending an organisational behavior on the entire organization and the effects as well as the relationship between the company and the outside environment, (Schneider & Somers, 2006). They argue that the concept of macro organisational community is based on such disciplines as: sociology, which deals with the structure, organisational relationship as well as the social status; anthropology, which deals the cultural influences of both the organization and outside community as well as symbolism; political science, which deals with theories on power, mediations as well as conflict resolution and; economics, which balances competitiveness and efficiency. They further hypotheses that effective macro organizational practices can enable management to answer questions related to; power distribution in the company and how to maintain it, conflict resolution, strategies that can be used to coordinate work activities, how the company will be structured to control its internal and external environment (Schneider & Somers, 2006). The indicate that effective macro organisational leadership can be manifested in an organization that has en effective coordination and cooperation in its departments and groups, the application of both formal and informal ways in interorganizational communication as well as effective relationship between the organization and its specific relation to the environment .
Lichtenstein, B.B. et al. (2006) argues that community leadership should not be based on the view of pure formal organizations or even community organizations but should rather be based on a combination of the two which results to efficient management that balances the two sides, thus enabling organizations to not only achieve their goals but also operate in a sustainable environment. He however notes that community leadership may be hindered by several factors such as: higher resources needed to develop and maintain community projects and programs, especially by small organizations; hindrance by some communities for organizations intended or commences project or service delivery and; displacement of the growth paradigm with globalization paradigm.
Uhl-Bien & Marion (2009) hypothesizes that the culture of an organization is vital when dealing with community leadership. The culture of an organization does not only reflects on attitudes, philosophies and values but also influences the manner in which the organization’s staff interact with the management, between themselves and other stakeholders in and out of the organization. Since community leadership has to address this interaction, it is vital for the organization to instill a culture of responsibility to the external factors of the organization on in its staff.
According to Uhl-Bien & McKelvey (2007), in community and leadership, various teams, programs, and projects should be created in order to drive the different agendas of the company to success. Sustainability teams should be created to enhance implementation, execution, and completion of started projects and programs. Creating teams of employees committed to different organisational projects and initiatives is a vital method of creating synergy, speeding implementation, and enhancing team spirit. These sustainability teams represent different organisational departments such as production, sales and marketing, supply chain, as well as customer care thus enabling the organization’s balanced relationship to the external environment.
References
Lichtenstein, B.B. et al. (2006) ‘Complexity leadership theory: an interactive perspective on leading in complex adaptive systems’, Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8 (4), pp.2-12.
Schneider, M. & Somers, M. (2006) ‘Organizations as complex adaptive systems: implications of complexity theory for leadership research’, The Leadership Quarterly,17 (4), pp.351-365.
Stacey, R.D. (2011) Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity. 6th ed. Harlow: Pearson
Uhl-Bien, M. & Marion, R. (2009) ‘Complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing: a meso model’, The Leadership Quarterly, 20 (4), pp.631-650.
Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R. & McKelvey, B. (2007) ‘Complexity leadership theory: shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era’, The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (4), pp.298-318
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