Trends in Business Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Trends in Business Leadership - Essay Example Changes in the work environment lead to new leadership styles whereby leaders change their styles to remain effective. Such changes include improvement in key processes, streamlining functions and restructuring for effectiveness. For an organization to sustain relevance in business, strategists must be put in place to improve the organization’s ability to read and respond to changing trends in the market environment. They should be able to identify challenges in time and respond promptly by improving structures that boost business flexibility and adaptability. Adaptability reduces rigidity of the leaders and enables them to commit to current and future changes. Therefore, they should view change as inevitable and essential part of organization success. The goal of such changes is adapt, regenerate and survive (McLean, 2006). This paper discusses five main trends in business leadership, the reasons for emerging trends and strategies to cope with these trends. Reasons for Trends in Leadership Most leaders lack competencies in strategic thinking, leading change, ability to inspire, techniques to create a vision and involve others in it. They also lack the ability to understand the organizational set up and proper functioning of systems. Most business organizations contain a large number of interacting processes and structures that are difficult to manage. This has forced many organizations to adopt strategies geared towards improving performance and attaining as well as maintaining competitive advantage. Effective leadership is the most significant of the strategies, thus most leaders are pressured by high performance expectation resulting to the emergence of new trends. Information systems in many organizations are indecipherable and complicated making the interactions between different organs of an organization difficult. Interactions in these organizations are non linear complicated implying that minute changes in leadership leads to pronounced, dispropo rtionate effects at all departments. This has led to communication trends and the need for effective leadership trends. Increased globalization has increased the urge to lead across cultures. The transformation from traditional organizational strategies has allowed room for flexibility and expansion enabling businesses to explore international markets. Most local markets are also facing stiff competition from local firms therefore creating a need for most organizations to explore international markets. Most organizations are favoring global-oriented who are able to formulate effective strategies that promote international business. Technology trends are caused by information overload, lack of interconnectedness between organization systems and business communities. Most of the new technologies also disrupt the professional practices. Organizations are thus edged towards effective leadership skills that are technologically sound to steer management towards technological advancement. The main trends in business leadership are: Focus on Human Resource Current market research indicates that most organizations consider human resource as the most eminent asset in corporate growth. Emerging trends predict that human resource will be the most

Hiring FBI Agents Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Hiring FBI Agents - Essay Example This has been refined over the years that only the best of the candidate pool even makes it to a formal interview stage. The disadvantage to this process is that some excellent candidates may be looked over and denied an opportunity to advance within the FBI because of one test score that is just a few points off the mark. Such cut and dry approaches to determining the validity of candidates can backfire at times because it negates the human aspect of looking at other desirable qualities that might be present in excess and are just what the FBI is needing. Such a multiple hurdles approach to hiring would actually motivate to choose a career with the FBI, were I to be interested in that path. The special agent position is a coveted role within law enforcement (Bowman, Carlson, Colvin, & Green, 2006). It is an elite position that I would be proud to be a part of and it would be seen as a great life accomplishment were I to make it through the entire process and be hired by the FBI in this role. The complexity of the hiring process illustrates the seriousness by which the organization views the job. I would be lined up against the very best of the best, and this would serve to increase my level of motivation to pass each exam, ensure that my personal life was well rounded and possessed integrity, and work hard to eventually land the job. In the end, the FBI is not the only such law enforcement position that is coveted by such minded individuals today. As such, the process may be too long and drawn out to bring out the very best applicants in any giving hiring season. While the steps involved in the process do not necessarily need to change, the FBI might look at ways to sped up the process so individuals know much sooner where they stand in terms of the likelihood that they will actually be hired. This is important for many reasons. To begin, if the individual is in the middle of a long hiring

Trends in Business Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Trends in Business Leadership - Essay Example Changes in the work environment lead to new leadership styles whereby leaders change their styles to remain effective. Such changes include improvement in key processes, streamlining functions and restructuring for effectiveness. For an organization to sustain relevance in business, strategists must be put in place to improve the organization’s ability to read and respond to changing trends in the market environment. They should be able to identify challenges in time and respond promptly by improving structures that boost business flexibility and adaptability. Adaptability reduces rigidity of the leaders and enables them to commit to current and future changes. Therefore, they should view change as inevitable and essential part of organization success. The goal of such changes is adapt, regenerate and survive (McLean, 2006). This paper discusses five main trends in business leadership, the reasons for emerging trends and strategies to cope with these trends. Reasons for Trends in Leadership Most leaders lack competencies in strategic thinking, leading change, ability to inspire, techniques to create a vision and involve others in it. They also lack the ability to understand the organizational set up and proper functioning of systems. Most business organizations contain a large number of interacting processes and structures that are difficult to manage. This has forced many organizations to adopt strategies geared towards improving performance and attaining as well as maintaining competitive advantage. Effective leadership is the most significant of the strategies, thus most leaders are pressured by high performance expectation resulting to the emergence of new trends. Information systems in many organizations are indecipherable and complicated making the interactions between different organs of an organization difficult. Interactions in these organizations are non linear complicated implying that minute changes in leadership leads to pronounced, dispropo rtionate effects at all departments. This has led to communication trends and the need for effective leadership trends. Increased globalization has increased the urge to lead across cultures. The transformation from traditional organizational strategies has allowed room for flexibility and expansion enabling businesses to explore international markets. Most local markets are also facing stiff competition from local firms therefore creating a need for most organizations to explore international markets. Most organizations are favoring global-oriented who are able to formulate effective strategies that promote international business. Technology trends are caused by information overload, lack of interconnectedness between organization systems and business communities. Most of the new technologies also disrupt the professional practices. Organizations are thus edged towards effective leadership skills that are technologically sound to steer management towards technological advancement. The main trends in business leadership are: Focus on Human Resource Current market research indicates that most organizations consider human resource as the most eminent asset in corporate growth. Emerging trends predict that human resource will be the most

Epistemology - Doubt Essay Example for Free

Epistemology Doubt Essay Being certain about something can sometimes be misleading or misunderstood. You either assure certainty or question doubt. You can easily be a cocky football player, think you have the best team, and go into the game knowing you’re going to win and have no doubt that the other team is better than you, but end up losing. But as soon as you have doubt and get intimidated by the other team you instantly try your best to win the game, no matter the obstacles and challenges you go through and prove to the other team you’re better. Yes, it’s true that when you are certain about things faith and arrogance takes over and leads us to become acknowledged or at the top. But why would someone great and successful ever experience doubt? In society we have to know what we want to accomplish and how we want to get it done. One can be doubtful on being able to attain the dreams, discoveries, and challenges that come towards our life. But in the positive, a lot of the times you doubt your self so you can have the ability to push yourself to do bigger and better things. For example, you can surely take a test in class and think it’s easy and be certain that you did really well on it. But, there is always that doubt that you didn’t do well because you didn’t study or weren’t well prepared for this test. When you know something you not only have an opinion, but that opinion is true. We cant just say because we believe something, it is certain. Although everything we know is also certain, not everything we think is certain is known. A person can be certain about something that is true but in fact is, he can be wrong about it. Certainty and doubt go hand in hand because too much certainty can make a person close-minded and ignorant. Not willing to accept facts based on illogical connections to the opinions of others that have an influence strong enough to cause an irrational mental model of what is acceptable to base future opinions on and this leads to decision making that does not follow logic, but rather a misguided, irrational and closed minded. It is highly important for certainty and doubt to coexist and interact with each other to keep us in reality. Sure enough, certainty can help us to accomplish what we want to. But doubt helps us visualize limits and know how much of something we need to accomplish. Everyday I go through doubts. I doubt I’m going to finish this essay, I doubt I’m going to make it through another day of school, I doubt I’ll be able to pay my phone bill before this week, but at least I’m certain about when I come back from New Orleans this weekend I’ll be more than broke. But we as humans are made to accomplish and succeed. Giving up is not an option; more like doubting yourself isn’t. But with certainty helps us find what we really want to get done. Like this essay for example, It might not be the best in my class, (doubt) but I know I did well enough to get through my goal for this semester, which is getting a eighty or higher in all my essays for AP English (certainty).

Benefits of Systems Thinking

Benefits of Systems Thinking INTRODUCTION Systems thinking is a well organised approach of understanding the dynamic relationship between components of a system, so that we can make better choices and avoid unintentional consequences. It’s a conceptual framework for problem-solving which understands and considers the problems in their entirety (Hall, 1999 and Senge 1990). In other words, it can be defined as a view which looks at the ‘system as a whole’ first with its fit and relationship to external environment being a primary concern as compared to the constituent elements that make up the system (Morgan, 2005). It can be used to understand how systems work and how individuals can deal with them, while looking for patterns of interaction and underlying structures which shapes the systems behaviour. As system is a combination of several parts people who understand systems thinking keep one eye on the big picture (i.e. system as a whole) and one on the detail (i.e. constituent’s components), as the y recognise that problem in one part of the system can impact other parts and forces patterns of behaviour in the system that lead to crisis (Morgan 2005). Systems view is a way of positioning and looking into an organisational or systems issue where system boundaries are to be set to determine what parts are contained inside the system and what parts are considered external environment. The environment will certainly influence the problem solving capabilities of the system, but it’s not the part of the whole system (Ackoff, 1971). Outcomes will depend heavily on how a system is defined because system thinking investigates relationships between various parts of the system and its external environment (Montano et. al, 2001). ADOPTION OF SYSTEMS THINKING A number of methods, tools and principles cover the concept of systems thinking with a common goal of understanding relationships within the system, as systems thinking works on the hypothesis that there are certain evolving properties of systems that do not exist when systems are disintegrated into individual parts. For example consider a driver who is constantly hitting red lights on the road. If the driver is only noticing one part of the system i.e. red lights, then he will simply decide to speed up to in-order to make the next light before it turns to red. But, if he considers other parts of the system i.e. his car, condition of the road, driving style and the distance between two lights, he will notice that every time he tries to speedup to make a light, it changes to red. His speed is tripping the lights to force him to drive slower. So if he is observing this pattern, he can simply reduce his speed to drive thorough all green lights. In systems view, the focus spreads in a variety of different directions compared to the conventional linear style of thinking. It focuses on processes, patterns and relationships and their flow and movement and puts much emphasis on understanding the effects of the interactions in the system as opposed to putting efforts to predict the outcomes (Morgan, 2005). It’s argued that the emphasis on systems view should begin when a project is started and should continue till the final lessons have been learnt even after completion (Stewart and Fortune, 1995). Advantages of Systems Thinking Adopting a view of system thinking can complement conventional styles of research in projects in certain ways: It suggests different levels of analysis and synthesis for different kinds of problems, ranging from the simple activity levels to the more complex hierarchical levels. Systems thinking complements reductionism (the principle that everything can be reduced to its individual parts), analytical analysis (breaking down a system to its smallest components), cause and effect thinking (environment-independent, linear but without feedback loops, closed and defined boundaries), complete determinism (illusion of control) with complexity (a sub-system of larger network), blended structure (explaining the whole system in terms of functions and inter-relationship between parts), circular contributing effects (explaining external environmental influences, performance and feedback) and belief in uncertainty which leads to probabilistic thinking (Schiuma et.al, 2012). It provides a conceptual framework which utilizes different theories, tools and techniques like the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), which helps in constructing a holistic, reliant perspective and practise aimed at disclosing the relationships characterizing a system (Joham et al., 2009 and Pourdehnad, 2007). Such approaches use a non-linear model where different elements are connected through cyclical rather linear cause-and-effect chains. This shows how a system is structured and also shows the nature of interactions among components of the system, which helps in understanding the behavioural patterns characterizing the system under investigation (Schiuma et.al, 2012). Having a reductionist thinking tends to push the project towards a closed systems view of the environmental i.e. the different phenomenon could be explained as individual and isolated events, which shows that the system and the context are separate, deterministic and predictable. In addition, the casual relationship between different elements is linear in the sense that A affects B which affects B, so such a approach can be used as a process or procedure to track and access results and performance on a operational level rather than on a broader system level. Project managers can use systems thinking to assist them in the scoping of a project where the project and its relationship to the environment are examined to underline potential risk areas and also to look at the project performance and thus to facilitate organizational learning (Stewart and Fortune, 1995). Disadvantages of Systems Thinking Although adoption of systems thinking/view is beneficial in some aspects while executing consulting projects, there are still certain problems which are associated with this approach. Some of them are as follow: Concept of systems thinking totally ignores or much worse destroys the most important aspects of human systems, for e.g. the interconnections or inter-relationships amongst and between the constituent sub-systems (Morgan, 2005). The project and its sub-tasks are totally ignored. Reductionism is no longer appropriate for dynamic projects which comprises of mostly human activities. It encourages fragmentation and isolation of the project which causes undue concern with the individual project activities or sub-systems. This method is makes us smart in micro-level thinking with regard to projects whereas on the other hand it’s allowing us to be dumb on the macro-level analysis. Under this thinking the project management loses the capability of making sense of how and why things work in a certain patter/manner. Reductionism can’t be implemented in every project. It tries to deal with the issues of the project one at a time, which leads to the problem of backing up which make things much worse. Also it is not helpful in dealing with multiple or delayed causality, as it is leading us to the simplistic way of thinking where individuals instead of focusing on the core problem focus on ‘either-or’ choices and blame mentality (Morgan, 2005). The simple approach to cause and effect can’t be implemented in consulting projects with high level of complexity, as it can’t keep up with the complexity of the project. As systems thinking focus on dealing with symptoms of the problem, interventions aimed at fixing things can end up sometimes making things better in the short run but worse in the long term. The over-reliance on reductionism will create an imaginary environment in which individuals think that prediction and control are the usable approaches to deal with complex projects. Endless varieties of tools and frameworks would be applied to ensure project success and when all such things fail they will try to explain the causes of system failure using the reductionist explanations of personal failure, resistance to change etc. So, the cycle goes on repeating itself and people, organisations get trapped into fixes which are doomed to fail. Having a systems perspective enables the project to exert control over people and its processes. But such a view tends to act against innovation and adaptation which are fundamental qualities for long-term effectiveness. Adopting a systems view can threatens some of the established policies and procedures in managing consulting projects, for e.g. in areas like monitoring and evaluation, performance management and assessment. Most of the practitioners have doubted its operational use, as it has not provided specific answers to the cases when the system has encountered problems. Some of its ideas such as emergence can be unattractive with project management teams, who are constantly under pressure to give results in short run. Systems view can also have a disengaging effect on people and organisations that are used to a structured system where projects are planned and targets are met. So, adopting a system thinking view can increase the effect of uncertainty in project consulting and management rather than reducing it. System thinking can also be demanding in terms of intellectual resources as it requires multi-disciplinary approaches to handle wide range of issues and patterns. It requires a significant investment in terms of skills, organisational structure where people are trained across a series of interrelated issues to make systems thinking work, because if they give up on the practise of systems views they will probably get back to much easier conventional approaches (Morgan, 2005). Conclusion The implications of systems thinking can be far reaching as it’s not clear how it will fit with other methods of analyzing situations. Questions will be asked about its contribution to monitoring and evaluation as the some of the sub-systems may be inadequate in generating data needed for analysis which leads to reluctance in trusting the conclusions (Morgan, 2005). Though it’s best in synthesis, it needs help in terms of practical analysis, so the question arises that can it supplement present methods of doing things or does it have to replace them in some way? In conclusion, adopting a systems view can contribute in planning and controlling the complexity and uncertainty by embedding flexibility in consulting activities. When implemented and aligned properly, systems view can alleviate the flaws present in the existing frameworks to produce a more general framework which includes both prescriptive and descriptive elements (Montano et. al, 2001). Also, it facilitates the links between project management initiatives and the strategic goals and objectives of an organisation helping in maintain a clear vision of what is being done and why it is being done (Ackoff and Emery, 1972).

Essay --

What is the director ultimately saying about the ways in which hope affects the individual? During the film Shawshank Redemption there is a very prominent theme of hope. Shawshank Redemption demonstrates positive and negative ways in which the main characters Andy, Brooks, Tommy and Red display hope. Through out the movie Frank Darabont gives us an insight to how each character connects to the theme of hope. Each character connects differently to hope. For example andy persevering through digging the tunnel, Red connects to hope by become friends with Andy, Tommy gets his high school diploma and finally Brook, although institutionalized became accustomed to being the librarian for many years of his life time in Shawshank prison The first example of a character connecting to hope is Andy, continuing to stay determined and pushing through abuse with â€Å"the sisters† he is still able to remand hopeful and ultimately escape. After serving almost twenty years in Shawshank prison Andy’s views began to change from hope being non existent to honestly believing that hope was real. After re...

Cut by sylvia Plath Essay -- essays research papers

â€Å"Cut† Sylvia Plath Persona In terms of content the persona in â€Å"Cut† is Sylvia Plath herself. Plath was one of the first American women writers to refuse to conceal her true emotions. In articulating her aggression, hostility and despair in her art, she effectively challenged the traditional literary prioritization of female experience. Plath has experienced much melancholy and depression in her life. Scenario The scenario of the poem starts off in a seemingly domestic scene, perhaps preparing for dinner and develops into this amazing association and blurring of the physical and emotional senses, where a great joy has been found in an ‘accident’. Plath dedicates â€Å"Cut† to her new au pair (nanny), Susan O’Neill Roe as a â€Å"welcome to the family† gesture. It is most likely the au pairs thumb, which has been cut however Plath refers to it as her own thumb as a sign of empathy/psychosis. In the poem, Plath describes the feelings and sensations of deliberate self mutilation and the emotional release it brings. The cutting of the thumb can be viewed in a Freudian manner in which the incident occurred accidentally â€Å"on purpose† a parapraxis, having the effect of building up tension. Context The context in which the poem is taking place is in England, isolated away from all her family and friends, during the 1950's where Plath was the victim of a male-orientated sexist society and her poetry a choreography of female wounds. Values portrayed through â€Å"Cut† are Plath’s life of hardships from separation, divorce and as a single mother and poet. Through the remarkable consistent images that all â€Å"flow† from her very ordinary â€Å"accident† it is evident that this poem showcases a history of bloodshed through war, death, injury and maiming in the Western world and Plath’s family history Story The story of â€Å"Cut† is a rapid succession/conglomeration off sensations and images of violence and bloodshed throught history and its emotional relief. Plath chooses to use an ongoing metaphor of a battle between two armies. She is possibly one soldier who has lost much, while fighting the depression battle. This poem demonstrates Plath’s disconnection from humanity as for example she disassociates the thumb as being part of the body. The fact that she relates her cut to onions, with cooking as a household duty displaying her discontentment with her role as a housewife and mot... ...rill-â€Å" creates a colloquial level of language, where in this case an exclamation mark could have been used. Sounds A variety of language devices are employed to create tone for the poem. Sounds such as assonance is used in the line â€Å"a flap like a hat† with an emphasis on ‘t’ and taken off on ‘a’ coupled with dental ‘t’ and plosive ‘p’ evoking and mirroring the on/off nature of a hat, in reference to the skin that has been cut on her thumb. Internal assonance and consonance appear and disappear with unpredictability. This demonstrates signs of Plath’s mental illness. Also there is assonance in â€Å"little pilgrim, the Indian’s axed your scalp† where the chopping sounds evoke the movement. In conclusion, there is more than one implication of the word alone â€Å"cut† [hurt,injured,rejected,excluded]these are to mean: physically injured, rejected or wounded by people, excluded by living on own and bleeding in all senses and self mutilation. In the poem â€Å"Cut† by Sylvia Plath there is more to the poem than moods and feelings through the use of context and technique. For instance images,sounds,tones,rhythm,rhyme and form which all add up to an effective poem with textual integrity.