Leadership and Strategic Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Leadership and Strategic Management - Essay Example Organized management and actions have existed for centauries. Management has undergone, in the past several years more so in the last centaury, methodical investigation, acceptance as a formal discipline of study and attained a common body of knowledge (Robbins & Coulter, 2005). Among the early contributors to contemporary management practices are Henry Fayol and Max Weber who are credited for developing general administrative theories. Their works centered on managers’ roles and what comprised good management practice (Robbins & Coulter, 2005). Current concepts about a managers’ role have evolved from Henry Fayol’s fourteen principals of management. Max Weber’s bureaucracy model was aimed at removing inefficiencies, patronage and ambiguity that characterized most businesses. Most components of his bureaucracy model are still inherent in big organizations to date. The universal point of ideas offered by Fayol, Weber and Taylor were majored on increased eff iciency. Thus the application of scientific management principles resulted in increased productivity of managers and the organizations as a whole (Jones & George, 2011). Leadership has been proven to have a direct cause and effect connection on organizations and their eventual success. Thus leaders have been tasked with shaping organizational strategies including its execution and efficiency (Northouse, 2007). Leaders therefore determine the culture, values, employee motivation and change tolerance within their institutions. With the on set of financial crisis, businesses have attracted keen analysis from shareholders and the general public. This has reinforced the concept of strategic management and a review of current leadership styles. Strategic management, popularized in the 1980s, is a term that covers business-wide strategy formulation, implementation and evaluation (Sadler, 2003). This usually is dependent on the leadership of an enterprise. The concept of strategic management has become important to the success or failure of enterprises, more so now that business environment require quick analysis, monitoring and precise interpretations of th eir surroundings. Though, it must be noted that not all enterprises that embrace this concept are safe from failures. One of the major reasons for failures in strategic management is poor direction from management and poor planning that strategic management is widely believed to have evolved from (Sadler, 2003). While implementing strategic management, leaders will usually be faced with the problem of change management. Change management is the planned approach to transitioning organizations from present state to a desired future state (Jones & George, 2011). Its aim is to help employees embrace and accept change in their present business environment. There are a number of beneficial reasons why an organization leadership will want to adopt change management. These include; increasing efficiency, increasing cohesiveness among employees so as to deliver objectives in a strong team, and also helps to gain a good understanding of what type of change is impending. This will usually help in smooth change transition more so touching on