ABSTRACT
This research project aims at investigating leadership Styles and
work productivity in an organization: A study of Keffi Local Government
Council. Some of the topics dealt with are summarized in the research
and findings are stated accordingly.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Leadership is an important aspect of management. Indeed it exists in
various segment of the population that is studies, military, business,
home, mosque, church, etc.
Leadership is only one part of management the two terms are not
interchangeable. While leadership is an important part of management,
particularly at the supervisory level, a good manager or leader must
have conceptual and technical skill as well as human leadership skill.
A leader who is successful at directing worker to strike toward group
objective, which he has identified goals are attainable and can be
periodically achieved.
The word leadership can be regarded as influence or process of
influencing people so that they will strive willing and in flusiatcally
toward the achievement of group goals or organizational goals, there are
certain designable traits or style which makes a leader to be effective
for example charisma, foresight, initiative, integrity persuasiveness
and intevigence etc.
Leaders can be replaced if we could identify the style associated
with leadership then our ability to select effective leadership behavior
and a technique is therefore improved.
Nevertheless, leadership is both effectuate that bond works group
together and the catalyst that triggers employer’s motivation. As a
result of this, the leader’s straight comes primarily from the support
of the sub-ordinates; without their support and co-operation, the leader
finds It practically impossible to reach the planned objective and the
come generally in effect.
Moreover, leadership occurs within a specific situation. In the
social setting there is a person, a position and a situation despite all
that has been written about leadership, these has been no consensus
concerning the primary role, or function of leadership.
Finally, leadership becomes necessary in all area of management
either in trading concern or non-trading organization because it help
those who direct others or influence others to know why it is necessary
to allow fairness and justice in their decision making.
1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Leaders, in most of the organization are political appointees who may
not be professionally competent; these political appointees interfere
in the day to day activities of the organization. As a result of these
political and in-competent interference, many organizations cannot
perform their responsibility effectively and efficiency, in most
organizations. There are poor leadership systems. As a result of
improper control and directives become rampart in most of the
organization. Poor attitude of leadership toward obligation also
militate against efficiency.
1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this project work as to give an in-depth research or
examination of leadership style effectiveness in the organization
performance: Some of the objectives are as follows:
i. To identify some of the general
characteristic of a leader and show the situation in which a group find
its seat in determining the choice of a leader.
ii. To determine how the leaders behavior affects the behavior of others in different fields.
iii. To examine the various ingredients and function of leadership.
iv. To examine the factors affecting leadership styles and
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
i. How dose effective leaders gain the power to control and influence other to achieve organization objectives?
ii. How can the behaviors of leaders affect the behaviors of their subordinates?
iii. What are the various ingredient and function of leadership?
iv. What are the major problems associating with leadership and how they can be solved?
1.4 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
Presented below is a set of hypothesis used for this research work.
Ho: Style of leadership does not determine the attainment of organization goals and objective.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Apart from the fact, it will also be useful to companies and
organizations, this is because the country is striving hard to make
necessary effort to improve leadership style in all the sectors of the
organization and this would help the economic growth and development of
Nigeria.
1.6 SCOPE AND LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
The research work covers the major factors, which leaders need to
know, this includes the style of a good leader to improve productivity
and attainment of the organizational goals and also to meet the team of
expert, the behavior and style of leader well as the existing type of
leadership.
There are certain constraints, which were encountered during the course of this study.
1.7 OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS
The following terms are hereby briefly defined
i. Leader: A leader is defined as
someone who guides others action and opinion, it’s also entail one who
checks activities of others in any big enterprise.
ii. Leadership: leadership is defined as the prominent of one or few individual in a group which is the process of control and co-ordination.
iii. Organization: Is a system by which manager’s co-ordinate human and materials resources within the formed structure of task or authority.
iv. Style: Can be define as a way of performance in an organization, in order to retain satisfies her customer according to their demand.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 INTRODUCTION
There is no universal agreement on what leadership is or how it is
conceptualized. Akpan (1982:3) defined leadership as “ability to
influence subordinate to do what they have to do. It has been defined as
the art of inducing subordinate to accomplish their assignments seal
and confidence”.
According to Montgomer (1962) defined leadership as the capacity and
will to rally men and women to a common purposed, and the character
which inspires confidence. Thus, leadership has to do with character,
inspiration and capacity in guiding the conduct of subordinates. Lord
Slim further attempted to differentiate between leadership and
management. He said “There is different between leadership and
management. Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and
vision; its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter
of accurate calculations, of statistics, of methods, timetables, and
routines, its practice is science, managers are necessary; while leaders
are essential”. Viewed from the standard point of result, leadership
can be defined as getting people to what the leader wants them to do
because he has influenced or inspired them to believe it is what they
want to do.
Leadership is viewed from other contest by Robert C. Klekamp, Daniel W. Geesing in their work entitled Management Principles and Practices (1982). They
defined leadership as a way of stimulating and motivating subordinates
to accomplish assign task. Apart from stimulating leadership is also
concerned with guiding, conducting and directing.
He/she moves the group within the constraints of it maximum
capabilities to attain certain specified objectives. Their group
response will depend upon capacities of the leaders.
Leadership has a greater relevant in activating and controlling
sector, one should assume that leading is synonymous with managing. A
good manager is a good leader, may not increase to be a manager.
Leadership was defined by Mallam Hammed Yanga (1960) in management as
the “Process of influencing members of the organization or to work
willingly with zeal and confidence so that organizational or the group’s
objective can be accomplished. To lead is to guide, direct and proceed”
According to Apple (1961), leadership simply refers the ability of
management to induce subordinate to work toward organizational goals
with confidence and Drucker (1962) argues that when we talk of
leadership, we are talking common men. Leadership “Is the lifetime of a
man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of man’s performance to a
higher standard, the building of man’s personality beyond its normal
limitation”. Therefore, leadership occurs whenever one person influence
and other to work toward some prediction goals, willingly and
enthusiastically.
Leadership is term used to describe a position in an organizational
hierarchy. Following this definition, the president of chief executive
officer of a firm is a leader by virtue of holding a high office. Others
use the term to describe particular personal characteristic under this
definition, a person is fudged a leader because of possessing certain
style (for example; perseverance, maturity, intelligence, fairness,
spirit of competition inquisitiveness, honesty and integrity, among
others).
Finally, the term leadership is also used to describe a category of
behavior, following this development, leadership refer to a dynamic
process in which individual behaves in a certain manner thereby
influencing other to follow stating. To those view point, leadership is
the art of individual or group activities towards achievement of
enterprise goal. Leadership has given a variety of definition in
behavioral science; leadership is social influencing process for the
attainment of goals.
A leader is the most influential person in organization who provides
direction to follow, guide group activities and ensures group objective
are realize. The function of leadership pervades all organizations. A
good leader therefore, is one who of personating other to move
enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals. An example of a
charismatic leader could be creative, initiative and moving on his
speech, actions including his style of interaction with other people in
his society.
Leaders characteristically induce or inspire other to achieve
leadership because it occurs within a specific situation on the role or
function of leadership. According to Nwachukwu (1962) maintained despite
all that has been written about leadership, there had been no consensus
on the primary role or function of leadership.
In other views, the topic leadership is not an easy one to tackle,
who is a leader? What does leadership mean? Ask these questions from any
randomly selected group and a multitude of conflicting answers will
ensure.
We have been told that some people are born leaders; other shave
leadership trust upon them. But today, psychologist agrees that leaders
can in fact be made. Leadership consists of certain fundamental positive
style which can be learned and applied to anyone.
Moreover, the concept goal derived from leadership theory. These
theories suggest that leaders are effective because of their position
impact on flowers motivation, ability at performance and satisfaction.
It is called path-goal, due, in essences to the leadership influence on
the subordinates’ perceptions of work goals; itself develop goals, and
attainment. The basic of goal concept is expectancy motivation which
state that an individual’s attitude, job satisfaction behavior is seen
as leading to various out comes that is the valances/or the preference
for those outcome.
2.2 CONCEPT OF LEADERSHIP
According to Chester (1938), leader defined “the goals that
organization purses the develop, the planning and control system that
guide and monitor the organization destiny they construct structure
appropriately for the tasks undertaken and they motivate their
subordinate to complete these tasks”.
International encyclopedia of social defined leader as somebody who
rapidly perceive to perform the act of leadership. Traditionally the
term leader applied to power status and disparity. Stodgill defined a
leader as person who occupies a high level of responsibilities.
Manager (1996) defined manager could be defined as person who make
things happen through the efforts of other people because without the
use of people, there are not means of achieving the objective or goals
of an organization. A manager is a person who own business or employed
by the entrepreneur to manage the business on behalf of broader
perspective. A manager therefore, is persons who carry out the following
process (planning, organizing, staffing leading and controlling) and
they study management in order to improve the management skills. At this
stage of growth, there must be men women whose job is to plan,
organize, and control the works of the others. The above mentioned types
are a concise function of a manager and the role he/she is expected to
perform in any institution or organization.
A leader who works hard will have followers that will learn to
emulate him. Gorman think as their leaders think and men known unerring
how their leaders think.
Because of importance of leadership to all kind of group action there
is a considerable volume of theories and research concerning it
difficult to summarize such a large body of research in a form of
relevant today management? However, in the succeeding page we shall
identify several major types of leadership theory and outline some basic
kind of leadership styles.
It is no wonder that when Stogdill completed his survey of leadership
theory and research in 1974, he found it necessary to abstract and
analyzed over zoo books and articles in the field.
These theories include the following:
i. The Trait/Great Man Theory:
The earliest studies of leadership were based largely on an attempt to
identifying the traits that leader actually possessed stating with the
“Great Man” theory that leader are born and not made, to belief dating
back to the ancient Greek Romans inquires where made to identify the
physical mental and personality trait of various leaders. The Great Man
theory lost much of its acceptability with rise in influence of the
behaviorist school of psychology, which emphasis that people are not
born with traits over them inherited physical characteristic and perhaps
tendency toward good health. In general, the study of leader traits has
not been a very faithful approach to explaining leadership. Not all the
leader possesses most or all of them, also, the trait a person should
have furthermore, and out of dozens of studies, there is no uniformity
of identified traits or any significant correction of traits with actual
instance of leadership.
As psychologist Engene E. Yennings has said “research has provide
such a variegated list of traits presumable to describe leadership that
for all practical purpose it describe nothing” Stogdill found from a
review of the literature that “there was a definite correction between
the traits of intelligence, scholarship, dependability, responsibility,
social participation and socio-economic status of leadership compound
with non-leader”
Ghisell (1967) found significant correction between leadership
effectiveness and the traits of intelligence supervisory ability,
initiative, self-assurance and individuality in the way work done.
ii. Fielder’s Contingency Theory: Fielder’s
theory implies that leadership is any process in which the ability of a
leader to exercise influence depends upon the group task situation and
degree to which the leaders’ “People become leaders not only because of
the attributes of their personality but because of various situational
factor and interaction between the leaders and the situations”.
iii. The Situational Theory:
After increasing disillusionment with great man and trait approaches to
understanding leadership, intentioned turned to the study of situation
and belief that leaders are the products of a given this
multidimensional approach. Leadership was dictated early in the studies
of Stogdill and his associates when it was discovered that in analyzing
470 Navy officers occupying forty-five (45) different position, their
leadership ability was heavily affected by such situational factors as
their jobs, the organizational environment in which they operated and
the characteristic of people they were assigned to lead. Other studies
made over the years have shown that effective leadership depends upon
response to such environment factors as the history of the enterprises,
the community in which the organization operate the psychological
climate of the group being of led, group members, personalities and
cultural influences, and time required for making decisions.
This approach obviously has much meaning for managerial theory and
practice. Therefore, it has meaning for practicing manager who makes
into account of the situation it’s entirely when they design environment
for performance.
2.2.1 TYPES AND QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP
In a broad term, we can say leaders are representatives of a group of
a people and of course exercise some control over the group. In social
psychology, leadership is frequently treated in the analysis of small
groups. In sociology, it is designed as the exercise of influences or
power in social collectivities.
According to Abenge (1995) “Leadership is that force that direct and
co-ordinates organization resource toward attaining its goals and
standard”. Leadership cannot take place in the vaccum, it resumes and
reciprocal relationship. Weberian sociology has identified three (3)
types of leadership corresponding to different forms of authority; there
are:
a. Charismatic Leadership: This rests on
belief in the extra-ordinary personal style of leadership, charisma has
no replacement, leaders such as Alexander the great, Hill Car Barca,
Hannibal, Napoleon, Bolivar, Macco, Lenin, Gandhi, Mao Nrunah, Lumumba
and Murtala Mohammed had personal style of leadership separate from
whatever office they occupied, charismatic, also refer to the claim or
leadership by which people claim or are believed to posses rare style
refer to the possession of some divine appeal and approval. People fear,
respect and honor leader that posses the wise style as their believe to
have some outstanding impersonality and appeal.
b. Traditional Leadership: Traditional legitimizes power by endowing certain statutes, offices and person with mystical, divine or secular authority.
c. Rational Leadership: This rests on the
“Belief in the validity of legal status and function” “Competence” based
on rationally created rules; “Here belief no longer rests on tradition
or personality but on reason”.
Katz and Kalu (1966) maintain that “the term leadership has three
major meanings, and a category position and who behaves in certain
ways”. The influence of a leader in power and the degree and extend of
his power depends on his prestige i.e. the degree to which is actions
are regarded as significant relevant and important by others. In other
hand, rational legal this is the types of leadership which derives from
and the constitution. It comes from the position holds as set out the
constitution of the society. Examples of these types of position of
leadership in Nigeria are the president and the state governor, this is
the usual type to be found in work organization; there is no automatic
succession.
d. Autocratic Leadership: Autocratic leader centralize power
and decision making in him and exercise complete control over the
subordinate. He holds over the head of his subordinate, the threat of
penalties and punishment. He sets the group goals and structure the
work. He runs his own show the leader give orders and subordinate are to
follow them ungrudgingly and unquestioned. The problem with this is
that subordinates are aware of what to do but not why, it may be
satisfying for the leader to dictate terms to other continuously but for
subordinates, this may be totally frustrating. He breathes so closely
down the necks of his subordinates that he makes effective action
impossible. Subordinates are compelled to follow the leader’s direction
to the later even though they may be wrong. Latter when errors creep in,
subordinate will avoid responsibility since they were merely obeying.
In autocratic situation, frustration, low moral and conflict develop
easily. Subordinates are induced to avoid responsibility. Initiative and
innovative behavior.
Moreover, autocratic leadership is good when leader is; if the leader
is weak and incompetent, the followers will be weak and incompetent.
Autocratic style permits quick decision making and hence can be applied with success, situating where:
i. The subordinates lack knowledge of company goals