Leadership

Review on the article "Discovering Your Authentic Leadership"

Organizations are social units with specific purposes. The basic elements of organizations have remained the same over the years. Several disciplines provide the knowledge and the means to understand organizations. However, it is appropriate to look at organizations integrally in multi-disciplinary perspective. Three viewpoints have emerged, over the years in successive stages, each seeking to provide a window on the others. They are the classical, the neoclassical and the modern viewpoints. Within the classical approach, three streams stand out: bureaucracy, administrative theory and principles of scientific management. It is important to note that with the passage of time, the viewpoints have been changed or modified, but not replaced as such. Each major contribution brought new knowledge, awareness, tools and techniques to understand the organizations better. Thus, today we are richer than ever before in terms of our knowledge about approaches to understand organizations. All the same, more knowledge meant reckoning with more complex variables to comprehend the complexities of human organizations. There is, as yet, no general, unified, universal theory as such. Organizations being diverse and complex in more senses than one, it is difficult, if not meaningless to be too general or too specific about them.

Organizations depend on individuals to achieve organizational objectives. Successful organizations pay adequate attention to their human resource development functions.   The values of openness, trust, mutuality, collaboration, and enthusiasm within the system should be recognized by every member of the organization. If implemented properly, integrated HRD systems can contribute significantly to positive cultural changes, increased productivity, and excellence in organizations.

Managers get things done through people. Understanding why people behave the way they do plays an important role...