Assignment 2b Complete Essay on Path Goal Theory PDF

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Over the last century and even onto today, the term “leadership” has been and is a very complex issue as many theories have derived, through researches, observations, formulated, debated, written about by many, to provide meaning to this one simple term. Based on different perspectives of leadership, the one definition that majority of us can agree on was defined by (William, McWilliams & Lawrence 2017) - who contended that leadership is “the art of influencing a group of people towards achieving a common objective”. However, (Malik, Aziz & Hassan 2014) arrived from a different angle and argued that leadership is defined as “when a leader builds a kind of relationship that promotes productivity in an organization.” In my opinion, both concepts of leadership arrive to a common goal - both seems to arrive at a conclusion that leadership helps to bring the workforce potential to an increased efficiency in production. However, the latter concept from 2014 shows that leaders exercise power over their employees while the 2017 concept portrayed that a leader would have exercised a positive and approachable effect or showed more concern on the wellbeing of the employees, which in a larger extent represented a group of workers who are a powerful asset of knowledge and skill in improving the status of the organization. To quote the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” This phrase seems to drive home the simple truth that any employee would provide quality service or work better and be more productive if they are treated fairly or supported in their working environment. According to (Farhan 2018), he stated that the Path-goal theory of leadership asserts the function of increasing subordinate performance by eradicating obstacles and providing encouragement and extrinsic rewards to achieve designated goals. This theory is known to reinforce the idea that motivation plays a distinctive role in how a leader change and adapt their leadership styles contingent on their subordinates and the environment. Based on (Cote 2017), he suggests that this theory manifest in the idea that leaders can increase job satisfaction by enhancing the psychological states of the employees. Predictions on individuals’ outcome can be predicted based on their perception towards the importance of a goal. This theory has several positive strengths. First, this method is suitable as it consists of high flexibility and applicable to any industry and the theory easily understandable. However, this theory does come with limitations too as it has been through many stages of evolution, it may seem a little complex to some and there are no results proven that there is a true correlation between the assumptions and the path-goal theory. The four leadership styles are supportive, participative, directive, and Page | 1

achievement-orientated. Subordinate characteristics such as the need for autonomy, need for achievement, locus of control and perception about ability also plays an important role in the choice of leadership style adopt by the leader. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to identify the leadership styles of path-goal theory and explain when it is appropriately used. Firstly, according to (William, McWilliams & Lawrence 2017), directive leadership is defined as a leadership style where the employees are precisely instructed of the leader’s expectation and are given specific guidelines to perform their tasks according to the organization’s standard rules and regulations. (Farhan 2018) claimed that this leadership style can be used as a learning tool to encourage a learning attitude across employees in understanding a new learning activity or goal. For instance, (Nor Amin, Chin & Ismail 2017) pointed that this leadership is one of the important aspects in setting directions to provide quality education for students in Brunei as it creates the guideline towards control, clear presentation of roles and an effective system which includes formalities. Leaders who usually use this style are likely to only use one-way communication, therefore employees may feel much more dependent on their leaders resulting the lack of initiative actions. However, (Cote 2017) suggests that excessive defectiveness may seem more as a hindrance. (Murdoch 2013) stresses that it may seem to be aggressive and controlling, hence this may affect the motivation as employees are not able to be part of any decision makings. This leadership style however is descending due to changes in global perspective as many perceives their tasks more as a personal fulfilment instead of a paycheck (Nor Amin, Chin & Ismail 2017). In my opinion, this leadership style is recommended in sectors that consisted of recurring tasks such as manufacturing and service. Besides that, participative leadership is known as a leadership style where leaders encourages participation from its subordinates towards achieving a goal. It is also more conducive to gain employee’s commitment and loyalty as it is appropriately used when subordinates show lack of judgement. This leadership style is known to reduce the rate of turnover in an organization as it provided employees a sense of belonging in the company. Findings by a quantitative study revealed by (Sinani,F 2016) further affirmed that there was a positive correlation between participative leadership and job satisfaction. This leadership style also has a great utility in team effectiveness which provides the employees to conceptualize fresh new innovative ideas for the organization and generate empowerment over the employees per Page | 2

(Malik, Aziz & Hassan 2014). Hence in my opinion, this leadership style could be well applied in democratic industries such as banks and hospitals as employee involvement in decision makings are essential and important. This is further supported by (Beli and Mjoli 2013) who stated that participative leadership also led to increased organizational commitment in service organisations. Based on my belief, a leader should also trust and believe his own set of rules and policies instead of entirely entrusting in the employee’s opinion as it may cause biasness or unconcluded decisions made by many different individuals. Hence, I believe, participative leadership should be applied to a certain extent and with great care. Furthermore, Supportive Leadership is defined as “a leadership style that employees are treated with equality and are showed concern of their wellbeing in an organization”, (William, McWilliams & Lawrence 2017). Superiors are known to create a healthier work environment as they focus on satisfying the requirements of individuals through a reachable and friendly conduct (Cote 2017). This is further supported by (Farhan 2018) as he emphasized that this supportive tool can be used to reduce conflicts, dissatisfactions and tension between subordinates. Also, based on an empirical research done by (Farhan 2018), he suggested that adopting a supportive behavior has a positive effect on job satisfaction in the workplace as it can be used as a tool to boost the employee’s self-confidence towards accomplishing a common goal. This leadership style is most appropriate to help the organization to discover potential talents or leaders. Through encouraging leadership style, the superior act as a stimulus for subordinates or a motivator to encourage the development of subordinates’ professional skills, enhancing their efforts further.

In my opinion, this leadership style would be most appropriate if used in

stressed-related work environments such as working in the airline industry or even in the military service where many if not most employees work in stressful situations or environment and charged with big responsibilities. It is well-known fact that leaders who are encouraging or supportive in nature tend to be more trusting in character too. However, leaders who adopts this leadership style must also be well-trained or be have great skills in management or else they may be taken advantage of by employees, if they are not careful. Thus, this may lead to political distress in the organization when there are problematic employees. Finally, (Cote 2017) cited achievement-oriented leadership as a directive behavior that challenges the employees to achieve by giving high performances, to set goals and displays Page | 3

confidence in their job responsibility. But according to (Murdoch 2013), leaders will be able to motivate subordinates by sharing their responsibility, working towards a common goal and removing obstacles. This is least preferred but considered as a unique leadership style as employees put forth extraordinary effort to accomplish goals that which allows them to reach self-actualization. Nevertheless, this leadership style may be more appropriate in research institutions where experts are more likely to arrive at solutions when not constrained by narrow rules or management controls. However, the management should establish broad criteria or limits for employees to work within as this approach may cause employees to be unsatisfied with the lack of structure and direction which could also lead to employees not giving full effort to their commitment at work or even to show the level of respect for their leaders. In conclusion, there are no ultimate perfect leadership style that could be employed in every situation, as every situation is different, and every organization has a different work culture and policy.

However, the path goal theory emphasizes that leader’s behaviors should

complement rather than duplicate the characteristics and factors that may affect employees such as culture, environment and social lifestyle. 1500 words

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List of Reference

Farhan, BY 2018, ‘Application of path-goal leadership theory and learning theory in a learning organization’, The Journal of Applied Business Research, vol. 24, no. 1, pp 13-22.

Malik, SH & Aziz, S & Hassan, H 2014 ‘Leadership behaviour and acceptance of leaders by subordinates: application of path goal theory in telecom sector’. International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, vol. 5, no. 2, pp170-175.

Nor Amin, A, Chin, HW & Ismail, A 2017 ‘Leadership style desired by youth in Asia’. Journal of Management Development, vol. 36, no 10, pp 1206-1215.

William, C, McWilliams, A & Lawrence, R 2017, MGMT 3rd Asia-pacific edition, Cengage Learning Australia

Cote, R 2017, ‘A comparison of leadership theories in an organizational environment’. International Journal of Business Administration, vol. 8, No. 5; 2017

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Murdoch, 2013, ‘An investigation of path-goal theory, relationship of leadership style, supervisor-related commitment, and gender’. Emerging Leadership Journeys, vol. 6 Iss. 1, pp. 13- 44.

Bell & Mjoli, 2013, ‘The effects of participative leadership on organizational commitment: comparing its effects on two gender groups among bank clerks’ African Journal of Business Management, vol.8(12), pp.451-459.

Sinani, F, 2016, ‘The effects of participative leadership practices on job satisfaction for highly skilled virtual teams’ Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Collection.

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