Introduction
The concepts of leadership and management have been consistently misused to refer to either of them. The two concepts are complex in their applicability and use in the field of business activities. This paper presents the role of leadership and manager in an organization. Besides, the treatise presents the uniqueness of leadership and management. The second part of the paper examines ethics and morality in an organization, how they are modeled by organization leaders, and enforced by the organization managers.
Leadership and Management: Apple Company
Role of Leadership
By definition, leadership is the capability to internalize the environmental setting that incorporates and empowers a group to creatively contribute towards definite course of addressing a challenge in an organization (Drucker 25). The main roles of leadership in an organization include adaptability, empowerment, commitment, contribution, and critical problem solving skills (De-George 54). Through these adjustments, Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple, has applied innovative leadership that reassures and discerns the wants and desires of the organization. The aspect of empowerment involves inspiring self esteem and confidence among the subjects to align their feelings to specific intuition or instinct. Therefore, the leadership of the Apple organization has facilitated the degree of empowerment and faith in solutions given, as was the case of the successful iPhone 6 brand innovation (De-George 57).
Role of Manager
The role of management in an organization include setting goals, strategic planning, managing resources, and deploying the needed resources to realize specific objectives that are measurable within a specified period of time (Drucker 28). In addition, management in organization inspires the need to contribute proactively towards creation of a suitable environment for closing the gap that may exist between a challenge and its solution. In the dynamic Apple organization, strategic management is a rich recipe for an imaginative response to stimulation that creates a wider chain of adaptation of viable solutions to different need, which directly affect organizational sustainability in its innovative goal. Basically, management of the Apple Company is characterized by imitation, status quo, and narrowed focus to a planned approach towards realizing its goal of efficiency in the music service (De-George 31).
Unique features and differences between leadership and management
In the practical Apple Company’s business environment, leadership and management share a complementary relationship despite being different concepts with different meanings and scope. Unlike leadership, the management of the company’s product innovation is an organized process that involves setting, planning, running resources and deploying assets to achieve specific goals and objectives that are reviewed within a closed period of time (Drucker 32). For instance, Tim Cook is a strategic manager and team leader at the Apple Company who has successfully applied transformational, participatory, and autocratic leadership styles to steer the company into its current position of the best innovation company in the world. Basically, management involves administration while leadership operates on the parameters of innovation. In most cases, the role of Tim Cook as the manager is reproducing the Apple’s action plans and their implementation while at the same time offering leadership in line with the originality of each plan.
Ethics and morals in an organization
Ethics are obligations that the management of a business should follow in doing business activities. Reflectively, when a business fails to follow these obligations, ethical dilemmas are likely to occur and negatively affect the organization. On the other hand, morals consist of systems that provide a basis for discerning whether an action is correct or erroneous. Positive ethical and moral aspirations in an organization are achievable through action oriented respect, mutual coexistence, and deeply entrenched social values through proactive organizational leadership strategies (Drucker 39). The basic code of ethics and morals functions on the need to develop good culture by fostering a strong alignment to path of achieving goals, missions, and vision of an organization through proactive leadership skills (Eriksen 751). The managers may enforce the created moral and ethical standards through ensuring that all the employees in an organization follow the written rules of engagement, expected behavior, and create repercussion guidelines for deviation.
Role of morals in an organization: Enron case
Morals play a significant role in an organization. The organizations with weak moral values may face serious ethical dilemmas as was the case with the Enron Company in the US, which had to be dissolved because of fraud. Enron’s corporate culture had little moral regulators to balance the goals of the company and expected behavior when handling business environment risks. Enron’s bankers, editors, and attorneys conspired to support the fraudulent dealings despite their ethical responsibility of maintaining integrity in the company. From an ethical perspective, they connived with the top management to inflate the asset values, overstate the reported income and cash flow, and eliminate the liabilities from the financial records. This means that they lacked integrity and objectivity in running the Enron organization (De-George 22).
When faced with a decision dilemma that requires critical assessments, morally upright organizations resort to analytical tools that ensure competitive positioning advantage. The competitive advantage position is meant to minimize the costs of different ethical dilemmas. Each option is assigned to a quadrant with predetermined response strategies and ‘follow-ups’ upon implementation (De-George 39).
Works Cited
De-George, Richard. Business Ethics. 7th ed. 2013. New York, NY: Pearson Education Limited. Print.
Drucker, Peter. People and Performance. Massachusetts, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2007. Print.
Eriksen, Matthew. “Authentic Leadership: Practical Reflexivity, Self-Awareness, and Self-Authorship.” Journal of Management Education, 33.1 (2009): 747-771. Print.