Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership and Management Paper Research

Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership and Management - Research Paper Example Management is not just confined only to organizations. Even political leaders need to have the knowledge and skills of a good manager in order to be successful in their careers. One leader with such qualities is the 34th president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower who exhibited both managerial and leadership qualities. This paper looks at  Eisenhower’s qualities as both of a leader and a manager. Characteristics of a Good Manager A number of factors define a good manager. The ability to have a vision about the future means that a manager is future oriented. A good manager needs to show enthusiasm in his/her work as well as to have the ability to empower and motivate others to work enthusiastically. The decision making process of a manager should be defined by an ability to make quick and informed decisions. Words need to be backed by actions. Managers who talk too much by issuing orders rarely succeed in their careers as workers need to see how they can perform t asks as well. Characteristics of a Good Leader A manager should be a good leader which means that he possesses good leadership skills. A good leader is proactive and thinks about the future. They are flexible in their decisions and actions so they can easily adapt to any change that may arise. A good leader has good communication skills, and respects the subordinates. Confidence in both leading the team and believing in personal decisions is an important quality of a good leader. A good leader shows enthusiasm in work. The interest in the feedback from the subordinates is a concern for efficient leaders, while they exhibit good organizational skills and delegate duties to the subjects (Leatherman, 2008). Leadership and Managerial Qualities of Dwight D. Eisenhower Eisenhower exhibited both leadership and managerial qualities in a number of ways. Having been a leader of the army during and after the First World War, he exhibited good leadership qualities by heading the army in war. At the onset of World War I, he immediately requested for an assignment overseas. This showed how dedicated he was in his job, showing one of the qualities of a good leader. As a hard working military man, he rose over the ranks to become Lieutenant Colonel in the National Army. As Lieutenant, he exhibited good organizational skills. He was able to organize members of the army during the war and draw placement programs of the personnel. His ability to approach members of the lower ranks and deal with them showed his commitment to the staff and his ability to effectively communicate with all the people in the military regardless of their position. His skills as a visionary leader were portrayed when he remained focused on the role of tanks in any war that would follow after the First World War. He showed his high level of commitment to his job patiently rising through the ranks of the military to become General of the Army Air Force. His dedication to work let him succeed in many assig nments such as in the invasion of Sicily. To promote democracy, he accepted the role of the President of Columbia and NATO Supreme Commander. His dream of becoming a president of the United States was supported by many people who felt that he had good leadership qualities suitable for the success of the United States. He chose to continue with Roosevelt’s plan of the New Deal for the United States and, thus, won a second term which

Software Design Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Software Design - Essay Example Its directives are written in simple languages or terms using simple and direct language that any customer is able to understand the requirements. Following the description, it is true that the objective of writing this procedural design is to clearly and illustratively give the targeted readers proper and crisp information (Pressman R., 2003). Procedural design performs the function of transforming structural elements to a procedural description which starts just after data design and architectural design. This type of design comes after data design (where appropriate data structure is selected) and architectural design (which defines any relationships among major structural elements with the view of developing a modular structure and representing control relationships between them). ii. An inclusion of diagrams, photographs or sketches in every step, as apt, is necessary for visual illustrations of necessary concepts. Pieces of information expounding diagrammatic illustrations are to be active voice, instructing a reader on actions to take. iii. A test of all procedures is necessary to ensure high level of accuracy and complete with useful information given. Consistent use of terminologies and no use of abbreviations or acronyms must be practiced for effectiveness. Procedural design is based on a step by step illustration which guides any applications through a series of instructions while Object Oriented Design is a software system designed to offer services to other objects as a set of interacting objects managing their individual states. While in procedural design actions are done systematically (from one step to the other) in object-oriented design objects are distributed and thus may be executed in parallel or sequentially (no specific order followed in execution). Object oriented design is basically

Nursing Professional Values Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Nursing Professional Values - Essay Example Because of this concept, society always turns its needs whenever certain individuals seek professional health service to hospital institutions. Thus, closely monitoring the quality of the healthcare service and the administrative process of hospital institution is indeed beneficial for the society themselves. Through this actions, improvement measures and promotion of quality can be further develop for the advantage of the people thus certain essential tools and measures are developed for improving the quality of services provided by hospital institutions. In this regard, the role of the nurses plays a great implication as to how the said process of operational success could be garnered. Nursing students as training professionals in the field of hospital has to have the ability to handle ethical issues within the said industry. Undeniably though, it is essential enough to consider this particular matter when dealing with healthcare professions such as nursing (Lewis, 2005:78). True, being a nurse requires one to become highly involved in different human operations and are thus more susceptible to issues that are related to the said situations. Consequently, the said healthcare professionals are required to learn different levels of ethical concerns even during their training years yet. This particular training ensures them of the capabilities that they have to at least manifest their personal concern for their patients as well as their professional standing for the performance of their duties towards their clients (Potter, 2005: 54).Being a nurse itself requires hard work and perseverance in treating patients from different ages, genders and situations. According to the Department of Nursing Education, applicants for the nursing job must have certain characteristics that will help them give the needed medication for the patients they care for. The said characteristics particularly involve that of the five major values of professionalism that must be given full attention by nurses in performing their duties to the public. The five values include Altruism, Autonomy, Human Dignity, Integrity, and Social Justice (Barnes, 2005: 36).

Journal Entry Week 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Journal Entry Week 4 - Essay Example Due to these challenges, shifting their manufacturing base back to the North America seems better option. The most obvious gains would be in the form of savings in labor costs compared to present Chinese trend; savings in transportation, duties, supply chain risks, industrial real estate and other such costs. Automation and other such measures to reduce costs will further depreciate Chinese labor economy. Rising demand markets in the Asian and Chinese regions can be advantageous to the North American manufacturers. Considering the challenges posed by the Chinese labor market, shifting outsourcing base to other developing countries would be beneficial, but these countries lack required resources, skill, capacity, infrastructure, security, government support etc. The US adopted outsourcing culture many decades ago, which caused serious challenges for its citizens; yet, they emerged from these challenges only to be better innovators and, thus, rule the world. During last decade, China dominated the world nations in exports and manufacturing industry owing to its low labor cost and availability of high-end technology. However, the author argues that manufacturing potential in the US still remains higher than visible and its flexibility adds greater potential to its future. Analysts suggest that the cost of production in the US is likely to be same as that in China, or slightly higher. In order to meet profitability from their production industry, China may shift some work to its interior cities that offer lower labor costs; however, differential skill set will be scarce. Many evidences exist to believe about shift of production base from China and other countries back to America; however, large scale production still continues to be undertaken in China. Production competitors to China include other low-cost labor countries: Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Researchers

Google’s Country Experience Case Study Essay Example for Free

Google’s Country Experience Case Study Essay The well-known online search engine Google still being used in mainland of China, even they shut down the â€Å"Google China† service. Chinese sometime prefer to use â€Å"Google Hong Kong† instead. The reason of that is Google provides results of search more reliable and efficiency. However, Google still quitted the market of China. The work progress of search engine is more complicate than just search the key-words. The key-words could be link to every websites that used the word, sometime it just have nothing to do with the main point. According to Curt Franklin, the search engine’s works basically performs three tasks: (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine.htm) ï‚ §Search the Internet, or select pieces of the internet based on important words. ï‚ §Keep an index of the words they found, and where they found them. ï‚ §Allow user to look for words or combinations of words found in that index. In that index, they don’t only sort the websites by key words, but also by contents. So each time we search something by words, in order to get what exactly we need, the system would find out more results that link to these words in the index. That’s how that’s how sometime we got results helpful but have no same key words with what we typed in. Search engines always provide free search experience for users; they make money from other websites. For websites, of no one check on at all, that won’t be necessary to exist. Search engines are just a good way to bring those websites in front of people’s eyes. According to Grant Crowell, there are a lot ways to make money for a search engine website. They can all sort into 3 aspects: (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2066421/How-Search-Engines-Make-Money) ï‚ §Provide unique search technologies, a search engine has to consider what differentiates its search product from others. And they can sell the technologies to others. ï‚ §Commercial search results, which means those websites they can pay to the search engine for raise their websites’ shown on the result list. ï‚ §Advertising, provide advertise link which about what users search out of the search results. One step further, search engines could build some partnerships with a diversity of vendors, partners,products, and sales channels. However, as the internet getting bigger, Google grew bigger. Today’s Google is not just a search engines. We could find news, music, movies channels on it. Google system on cellphone is still in competition with Apple’s IOS IPhone system. Lately, with internet going everywhere in our life, Google’s own laptop system has become more popular. Which has no hard drive, everything saves on Google cloud. Obviously, the ways Google make money are more than we can imagine. The search engines have high exportability in every country as long as they use internet there. It like a transportation industry, no matter what people do, they need transportation to move their goods. Search engines are just â€Å"transportations† which bring the websites with information that user need to them. It’s good to bring the technology into a new area; it may improve internet users’ experience. The business model for Google or others search engines basically is selling advertises on search results. But these advertises are going to be useful based on what users searched. There are users looking for information, and also organizations which trying to giving information. The search engines give user search result and there advertisings about what they need to them, and get paid from these organization who post those advertising.

Economic development Essay Example for Free

Economic development Essay Economic development and economic growth are both indicators of the economic position of the country. Economic growth is the growth in gross domestic product and economic development is related to growth in the standard of living and poverty. As you can see economic growth and economic development are not the same thing, economic development is far more than just growth in GDP as it involves indicators that are not purely economically related. However economic growth is an indicator of economic development but there are also several other factors that represent economic development. These indicators are; life expectancy at birth, infant mortality rate, daily calorie supply per capita, adult literacy rate, number of doctors per 1000 people, average years of schooling, availability of clean water, freedom of press, immunisation rates and levels of discrimination. As you can see these are generally not economic indicators but when they are combined they form the economic development figure. There are fifteen barriers to economic development, the first of these being a lack of physical capital. Lack physical capital is a significant barrier to the development of a country for several reasons. There is already a shortage of capital that further leads to less capital being produced; this creates significant problems for developing countries. In these countries the income levels are low leading to low savings and therefore little money for investment in capital. This lack of capital furthers the low productivity therefore the employment remains low. This also leads to a lack of demand for goods and services the low demand means that less needs to be produced therefore less capital needs to be produced. This then forces the country into a cycle of underdevelopment. This consequently creates a barrier for the country to develop. An example of this is in most less developed countries where they are in constant times of war and civil unrest. Their capital is destroyed through war making it difficult for the country to produce more capital. Also, Sierra Leone, the worlds least developed country, as shown by the human development index, has a GDP per capita of US$159 this creates significant problems for the economy and its development. A lack of human capital is the next barrier to development. This barrier is created through a lack of education and training of the population. It also relates to the general heath and wellbeing of the population. If the labour-force are getting sick then they are unable to work and therefore decreasing the labour capital. A current example of this situation is in South Africa. In South Africa the micro-economic impact of AIDS is very serious and is getting worse. Among skilled workers HIV prevalence is expected to peak between a fifth and a quarter percent by the year 2000, which is consequently depleting the number of skilled workers creating the lack of capital development barrier. These problems are also leading to a rise in insurance bills and the costs of health benefits rise. This therefore diverts government savings to pay for health care and as a result the availability of funds for investment will fall. AIDS is predicted to knock 0.3 to 0.4 percent off the annual growth rate. As you can see this is a severe barrier to development in these less developed countries. A strategy to this barrier is human resource development. The next barrier to development is a lack of savings. This also causes low levels of investment due to the low income leading to low savings. This low level of savings is also caused by several other reasons such as; poorly developed financial markets, holding of savings in traditional non-money forms, the purchase of unnecessary luxury items, cheap family labour reducing the incentive to save for investment and the general indebtedness of the population. The low incentive to reinvest profits by businesses also reduces the savings. Budget deficits by the government to make up for the low taxation revenue are also decreasing the amount being saved. When there is a lack of savings caused by any of these causes it forces the need to borrow form overseas that consequently leads to problems with the balance of payments. An example of lack of savings exists in Nigeria. In Nigeria there are severe problems with their currency. These begin with significant fraud problems also the majority of trading is done with cash in which until recently the currency did not exceed the equivalent of 50 cents. The next problem is that they dont believe in banks, the only use of banks is to exchange foreign currencies for tourists, which leads to a lack of funds for investments. Also, Local traders keep all working capital stuffed in coca jars, as they believe business opportunities will disappear in the time it takes to make a withdrawal. Banks do not allow credit due to the fear of not being repaid. All of these factors contribute to a large barrier to development simply due to a lack of savings. This could be solved through improving the financial system. Another barrier to development is a lack of taxation revenue. A lack of taxation creates barriers as it means the government has little finances to use on economic development. The high unemployment, very low-income levels and difficulties in tax collection cause this lack of tax revenue. The government is then forced to collect tax mainly from customs duties, sales taxes and excises. These taxes can prove to be very inflationary and are also regressive. Another problem with these taxes is that they discourage investment and the creation of employment. Nigeria also has a problem with the collection of taxation. Most Nigerians that can afford to avoid paying taxes, as they believe that their money will be flinched by the corrupt government. This creates severe problems for the country, as there is no money for the government to use in investment to promote economic development. Improving the financial system will also help solve this barrier. The next barrier to entry is a lack of infrastructure. Less developed countries rarely have a sufficient supply of necessities such as roads, ports, sewerage, power schools or water- facilities etc. The main reason that this infrastructure is not being made is that the government simply cannot raise the funds to finance them due to their lack of taxation revenue. Another reason maybe that the government has chosen to finance defence spending or if they are in time of war, in which most LCDs are. A lack of infrastructure restricts the free flow of goods and services and reduces the productivity of the labour force that further restricts the economic development of the country. In Africa infrastructure is very underdeveloped compared to the other less developed regions. They have 6 phone lines for every 1000 people compared to the average of 54 for other developing regions. Also their power supply is far less than the average of 300kw per 1000 peoples with 80kw this significantly stops their development. In Nigeria there are serious problems with infrastructure causing business uncertainty. Telephones rarely work and the electric comes in periodic vengeful surges. Nigerian firms, particularly the state-owned ones due to the lack of taxation, devote little effort into maintaining their infrastructure and it therefore ends up breaking down. Reliable firms are so hard to come by that firms barter contacts: well let you share the electricity from our generator if you can help us find spare parts for it. Firms wanting to set up in Nigeria face the problem known locally as BYOI (bring your own infrastructure) this shows how much of a problem infrastructure is in Nigeria. A lack of infrastructure could be solved in many ways such as encouraging enterprise, human resource development or improving the financial system. A lack of entrepreneurs is another barrier to economic development. Enterprise is essential in order for development to occur, as it is one of the key factors to production. In the less developed countries there tens to be a lack of entrepreneurs for several reasons. The first of these is the fact that there is a limited opportunity to make a profit, due to the lack of demand. The next reason is that the businesses not easily financed due to the low level of savings. The lack of infrastructure available also distracts these entrepreneurs. Another reason to the lack of entrepreneurs is that cultural beliefs often place little importance on monetary gain and entrepreneurs are thus given little status. The number of entrepreneurs is also reduced by the lack of education in these countries. The final reason is that it is risky for an entrepreneur due to the political and economic instability. An example of a lack of entrepreneurs is also in Nigeria as it closely relates to the lack of the infrastructure. The lack of infrastructure adds at least 25 percent onto a firms operating costs if it choses to set up in Nigeria, this is a significant deterrent for firms to set up and should be solved if the county wants to achieve economic development. A strategy that could be adopted to help this situation is encouraging enterprise. The next barrier to economic development is a lack of technology. There are several reasons why these less developed countries are not more technologically advanced. The first reason being that most new technology will involve some investment in capital that is lacking in these less developed countries. Also another problem is that the new technology will need skilled labour to operate it but skilled labour is also of shortage in a LCD. The next reason is that companies dont really want to adopt labour saving technology when they already have cheap labour and there are high unemployment rates. The final reason that there is a lack of technology is that new technology is used to facilitate the achievement of economies of scale and the small markets in LCDs reduce the incentive to mass-produce. The governments however, have managed to encourage technology into these LCDs and most currently use modern technology that compliments the labour so workers maintain their jobs. A lot of the modern technology used in these counties is generally used in the foreign owned industries where they mass-produce in order to export to advanced markets. Over population and rapid population growth is another factor that causes a barrier to development. In these less developed countries the birth rates are often five times higher than in the more developed countries. The advances of medicine have also caused a fall in the deaths, which leads to a higher population growth. The growth of these countries is generally around 2 percent and their growth is usually below this figure, which therefore worsens the situation, and the real GNP per capita often falls. In the more advanced countries they generally have population growth of around 0.5 percent and their economic growth will usually be higher than that. This is where the widening gap occurs pushing less developed countries further away from more advanced countries. This high growth of the population also has the effect of increasing the labour force, but as there is little demand for labour the unemployment rate will tend to rise. Also, most of this population is below 15 or above 65 meaning they are unable to contribute o production but still need things such as food, water, clothing and shelter. This creates a problem known as dependency burden making development even harder. Governments in these LDCs fight a tough battle with a rapid growing population and are always trying to slow this rate but they face several problems such as poor education, communication, lack of contraception and cultural attitudes. Africa is currently the fastest growing of all the developing regions with a growth rate of 3 percent over the past decade but with this high growth rate comes several associated problems. Africa has one doctor for every 20,000 people compared to an average 5000 people in developing countries and its infant mortality rate is the highest at 96 per thousand births almost double the developing countries average. Africans also have a life expectancy of 52 years where the average for developing countries is 64. As you can see that the effects of a high population are not beneficial to a developing country. This barrier to development can be solved with the population control strategy. The next barrier to development is inflation. Inflation in these countries is caused by the scare amounts of goods and services relative to the high population consequently causing demand pull inflation. The domestic supply is unable to match the domestic demand. The inflation rates in many of these countries gets above 200 percent compared to that of around 5 percent in most advanced countries. This high inflation has many unwanted effects such as decreased living standards and a reduction in real income, it also tends to redistribute the income from the poor to the wealthy therefore increasing the income inequality that already exists. A high inflation rate also causes the investment of non-productive assets such as antiques or gold, this money is therefore taken out of the economy reducing the funds available for investment. These high inflation rates also cause a reduction in the competitiveness of exporters and import competing firms that therefore leads to an increase in the countries current account deficit. Another effect that inflation will lead to is a falling exchange rate, which if the country has a large foreign debt will make it even harder to pay. Inflation is very high in most of the African countries and causes severe problems to their economy and development progress. Balance of payments problems is also another barrier to development of these less developed countries. The majority of LCDs have problems with their external balance as the little income they do earn is used on imports and used to pay off interest on their foreign debts. As these countries are in deficit they are continually forced to borrow from overseas to finance their payments worsening their current account deficit even more. Many of these countries are also suffering from worsening terms of trade that also decreases their export revenue and thus further worsening their balance of payments. The WTO worldwide reduction of tariffs will help to assist this but government policies need to be implemented to seriously boost export revenue and turn the consumers away from imports. The strategy to help the balance of payments is import replacement. The next barrier to development that LCDs face is a depletion of their natural resources. Many of these countries are highly dependent on one major export to create export revenue, create growth, employment and income and the reduction in the current account deficit. This creates problems as they may deplete natural resources without considering future production. This reduces the potential for further future development and growth. In Mauritius, they have cleared 25 percent of their forests in the last 19 years purely for export. This causes massive environmental effects and also is a serious concern, as when the resources run out the countrys economy will fail to stay afloat. This is the same in many less developed countries including many African counties and their dependency on oil. It can be helped with export development to have a wider range of exports and less dependency on one major export. Another significant barrier to economic development in these less developed countries is corruption and poor administration by the government. Corruption is a very common problem in LDCs. The problem associated with this is that aid and government revenue is not all used in promoting growth, corrupt leaders and government officials take most of it. When a government is corrupt it causes most of their aid to be withdrawn forcing them to reform their political structures. This withdrawal of overseas assistance causes depletions in general living standards of the country. Another problem with these governments is that they know little or nothing about economics. These leads to several problems including poor administration and efficiency these lead to a poor ability to promote development. An example of this is in Nigeria where it has been estimated that in the last twenty years over two billion dollars of oil revenue from the country has been embezzled. This is mainly due to their last dictator who ordered the Nigerian Central Bank to deposit 15 million dollars a day into his own Swiss bank account. This works out to twenty percent of GDP and when you take into consideration that their NFD is over 40 percent of GDP, the country is not left with much money. A strategy that has been put into place for this specific barrier is the refusal to lend money to Nigeria from IMF. Natural disasters are another barrier to development in less developed countries. The effects of natural disasters such as floods or droughts have a much greater impact on less developed countries compared to that of advanced countries. Most LCDs are prone to these natural disasters, which is a significant factor to their underdevelopment. In India they have times of severe droughts and flooding where 80 million people were affected. This has severely decreased their agriculture production and is consequently creating a barrier to their development. There is not much that can be done about natural disasters but do adjust to them and to adopt new ways to cope with them. Another significant factor preventing the development of less developed countries is war and civil unrest. Many LCDs are in constant war and civil unrest, this causes several problems with development. The first of these problems is that entrepreneurs are discouraged by the countries instability also important infrastructure is destroyed and governments spend their little taxation revenue on maintaining order or producing weapons. Economies in war torn countries are unlikely to be operating at full capacity making it hard for development to occur. In Rwanda civil wars in the nineties have claimed the lives of almost 1,000,000 Rwandans. Most of the aid to the country was invested in weaponry and therefore not used in promoting economic development, as it should have been. This is how civil wars can create barriers to development. The only solution to this is to end the wars and focus the spending into promoting economic development. The final barrier to development is a lack of press freedom. Press freedom involves the exchange of ideas, criticism of government and increased awareness of world events and developments. This is something that most LCDs do not have and therefore their economic development is limited. In Mexico the government allowed Televisa to have a monopoly in the television market if they didnt play any anti-government shows and supported the government. In the eighties journalists were killed by the police in Mexico City if they published any anti-government articles. This is serious problem in these less developed countries and is usually the result of government corruption. The first strategy to promote economic development in these less developed countries is export development. This strategy involves assisting those producers who export to overseas markets. An increase in export development will earn foreign exchange and create unemployment and income and also help to solve problems with the balance of payments. The next strategy to promoting development is import replacement. Import replacement involves the shifting of demand away from imports and towards the domestically produced products. This can be done in several ways including the induction of tariffs on imports making them more expensive relative to the domestic product. This also encourages foreign investment as the foreign firms wish to have the same protection. Assisting domestic producers financially is another way of promoting this economic development, by subsidising and offering tax incentives to local producers it will increase their competitiveness with imports by the lower costs of production. However, replacing imports is only a short-term solution and therefore policies promoting long-term development must be applied. Human resource development is the next strategy to development. This development involves improving the size of the labour force and also the skills of the labour force. The labour force can be increased through improved health care and skills can be attained through things such as training and education. In Nigeria the World Bank is currently funding an $80 million project into their education as well as building a better and more consistent water supply. Also In Malaysia education investment has been amongst their highest priorities for decades, they have spent $731 million on improving their education levels to the level they are currently at Another way to promote economic development in these less developed countries is through encouraging enterprise. In most LDCs there is a lack of entrepreneurs, in order to increase the quantity there are several solutions such as improving management and leadership training and tax incentives, subsidies and free loans. Cuba has introduced a group of people called the cuentapropistas, 170,000 entrepreneurs marking the arrival of a new business sector in the islands socialist economy. They account for 8% of the labour force and manage to put food on the table for one in ten Cubans. These new small businesses have been a result of reduced subsidies to state enterprises, increased foreign investment, and introduction of incentives in the agricultural sector and the legalisation of dealings in foreign currency. This has already had positive signs on the Cuban economy with growth in 1998 at 8 percent some 31percent higher than two years previous. Population control is another strategy to economic development. Rapid population growth is unwanted as it creates problems such as inflation and scarcity and therefore more poverty. There are plenty of methods that can be put into place to slow population growth. Some of these methods include maximum children policy such as Chinas one child policy and free supplies of contraception. The Grameen bank is another contributor to helping population control in Bangladesh. The bank issue loans to woman and as part of the conditions to borrowing the money they must agree to have small families. This has proved to be a successful program all across the world and has helped to promote the small-scale development of many less developed countries. The next strategy to promote economic development is increasing the agricultural productivity. Agriculture is usually a major sector in the less developed countries and thus improving its productivity will significantly promote development. Improving the agriculture productivity can be done in many ways. Some of these include merging small farms to create larger more efficient ones and encouraging owner operators to increase the incentive to improve productivity there also several other ways in which these countries can improve their agricultural productivity. With 75 percent of the population living in rural areas, improving the efficiency of Indias agriculture is the key to attaining high growth and reducing poverty. Accelerating rural development and poverty reduction requires cutting spending on input subsidies; investing in rural infrastructure; providing more effective rural services, especially to the poor and socially excluded; improving management of water, forests, and other natural resources; liberalizing the rural economy, including the rural financial system. In the heart of Indias poorest region, the Bihar Plateau Development Project is increasing access to much-needed irrigation and safe drinking water by tribal communities and raising their incomes through the diversification of rural livelihoods. The project aims to reach 4.5 million people through a variety of institutional mechanisms, including water and sanitation committees, water user associations, and income generation schemes, all aiming to transfer skills and enhance peoples capabilities so that the benefits may be sustained once the project ends. This is one way in which India is proving to increase its agricultural produc tivity. Another strategy to promoting economic development is by adopting intermediate technology. If a less developed country invested in new technology it may be forgiving employment possibilities, as most new technology is very labour intensive, this will consequently lead to a fall in employment. As these countries have an abundance of labour it is much easier, cost effective and better for the economy if they use intermediate technology that still requires high levels of labour. An example of this is Fred Hollows, Hollows uses local resources to create employment income and economic growth through the training of people to perform the medical tasks and also employment in the factories where the lens are created. The final strategy to promote economic development is to improve the financial system. In these economies there is a lack of savings and an insufficient financial system, this creates major barriers to development. Thus policies need to be adopted to improve this situation that promote growth and employment without generating high levels of inflation. The World Banks Executive Board approved a $506 million loan to support financial sector adjustment and reform in Colombia. The loan is part of a revised World Bank strategy for Colombia that includes intensified lending to help the country promote peace, ease the impact of the recession on the poor, and rebuild after their earthquake. It is also part of a $1.4 billion package to help bolster Colombias economy. This financial sector adjustment loan reflects the World Banks confidence in Colombias wide-ranging reform strategy, which is critical to its effort to overcome the recession, said Andres Solimano, director of the Banks program i n Colombia. The financing of many of these strategies is usually funded through institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund institutions. The World Bank is a major force behind the development of less developed countries as it gives issues discounted loans to most of these countries. Another way that these countries can fund their development is through overseas aid. The are large amounts of money flowing out of the developed countries from governments and other aid organizations as aid into the less developed countries hoping to achieve economic development. For all of these less developed countries to achieve economic development, an effort from all developed countries with aid and advice must be contributed, but until then the world will not have any chance of abolishing poverty. References: IFC Building the private sector in Africa The Economist January 15th 2000 survey Nigeria World bank Rwanda development project The Economist May 27th Aids impact in South Africa World Bank Cubas Cuentapropistas World Bank Indias development The Grameen Bank Economic Development in Bangladesh The Economist May 27th Growth is good The Economist Feb 22nd Televista World Bank press release, 11th June 1998

The Role And The Function Of Leadership Management Essay

The Role And The Function Of Leadership Management Essay What makes a leader. What is leadership. What do leaders do. After 100 years of modern studies, these remain cogent questions. Many writers have offered either general or specific answers over the years, but the discussion continues unabated. People have not yet resolved these questions to the satisfaction of most, and the search for acceptable answers continues. Understanding the role and the function of leadership is one of the most important intellectual tasks of this generation, and leading is one of the most needed skills. The reason is simple. Leaders play a major role in helping us shape our life. Leaders define business and its practice. They determine the character of society. They define our teams, groups and communities. They set and administer government policy. In all walks of life, leaders behavior sets the course others follow and determines the measures used to account for group actions. Success in the new millennium, as in the past, will depend on how well leaders understand their roles, the leadership process and their own values and vision as well as those of their groups. Their behavior sets the course others follow and determines the values and other measures used to account for group actions. Understanding leadership is, like all of the important aspects of life, a thing of the mind more than of an objective reality. Traditionally, leadership has been thought of in terms of the heads, or chief officers of organizations, regardless of the tasks or functions they may perform. It is easy to think about leaders and leadership in terms of authority and headship and to talk about leadership as management. Management, as a role for heads of organizations, involves control over others behaviors and actions. For most people a position of leadership centers around the management role, its tasks and techniques-its technology. It conjures up ideas like controlling interpersonal relations, making decisions, aligning individual member actions and perceptions with corporate goals, planning, budgeting and directing the effort of the several followers engaged in the work with us. The manager role involves insuring that group activity is timed, controlled and predictable. The idea of business management is pervasive and powerful in society. It defines those human attributes which are thought appropriate to success in the formal corporation, like competition, ambition and financial astuteness. The Western myth of managerial man is one of the dominant myths of our age. The central feature of this concept is the idea of management. Since the early days of the twentieth century until today, management has been given prominence over other, some arguably more important, human activities related to emotional needs, wider family relationships and social or intellectual aspirations. For many people, management has become the metaphor of the twentieth and twenty first century, encompassing work, workers and work cultures. In accordance with www.businessdictionary.com, a leader is a person who holds a dominant or superior position within his or her field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others. Eight major traits that differentiate leaders from non-leaders are: responsibility, integrity, ability to make decisions, ability to deal with facts, vision of the big picture, optimism, resilience and excellence. There are two types of leaders: transactional and transformational. Transactional leader approaches followers with an eye to exchanging one thing for another, while transformational recognizes and exploits an existing need or demand of a potential follower and looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower (Burns, 1972) In order to manage one-on-one communication effectively, a leader has to meet four basic criteria. They are: achievable, inspiring, measurable and shared. Since the result is probably the most important thing in any human activity, it is extremely important for a leader to be achievable. A good leader also has to be inspiring in order to make others achieve. Some people are leaders because of their formal position in an organization or a group, whereas others are leaders because of the way other group members respond to them. These two common forms of leadership are called assigned leadership and emergent leadership. Leadership that is based on occupying a position in an organization is an assigned leadership. Emergent leadership, in its turn, is not assigned by position; rather, it emerges over a period through communication of a leader with his followers. In our contemporary society in order to survive any business has to reshape itself to the needs of constantly changing world. It is not enough to just satisfy consumers needs and wants. In order to withstand severe market competition it has become important to follow consumers ever-changing requirements. Leaders reshape their teams using two ways: episodic and continuous change methods. Each method is used depending on the scale of changes needed and type of the environment a person works in. Also, different exhibition of leadership is needed to perform such changes. Continuous changes take place when a company or a team adapts to the external environment constantly and during a long period of time. Changes appear as endless modifications to working and production processes on micro levels. Working environment constantly evolves, trying to recognize, track and respond to changing market conditions, putting an emphasis on long-run adaptability. This, however, sometimes means organizations or teams inability to remain stable. Leader in this particular case plays a role of a sense maker who redirects changes, however does not play a role of a person who leads the changes in the company. Leadership is revealed through a success of the team in long-run. Episodic changes, on the other hand, are occasional, infrequent and discontinuous changes that dramatically alter the way of doing business inside the company or the team. During a short-run period a group of people strives to adapt to the external environment, being inert and unable to do this using continuous adaptation. Changes take place on macro levels and are usually very distant and global. Leaders are considered as one of the five triggers to such changes. They provide a strong sense of purpose of the change, are passionate, inspire others, making people follow them, and actually make changes happen. Principles of leadership excellence A Focus on Quality The leaders job is to encourage and sustain high-quality products and service to all who have a stake in the groups work. Excellence leadership incorporates ideas that energize and inspire followers to unified action to increase and maintain high-quality services and products. Leaders focus on high-quality performance in all aspects of work. They foster team approaches to task activity that delegate more discretion over the work to the team and to individuals. They set standards of conduct and performance that implement cultural values and behaviors. The leadership model includes encouraging the formation of traditions that foster and inculcate the core-value vision. Often it includes dramatizing the core-value vision in ways that explain and interpret it to organization members. This virtual leadership environment assumes a culture of excellence. Culture includes experience, expectation for the future and values that condition behavior. Without general agreement on acceptable behavior and the values context within which we operate, corporation members are free to follow divergent paths. Coherent, cooperative action is impossible where at least implicit agreement in a common culture is missing. Creating and maintaining a culture conducive to attainment of personal and team excellence goals is, therefore, a hallmark of leadership excellence in any organization. A Focus on Vision The principal mechanism for implementing values and purposes the leader desires is the vision statement. A vision statement is a short, memorable motto or statement that encapsulates the core values of the organization. Creating the statement is a personal task done primarily by the leader. The excellent leader adopts a core-value vision that emphasizes quality improvement values. The impact of vision setting is powerful. It pervades all else the excellent leader does. It is both part of the definition of the excellent leader and the mechanism for integrating context (culture) and technologies. It is the core idea binding the leader and the followers in a common purpose. A Focus on Service Also critical is the need for the leader to address questions of high-quality service in attaining corporate goals. In doing this, leaders act to prepare and then empower followers to be of service. This aspect of the service dimension is similar to the training and education programs managers and leaders have been doing routinely. Excellence leaders see value in helping followers broadly develop their capacity to be of service. They also emphasize high-quality, excellent service levels. The second aspect of the service dimension has to do with the service role of the leader toward followers. The leaders job is not only to encourage and sustain high-quality service by all stakeholders but to provide needed services to all those who have a stake in the groups work. Leaders serve coworkers as their needs arise, so they (the followers) can accomplish their set tasks. Leaders serve followers in ways that energize and inspire them to unified action. The service role casts the leader as a steward in relationships with coworkers. The stewardship role asks the leader to hold in trust the organization, its resources, its people and the common vision of the future. A Focus on Innovation Leaders foster innovation in groups. The leadership model sees the leaders role as transforming the self, followers and the institution to achieve the strategic vision. Leaders see their role as transforming the group. Leaders have a bias for change. They are alert to the expressed and implied needs of customers, employees and clients. They respect both the techniques and the pressures for change. Leaders develop their followers in appropriate ways to enhance them and improve their performance. Leaders love people. They expend large amounts of energy in seeking, developing and expanding the capacities of those around them. Leadership is in the business of making champions. Champions are group members imbued with the leaders vision and capable of moving an idea through all the development phases to full implementation. A Focus on Productivity Improvement Productivity improvement is also a part of the definition of the excellent leader. Leaders take responsibility for improvement in the productive capacity of the group and its members. These leaders have a results-oriented, not activity-oriented, service style. There is an uncompromising commitment to the customer. They inspire others to think, plan and act with the customers need in mind (Fairholm, Real Leadership: How Spiritual Values Give Leadership Meaning, 2011). Productivity, therefore, becomes a function of directed service. Excellence leaders encourage productivity through reward structures contingent upon the demonstration of desired productivity behaviors (Bernard Avolio, 1994). Leaders are focused on reward structures that encourage high-quality work. Leaders provide incentives for stakeholders to change to accommodate the vision values. Rewards in excellent leadership emphasize development of individual capacities and respect for group values, norms, work processes and productivity results. Skills needed for leadership excellence Excellent leadership appears to be an applied capacity. It is action-oriented, and it cannot be learned in classrooms. Of course, some leadership skills are acquired in the normal way through reading, studying and analyzing theoretical propositions and principles. And some leadership capacity is learned through observation of other leaders. But leadership excellence is learned most fully through leadership action. It is a dynamic process. One study of executives in Virginia (Fairholm, Values leadership: toward a new philosophy of leadership, 1991) identified eight categories of skills that seem to define the technology of excellence. They include: Ability to assess the situation Capacity to build on employee strengths Sensitivity to evolving trends Political astuteness Refined sense of timing Capacity to be inspirational Technical (job) competence Ability to focus on a few important things The factors that promote excellence in organizations across the nation include clarity of mission and vision and effective leadership at the top. Leaders select and support service champions (in-house entrepreneurs). They interact closely with both employees and customers. They understand cultures and structures, emphasize process over product and focus on human factors to get a high-quality product. These skills run counter to much of the content of professional business school curricula. These schools teach quantitative analysis and rational decision making as primary technologies. Evidence amassed in leadership excellence suggest otherwise. Unlike management, leadership excellence is more a political process of defining the situation, assessing the strengths of actors, sensing nuances in relationships and acting to focus group resources at the right time. Technical competence in the job to be done is less important than political sensitivity. Preparation for leadership excellence asks embryonic leaders to be political, to be sensitive to the feelings of others and to care about their followers as human beings, not as just cogs in the industrial machine. Leaders who focus too much on traditional managerial goals of tight control will fall short of attainable high-quality performance and can expect failure, even destruction. Quality improvement is a long-term values-change process. There are few quick successes. Attaining high quality requires total employee involvement at all levels in the organization. It is a matter of cultural change to give high priority to quality values and methods. It requires effort by everyone: workers, middle managers and those at the top. Each needs to play a role in changing the culture to value quality and in performing to attain it. Producing high-quality products or services also implies quality-of-work-life factors that are difficult to attain. Leaders need to create a culture that meets the needs of all stakeholders both within and external to the organization. They need to give employees something personally meaningful to commit to before they commit themselves to quality goals or anything else High quality will come only as we move from a situation where workers work because they fear economic deprivation, to a situation where they work because they want to improve themselves and make a difference in the world. It is an empowerment idea.