The organization It is made up of people who try to achieve explicitly established common goals and for this they contribute efforts, skills, energy, and play different roles, depending on the structure of the organization itself and the formal and informal processes that develop. In this frame appear the functions of leadershipSometimes formally established other times, the leader emerges informally without the need for an appointment from the organization. Both types of leadership exist and are combined within the organization in different ways. In this Psychology-Online article, we talk about the importance of leadership in organizations.
The beginnings of empirical research date back to 1940 when Lewin et al. they began to work systematically on the subject.
In the late 1950s, Bennis he summed up progress on the subject by saying that of all the dark and confusing areas in social psychology, leadership struggles for the top spot. Leadership is probably more than any other topic in social science, the subject that has been written the most, but the least known about.
The lack of consensus in this area of leadership and authority cannot be attributed to the reluctance of social scientists for embarking on empirical research and projects related to these topics. The problem is not that there is little evidence but that what exists (a lot) is presented in a very contradictory way.
Stogdill He undertook the task of presenting a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject, and in 1974 published his The Handbook of Leadership, a review and analysis of more than 3,000 books and articles on the leadership. It is difficult to know what has been convincingly demonstrated through experimental replications.
McCall and Lombardo point out that the review of the research carried out on the subject allows discovering:
- that the number of non-integrated models, theories, prescriptions and conceptual schemes on leadership is worrying,
- that the vast majority of literature is fragmentary, trivial and unrealistic,
- that research results are characterized by type III error, that is, "wrong" problem solving, and by contradictions.
The potential contribution of research carried out for the study of leadership in organizations has not been so relevant, Although there seems to be agreement that the success or failure of any organization depends, to a large extent, on the quality of its leaders. The basic difference between a successful organization and one without it is leadership. Schultz (1978) points out that half of all new industries fail in their first 2 years of life and as only a third are over 5 years old, attribute, in most cases, the cause of failure to leadership defective.
All types of organization recognize the importance of the role of leadership.
The emphasis on leadership as a research topic in organizational psychology is justified by the belief that it was important to the functioning and success of organizations and that to the extent that leadership theories are successfully developed, it will be possible to develop techniques for selecting and training leaders with an increase in effectiveness organizational.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
