Social capital and leadership development case study
Summary
Significance of leadership could be understood from the fact that in year 2000, companies were spending over $50 billion per year over its development. Such a huge expenditure were being performed in order to make sure that companies are able to attain their final objectives along with maintain optimum echelon of employee satisfaction that makes it even more challenging. But according to Day and O’Connor, there has been a remarkable alteration in traditional theory of leadership regarding approaches that used to be followed. Previously, emphasis was laid over behavioral styles, and situational aspects like task structure, nature of decision processes, leadership substitutes, leader member exchange quality, etc. These features have now been rendered into more number of added facets as there has been a remarkable increase in the factors like volatility and vitality related with the markets.
Also initial leadership aspects used to negate the efficacy of social capital that makes a vital contribution in defining the overall progress of the organization. Thus recent leadership theories laid an optimum level of focus over human and social elements in a collaborated manner to make maximum possible use of the available resources.
Key learning points
Following are the key learning points mentioned in case,
- Leadership does not refer to a pre-defined set of protocols that have to be followed in order to make sure that organization achieve its objectives.
- But an important aspect of leadership is that it should be developed in a continuous manner rather than breaks. Some of the features that help in development are experience, ability, motivation, skills, and rewards.
- There should be a regular value addition in the organization effectiveness with the help of development in leadership, but along with it, there should also be an element of uniqueness in order to maintain synchronization between organizational functioning and market conditions.
- There is a close link between human capital and social capital, as former refers to individual competencies, while later refers to relational competencies.
- Both these features have different facets related with them like work experience, education, knowledge, skills, abilities are related to human capital, while social awareness, self-management, forging commitments, fostering cooperation, giving feedback, establishing trust, goodwill, and reciprocity are related to the social capital.
- Although leadership is considered to be as highly distinctive feature, but there are certain rules that remain same for all the leaders and are followed vitally, like leadership is not a position, rank, or title.
- Leaders can be held responsible for all the changes that are to be brought out in the organizations or a specific department of the company. Thus it become a basic responsibility of a leader to ensure that he develop organizational social capital in such a manner that it is able to make profitable implementation in different departments and also among collaborated functioning of different departments.
Justification of statements
While both human and social capital is important, they affect organizations differently.
These two aspects could be considered as two different sides of a coin that should be executed in such a manner that they act in a mutually beneficial manner for the organization. Human capital is fundamentally associated with the operational activities and makes contribution that can easily be identified by the organization, while social capital may sometime make contribution that are not easily identifiable or recognized in long run of the company. Thus leaders should be able to make proper demarcation between these two features without leaving any ambiguity.
It also depicts efficiency of the leader to carry out this basic functioning that can be regarded as one of the elementary feature of the organization. Thus I completely agree with the given statement.
Critical analysis
One of the key aspects related to leadership is transformation, which has to be implemented in a highly crucial manner in order to make sure that organization is able to retain its identity in consistently changing environment. There are certain features and behavior that can be considered as essential for leaders to apply such that their organization is able to make its survival possible in a profitable manner. These practical implementation aspects have not been mentioned in the case in an exclusive format. Only a hint of these applications had been presented in the case that leaves this case incomplete in this particular facet. But it has defined other values like social and human capital in a highly explicit manner. One of the best ways to define effectiveness of a method is through making a comparison over time, and this case has performed such a comparison.
Practical implication in UAE
Company chosen for practical implication is Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank.
Purpose for choosing this organization is that it has been existence for a significantly long time that makes it possible for us to perform a comparative analysis over time. It is one of those organizations that have encountered high degree of changes over time along with respect to leadership. Also consistently high performance shows that most of the implications were successful over the organization; hence depict extremely high effectiveness of leadership aspect that is being followed by it. No doubts there had been certain ups and downs in its entire tenure, but due to highly concrete basic structuring, it was able to sustain its functioning despite of high flexibility in the external market conditions.
Conclusion
Leadership is a practice that can not defined in an exact manner; rather it has to be developed in accordance to the situation and make sure that organization make optimum use of its resource content along with relating it with market conditions. Leadership is also a characteristic that vary from organization to organization and place to place. With changing times, there is a need for leaders to identify impact and importance of human and social capital that constitute one of the basic units of the organizational functioning. In no way it can be regarded as two separate entities as both of them are inter dependent over each other. Performance of a leader could also be tested from the fact that how efficiently he is able to establish relation between these two factors. (McCallum, 2008)
References
McCallum, Shelly & O’Connel, David. (2008). Social capital and leadership development. Emerald, Volume: 30.