“All groups and organizations should function as teams in which everyone makes decisions and shares responsibilities and duties. Giving one person central authority and responsibility for a project or task is not an effective way to get work done.”
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above? Support your views with reasons and/or specific examples drawn from your own work or school experiences, your observations, or your reading.
Eventhough the author's statement is quite enticing I chose to stand on the other side of the fence, for the following reasons.
Digging the examples from history to present events, there is no harm to claim that leadership is mostly about a single person and his strength to take a prompt decision. Alexander lead his huge army to invade the whole world just by his sheer will power and decision. Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google are all ruling today just because they are driven by one man and one decision.
Coming down to day to day life activities, such as in any project, if every person in a team has the same and the equal responsibilities, there can be unnecessary conflicts in opinion even executing a tiny job. Everybody will have different vision and may be most of those are not correct. This situation is not only time-consuming but also counter-prodcutive for a company where fast delivery is a buzz word.
The reason for advocating a single leader is that he can delegate the responsibilities to the right guy avoiding unnecessary delays and confusion. Not everybody is adept at everything, but it is also true that everybody has their own strength. So its a leader's job to know whom to assign a job so as to deduce the best output from him. If everybody becomes leader who is going to execute the actual job at hand?? An example in this scenario can be that all US soldiers be given the rank of a Captain, then who is going to command and who is going to follow?
A leader ensures that decision is made, he may be wrong at certain occassions but would be able to make decisions on time. Delegation helps others concentrate on their strength and leave the leader to plan out the future activities. A leader is chosen based on certain attributes, which cannot be found in everybody. According to a survey in US army, there is a steady shortage of around 300-400 army personnels for the last 2 decades. So the point is that not everybody can be leader, it is safe in few hands only.
Finally, even though its a very win-win situation to suggest that equal responsibilities be given to every member, but in practical scenarios, either we think about household jobs or office work, one-man leadership is best to accomplish things efficiently.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The following appeared in the editorial section of a corporate newsletter.
“The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument,
what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Author is trying to make a generalization that workers have interest in management issues. To support his statement he presented a survey data which cliams that 79% of the workers have expressed their high interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits program.
While at first glance, author seems very convincing and I find it hard to find a loophole in the statement, but on a second look, it is obvious that author's statements cannot be sound enough if he doesnot make certain assumptions.
The very first thing the author assumes that if workers have shown interest in corporate restructing and redesign, that itself is sufficient and a necessary condition to conclude that workers are interested in management activities. I would say, those two aforementioned activities are a very tiny part in a management activities and in some cases, these activities may not be important as well. Author must show that workers also have active interest in other core management issues like, planning, resources, company finances, work delegation to name a few.
Last, but not the last, lets assume that pure workers, and not people from management group comprises the majority of the surver taker, but question which raises doubt in reader's mind is what was the nature or authenticity of survey, for instance, what kind of questions were asked in the survey ? Was it an multiple-choice or was it an oral questinairre? Based on what criteria they came to the conclusion made by the author. All these question needs explanation and solid reasoning.
Finally, even though the author sounds enthusiastic, his statement will be more convincing if he can backup his argument with relavant data and logic.
“The common notion that workers are generally apathetic about management issues is false, or at least outdated: a recently published survey indicates that 79 percent of the nearly 1,200 workers who responded to survey questionnaires expressed a high level of interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits programs.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument,
what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
Author is trying to make a generalization that workers have interest in management issues. To support his statement he presented a survey data which cliams that 79% of the workers have expressed their high interest in the topics of corporate restructuring and redesign of benefits program.
While at first glance, author seems very convincing and I find it hard to find a loophole in the statement, but on a second look, it is obvious that author's statements cannot be sound enough if he doesnot make certain assumptions.
The very first thing the author assumes that if workers have shown interest in corporate restructing and redesign, that itself is sufficient and a necessary condition to conclude that workers are interested in management activities. I would say, those two aforementioned activities are a very tiny part in a management activities and in some cases, these activities may not be important as well. Author must show that workers also have active interest in other core management issues like, planning, resources, company finances, work delegation to name a few.
Last, but not the last, lets assume that pure workers, and not people from management group comprises the majority of the surver taker, but question which raises doubt in reader's mind is what was the nature or authenticity of survey, for instance, what kind of questions were asked in the survey ? Was it an multiple-choice or was it an oral questinairre? Based on what criteria they came to the conclusion made by the author. All these question needs explanation and solid reasoning.
Finally, even though the author sounds enthusiastic, his statement will be more convincing if he can backup his argument with relavant data and logic.
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