Meyerson's Leadership Style Versus Mr example essay topic

Khaled MuQattash April 15, 2002 Organizational Behavior Case 141) Compare Mr. Meyerson's leadership style versus Mr. Perot's based on the Michigan and Ohio state behavioral theories of leadership. Employee centered supervisors are those who place strong emphasis on their concerned with getting the work done. Sometimes, the more general terms human relations oriented and task oriented are used to describe these alternative leader behaviors. Consideration and initiating structure are highly considerate leader is sensitive to people's feelings, and much like the employee centered leader, tries to make things pleasant for his or her followers.

In contrast, a leader high in initiating structure is more concerned with defining task requirements and other aspects of the work agenda; he or she might be seen as similar to a production-centered supervision. Meyerson's concern was emphasis on profit at the expense of people. He believed that technology, customers, the market, and what people in organizations wanted from their work had all changed his previous times at EDS. Meyerson wanted to move Perot Systems toward a corporate model that recognized that the larger issues in life mattered as much as the demands for profit and loss. Mayerson's objective was clear. We still tell people we " ll give them everything we can in the way of financial rewards.

In fact, the people who run the company own more than 60 percent of the company. So if we go public someday, we " ll still make a lot of our people very rich. Meyerson's other major concern was how EDS had treated customers. He described negotiations as intense, with EDS desire to win every penny possible from the customer. Not just to win but to dominate.

At Perot Systems, Meyerson promoted a much closer working relationship with customers and designed the reward system to reflect this newfound cooperation. Perot Systems concentrates on particular industry groups in order to provide enhanced expertise. Financial services, energy, travel and transportation, health care, communication, manufacturing, and construction. Mr. Perot does not use e-mail; he relies on face to face communication and internet access were largely the domain of military overlords and university scientists, and Perot Systems was doing mostly standard corporate work on central computers. 2) Utilizing Fiedler's Contingency Theory of leadership, explain how either Meyerson's or Perot's style might be most appropriate based on specific characteristics of the situation at Perot Systems. Fiedler considers situational control the extent to which a leader can determine what his or her group is going to do as well as the outcomes of the group's actions and decisions.

Fiedler uses an instrument called the least preferred co-worker scale to measure a person's leadership style. A task-motivated leader tends to be non directive in high control situation and directive in moderate and low control situations. As we can see Meyerson would score excellent because Mort Meyerson's new attitude toward business was a new emphasis on the shifting face of leadership. He concludes that the new leadership entails three job; make sure that the organization knows itself, pick the right people and create an environment where those people can succeed, and be accessible to the people in the organization. 3) Evaluate the situation at Perot Systems from the point of view of the discussion on New Leadership. In addition to contrasting the core themes of traditional and new leadership in high performance environments, it is important to examine a number of issues concerning the role of new leadership in workplace.

First, can people be trained in new leadership? As we see people have adapt to the environment if they want a job and it is not hard at all to adapt to it. I know from personal experience. Perot needs to have his training open for the workers or else they would not know what expected. Perot systems struggled to earn a consistent profit. As one of the smaller players in the information technology field, Perot Systems' higher cost and lower net earnings troubled Mr. Perot.

He has centralized reviews of spending and new contracts. He has directed every supervisor to attend a leadership-training course that reinforces his precepts. He has cut expenses, stepped up recruiting from the military, reinstated mandatory drug testing, and assigned a reading list including his autobiography. He has promoted executives with military backgrounds who have been with him for decades, since his days as commander in chief of Electronic Data Systems.

White shirts are in, and under his current thinking, same sex partners' health benefits will be out. Khaled MuQattash Case 15 April 15, 2002 Power of Empowerment at GM 1) How would you describe Parma's environment in terms of its level of uncertainty and complexity. The way I could describe Parma's environment in terms of its level of uncertainty is they were not sure on what they were doing in the company. Everyone had to work because they needed to support themselves. Parma's was a company who was there to make a lot of money and not care how anyone felt. They had nothing organized.

If it were not for Bob trying to make things happened the right way no one would care at all. As much as everyone complained if it was not for Bob and the union the company would have crumbled a long time ago. 2) How would you characterize Bob Lintz's approach to communication, decision making, and the exercise of power to create change at Pama? The way I would characterize Bob's approach to communication he is trying to get all workers to work as a team and have trust in one another. Bob also communicated with the union 1005 to work together with the company to have things change. Bob has a lot of decision making because he has supervisors and managers who do not want to change anything.

It took Bob years just to get doors on the bathroom stall. Bob had so many demands from the union. Bob decided to work together with the union. Since he did realize that working with them to solve the problems at Parma was not a very big problem. Bob wanted to change things at Parma as soon as he could, but he had a problem because no one would fully agree with him.

Roger liked what Bob was doing but he knew Bob had to go through a lot of obstacles to improve the company. Bob tried.