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YALF SEASON 2, HELD IN DOVA HOTELS LEKI LAGOS NGN |
A participative leader must have a
pioneering, imaginative and adventuresome mindset in order to empower employees
to make decisions involving the organization (Smith, 2008). Participative
leaders empower their employees in the decision-making process by meeting with
them periodically and listening and trusting them (UCF, n.d.). Wolf, Boland & Aukerman (1994b) defined
empowerment as “the awareness of a person’s potential talents, gifts, and power
and how a person can contribute to the organization’s goals (as cited in Thyer,
2003). Participative leadership requires and encourages participation from
everyone and shares decision-making for the betterment of the organization. Employee motivation is derived through
obtaining financial and self-image awards.
Leaders reward employees through financial gains and positive
evaluations which in turn increases motivation and morale (Murphy, 2005).
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YALF SEASON 2 WITH K. BANGWELL |
The
research contends there are some advantages and disadvantages to using this
style of leadership. Skogan (2006) noted
that leaders who allowed employees to participate in decision-making showed
improvement in labor-management relations, encouraged employee commitment,
enhanced community service, and diminished employee rejections of police
restructuring (as cited in Steinheider & Wuestewald, 2008). Research provides a plethora of findings for
implementing participative leadership such as: increased occupational
contentment, organizational allegiance, an organizational ownership behavior,
apparent support, labor-management collaboration and employee performance
(Steinheider & Wuestewald). Smith
(2008) suggested that the police rank structure impeded this style of
leadership. Furthermore, the police
organizational system has embedded a culture of risk aversion by continuing in
a hierarchical structure. The researcher suggested that since the hierarchical
system promoted employees to rank that it actually blocked participation at
different levels within the organization due to a lack of trust or experience. Other researchers suggest that some have been
left out of the decision-making process by allowing employees to participate at
a suggestion level or their discretionary decision-making on the street. Labor unions have increased their control
within the police organization, but have not been included in the
decision-making process. Flynn (2004)
and Skogan (2004) contend these labor unions are not being asked to help in the
decision-making process because of the hierarchical ethos of the police
organization and the selfishness of the labor unions (as cited in Steinheider
& Wuestewald, 2008). Ospina &
Yaroni (2003) suggested that labor union representatives and police leaders
only cooperate with each other when there is a critical situation (as cited in
Steinheider & Wuestewald, 2008).
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