Leadership Competency: Organizational Acumen
Introduction
Over the last 3 weeks, you explored self-management, cognitive adeptness, and interpersonal adeptness as competencies crucial to building relationships and understanding complex ideas. This week, you will consider organizational acumen as a leadership competency and explore how it might impact the bigger picture: organizational culture. You also will examine two commonly used approaches, problem solving and appreciative inquiry, that leaders might use to address organizational problems.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this week, you should be able to:
• Explain how leaders help to create organizational culture
• Explain how leadership development contributes to changes in organizational culture
• Distinguish between appreciative inquiry and problem solving
• Apply appreciative inquiry to organizational problems
Organizational Culture
Organizational acumen uses a set of skills and aptitudes needed to design, implement, and nurture the culture of organizations. Organizational culture consists of organizational values, assumptions, processes, goals, biases, and ethics. Culture is being rediscovered as a key to retention, employee satisfaction, and competitive advantage. Fortunately, leaders and leadership development can influence organizational culture in many positive ways, thus affecting the success of organizations.
To prepare for this Discussion:
• Review the course media “Leadership Competency: Organizational Acumen,” with Dr. Miller and Russ Bredholt. Pay particular attention to how leaders might analyze organizations, make decisions, and resolve conflicts. Consider how each of these actions might contribute to organizational culture.
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• Review the article “The Role of the Founder in Creating Organizational Culture.” Consider how leaders” beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors impact organizational culture.
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• Review the articles “Changing Organizational Culture Through Leadership Development: A Case in Leadership Transformation” and “Leadership Development and Organizational Culture: Which Comes First?” Think about how leadership development and training might result in changes in organizational culture.
With these thoughts in mind:
Write an explanation of how leaders might help to create organizational culture. Be sure to provide specific examples to illustrate your explanation. Then explain how leadership development might contribute to changes in organizational culture. Be specific.
Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references from the Learning Resources.
Learning Resources
This page contains the Learning Resources for this week. Be sure to scroll down the page to see all of this week’s assigned Learning Resources. To access select media resources, please use the streaming media player below.
Readings
• Article: Fitzgerald, S. P., Murrell, K. L., & Miller, M. G. (2003). Appreciative inquiry: Accentuating the positive. Business Strategy Review, 14(1), 5-7.
Use the Business Source Premier database, and search using the article’s Accession Number: 9303287
• Article: Hasler, M. G. (2005). Leadership development and organizational culture: Which comes first? Retrieved October 26, 2008, fromhttps://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED492357.pdf
• Article: Kerka, S. (2003). Appreciative inquiry: Trends and issues alert. Eric Publications, 1-4.
Use the ERIC database, and search using the article’s Accession Number: ED473671
• Article: McNamara, C. (2008). Basic guidelines to problem solving and decision making. Retrieved on October 23, 2008, fromhttps://managementhelp.org/personalproductivity/problem-solving.htm
• Article: Schein, E. H. (1983). The role of the founder in creating organizational culture. Organizational Dynamics, 12(1), 13-28.
Use the Business Source Premier database, and search using the article’s Accession Number: 4636855
• Article: Sharkey, L. D. (1999). Changing organizational culture through leadership development: A case in leadership transformation. Organization Development Journal, 17(3), 29-37.
Use the ABI/INFORM Global database, and search using the article’s Accession Number: 44514701
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