CRITICAL REVIEW

Assignment
Submitted to: Sir Saqib Fareed
Submitted by: Shoaib Waqas
Roll no: 10031920-156
MBA 7th (AX)









DECEMBER 24, 2013
UNIVERSITY OF GUJRAT

Leadership, The Theory behind the practice
Going through the literature of this article I found that since 1994 Adaptive leadership has been
explored in the world. And there are certain characteristics which are adaptable by an individual
to become a leader. Earlier concept was just that leaders are born but research is continuously be
carried on that how adaptive leadership can be embraced.
The writer in this article talked about leadership, adaptive leadership, authority, disequilibrium at
workplace while they sift through what is essential and what is expendable. Adaptive leadership
is basically a framework that helps out individual and other people to adopt them to challenging
environment. Also it is a diagnostic way that chooses the best possible way to adopt change.
Organizational adaptation occurs through experimentation. And when an organization is going to
adapt diversity its actually accumulating different kinds of people to strengthen the decision
making process. Adaptation is not a sudden or quick process to carry on but it is a gradual
process and with the passage of time it is going to be adopted.
Thriving in reference to business involvement and the said to meet the long and short term
commitments and to increase customers value. The companies do this to retain their customer
and make them feel delight. Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle
tough challenges and thrive. In other words adaptive leadership teaches us to be more proactive
and initiative to handle the challenges and be successful.
The adaptive leadership involves four pre conditions
Get rid of the broken systems illusion
Learn to live in the Disequilibrium
Engage above and below the neck
Connect to purpose

When organization is in broken system illusion we need to motivate people and mobilize them
that they perform well. By managing human capital broken system of illusion can be evacuated.
To practice adaptive leadership, you have to help people navigate through a period of
disturbance as they sift through what is essential and what is expendable, and as they experiment
with solutions to the adaptive challenges at hand. People need to manage in that environment and
tolerate the discomfort they experience. If leadership involves will and skill, then leadership
requires the engagement of what goes on both above and below the neck. Courage depend upon
your heart, mind, spirit to do something, and your inner feelings. Skill requires learning new
competencies, with your brain training your body to become proficient at new techniques of
diagnosis and action. You have to choose among competing, legitimate purposes, sacrificing
many in the service of one or a few. In doing so, you make a statement about what you are
willing to die for, and, therefore, what you are willing to live for.
Leadership is basically bottom up, i.e. others accept the lead and direction willingly it is a
sustainable process. While the authority is using power and people to tell people they should do
something. It is top down. It is a transitory process in which peoples are compelled to follow
directions because of authoritarians power. While leadership is all about getting people to want
to do something. Being a leader, you not only to meet the expectation of top level management
but also to meet the challenging environment as well. So the authors only said that a leader just
focuses on changing environment and challenges.
When anyone from the organization is promoted there exist a formal level of authority that
comes with this role. This authority is associated with the position. We can say as Head of
technicians etc. While informal authority can be given to someone who may be a junior or
senior. This authority is given on behalf of trust, confidence, personality etc.
If a person is holding an informal authority he or she should be announced to have formal
authority because if we do this he/she will perform duties more diligently and effectively.
Activities of adaptive leadership
Adaptive leadership is an iterative process involving three key activities:
observing events and patterns around you;
interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is really
going on);
Designing interventions based on the observations and interpretations to address the
adaptive challenge you have identified.
Iterative process is an evolutionary acquisition in which there is incremental build through
inception, elaboration and transition. And the activities mentioned above builds on the ones that
come before it; and the process overall is iterative: you repeatedly refine your observations,
interpretations, and interventions.

Motivation - Non secret Ingredient of High Performance
Motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal oriented behaviors.
Motivation is what causes us to act in an organization for the wellbeing of it.
This paper is based on the theories of motivation and its practices is about the basic knowledge
of management system for the organization how to involve the workers to their work and how
they are more satisfied and enhancing the productivity.
Theories of Motivation
In 1800s and 1900s the classic theories of industrial management were formulated. Fredrick
Taylor involve the work for producing goods and services with machines this thing create
worker lazy and untrustworthy creature thats why they motivate only with the pay and with fear
of dismissals. Another theory which is theory x has tool of greed and fear .employ satisfaction
and commitment effect performance. I have explained this because no any organization wants to
put such employees to as a part of the organization who are careless, dislike work and make
diversion from their responsibilities. Theory y describes that people are not naturally slackers but
eager to work to accept responsibility. These are less concern with the workers motivation than
with the mechanisms.
Intrinsic and extrinsic reward
These rewards are given to employee for boosting his self-morale that he becomes more
committed to the work and the organization. Intrinsic reward produce non quantifiable personal
satisfaction feeling that one work is appreciated extrinsic reward is external forms of intangible
forms of reorganization such as pay and bonus through both rewards the employees are
motivated. Incentive system creates alignment between desired performance and the rewards that
employees wish to have other than salary.

Messy problems of incentive system
Employee productivity and performance is hard to measure because sometimes they are not
quantifiable. Some issues are difficult its impossible to satisfy everyone sense of fairness. If an
organization is going to adopt incentive system approach, then it is going to face three key issues
like uncontrollability problem, alignment problem and interdependency problem. There can exist
a sense of noninvolvement with the work if unjustly or un-fairly incentives are given which can
create discrimination among employees of the same rank.
Carrot and Stick approach
Concept of carrot and stick did not convey in a proper way in motivation. This concept basically
refers to a policy of offering a combination of rewards and punishment to induce behavior. It is
named in reference to a cart driver dangling a carrot in front of a mule and holding a stick behind
it. The mule would move towards the carrot because it wants the reward of food, while also
moving away from the stick behind it, since it does not want the punishment of pain, thus
drawing the cart. Thus employees really wish to have carrots in term as rewards and avoid sticks
in term as punishment.
The motivational practices
Leaders trust each employee to do his or her job well. Assuming that they have capable people
on payroll include making pay fair and competitive, making jobs more complete, introducing
challenge; encourage some people to become more expert sacking slackers
In this article the authors focus was just on two reward system. But according to me there are
some other factors that motivate including
Get to know your employees
Better work environment
Cooperation and understanding
Create social events
By acting upon these factors employees can be more given the opportunity to work as teams and
will be more productive. The employees will definitely work for the betterment of the
organization if the organization is working for the betterment of the employees.
Beyond Theory Y
Douglas McGregor differentiated between theory X and Y that theory X assumes people dislike
work and must be coerced and theory Y states that a persons intrinsic interest in his work as self
directing.
Environment characteristics are also very important because it has a great impact on employees
performance. So it should be taken when further study on this topic. Because environment
characteristics effect on creating a fit between task and performance. But the writer has neglected
it. In order to take the organizational characteristics, the author did not take in account the
personality characteristics that are more important. Because it helps to create a fit between task
and people.
It does not distinguish between cases in which outcomes are uncontrollable for all people and
cases in which they are uncontrollable only for some people
Contingency theory
While explaining the fit between organization and task and a fit between people and organization
the writer forgot to write on the fit between the people and the task which was equally important
in this theory. This theory indicates that there is no best way to recognize corporation, lead a
company or to handle a company rather than it depends upon some internal and external
situation.
With the benefit of the matrix, it is possible to see that much of the debate about Theory X and
Theory Y has taken place along the diagonal between the controllers and the freedom lovers, and
that it is for this reason that the debate has been somewhat confusing and unedifying. Critics of
Theory X generally focus their ire on the controllers.


Spin out Management: Theory and Practice
Spin out management is a process by which a new or existing part of an enterprise is separated
from the parent company with the objective to develop independently related or unrelated
activities by profiting from the parent company.
In this article there is no authentic definition of an organization. As different authors has defined
organization in different ways. Therefore an organization can be defined as an institute where a
group of people work together to achieve certain goals and objectives. But in this paper author
have mixed the concept of organization and its structure. Organization has a purpose and follows
a particular strategy to goals or set of goals. Whereas structure is the manner, in which something
is build.
Spin outs are difficult to manage and hold with parent company because they have their own
decisions and dont follow the parent company. It creates the major problem faced by mangers.
In the whole article the solutions of this problems cannot addressed and the problems are
including the crises of leadership, the crises of control.
In a spinout model there is problem of ineffective leadership and the organization can suffer in
the presence of this problem .In the article this issue is fully neglected and the author have not
mentioned that adoptive leadership can affect the performance of spin out. The structure of the
organization is now more complex so the control is also become more complex. It is difficult to
control these spin outs for the parent company because if they take wrong decisions the parent
company reputation can suffer a lot. Then the article goes with the negative effects an
organization will encounter by doing nothing, using previous research from Greiner and Miller &
Friesen. Author has neglected the advantages of the flat structure of an organization. In These
spin outs it is very difficult for the management to up hold the morale of both employees
working in spin outs and parent company because if some employees are promoted to new spin
out from the parent company the other may feel low and a sense of jealousy may born among
employees which is difficult for managers to overcome.
So the writer should have discussed intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for both of the employees
working in spin outs and parent company to keep their morale high.
By giving the total control over to spin outs in taking their decisions can suffer the parent
company for example if the spin out fail to gain customer satisfaction it may damage the parents
company image. But the writer has not explained that decision making by spin out can suffer
parent company so it should be the right of parent to authorize the decision of spin outs after that
to implement them.


















References:
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and
new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.
Smircich, L., & Morgan, G. (1982). Leadership: The management of meaning. Journal of
Applied Behavioral Science, 18(3), 257-273.
Zacharias, W. H. (1967). A general theory of X-ray diffraction in crystals.Acta
Crystallographic, 23(4), 558-564.
Clarisse, B., & Moray, N. (2004). A process study of entrepreneurial team formation: the
case of a research-based spin-off. Journal of Business Venturing, 19(1), 55-79.
Command, A. (1992). Leadership and Management. US Army War College,1993.
Harpine, E. C. (2008). Motivation: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic. Group Interventions in Schools:
Promoting Mental Health for At-Risk Children and Youth, 19-26.
Agarwal, R., Echambadi, R., Franco, A. M., & Sarkar, M. B. (2004). Knowledge transfer
through inheritance: Spin-out generation, development, and survival. Academy of
Management Journal, 47(4), 501-522.