Fedex Case Analysis

Influence of Religion on decision making by leaders and it's effect on stakeholders

INTRODUCTION

Human beings are the most precious part of civilization. What responsibility could be more important than the leadership and development of people? Without leadership an organization is only a confusion of people and machines. Leadership is the process of encouraging and helping others to work enthusiastically toward objectives. It is the human factor that builds a group together and motivates it toward goals. The leaders' act of motivation is similar in effect to that of the secret chemical that turns the insect pupa into a butterfly with all the beauty that was the pupa's potential. Leadership transforms potential into reality. This was the role played by Lee Iacocca, who provided superb leadership to guide Chrysler Corporation out of hard times in the early 1980s. Leadership is the ultimate act that brings to success all the potential that is in an organization and its people. It is so important that people have been concerned about it since the beginning of history.

Formerly it was thought that personal traits were the major source of successful leadership, but more recent emphasis is on identifying leadership behaviors. That is successful leadership depends on appropriate behavior skills, and actions, and not personal traits. Leaders use three different types of skills-technical (refers to a persons knowledge and ability in any type of process or technique. Examples are the skills learned by accountants, engineers and toolmakers. This skill is the distinguishing feature of job performance at the operating level. But as employees are promoted to leadership responsibilities their technical skills become proportionally less important.).The other skill is human skill (is the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork. No leader at any organizational level escapes the requirements for effective human skill. It is a major part of leadership behavior.).The other important skill is the conceptual skill (is the ability to think in terms of models, frameworks, and broad relationships, such as long range plans. It becomes increasingly important in higher managerial jobs. Conceptual skills deal with ideas.).

BACKGROUND

Traditionally leadership is used to describe what individuals do under condition of change. When organization is dynamic and undergoing transformation people at the top are suppose to exhibit leadership. In addition leadership has sometimes been defined as doing the right things. Leaders have been said to focus on direction settings, articulating a vision and creating something new. It has been equated with dynamism, vibrancy, and charisma.

Leaders cannot be successful without good managers, and managers cannot be successful without being good leaders. No longer do organization and individual have the luxury of holding onto the status quo worrying about doing things right but failing to do the right things, keeping the system stable instead of leading change and improvement; monitoring current performance instead of formulating the vision of the future; concentrating on equilibrium and control instead of vibrancy and charisma. Effective management and leadership are inseparable. The skills required to do one are also required of the other. No organization in a post-industrial hyper turbulent environment will survive without executive capable of providing both management and leadership. By staying the same, we get worse. Because our circumstances are constantly changing and expectations for performance are continually escalating, the traditional definition of management is outmoded and irrelevant today. Effective managers and leaders do exactly the same things. Leadership is one of the attribute of effective managers. Effective managers must have leadership abilities. Leadership and management from our perspective are indistinguishable.

Every organization has managers and for organization to be effective in using its resources and skills it requires good managers who in turn have to be good leaders to lead the organization to higher level of performance. In making choices, managers or leaders have to make decisions. Indeed, everything that an organization does involves a decision of some kind. Clearly an organization is not only a value creation machine but a decision making machine as well. At every level and in every sub unit, in profit, non-profit, or government organizations, people continuously make decisions and how they make them determines how much value the organization creates. In general managers or leaders are called to make two kind of decisions programmed and non-programmed. Programmed decision is repetitive and routine. Rules, routine and standard operating procedures can be developing in advance to handle them. Many of the routines and procedures for selecting appropriate solutions are formalized in an organizations rules and standard operating procedures and in the values and norms of its culture. While non-programmed decisions are novel and unstructured. No rules, routines or standard operating procedures can be developed to handle them. Solutions must be worked out as problems arise. Non-programmed decision making requires much more search activity and action by mangers to find a solution then thus programmed decision making. Non routine research and development is based on non-programmed decision making by researchers who continually experiment find solutions to problems. Similarly the creation of organization strategies involves in non programmed decision making by managers who experiment to find the best way to use an organization skills and resources to create value who never know in advance whether they are making the right decision.

Non- programmed decision making forces managers to rely on judgment, intuition, and creativity to solve organizational problems; they cannot rely on rules and standard operating procedures to provide non-programmed solution. Programmed decision making allows an organization to increase its efficiency and reduce the costs of making goods and services. The non- programmed decision making allows organization to adapt to its environment and to generate new ways of behaving so that it can effectively exploit and manipulate its environment.

There are several models of decision making. Some of the most important is being the rational models and the Carnegie model. In the rational decision making model it is assumed the managers have all the information available for decision making. The decision making is costless and value free, that the full range of possible alternative is generated, the solution is chosen by unanimous agreement and the solution is best for