photo: credit to Andrew Huang
Saturday, October 24, 2015
First Fundraising Event this Semester
Saturday, October 3, 2015
How does good leadership save money
In 2015, summer, I was working as a research assistant for a meta-research about organizational psychology. It was heavily dependent on data, and I did a lot of work in literature search as well. Even though there were a lot of repetitive work, I learned a lot from a numerous literature that I've read.
A lot of literature I focused on were about counterproductive behaviors and possible effects that would bring to the organization. For example, employee theft actually can cause large company loss. This could happen when employees think they are underpaid. That is, their output to the organization and their benefit earned from it have a huge discrepancy. Therefore, they try to gain some compensation from theft behaviors. I remember in one experiment, researchers go to three plants of one company. The organization was facing financial difficulty and tried to have a salary cut for all employees.
When employee received the announcement from the President, different leadership styles have very distinctive effects on employee theft later on. In the announcement, if the president only explains the financial difficulty and announce the salary cut, employee tended to feel not being respected. While, if the leader showed empathy and gave a very detailed explanation, that would make a big difference. Later on, the employee theft was way much lower in the situation where the president showed empathy and sincerity. In this case, a good leadership saves millions of money for this organization.
Now I am in the position as a leader in the organization. This research always reminds me of being considerate of people's feelings. A good leadership is more than just being nice. It is more about mutual respect and mutual goal. People in the same organization should have similar goals so that they could work together towards it. However, when people feel that their efforts are not being respected, negative emotions would hurt organization efficiency a lot. People will stop putting efforts, stop caring about the goal, then possibly drop out. So for a good leadership, people will be willing to make even extra efforts just because they think it worths the respect, or personal development they gain. How to tell if an organization has a good leadership? Ask members whether they are willing to work extra hours.
A lot of literature I focused on were about counterproductive behaviors and possible effects that would bring to the organization. For example, employee theft actually can cause large company loss. This could happen when employees think they are underpaid. That is, their output to the organization and their benefit earned from it have a huge discrepancy. Therefore, they try to gain some compensation from theft behaviors. I remember in one experiment, researchers go to three plants of one company. The organization was facing financial difficulty and tried to have a salary cut for all employees.
When employee received the announcement from the President, different leadership styles have very distinctive effects on employee theft later on. In the announcement, if the president only explains the financial difficulty and announce the salary cut, employee tended to feel not being respected. While, if the leader showed empathy and gave a very detailed explanation, that would make a big difference. Later on, the employee theft was way much lower in the situation where the president showed empathy and sincerity. In this case, a good leadership saves millions of money for this organization.
Now I am in the position as a leader in the organization. This research always reminds me of being considerate of people's feelings. A good leadership is more than just being nice. It is more about mutual respect and mutual goal. People in the same organization should have similar goals so that they could work together towards it. However, when people feel that their efforts are not being respected, negative emotions would hurt organization efficiency a lot. People will stop putting efforts, stop caring about the goal, then possibly drop out. So for a good leadership, people will be willing to make even extra efforts just because they think it worths the respect, or personal development they gain. How to tell if an organization has a good leadership? Ask members whether they are willing to work extra hours.
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