CHAPTER TWO - PRECEDENCE IN RESEARCH
The purpose of this project was to establish the relationship between birth order and success in organizational management. To examine the precedence in literature for this issue, literature relevant to two topical areas was reviewed. A review of the literature relevant to success in organizational management is followed by a review of literature that specifically addressed the relationship between birth order and individual success in later life.
Success in Organizational Management
Leadership styles will vary between the extremes of task and relationships orientations, between authoritarian leadership and participative management, and between directive leadership and management-by-objectives, to state but a few distinctions. The leader who is completely task oriented will likely make decisions that are geared to "getting the job done," regardless of the socio-psychological effect such decisions may have on the individual members of an organization. Conversely, the leader who is completely relationships oriented will likely make decisions which, while they avoid organizational conflict development, will often immobilize the organization from an economic perspective. The most successful leaders give consideration to both economic and social factors in decision-making. The balance between these two sets of values will vary between organizations and will vary within organizations over time. This balance depends upon the prevailing situation.
The transformational leadership style concept provides a slight departure from the leadership theory trend of the past three decades. Where all concepts of leadership recognize that successful leaders in any type of organization must work within a set of goals and objectives, the transformational leadership concept recognizes that a successful leader must expand these goals and objectives into a vision (McDaniel, 1992, pp. 60-65). This vision...