Leadership and Organizational Change

There has been some debate in the fields of management and organizational development about the differences between managers and leaders, or if there are any significant conceptual differences. Leaders are often seen as more visionary, while managers are defined as concerned with the daily tasks of the organization.

The intent in this paper is to define leadership, explore some different types of leadership, or leadership styles, and to examine how particular styles or types impact the process of organizational change.

In his article about leaders and managers, Zaleznick (1977) clearly asserted that leaders are different from managers and have distinctive skills. For him, the primary difference between the manager and the leader is the focus of these individuals. As he put it: "The distinction is simply between a manager's attention to how things get done and a leader's to what the events and decisions means to participants" (1977, p. 73).

It is at the meaning, or organizational culture level, that change occurs or gets bogged down. Brown (1990) indicated that much current technological change fails because of inadequate attention to meaning within organizations. Morrill (1991) showed that there are fullydeveloped, although almost invisible and unconscious, meaning systems involved in mediating corporate change that is chaotic, such as takeover situations.

Messick and Bazerman (1996) focus on ethical leaders