Business management research literature contains conflicting ideas about the nature of management and leadership with as many as one hundred different definitions of leadership (Bastien et al 275). Considering the enormous variety of types of companies, cultures, and personalities of people to be led, it is no surprise that there is not complete consensus on what makes an effective business manager in quality organizations. It is the purpose of this paper to focus on the need for management to initiate quality within business rather than the workers.
Leadership means different things to different people. Generally the qualities of courage, intelligence, conviction, energy, charisma, ambition, decisiveness, persistence, assertiveness, and the ability to inspire others are thought to be associated positively with leadership (Frank 382). Although managers are thought to have responsibilities somewhat different from executive leaders, such as resolving disputes, allocating resources, and negotiating contracts, for purposes of this paper, the terms manager and leader are used interchangeably.
Effective managers are completely committed to the tasks at hand. They are committed to a depth that the workers can feel the integrity of the person's every decision and action. For example in the business novel The Goal the manager Rogo elicits information from all levels of workers. He is a walkabout manager who constantly gleans information about bottlenecks, obstacles to getting orders out on time and illogical focuses on stockpiling inventory and needlessly working people overtime. One can learn from Rogo's experience that management has to do with thinking, and that one needs to constantly be on top of the flow of the throughput in order to determine what has to happen. It is not a job for a robot. Rogo does away with the sacred cows of "measurement issues, the lag in product design, the long lead times in production, the gen...