Pros and Cons of Laissez-faire Leadership Style



Leadership is recognised as the key tool of an organisation through which the leaders or managers can achieve the goas and objectives of their firm and increase the productivity and performance. (Chaudhry & Javed, 2012)

Employees are the valuable asset of an organisation who carry out the duties required to achieve the desired objective of any firm; hence the leadership style which characterizes the interaction between leaders and their subordinates should be considered as more important in terms of the efficiency and productivity. (Belonio, 2012)

Effective leaders should include their subordinates and employees, their peers, and perhaps even their superiors in the work process and will have to engage them in the process of thinking innovatively and creatively to find and solve problems. (Fiaz, et al., 2017)

In this context the leadership style plays a vital role in the performance of every organisation and laissez-faire leadership style found as one of an important leadership style which has direct impacts to the performance and motivations of employees.

What is Laissez-Faire Leadership Style?
According to Chaudhry & Javed (2012) the laissez-faire leadership style is a practice of leaders which give complete freedom to take decisions and leaders normally don‟t wants their interference in decision making process. Further they allow their subordinates to get their personal decisions about the work and they are free to do the work in their own way. (Chaudhry & Javed , 2012)

As cited by Buch et al. (2015), Bass (2008) has argued that laissez-faire leadership style is an inactive leadership style where leaders has no confidence in their job role and always seek to avoid subordinates. Further leaders are generally delaying their decision and they will take no attempts to respond to their subordinates.


What are the key advantages in laissez-faire leadership style?
  • According the study of leadership style practiced in the banking sector in Bangkok and laissez-faire leadership had a positive effect as well on the significant subscales of job satisfaction which was significant to Job performance.  (Belonio, 2012)
  • The laissez-faire leader gives more control and power to the followers to make decisions which intrinsically motivate the followers to accomplish tasks and goals. (Jones & Rudd, 2008). Hence motivation level is always high when this kind of power and freedom given when subordinates are qualified and experienced.
  • Since the leaders does not get involved in the subordinates work flow, his time could be saved and could concentrate more on some other managerial functions which subordinates cannot be delegated.
  • Since leaders’ involvements is less in this type of leadership style, there is a room for new and innovative ideas which would found develop the skills and talents of subordinates. 

What are the negative impacts of laissez-faire leadership style?
  • This avoidance behaviour of leaders under this style leads to excessive frustration among followers and low level of self-esteem.  (Khan, et al., 2016)
  • When the subordinates are inexperience and expect the involvement of managers, this type of style creates demotivation because of not interference of management and is not an important style that boost the motivation level of workers as compare to other leadership styles (Chaudhry & Javed, 2012)
  • According to Bass (2008) under this type of leadership style the subordinates will be loaded with too much of responsibilities and leaders will be diverting attention from hard choices, and abdicating responsibility.
  • Leaders will not get involved in supervising activity due to lack of confidence and will always be engaged in paper works to avoid subordinates. (Bass, 2008)
  • Bass (2008) further argues that laissez faire leaders “refuse to take sides in a dispute, are disorganized in dealing with priorities, and talk about getting down to work, but never really do”. These characteristics of leadership make the subordinates feel ignored and isolated 

Conclusion
Laissez-faire leadership style consists of both advantages and disadvantages which should be clearly identified the management and should be practiced according to the situational needs. When the subordinates are well experienced and has adequate knowledge and confidence in performing the duties, laissez-faire leadership would further boost the motivation and performance could be enhanced. However, if the subordinates possess lower exposure and knowledge in their duties this style would increase the demotivation factor and performance would go further down.


References
Bass, B. M., 2008. Bass and Stogdill`s Handbokk of Leadership:Theory , Research and Managerial Application. New York: Free Press.

Belonio, R. J., 2012. The effect of leadership style on employee satisfaction and perfromnce of bank employees in Bangkok. Au-GSB E-Journal.

Buch, R., Martinsen, Ø. L. & Kuvaas, B., 2015. The Destructiveness of Laissez-Faire Leadership Behavior: The Mediating Role of Economic Leader-Member Exchange Relationships. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Volume 22, pp. 115-124.

Chaudhry, A. Q. & Javed , H., 2012. Impact of Transactional and Laissez Faire Leadership Style on Motivation. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(7), pp. 258-264.

Fiaz, M., Su, Q., Ikram, A. & Saqib, A., 2017. Leadership styles and employeemotivation: Perspective from an emerging economy.  The journal of development areas, 51(4), pp. 143 -156.

Jones, D. & Rudd, R., 2008. Transactional, Transformational, or Laissez-Faire leadership, An assesment of collage of agreeculture academic program leaders'(Deans) Leadership styles. Journal of Agricultural Education, 49(2), pp. 88-97.

Khan, Z. A., Nawaz, A. & Khan, I., 2016. Leadership Theories and Styles: A Literature Review. Journal of Resources Development and Management, Volume 16, pp. 1-7.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Strategy Implementation

Image
What is strategy? Strategy is defined as a function of determining the long-term goals and objectives, providing necessary resources to carrying out these goals and adopting course of actions. The main aim of strategy is to set direction, focus effort, define or clarify the organization, and provide cons istency or guidance in re sponse to the environment   (Serah, 2015) . Strategy Implementation Serah (2015) states that implementation is process which comprises of decisions on organisation’s resources alignment such as people, process and systems towards its goals and objectives. This process will result in how the organization's re sources are structured, leadership arrangements, communication, incentives, and monitoring mechanisms to track prog ress towards objectives . Role of leadership in effective strategy implementations Jooste & Fourie (2009) have identified several positive actions of leadrship which ilustrates the strategic leadership. According ...
Read more

Leadership Styles and Frameworks

Image
Introduction   Leadership style refers to a leader's characteristic behaviors when directing, motivating, guiding, and managing groups of people. Great leaders can inspire political movements and social change. They can also motivate others to perform, create, and innovate. As you start to consider some of the people who you think of as great leaders, you can immediately see that there are often vast differences in how each person leads. Fortunately, researchers have developed different theories and frameworks that allow us to better identify and understand these different leadership styles. Lewin's Leadership Styles In 1939, a group of researchers led by psychologist  Kurt Lewin  set out to identify different styles of leadership   (Lewin, et al., 1939) . While further research has identified more distinct types of leadership, this early study was very influential and established three major leadership styles that have provided a springboard for more d...
Read more