Week 5.Assignment.Leadership and Employee Satisfaction
Leadership is an important topic in organizational psychology and one that you will revisit in Week 7 and throughout the rest of your program. As you may know from personal or professional experience, good leadership can inspire employees to work together to achieve organizational goals, while poor leadership can demotivate and demoralize employees, and derail organizational goals.
For this Application, you will examine historical leadership theories (more than 20 years old) and contemporary leadership theories (less than 20 years old). Leadership theories, also referred to as leadership models or approaches, explain specific individual and/or environmental factors that contribute to effective leadership. For example, a newer theory, called transformational leadership, suggests that effective leaders are charismatic, inspiring, and able to communicate a vision and unite employees to achieve that vision. As you examine different leadership theories, you will also consider how they could be used to improve job satisfaction.
To Prepare for this Assignment:
· Read Chapter 12 in the Aamodt text, Industrial/organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach. Examine historical leadership theories (more than 20 years old) and contemporary leadership theories (less than 20 years old).
· Review Chapter 12 in The SAGE Handbook. Consider how leadership affects employee engagement, including satisfaction. Then identify strategies that could be used to assess a leader’s influence on job satisfaction of employees.
· Select an organization for which you currently work or have previously worked, or a well-known organization (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, Facebook).
· Identify one historical leadership theory and one contemporary leadership theory that you would use to improve job satisfaction in the organization.
· Consider the strategies you would use to assess whether a given leadership theory/model has improved job satisfaction.
· Resources
Motivational Theories and Models
· Aamodt, M. (2016). Industrial/organizational psychology: An applied approach (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
o Chapter 9, “Employee Motivation” (pp. 321–356)
o Time Estimate: 60 minutes
· Nazir, S., Shafi, A., Qun, W., Nazir, N., & Tran, Q. D. (2016). Influence of organizational rewards on organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Employee RelationsLinks to an external site., 38(4), 596–619.
o Time Estimate: 70 minutes
Leadership
· Aamodt, M. (2016). Industrial/organizational psychology: An applied approach (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
o Chapter 12, “Leadership” (pp. 439–462)
o Time Estimate: 40 minutes
· Hogan, R., Curphy, G., Kaiser, R., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2018). Leadership in organizations. In D. S. Ones, N. Anderson, C. Viswesvaran, & H. K. Sinangil (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of industrial, work, and organizational psychologyLinks to an external site. (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 269-287). London, UK: SAGE Publications, Ltd.
o Note: Chapter 12
o Time Estimate: 60 minutes
INSTRUCTIONS: Submit a 2–3-page paper that addresses the following questions. Your paper should follow APA style, be double-spaced with one-inch margins, and include a title page and reference list.
· Describe one historical leadership theory/model of interest to you. What did this theory provide to the field of I/O psychology? How would you apply the theory to the organization you selected to improve job satisfaction?
· Describe one contemporary leadership theory/model. What did this theory/model provide to the field of I/O psychology? How would you apply the theory/model to the organization you selected to improve job satisfaction?
· Provide an assessment on how leadership influences job satisfaction in the workplace. How would you assess that a given leadership theory/model has improved job satisfaction?