Leadership Styles

Paper Summary:

The paper provides an overview and background concerning leadership and its importance in helping an organization achieve its goals and improve its profitability. The paper examines how two such leaders, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., have used their leadership skills to guide their respective organizations to the success they enjoy today. The paper provides a critical review of the peer-reviewed and scholarly literature and includes case studies of these two business leaders and their companies.

Outline:
Introduction
Review of the Literature
Characteristics of Effective Leadership
Research Methodology
Microsoft and Bill Gates
Apple Computer and Steve Jobs
Data Presentation and Analysis
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"While the debate over nurture versus nature continues, it is clear that some people appear to be "natural-born" leaders who are capable of motivating others to achieve far more than others. These leaders seem to possess the right combination of personality, vision and motivational skills and can use them to their maximum advantage in a wide variety of organizational settings. These leaders also have an enormously positive impact on an organization's bottom line, and it is not surprising that an increasing amount of research in recent years has been devoted to identifying what characteristics these leaders share and what they do that is so fundamentally different from ineffectual leaders."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Apple. (2007). Yahoo! Business. [Online]. Available: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AAPL
• Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (2002). Developing potential across a full range of leadership: Cases on transactional and transformational leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press.
• ---. Transformational leadership: Industrial, military, and educational impact. (1998). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Blackwell, C. W., Gibson, J. W., & Hannon, J. C. (1998) Charismatic leadership: The hidden controversy. Journal of Leadership Studies, 5(4), 11.

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