This article is the first in a two part series. Watch for the second installment next week.

Mordu Serry-Kamal

Public management textbooks are replete with diverse concepts that are oriented toward addressing human productivity and behavior in organizations, as perhaps most of such organizations strive to improve the quality and quantity of service delivery within the public, private, and nonprofit sectors of an economy. Among these varied concepts are management and leadership. These two concepts are significant within this exercise because of the role, which they perform in ensuring that all the factors of production, in any entrepreneurial effort, are mobilized effectively so that goods and services are delivered according to the goal established by the relevant organization, and the expectations of shareholders as recipients of those goods and services.

These two terms, sometimes articulated as synonyms, are in actuality not only different conceptually but they are also mutually exclusive. Their mutual exclusivity is established on the fact that, viewed from a productivity perspective, the two are largely dependent on each other. For example, in order to advance organizational productivity, leadership skills will be needed to enhance the bastion of management skills, assuming that such skills do exist in any given case. Further, in order to comprehend the distinguishing features pertaining to management and leadership, reference should be made to John Kotter’s tabular comparison of these concepts in the form of models. Therefore, according to John P. Kotter, in a 2001 Classics of Organizational Behavior article entitled “Management and Leadership”, the models make it clear that management and leadership attempt to achieve certain factors somewhat differently. These factors are: one, the establishment of an agenda or the objectives consisting of the goal of the organization; two, the development of human resources designed to achieve the agenda or plan; three, the implementation or execution of the agenda; and four, the monitoring of the results or outcomes that are expected.

According to Paul Hersey and others, in a 2008 Management of Organizational Behavior textbook, management is defined as “… the process of working with and through individuals and groups and other resources such as equipment, capital, and technology, to accomplish organizational goals”. The same authors also define leadership as that which occurs “… whenever one person attempts to influence the behavior of an individual or group, regardless of the reason”. This definition implies that leadership is not necessarily relegated to being just a top-to-bottom phenomenon within a hierarchy, but that it may also imply a bottoms-up phenomenon for as long as the environment exists whereby the manifestation of the latter may transpire. Therefore, from the standpoint of the manager, leadership skills are needed to gain the “voluntary compliance” of the organizational personnel, which constitute the most valuable of all the assets or factors of production within an organization.

The factors below signify the parallels between management and leadership, as exemplified in the Kotter principles.

• As managers plan to fulfill organizational goals, leaders develop a vision in an attempt to steer the organization in a direction that would achieve the goal effectively into the distant future.

• As managers organize and acquire the staff to assist in carrying out the mission of the organization, through human resource management, leaders attempt to influence stakeholders (all the categories that may gain or lose as a result of the organizational effort) through effective communication in order to amass support for the leader’s vision of goal attainment.
• As managers attempt to implement or execute organizational goals through monitoring results and solving problems, leaders motivate employees to accept and overcome the challenges that might become obstacles to the organization’s quest to achieve its goal.
• As managers attempt to fulfill the expectations of stakeholders in terms of simple goal achievements, leaders place a strong emphasis on organizational change which may bring about organizational outcomes that might be competitive with other organizations.

Therefore, based on the academic constructs established above, this brief exercise will attempt to accomplish two objectives. One, analyze actual private sector cases in public management, through the application of the concepts of management and leadership as defined and explained above. Two, evaluate the extent to which the applicable organizations are reaching their established goals on the basis of actual or demonstrated performance. Some aspects of the Kotter model may not necessarily be directly applicable to these case studies.

Case One: The Car Wash Company

The first time this writer visited this particular car wash company it was not exactly clear as to what to expect as regards the quality of services that were being rendered by that company. The reason for such anxiety was that other similar establishments had been patronized in the past whereby the results had been somewhat dismal and disappointing, in terms of expected performance. In addition, this initial feeling was prevalent despite the fact that there were the usual “superficial” business attractions which, by conceptual definition, appear to be displayed primarily for the purpose of attracting customers. Some of these attractions included:

• A legibly written pro-consumer mission statement indicating that the cars of the customers would be washed to their utmost satisfaction – the stated goal of the organization.
• A service fee which appeared to be low as compared to other car washes – competitiveness.
• A cadre of personnel who were standing “appearing ready to get to work”- a team of motivated workers.
• However, as a customer or a stakeholder, the author’s interests were centered only on performance or results pertaining to the services to be rendered. As a result, a primary concern was whether the services to be rendered will be commensurate with the charges that will be incurred. Additionally, there was also a concern as to whether this writer will receive the professional courtesy that would be due a customer, who was willing to patronize that organization by paying for the services which were purported to be rendered.

The first visit passed without incident. In other words, the writer was completely satisfied with the quality of service, personnel courtesy, and the charges that had been incurred for the package of services rendered. However, because of prior experiences, this writer felt that he may have been lucky on that particular day; and that, he would return at another time only to discover that the professional events of the first visit may no longer be manifested. Fortunately, exactly the same situations kept repeating themselves in every subsequent visit, to the extent that this writer became a fixture or a repeat customer in that organization. Later, the interaction between this customer and the personnel became rather lax and jovial to include matters having absolutely nothing to do with washing cars: sports, education, politics, and even society’s social problems. At this time it became very clear that this writer may have eventually found a place in which to have his car washed, when he could not do so himself.

A number of reasons can be cited pertaining to the generation of this amicable climate between the customer and the business enterprise. One, a business relationship that was based on service delivery, mutual trust, and respect had been engendered and was being nurtured. Two, the enterprise appeared to know that consistency in productivity and business courtesy would be needed in order to maintain the relationship. Therefore, assessed from these perspectives, the customer concluded that there was certainly leadership in addition to management in this car wash company. The evidence, to support this claim, will be provided in the analyses next week.

Mordu Serry-Kamal is an associate professor of public administration and political science at Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC. Email: kamalms@wssu.edu