Chapter 5
Chapter 5
holding on to power, and using power to gain advantage. How to obtain and maintain political power. The dedication declares Machiavelli's intention to discuss in plain language the conduct of great men and the principles of princely government. He does so in hope of pleasing and enlightening the Medici family. Book divided into four section: Discuss the different types of principalities or states, discuss the different types of armies and the proper conduct of a prince as military leader, discuss the character and behavior of the prince, and discuss Italy's desperate political situation. The final chapter is a plea for the Medici family to supply the prince who will lead Italy out of humiliation. The types of principalities Machiavelli lists four types of principalities: Hereditary principalities, which are inherited by the ruler Mixed principalities, territories that are annexed to the ruler's existing territories New principalities, which may be acquired by several methods: by one's own power, by the power of others, by criminal acts or extreme cruelty, or by the will of the people (civic principalities) Ecclesiastical principalities, namely the Papal States belonging to the Catholic church The types of armies A prince must always pay close attention to military affairs if he wants to remain in power. Machiavelli lists four types of armies: Mercenaries or hired soldiers, which are dangerous and unreliable Auxiliaries, troops that are loaned to you by other rulersalso dangerous and unreliable Native troops, composed of one's own citizens or subjectsby far the most desirable kind Mixed troops, a combination of native troops and mercenaries or auxiliariesstill less desirable than a completely native army The character and behavior of the prince Machiavelli recommends the following character and behavior for princes: It is better to be stingy than generous. It is better to be cruel than merciful. It is better to break promises if keeping them would be against one's interests. Princes must avoid making themselves hated and despised; the goodwill of the people is a better defense than any fortress. Princes should undertake great projects to enhance their reputation. Princes should choose wise advisors and avoid flatterers. Italy's political situation Machiavelli outlines and recommends the following: The rulers of Italy have lost their states by ignoring the political and military principles Machiavelli enumerates. Fortune controls half of human affairs, but free will controls the rest, leaving the prince free to act. However, few princes can adapt their actions to the times. The final chapter is an exhortation to the Medici family to follow Machiavelli's principles
and thereby free Italy from foreign domination. The origins and nature of honor- our sense of honor comes from observing the actions of family and neighbors, the media, or movies, etc. page 175 National honor-us a very important and significant role to America. To maintain honor plays a significant role in decision making process. To upon the national honor. Honor comes before ethics because a person with honor has no moral compass and does not know which way to turn to be ethical. Honor goes to the essence of public affairs. It is said that it ancient times only individuals perceived to be honorable could be trusted with the publics business. Honors could be influenced by the prevailing organizational and political culture. Page 176 Honors have many dimensions-ex officio means by virtue of the office. People hold positions on boards, commissions, councils, councils, and so on because of another office they occupy. honorable such as judges, mayors, etc. does not imply to personal honor or integrity but just a terms of formal addressing. Honor is a function of outward perception of ones reputation. Whether its a individual or organization. True honor begins with personal integrity and honesty. As what Benjamin Franklin would say, honesty is the best policy pg 177. The core of honor is those who hold ups to their integrity their principles, values, and most importantly their words. This integrity of communication is essential for the smooth functioning of organizations that, in essence, are merely information-processing structures. Code of honors (of integrity) first involved among the military. Because lives, indeed whole battles, depended on the accuracy of information sent up the chain of command, it was imperative that an ethic of honesty be instilled. The word of an officer is not known to be good, that an officer has lost his or her effectiveness to their superior. The second meaning of integrity is integrated strength or character. A building that holds together is aid to have structural integrity. Individuals who have character, as demonstrated by an observable long period of acting with integrity, are said to have gravitas. Or as British put it bottom-meaning that they are seated firmly enough in their convictions that they are not easily swayed (persuaded). Thus those who have integrity have a sure sense of right from wrong; they know what their core beliefs are, and what they will or will not do, no matter what the pressure. Value: administrators with integrity understand that they have a special moral obligation to the people they served. The two most common lapses of honor and honesty are corruption and lying. Pg 178 Chapter 5 Summary: Honor comes before ethics because a person without honor has no moral compass and does not know which way to turn to be ethical. Honor goes to the essence of public affairs. Since, ancient times only individuals perceived to be honorable could be trusted with the publics business. Recurrent government scandals, no matter how much they cost, pose a great threat to the democratic notions of the rule of law. When a public official misuses his or her office for self-gain, then the rule of law no longer obtains, and there is, in effect, a
return to tyranny. Do public officials have a special obligation to tell the truth, or do their offices permit them special excuses to depart from truth telling? Because knowledge is the cornerstone of democracy, an informed public is a prerequisite for a democratic government. Hence, citizens have an inherent right to know the truth of public issues. On the other hand, there may be times of crisis when it may be permissible for a public official to deceive the public for its own good. In public administration there is a hierarchy of levels of ethics; personal morality, professional ethics, organizational ethics, and social ethics. This last level obliges members of given society to act in ways that both protect individuals and further the progress of the group as a whole. Codes of honor have their origins in ancient precepts about how a person should behave in the face of danger, when confronted with temptation, or before authority figures. Many civilian government agencies now have parallel standards of conduct, formal guidelines for ethical behaviors, which seek to ensure that employees refrain from using their official positions for private gain. Administrative accountability is that aspect of administrative responsibility by which officials are held answerable for general notions of democracy and morality as well as for specific legal mandates. In democratic societies administers are required to respond to a complex system of checks and balances and to be subject to scrutiny by official auditors, the media, and community watchdogs and potential whistleblowers. Pg206 Chapter 10-Leadership Summary- (definition) Leadership is the exercise of authorize, whether formal or informal, in directing and coordinating the work of others. The best leaders are those who can simultaneously exercise both kinds of leadership, the formal, based on the authority, of rank or office, and the informal, based pm the willingness of others to give service to a person with special qualities of authority. There is a difference between leadership and management: management involves power (formal authority) bestowed on the occupant of a position by a higher organizational authority. Leadership, in contrast, cannot be bestowed by a higher authority but must be earned. In chapter 10 review: Hedgehog (the Fox or Henry IV) analogy- when threatened rolls up into a ball so its protected by the sharp quills covering its body. The fox is notoriously clever, shrewed, and ingenious creature-traits. Classified political leaders either hedgehogs or foxes. Archilochus wrote The fox knows many things, but hedgehog knows one big thing. Hedgehogs are those who are single-minded about a concept. Hedgehog did not bother with detail of policy implementation but what helped to defined him as hedgehog. Hedgehogs are big-picture, not small detail, leaders. Page 368 Like President Cater and Clinton known as hedgehog because they know all of the details on all the policies, didnt give a clear vision to the public and subordinates to follow. They act on too much with tactically and not enough strategically. The job of a leader is to inspire.
Hedgehogs do better than foxes because they are more focused, more on target. Foxes may be brilliant managers and organizers of all the policy details, but management is not leadership. The original managers, etymologically speaking, were horse trainers. The words meanings was gradually extended to any kind of skillful handling. So while a foxs skill in handling situation is add up to follow-me! A leader with a hedgehogic vision inspire others while a manager merely delegates. President Barack Obamas leadership style seems to be a hybrid of the hedgehog and the fox. 1st few months, he laid out a hedgehogic list of big things to accomplish, conclude two wars, reform health care, stimulate an economy in deep recession, develop new energy policies, reform education, install new regulatory regimes for business and banking, reform immigration policies, and facilitate peace in Middle east. He is everything at once, a hedgehog with a foxs control of details. Will he succeed. Pg370 Leadership- many characteristic of a public sector management that call for knowledge and skills. Performance means the demonstration of a skill, the display of competence. (pg. 370) The job of the leader of any organization is to get people to do things they have never done before, to do things that are not routine, and to take risks. Pg371 In essence, that is the most basic task of a leader-to create organization out of disorders, to make people more capable as a cohesive group than they are as unorganized individuals. Distinguish Leadership and Management pg 372 to 374 Management involves power (usually formal authority) bestowed on the occupant of a position by a higher organizational authority. With the power of management cones responsibility and accountability for the use of organizational resources. Leadership cannot be bestowed on a person by a higher authority. Effective managers must also be leaders, and many leaders become managers, but the two set roles and function differ. Legitimacy of leader or manager. Managers presumably have legitimacy because of the legal and perceived rights that accompany their organizational positions. Leaders legitimacy is separate and distinct from the legitimacy of a manager-cannot be addressed without introducing the concept of charisma, leadership based on the compelling personality of the leader rather than on formal position. Max Weber- concept- called a universal genius for nothing-who distinguished charismatic authority from the traditional authority of a monarch and the legal authority one receives by virtue of law, such as the authority that legitimizes organizational executives. The charisma is describes as a divine grace-charismatic leadership, if it is survive, must eventually be institutionalized or rountinized. Two evident things: Leadership involves a relationship between people in which influence and power are unevenly distributed on a legitimate basis, and second a leader cannot function in isolation. Pg 374
Most accepted definition of the organizational Leadership function comes from Chester Barnard, his study of the functions of the executive, he defines 3 essential functions of leader or executives: To provide a system of communication To promote the securing of essential efforts To formulate and define the purposes and goals of an organization -Barnard foreseen what is a leader/executive should be is establishing and communicating a system of organizational values among organizational members. the formulation and definition of purpose is then a widely distributed function only the more general part of which is executive. In this fact lies the most important inherent difficulty in the operation and cooperative systems: the necessity for indoctrinating those at the lower levels with general purposes Barnards is referring to the necessity for top management to develop and instill a strategic vision for organization. Without that up-and-down-the-line coordination of purposeful decisions, general decisions, and general purposes are mere intellectual processes in an organization vacuum, insulated from realities by layers of misunderstanding. The function of formulating grand purposes and providing for their redefinition is one that needs sensitive systems of communication, experience in interpretation, imagination, and delegation of responsibility. Barnard knews in part because he was a real executive, that if the value system of the organization was clear and strong, the day-to-day concerns would take care of themselves. Page 374 Trait Theories Trait approaches to leadership assumes that leaders possess traits-personality characteristics-that makes them fundamentally different from followers. Believe that some people have unique leadership characteristics and qualities that enable them to assume responsibilities not everyone can execute. Therefore they are born leaders. There are other valuable traits that makes and influence leadership effectiveness is persuasive leader. View leadership as a relationship, the interaction between individuals-called transaction. Situation strongly influence leadership-In determining the qualities, characteristics, and skills needed in a leader. Traits-intelligence, energy, achievement, dependability, and socioeconomic status. Simple fact that a leader may be effective in one setting and ineffective in another. It depends on the situation. Transactional Approaches Traits approaches described that an individual who was a leader, transactional approaches sought to determine how leadership was established and exerted. Leadership style oriented transactional approaches all follow in the tradition of the Lewin Lippitt studies of the effectiveness of leadership styles on the group efforts. The leader in each group was classified as having authoritarian, a democratic, or laissez-faire orientation. Authoritarian leaders determined all policies, set all work assignments, were personal in
their criticisms, and were product (or task) oriented. Transformational Leadership Is one with the ability to change an embedded organizational culture by creating a new vision for the organization and marshalling the appropriate support to make that vision the new reality. Pg 379-380. Micromanagement-terms for supervising too closely. To lead too much. Managers to overmanaged. Managers refuse to allow subordinate to have any real authority or responsibility, thereby ensuring that subordinates can neither function as, nor grow into, effective managers. Furthermore, managers are kept so busy micromanaging that they never have time to do what managers are supposed to do-like develop long-term strategy and overall vision. Pg. 380-381