The Role of Leadership and Innovation in Sustaining Competitiveness Essay

The Role of Leadership and Innovation in Sustaining Competitiveness - Essay Example Therefore, organizations with creative and effective leadership will be able to sustain competitiveness in their business environment due to their superior strategic measures compared to their competitors. Organizational leadership involves the ability of management to achieve and protect a company’s benefits through the ability to balance employees’ needs and company targets by ensuring that there are no frictions between the two demands. This entails bringing employee demands and organizational needs together to work in an environment that will enable effective and efficient achievement a common goal. Consequently, organizational leadership has a central role of cultivating synergies between the organization and its employees. Leadership helps the member of an organization and working teams overcome workplace environmental challenges therefore working to achieve organizational goals in a worthy way (Kalamas & Kalamas and p.2004).   Innovative ideas can also motivate employees to give their best to the organization. Organizations that allow employees to undertake new and non-traditional ways of working will gain more from employees’ talents. ... Leadership is important for an organization since it enables the organization and organizational teams achieve their set goals. When leaders and the people led do not know where they are heading in terms of organizational goals and objectives, then leadership means nothing. Therefore, it is important for leaders in organizations to have a clear vision of how and where they see the organization in the future. According to Maxey (2000, p.48), vision of an organization represents a mental image of its possible and desirable future. The future of an organization depends on its leadership ability to recognize organizational changes accurately and use them intelligently for the improvement and sustainability of the organization. Sage and Rouse (2011, p.800) note leaders focus on the on the future and therefore the what separates a cultural change that fails from that which succeeds is the competent leadership at the top of organizational command. The importance of having a leader who is ab le to set visions for how the organization will operate in future can be demonstrated by the approach taken by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, as a strategic leader for Apple is an appropriate example in the area of creativity and innovation (Ireland, Hoskisson and Hitt 2008, p.36). He was able to position Apple to seize future markets through the firm’s strategy, which was based on insights into external opportunities. Steve Jobs recognized that Apple had a limited client base in the personal computing market. Nevertheless, Jobs maintained that the company was undertaking a long-term strategy that would see it operate beyond personal computer industry. Further, Steve Jobs claimed that he was waiting for the next big thing that was