CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Leadership is conceived as a process where one or more persons influence a group of person to move in a certain direction. The word leadership has been used in various aspects of human endeavour such as politics, business, academics and social works. Messick and Krammer (2004) argued that the degree to which the individual exhibits leadership traits depends not only on his characteristics and personal abilities, but also on the characteristics of the situation and environment in which he finds himself. Therefore, an individual will support the organization if he believes that through it his personal objective and goals could be met if not, the person’s interest will decline.
Among the objectives of any organization are profit making and attainment of maturity and liquidity status. In the pursuit of these objectives, organizations allocate scarce resources to competing ends. In the process they provide employment, provide goods and services, purchase goods and services and, thus contribute to the growth of the society and economy at large. Imamaka (1995) observes that, the effectiveness of this process is greatly determined by the availability of and access to personnel, financemachinery, raw material and possibility of making their goods and services available to their customers.
An organization is a social set up, which has a boundary that separates it from its environment, pursues its own collective goals, and controls its own performance (Kick and Gullet, 1995)., in a formal organization, interactions are rationally coordinated and directed through time on a common basis.
The person at the helm of affairs is usually the leaders.
Kraines (2011) stressed that the word leadership has been used by most discipline: political science, business executives, social workers and educationist. However, there is large disagreement as regards the exact meaning.
This view was also supported by Tafffinder (2006), who gave different definitions to leadership: “a simple meaning leadership is getting people to do things they are never thought of doing, do not believe are possible or that they do not want to do. With reference to an organization, he defined leadership as “the action of commitment employees to contribute their best to the purpose of the organization”. While on a complex and more accurate view, he explains that you only know leadership by it consequences – from the fact that individuals or a group of people start to behave in a particular ways as a result of the actions of someone else”.