Microsoft Word doctoral thesis final[1]. doc

2.3.1  The leadership and management distinction 
 
In his article ‘What leaders really do’, Kotter (1993:26) writes: 
 
Leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. 
Each has its own function and characteristic activities.…both leadership and 
management are necessary for success in an increasingly volatile business 
environment …and the real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong 
management and use each to balance the other…management is about coping with 
complexity [whereas] leadership…is about coping with change… [and] these different 
functions shape the characteristic activities of management and leadership. 
 
Firstly, management accomplishes the function of coping with complexity by planning 
and budgeting whilst leadership accomplishes change by first setting a direction. 
Secondly, management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organising and 
staffing, whereas leadership does so by aligning people. Thirdly, management ensures 

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accomplishment by controlling and problem-solving. Leadership does the same by 
motivating and inspiring (Kotter 1993). 
 
Zaleznik (1993) distinguishes leaders and managers along similar lines as Kotter’s 
(1993). In his, ‘Managers and leaders: are they different?’, Zaleznik illustrates that 
“leaders and managers are basically different types of people” and attempts to 
demonstrate “that managers and leaders have different attitudes toward their goals, 
careers, relations with others and themselves” (Zaleznik 1993:36). He traces the different 
lines of development of managers and leaders whose progress, he says, depends on their 
forming a one-to-one relationship with a mentor. Managers tend to adopt impersonal 
attitudes towards goals. Their goals arise out of necessities rather than desires and 
therefore are deeply embedded in the history and culture of the organisation, whereas 
leaders are active rather than re-active, shaping ideas instead of responding to them. They 
adopt a personal and active attitude towards goals. Leaders and managers also differ in 
their conceptions of work. Whereas managers tend to view work as an enabling process 
involving some combination of people and ideas interacting to establish strategies and 
make decisions, and act to limit choices, leaders work in the opposite direction, to 
develop fresh approaches to long-standing problems and to open issues up to new 
options. Managers prefer to work with people and relate to them according to the role 
they play in a sequence of events or in a decision making process, while leaders who are 
concerned with ideas, relate in more intuitive and empathetic ways. In short, the manager 
pays attention to how things get done and a leader pays attention to what the events and 
decisions mean to participants (Zaleznik 1993).