Sample paper: Nursing leadership

Nursing Leadership

Student Name

Institutional Affiliation

Question one

 Through leadership, it is possible to set policies and guidelines that govern the operation of every activity within the field. Nursing is one of the major technical fields, professional leadership has always played an important role in ensuring that there is the delivery of quality services to the patients. However, professional leadership in nursing has faced several challenges and barriers which has limited delivery of better leadership services. Nevertheless, the challenges should not lead to the eradication of leadership in the nursing industry, they should, however, provide a propelling force towards offering the best leadership. People have different ideas, during decision making, each person would want his or her idea to be considered and when that is not done, there may rise unnecessary quarrels within the organization. Thompson et al. (2004), acknowledges that this is a major challenge that professional leaders face, he advises that each person be allowed to explain more about his or her idea and through that, it will be easy to merge all ideas and come up with a concrete solution.

Question two

In the health care industry, nursing is the largest profession, in this profession research shows that there are more women than men. Unfortunately, during policymaking, the nursing profession has often lacked enough representation this makes other medical practitioners make policies that all nurses are supposed to adhere to. Gender bias has always been a great issue for human beings to deal with. Women are considered weak and vulnerable, often their ideas are ignored and thus they lack the morale of presenting concrete ideas that could change the face of the nursing profession (MacKusick & Minick, 2010). Thus, the main problem has been ignorance since other medical practitioners especially male have ignored the ideas raised by women making the nursing profession lack representation during policymaking.

CHAPTER 5 OUTLINE

What Is Perception, and Why Is It Important?   Definition:        Perception is a process by which individuals organize and interpret                         their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their                         environment. Why is this important to the study of OB? Because people’s behavior is based on their perception of what reality is, not on reality itself.
A.    Factors Influencing Perception
1.     Factors that shape and can distort perception (Exhibit 5-1): ·         Perceiver ·         Target ·         Situation 2.     When an individual looks at a target and attempts to interpret what he or she sees, that interpretation is heavily influenced by personal characteristics of the individual perceiver. 3.     The more relevant personal characteristics affecting perception of the perceiver are attitudes, motives, interests, past experiences, and expectations. 4.     Characteristics of the target can also affect what is being perceived.  This would include attractiveness, gregariousness, and our tendency to group similar things together.  For example, members of a group with clearly distinguishable features or color are often perceived as alike in other, unrelated characteristics as well. 5.     The context in which we see objects or events also influences our attention.  This could include time, heat, light, or other situational factors.

 

Person Perception: Making Judgments about Others

B.    Attribution Theory  (Exhibit 5-2)
1.   Our perceptions of people differ from our perceptions of inanimate objects. ·         We make inferences about the actions of people that we do not make about inanimate objects. ·         Nonliving objects are subject to the laws of nature. ·         People have beliefs, motives, or intentions. 2.   Our perception and judgment of a person’s actions are influenced by these assumptions.
3.   Attribution theory suggests that when we observe an individual’s behavior, we attempt to determine whether it was internally or externally caused. That determination depends largely on three factors: ·         Distinctiveness ·         Consensus ·         Consistency 4.  Clarification of the differences between internal and external causation: ·         Internally caused behaviors are those that are believed to be under the personal control of the individual. ·         Externally caused behavior is seen as resulting from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having been forced into the behavior by the situation. 5.   Distinctiveness refers to whether an individual displays different behaviors in different situations. What we want to know is whether the observed behavior is unusual. ·         If it is, the observer is likely to give the behavior an external attribution. ·         If this action is not unusual, it will probably be judged as internal. 6.   Consensus occurs if everyone who is faced with a similar situation responds in the same way.  If consensus is high, you would be expected to give an external attribution to the employee’s tardiness, whereas if other employees who took the same route made it to work on time, your conclusion as to causation would be internal. 7.   Consistency in a person’s actions. Does the person respond the same way over time? The more consistent the behavior, the more the observer is inclined to attribute it to internal causes. 8.   Fundamental Attribution Error ·         There is substantial evidence that we have a tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal or personal factors. ·         There is also a tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors such as ability or effort while putting the blame for failure on external factors such as luck. This is called the “self-serving bias” and suggests that feedback provided to employees will be distorted by recipients. 9.   Are these errors or biases that distort attribution universal across different cultures? While there is no definitive answer there is some preliminary evidence that indicates cultural differences: ·         Korean managers found that, contrary to the self-serving bias, they tended to accept responsibility for group failure. ·         Attribution theory was developed largely based on experiments with Americans and Western Europeans. ·         The Korean study suggests caution in making attribution theory predictions in non-Western societies, especially in countries with strong collectivist traditions.
C.    Frequently Used Shortcuts in Judging Others
1.   We use a number of shortcuts when we judge others. An understanding of these shortcuts can be helpful toward recognizing when they can result in significant distortions. 2.   Selective Perception ·         Any characteristic that makes a person, object, or event stand out will increase the probability that it will be perceived. ·         Since we can’t observe everything going on about us, we engage in selective perception. ·         A classic example: a.   Dearborn and Simon performed a perceptual study in which 23 business executives read a comprehensive case describing the organization and activities of a steel company. b.   The results along with other results of the study, led the researchers to conclude that the participants perceived aspects of a situation that were specifically related to the activities and goals of the unit to which they were attached. c.   A group’s perception of organizational activities is selectively altered to align with the vested interests they represent. 3.   Halo Effect ·         The halo effect occurs when we draw a general impression on the basis of a single characteristic: a.   This phenomenon frequently occurs when students appraise their classroom instructor.  b.   Propensity for halo effect to operate is not random.  ·         The reality of the halo effect was confirmed in a classic study. a.   Subjects were given a list of traits such as intelligent, skillful, practical, industrious, determined, and warm, and were asked to evaluate the person to whom those traits applied.  When the word “warm” was substituted with “cold” the subjects changed their evaluation of the person. b.   The experiment showed that subjects were allowing a single trait to influence their overall impression of the person being judged. c.   Research suggests that it is likely to be most extreme when the traits to be perceived are ambiguous in behavioral terms, when the traits have moral overtones, and when the perceiver is judging traits with which he or she has had limited experience.

Personal Statement

From a tender age, long before I could fathom the particulars of science or its numerous fields, I had already developed a compelling desire to practice in the healthcare profession. This desire was as a result of a tragic incident that occurred to my family when I was around ten years old. My beloved little sister, upon premature discharge from the hospital, passed on. The heartbreaking incident happened in my home country, Nigeria. I was utterly devastated. She had been discharged from the hospital because we could no longer afford her medical upkeep. We desperately sought for ways to help her in vain. The loss engraved in me a deep desire to dedicate my life to caring for the sick, and in particular the sick and the poor. Nevertheless, it was not until my senior year in high school that I married my desire to my specific liking for human biology.

My childhood imaginations of how the body works were that there were little persons who always labored to make metabolic processes possible. Honestly, I was thrilled and overly excited to learn and understand the word metabolism later in life at Texas State University. I was very encouraged to confirm the reality of my imagination in real life. My imagination of little persons matched the relationship of body cells to the rest of the body in general. My thirst for learning, great sense of imagination, and the ability to relate textbook knowledge to the practical anatomy it refers to have brought me a long way in becoming the health caregiver that I always aspired to be.

SCENARIO PLANNING CONCEPT IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

SCENARIO PLANNING CONCEPT

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Scenario Panning Concept

Scenario planning refers to the process of forecasting future activities. Important to note that, scenario planning consists of formulated plans that are based on the mission and the overall goals of the organisation. Again, the entire process requires the business managers to think and make ethical decisions for the long terms objectives. The fundamental purpose of this paper is to research and discuss scenario planning in strategic management of a business or an organisation. Also, the paper seeks for new developments, advancements, and application of the concept in strategic management. Vivid discussions are presented in the content below.

Scenario planning is an essential part of strategic management since it makes the managers plan for the future. Generally, the concept is crucial in an organisation because it helps to deal with uncertainty in the following ways. Firstly, the idea helps the managers to understand the environment as they become rational to risk-taking and also avoid them from taking unreasonable risks (Porter, 1996). Secondly, the concept helps the managers to become more adaptive in their organisations. The Management team expand their mental models hence take proactive actions. Also, the idea avoids denial and paralysis through providing a framework to outline limited strategic choices in the organisation, thus helping the managers to make rational decisions as they get out of the existing mental models.

The concept of scenario planning within the Strategic management fits in the optimisation of effort in the organisation. Notably, considering the available resources in the organisation, the management plans of what they want to achieve in the future. Therefore, the existing gap provides a room for decision making inspiring what the organisation needs to accomplish at a given time. Finally, the concept helps the management team of an organisation to set the mission based on the goals intending to achieve. The idea, as stated, is useful in scheduling the plans that are crucial in organisation advancement.  

Clarification of Meaning and Origin of the Concept

Scenario planning is also defined as a process and an ongoing approach in organisational development by setting future objectives based on the current resources. The management team of an organisation has the mandate to schedule plans that lead to corporate growth in terms of market penetration as it tries to accomplish its specified mission. The overall process starts by considering the available resources that might have an impact on the world, for example, technology, social, and environmental change. Therefore, the concept seeks for the most critical factors and uncertainties hence exploring their implications as they combine them in distinct plausible ways to create possible future.

Mentioning on the origin of the scenario planning based on the recent articles I have read, it is clear that the source of the concept was used in World War 2 (Cork & Kate, 2007, p.4). The idea was primarily used in analysing the prediction regarding their enemies and make ethical decisions. Later on, the idea was then moved to a business-related organisation in the 1960s, especially in Royal Dutch Shell.  The shell's ability to react to the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s is one of the most exceptional examples of implementing scenario planning in strategic management in business organisation to anticipate significant future challenges. Importantly, the concept assisted the company in dealing and countering its challenges. Since then, the idea is practised in most of the business organisation, helping them to expand as well as developing their potential objectives in both short and long terms. The concept needs diversified and skilled people to implement, whereby in most companies and organisations, managers are encouraged to hold and develop skills in scenario thinking.

Recent Developments in Academic Thought Related to Scenario Planning

The concept has undergone developments in academic thought since the 1980s as it has been seeking for personnel to break the constraints of everyday thinking. The development of scenario planning is illustrated in the following figure.

According to the figure above, different possible futures are identified based on the available resources in the organisation. The overall available resources determine the direction and the speed of movement in terms of development and advancement. Ideally, most of the required resources are in terms of technology-based that affects the entire environment. Secondly, the management team has the mandate to formulate the plan to deal with the specified futures following the available resources. Prominent to memo that, the plans are essential in the organisation since they determine both the short and long term objectives. For instance, an institutional organisation might focus on producing quality service in terms acceptance in the society therefore, this form the basis of the mission of the organisation. In this case, the managers should focus on formulating ideas to meet the plans.

At this juncture, the management accounts for the particular plan to invest that will have an immediate impact on the organisation. For instance, the idea was to install an internet connection for smooth running of the activities, and then they have to invest in the project to facilitate improvement in the institution. Once the management is done with the most basic plan, they can hedge to another scenario plan depending on the urgency. The projects are completed depending on their importance in the organisation such that, the most important ideas are firstly completed. If the entire scenario is invalid or fails to work well, then the management switch to another scenario planning that can have an impact on meeting the overall goals of the organisation. According to the discussed presented above elaborating the figure on the development of scenario planning in academic thought, it is vividly portrayed that following the exact steps lead the progression of the organisation.