Mrd. Anemarie Moise
University of Bucharest
People have often spoken about the importance and the role of the family, as “the foundation cell of the society”. To every man, the family represents an unmistakable universe, to which the birth, the growth, the creation and the development are closely linked personality. It also represents the environment within the human being learns how to articulate sounds, how to codify the first symbols of life. It is almost obvious that the way in which the individual will relate in the couple will attract satisfactions or dissatisfactions at the work place.
In the past, the wide range of psychological processes (especially emotional ones) taking place at an individual level were ignored in the study of organizational behavior. The work place was seen like a rational implication, and some feelings that the individual manifested were not considered being able to explain facts at the work place. All these conclusions were divided in several researches and that were underling the importance of individual’s feelings in the explanation of the negative consequences within the company that he represented.
One of the most important aspects in the study of organizational behaviour is the process of leadership. Why? Because in the organisational activity, leadership, it is considered to be determinative, strategic factor in the process of structuring, functioning and efficiency of the institutions. This dynamic process of organization must be understood as involving the capacity of the leadership to integrate and coordinate all the resources to obtain the desired results. One point of interest had in view was represented by identification the link between the way in which the individual related in the couple and the way in which the individual related with the work mates. Therefore, the next born question was the following: will the individual who manifests authority in the couple manifest authority at work too, or will he have a participative leadership style?
It is well known that leaders have certain common features. It has been shown that many features are not correlated with the idea that people become leaders or with the efficiency of being leaders. However, the researches show that also there are some features associated with the leader status like intelligence, energy, self-confidence, motivation to rule, emotional stability, honesty and integrity, need of fulfilment. This is the definition of Herb Kelleher from S.W.
In many cases, it is difficult to determine whether the features make a leader or the occasion to be a leader produces the features for this role. For example do dominant individuals tend to become leaders, or do employers become dominant after having played successfully the role of a leader? The distinction is important. If the first variant is true, it should be desirable to look for dominant persons and put them in ruling roles. If the second variant is true, this strategy will not be the best. Even if we know that intelligence, dominance, height are associated with one efficient leadership, we have a few marks concerning what intelligent, dominant or high people do in order to manage to influence other people.
A first aspect noted in the investigation of the link between the dominance in the couple and the dominance in the work place was that the participative style is more important many choices than the others styles among leaders. This creates favourable attitudes, an interpersonal climate based on trust and respect and thus efficiency will rich significant levels. As to repartition on sexes between the authoritarian leadership style and the participative leadership style, researchers say that females tend to be more participative than men because they have better social abilities away, which give them the possibility to rule successfully the process of giving something in order to win something else.
In the research about dominance in the couple, one first significant result has been that the number of females who are dominant in couple increasing and this underlines the fact that the role of the female in our society has grow and she can compare with the man on the same positions. She is able not only to express her point of view but also to impose it within the couple. The changes in the couple dominance have led to an effect represented by a compromise between the two parts of the couple, to a division of attributions, to a symbiosis between the public and the private life, valorised by men and women alike.
It has also been found that the greater number of years spent together the dominance slightly is, which underlines the fact that couples mature together. In addition, they get to be preoccupied much more by living together in better conditions than by the division of states and roles.
After a period of intense researches, the conclusion about the relationship between the couple dominance and the authoritarian style of leadership has been that this correlates positively. This means that if the individual is dominant in the conjugal relationship, he will try to install himself on the same position at the work place. The discovered explanation, has been that the persons manifesting authority in the couple will tend to translate the majority of the characteristics of the couple behaviour at the work place too. And this refers to influence, power and dominance. Therefore, a person having the ability to influence the behaviour and the feelings of his partner will manifest the same abilities as far as his subordinates are concerned. Even more, the individual who is dominant in couple will tend to behave and to have the same expectations from his’ subordinates as he has from his couple partner. He is used to taking decisions, to influencing, to dominating, he knows that in a couple this aspects give him satisfactions, and therefore he thinks that if he uses them at work he will get the same satisfactions. He also considers that as his influence on his partner changes opinions and attitudes, it will do the same in the case of his subordinates.
We mustn’t understand the authority in the couple or in the organizational environment as a negative aspect, we have to understand that in certain conditions we have to operate with these in order to get a greater efficiency.
The determination of this relationship brings a new solution to the improvement of the activity of Human Resources Departments. So, knowing the level of dominance of an individual in the couple, we can determine the way in which he will get performances or not at the place where he or she is going to work, because if it is a place in which people tend to have a submissive behaviour, without decisional capacity, then a style of leadership based on authority in which although the subordinates are consulted the decision will be taken only at the top of the hierarchy. On the other hand, if we have a work place in which everyone wants to express his point of view and all the members of the group participate in the decisional process, the leader has to treat his employees with interest and respect, has to be sensitive to the necessities and feelings and has to be receptive to their ideas and suggestions. In this case, a leadership style based on authority will born conflicts.
During the process of selection and recruitment of a leader, during the process of determination of his potential in a leadership position in many cases we can use a questionnaire of dominance in the couple to determine the way in which he will behave in the role of a leader.