Relationship between empowerment and leadership in the economy

Abstract

There are various theories about how a leader should behave and what are the characteristics of a leader in the context of the modern economic world and business. The question of how actually an individual becomes a leader is of interest to many people. Very often the word “leader” is used as an equivalent of a person gaining power in a particular structure or organization. Аlso the words „leader“ and „manager“ are often misused as synonyms. Тhere is a big difference between the two concepts. Мanager in the economic world can take a position as a continuation of personal and professional qualities which will elevate him in the structural hierarchy. Also, manager could be chosen for the position by external factors. In both cases, this is not a matter of choice of the group. If the manager has leadership qualities, he could be recognized by the group later, but he could also be rejected. Placing a certain individual, who is not chosen by the group, in a leading role is a subject of analysis. An experiment with students is conducted so to prove the hypothesis. The experiment aims to determine whether there is a connection between empowerment and leadership, fundamentally distinguishing the fact that empowerment does not presumably make the individual leader. For the purposes of the experiment, fictional information about a non-existent country is provided. In this way, a simulation environment is created. Each student has own task and must defend own draft budget in a discussion. The simulation aims to observe not mostly the success of defending own draft budget, but the behavior and unconscious leadership skills of the participants.