Bill Gates-Transformational Leader

Bill Gates is a businessman investor and computer programmer. He is the co-founder of the Microsoft, which is the world’s largest PC software company. Gates has held various positions in the Microsoft Corporation i.e. chairman, CEO, and chief software architect. He stepped down as CEO in 2000 and created the position of chief software officer. Microsoft brought the personal computer revolution making gates one of the wealthiest people. Through his career in the Microsoft Corporation, Bill gates practiced transformational leadership helping the corporation to stand out as one of the best personal computer software company in the world (Gates).
            Transformational leadership is a type of leadership style where the leader causes a change in individual and social systems (Hawkins). Bill Gates used idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration to manage the Microsoft Corporation. This paper will seek to analyze the transformational approach that bill Gates practiced.
Idealized influence.
            Bill Gates used idealized influence on his followers thereby gaining trust, loyalty and respect from the followers; he did this through the application of charismatic vision and behavior. He is known to have created the state of idealized influence by articulating the vision of Microsoft to the staff and explaining how the vision was to be attained in an appealing manner. He leads by example and Acts confidently and optimistically. From laying down the rules and following them, bill gates shared the risks with his followers. Microsoft is considered to one of the best corporations to work in this is because he let the staff have shares in the company. By giving the employees generous stock options, Gates made the employees millionaires in the process.
            Gates showed a high level of ethical and moral conduct as a leader of the Microsoft Company. This was demonstrated by the way he handled the staff in a personalized way i.e. by writing employees a thank you notes. His actions emphasized values of transformational leadership; he showed that every employee was outstanding in his capacity by thanking them for every action that they did.
Inspirational motivation
            As a leader of the Microsoft Company, bill gates inspired his followers towards new idea and goals. He did this by articulating a clear and appealing view of the future through his quotes. Gates has several inspirational quotes that help his followers to have a clear picture of the future developments in the software business. For instance, he quoted that “success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. Here he is motivating the business people not to embrace know that failure is part of winning, and those successful should not believe that they can’t fail at one time in their businesses.
            Gates is known to encourage followers to integrate and become part of the organizational culture and environment. He has been quoted to say “if you can’t make it good, at least make it look good." This quote motivates his followers not to be lazy but try to do the best in everything that they assigned to do. He developed a shared vision in both economic and ideological terms in a manner that his followers would see a meaning in their work. He appreciated even the lazy people by encouraging them. For example, he is quoted to say that he would choose a lazy person to do a job because the lazy person would find an easy way of doing the job.

Intellectual stimulation.
            Bill Gates use transformational leadership to bring change through intellectual stimulation that aims at a self-reflective change of values and beliefs. He developed a climate of intellectual stimulation and nurtured it within the organization. He does this by making his followers think in rational ways and be both creative and innovative. The employees of the Microsoft Corporation are encouraged to come up with new ideas that will help the company to grow. This led to the staff coming up with new applications that were adopted by the Corporation.
            Several Microsoft windows apps created by the corporation are as a result of ideas adopted by the staff of the organization. This intellectual stimulation has earned bill gates as one of the leaders practicing transformational leadership.
Individual consideration.
            Bill gates’ approach in transformational leadership includes individual consideration i.e. he treats every follower as an individual rather than as an employee, he takes into consideration every individual’s talents and levels of knowledge, hence deciding on what best suits the individual. This leads to the attainment of high results from the individual.
            Gates is known to have interacted with the employees on a personal level i.e. by writing thank you notes whenever an individual did him a favor. He made private notes of congratulations to the employees to boost their self-confidence. Microsoft Corporation also is voted to be the best company to work in; this is because gates ensured that there is a fair distribution of the workload.
Conclusion.
            Transformational leadership is necessary to change the way in which organizational leadership is to be practiced. In transformational leadership, the leader identifies the need for change, creates a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and he executes the change with the commitment of the followers. Bill gates is a business entrepreneur who is attributed to having practiced transformational leadership during his time as the CEO of the Microsoft Corporation. The success of Microsoft as the leading company in the provision of the software made gates one of the wealthiest people in the world as listed by Forbes. This is due to his genius practice of transformation leadership.

                                                            References

            Gates, Bill, and Lisa Rogak. Impatient optimist: Bill Gates in his own words. Hardie Grant, 2012.

            Hawkins, Peter. Leadership team coaching developing collective transformational leadership. Kogan Page, 2011.

Cash transfers, tariffs and quotas

Cash transfers are payments made by the government to people in form of cash. They are benefits paid to people by the government i.e. worker’s compensation benefits in case of injury on the job. This benefits are paid in cash. In-kind benefits  on the other hand are benefits paid to individuals by the government, but unlike cash transfers, they are not paid directly in cash but instead, the individuals receives goods and services for free or at a reduced rate. For instance, in case of an employee who gets injured during the job will get a cover for medical costs and not in cash.

Cash transfers are preferred unlike in kind transfer because with in kind transfers, they have failed to deliver due to active involvement of the government. This paves way for leakages and supply of substandard quality services and political bias in distribution.

Advantages and disadvantages.

            Cash transfers are beneficial because the direct cash transfers can be used in different ways as chooses the beneficiary. One could choose to invest his benefits, thus cash transfers give greater freedom to use to use the benefits in a way that suits the situation. However the cash transfer programs can have their disadvantages, for instance cash transfers made are often used for the wrong purposes hence not meeting the government’s plans and targets. I.e. aid given to the HIV victims.

            The good thing about the in kind transfers is that the government is sure the benefit can used for the intended purpose. For instance if the government is giving welfare type programs, then the in-kind transfers will be used for that purpose. However, in kind transfers have a negative characteristics, the government incurs extra costs that go along with these transfers

Tariffs and quotas

            Tariffs are taxes that are imposed on the imported goods, this makes the prices of these goods to increase on the domestic country. Tariffs are beneficial to the government as it increases it tax revenue. Also, the domestic producers benefit because they receive higher prices. On the other hand, quotas are limits to the amount of goods that is to be imported into the country. Quotas are disadvantageous to the consumers while the local producers benefit by getting higher prices.

            For a small country, the use of tariffs would be of more advantage to the economy than using quotas. This is because, use of quotas, will result in restrictions from the partner countries, it will also lead to widespread corruption from the administration, who will favor countries who bribe them. Unlike when tariffs are used, tariffs do not affect the world prices nor the economy, and the import price rises to full amount.

            While using tariffs, there are parties who gain while others loose. Tariffs increases the price of the goods that are imported, this makes the domestic goods cheaper increasing their demand in the process. Thus the local producers gain from the use of tariffs. Also the government imposes taxes on this goods, this leads to an increase in the tax revenue for the authority. Consumers are the major losers from the use of tariffs, that is, since the goods are taxed, they must increase in price, but often the goods that are imported are those not produced locally. This forces them to buy these goods at costly prices.