Hi, Steemians.
A pleasure to greet you again. As in other publications I have commented, I am a mechanical engineer belonging to the largest oil company in Venezuela. And today I want to address an extremely interesting topic: leadership, and how it has been formed in the Venezuelan oil industry.
Leadership is called in this way the set of skills that a certain person must possess in order to influence the way people think or act, motivating them to make the tasks that these people have to carry out efficiently. This way to the achievement of the achievements, using different tools such as charisma and safety when talking as well as the ability to socialize with others.
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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Venezuelan Petroleum Industry has experienced intense waves of mergers and acquisitions, which have led to the trend and behavior of the Leadership established in it, these were conceived and nurtured in the past from two (02) thought or current of turn that stood out from the group of existing companies of the time, one of AUTHORITARY nature of the employer, in the sense of imposing and enforcing a mandate even against the will of the followers of the behavior associated with the Creole Petroleum Corporation with subsequent transformation of the operator LAGOVEN, and the other based on the LEGITIMACY of the typical employer, which was created from the principles of the company Caribbean Petroleum (subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell), associated with the operator MARAVEN, among other operators of the country, and that subsequently formed the stand PETROLEOS DE VENEZUELA SA (PDVSA).
Both thoughts were directly associated with the type of leader, his leadership process, and the situation of his environment. In this sense, the emerging leadership within the Venezuelan Petroleum industry organization has been changing from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, in search of improving and establishing a more effective and efficient leadership formula in accordance with the supervisory processes.
In this order of ideas, studies have been carried out of the leadership formed by the supervisory personnel of the Venezuelan Petroleum industry; studies oriented to know the uncertainty patterns and associated with the behavior manifested on the supervisory chain, in order to identify the changes that are have registered.
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From the creation of these new organizations, a pattern of organizational behavior is established that is quickly adopted by the Venezuelan oil worker and that ends up imposing, modifying his behavior and later acquires this pattern that displaces his habits, such as corporal expressions (clothing) and expressions alien to their vocabulary (idioms), and the scenarios formed by new social groups are established based on the class and the ethnic and multicultural aspects, with this an individual phenomenon arises, then the figure of the leader and its interpersonal influence exerted. in a situation, directed through the process of human communication to obtain one or several specific objectives, this character and his performance was directed to command over the group, give solutions to problems and make decisions for the same purpose.
Starting from what was proposed, and to guide us in the understanding of the leadership tendencies of the time, historically we have observed the existence of four theoretical tendencies that try to explain leadership, these are: the theory of the TRAITS, the theory of the BEHAVIOR, SITUATIONAL theory or CONTINGENCY and EMERGING theories.
The predominant leadership during the beginning of the Venezuelan Petroleum era was modeled by the theory of traits, which is based on the characteristics or natural or innate traits of individuals.
This approach was eminently psychological, companies only had to select the boss or administrator identifying the best characteristics of the applicants. The theoretical approach assumed was the product of the contributions of Robbins (1994), which exposes six (06) traits that should be considered for the process of leader selection: impulse, desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence and specialized knowledge, and in the present have incorporated new variables such as integrity, trust, curiosity, boldness, vision.
After the first fifty (50) years of oil exploitation in Venezuela, a new scenario is produced with the creation of the state company Petróleos de Venezuela, S. A (PDVSA).
This company that replaced the transnational companies that operated before, but maintaining its same criteria and alive its legacy, continues in its operative form. It is in this historical context that the interior of the nascent organizations are tied to the productive and economic axis of the country again.
We resort to a redefinition of the type of leadership according to the features but on a larger scale, that is, we had to select the perfect ideal man, the hard man, the one with the highest degree of mental evolution. Selection that was based on behavior only to validate behaviors that guaranteed order and social control, excluding very important social values such as solidarity, friendship, so to fill that gap necessarily resorted to the rewarding power of the leader.
With these foundations (social order, control, hierarchy, rationality and command), it can be understood why the official who performed the role of foreman, supervisor or general administrator was the call to exercise leadership in the name of capital, who would ensure the actions of the planning, the strategy, the direction of the resources and the evaluation, attributed to its hierarchy.
That is, I had to do everything within the imposed logic. If he met the objectives and achieved obedience, such an employee rated him as a potential leader. This situation did not guarantee the efficiency of the processes within the organization, because it was discovered that the masses could obey someone other than the boss.
This nascent functional structure is in the process of evolution, as well as in the stage of forming interdisciplinary work groups as the basis for the new Organizational Behavior, which is to be established. Ferrer de Molero (2013) states in the study "Stages of group development" that there are five (05) phases that all working groups must pass through, these are: Training, Storm, Normativity, Performance and Movement.
Likewise, the author Ferrer de Molero Marzo (2013), warns that without the existence of an effective organizational strategy and a fair distribution of resources, a positive influence can not be made within the work groups.
The behaviors associated with these styles of leadership have left sequels, despite the fact that fifty-four (54) years have elapsed since its establishment for the first time, the organizational structures found within PDVSA, based on anachronistic models and whose style does not provide solutions to the current changes demanded by the Oil Industry, focus on the five (05) key elements defined in the areas of specialization of work, the established department, the chain of command, the control section, centralization - decentralization and finally the formalization of the organizational structures, parameters that do not adapt to the current topology of the established operators.
With the current organizational changes experienced by the Venezuelan Hydrocarbons industry in the present, and extrapolating the author's thought Senge (1993, 1996), which argues that the only way to survive changes in the environment is to form intelligent organizations, where their leaders can have a mastery of the staff, and in turn manage new mental models, share the vision of working and learn as a team and have a systemic vision of reality, essential scenarios to make the necessary changes.
In this sense, the emerging leadership within the Venezuelan Petroleum Industry, has been transmuting from the beginning of the 20th century until today, changes that have originated within the organization and that are being studied from the theory of RASGOS, such as: Quality total, reengineering, new strategic management, business excellence, benchmarking, empowerment, globalization, the Balanced Scorecard.
Contemporary trends encourage new and old authors to consider what the leadership of the future would be like within an organization, in their writings they agree that the current situation are those that explain the tendency of leadership within the internal processes of organizations, context which is linked to the field of education and the formation of the leader within these.
All the proposals have been extrapolated from studies of behaviors formulated in the last century, as indicated above, particularly those from the 1980s, where priority was given to coercive leadership practices, based on the use of authority , the rewards and punishments to establish or exert an influence on the followers.
However, this behavior pattern was viable in its moments, but in the current context of history, they do not have greater relevance or effect within the supervised chain, producing states of uncertainty, accompanied by negative and intolerable patterns of behavior. repetitive between the lines of command and the supervised one.
The characters indicated within the Venezuelan Petroleum Industry, correspond to a philosophy of life and autocratic behavior, existing in the behavior patterns of a Resilient leadership, which is composed of the following features: self-control, locus of internal control, self-esteem, creativity, initiative, humor, ability to relate, and which establishes reasons to act in orientation to achievement within the Venezuelan Petroleum Industry.
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