Practical connection Assignment
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Bratton_PPT061.pptxOrganizational Leadership
John Bratton
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Part 2
Leadership theories
Trait, behaviour and contingency theories of leadership
Chapter 5
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Learning outcomes
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the early research on leadership traits, describe the research methods used, and explain why many of the early studies were contradictory or inconclusive.
Explain the University of Michigan, the Ohio State and the Blake and Mouton models of leadership.
Describe and critique early and contemporary contingency theories of leadership including; least preferred coworker theory, path-goal theory and situational theory.
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Introduction
Early leadership research focused on the role of individual traits to explain differences between leaders and non-leaders and leadership effectiveness – however, generally weak for predictive purposes.
This leads to shift the focus from studying traits that a leader ‘has’ to the study of how leaders ‘behave’, providing the framework for contingency theory which assumed rational analysis of situation or context should determine how a leader behaves.
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Leader traits and attributes
Trait - a variety of enduring characteristics, typically belonging to an individual, including personality tendencies that determine an individual’s behaviour.
4 core properties:
Measurable
Vary across individuals
Exhibit time and situational stability
Help predict attitudes and behaviours
Trait Activation Theory
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Leader traits and attributes
Trait Activation Theory
Focus on personal characteristics, or intellectual attributes that differentiate leaders from non-leaders.
Theories and researches in this matter flourished between the 19th century to mid-20th century, discovering:
specific psychological traits and attributes which would help explain whether an individual will emerge as an informal leader in a group.
how traits and personal attributes are related to leadership effectiveness.
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Leader traits and attributes
Researchers utilized various methods to identify a universal cluster of leadership traits, including intelligence and personality testing, observation, and analysis of biographical data. Though, any interpretation of comparative data might differ because the researchers use different descriptors to describe similar personal characteristics.
Considered singularly, Stogdill (1974) observed that traits have little diagnostic or predictive significance. Rather, specific “patterns of traits” appear to interact in a complex way to give leadership advantage and are a “sensible modification” of the extreme variant of situationalist model (1974, p. 87).
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Leader traits and attributes
Critiques:
Largely neglected the context within which leaders find themselves.
Underplays followership in the leadership process – focused on trait variables and optimum performance and downplaying what it is like to be a human being.
Because of the above, this model also disregarded class, gender and race – leading to studies using intersectionality.
Culturally determined.
Underestimated the challenges of proving causality.
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Leader behaviour and styles
Behavioural Theories
Focus on behaviour and infer people can be trained to be leaders – what they do and how they behave towards followers.
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Leader behaviour and styles
Evolving from a system of “scientific management” to observing a disconnection between employee’s psychological aspirations, management practices and leadership styles, this has lead to majority of the studies comparing different types of leadership styles based on 2 main types of behavior:
Task behaviours – to what extent the leader emphasize productivity targets; also known as ‘producton-centred’ and ‘task-orientated’ leadership styles.
Relationship behaviours – to what extent the leader is concerned about her or his followers as people: their needs, development, and problems; also known as ‘employee-centred’ and ‘person-orientated’ leadership styles.
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Leader behaviour and styles
University of Michigan Studies
Focus: the effect of the leader’s behaviour or style on work performance – identified 2 discrete types of leadership behaviours: production orientation and employee orientation.
From reframing these 2 types to be of opposite ends of a single leadership dimension, these 2 leadership constructs were conceptualized as independent orientations as more research is done.
Employee-oriented leader behaviours were associated with higher group performance and higher job satisfaction among group members.
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Leader behaviour and styles
Ohio State University
Focus: how leaders behaved when they were leading a team or an organization by initial study of aircrews and pilots – results suggested 2 underlying dimensions of leader behaviours: initiating structure and consideration.
Both structures are considered 2 independent dimensions, thus a leader’s behaviour can be flexible and capable of changing as the situations warranted.
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Leader behaviour and styles
Effective leader attempts to increase both initiating and consideration structure and to maintain a balance between the two.
Ohio State’s approach measured both formal and informal variables although its studies shares similarity with Michigan’s – looking into the differences between the leader’s formal responsibility and formal interaction with followers, vice versa.
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Leader behaviour and styles
Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid or Leadership Grid
Based on leader styles similar to those found in the Ohio State studies, they have characterized 2 main activities of leaders: concern for results and concern for people.
These two attitudinal dimensions are independent of each other. In different combinations, they yield a broad range of different leadership styles (see Figure 6.1).
This model differs from Ohio States (descriptive and non-evaluative) that it is normative and prescriptive.
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Leader behaviour and styles
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Leader behaviour and styles
Critiques:
Unable to identify a universal style of leadership that could be effective in the vast majority of situations.
This approach suggests that the most effective leadership style is the so-called “high-high” style, that is, high results- and high people-oriented behaviour.
It has not adequately demonstrated how leaders’ behaviours are associated with performance outcomes (causal connection; Bryman, 1992).
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Contingency theories of leadership
Proposes that the appropriate leader behaviour depends on certain factors or contingency variables including the task and the followers. Thus, there is no one best behaviour or style of leadership, but, rather, situation X requires leadership behaviour or style B.
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Contingency theories of leadership
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
Assumes that leaders are either task-oriented or relationship-oriented, an orientation that the leader cannot change.
The effectiveness of both types of leaders depends on the favourableness of the situation – classified by the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) Scale.
Contingency Variables: task structure, position power, and leader-member relations
Criticism: it is a projective technique, with associated measurement biases and low measurement reliability (McMahon, l972; Peters et al. 1985).
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Contingency theories of leadership
House’s Path-Goal Theory
This theory has its roots in the expectancy theory of motivation (Vroom, 1964). Expectancy theory is based on the notion that work motivation is contingent upon the perception of a link between levels of physical or mental effort and reward (Bratton, 2015).
Here, the main task of the leader is to facilitate the follower’s path to the goal.
Contingency Variables: characteristics of the work environment (situation) and of the followers.
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Contingency theories of leadership
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Contingency theories of leadership
Limitations:
The research support for the theory is weak (e.g. Schriesheim et al. 2006).
This theory incorporates so many different aspects of leadership that interpreting the theory can be unclear.
The model neglects to explain adequately the leader-behaviour-follower motivation relationship.
The leader has to provide coaching to help followers achieve their goals, which assumes that the leadership is a one-way process and fails to recognize followers’ initiative and action.
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Contingency theories of leadership
Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory (SLT)
suggests that the leader’s behaviour must be flexible to reflect the situation, by choosing the right leadership style contingent on the subordinates’ ability and motivation to perform a given task.
SLT requires a leader to appraise her or his subordinates’ and judge how competent and committed or motivated they are to perform and accept responsibility for completing a given task or goal.
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Contingency theories of leadership
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Contingency theories of leadership
Critiques:
It facilitates managers and leaders to become more context sensitive, flexible and responsive to peers (Graeff, 1983).
All the theories incorporate multiple factors simultaneously into recommending a preferred leadership style, which is open to wide interpretation.
They do not explain adequately the causal effects underpinning the relationships they draw. The absence of central hypotheses does not allow for a reliable testing of the variability of dependent and independent variables.
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