Chapter Fourteen
Leadership
McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Organizational Behavior: Key Concepts, Skills & Best Practices, 3/e
Copyright © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
What Does Leadership Involve?
• Universal Phenomena
- Everybody is concerned about it (especially in
uncertain situations)
• Leadership
- Influencing employees to
voluntarily pursue
organizational goals
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What Does Leadership Involve?
• Leader is responsible for :
- At the individual level : mentoring, motivating,
performance management
- At the group level : team building, conflict
management, communication
performance management
- At the organization level : building culture,
creating changes,
performance management
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Leadership theories
• Trait theory
• Behavioral theory
• Situational (Contingency) theories
- Fiedler’s contingency model
- Path-Goal Theory
- Hersey & Blanchard’s Situational leadership theory
• Transformational leadership
• Additional perspectives
- LMX model
- Shared leadership
- Servant leadership
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Trait Theory
• Tried to identify leader trait
- Personal characteristics that differentiate leaders from
followers
- Physical or personality characteristics
• However, researchers were unable to uncover a
consistent set of traits
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Gender as a trait
• Men and women were seen as displaying more task
and social leadership, respectively
• Women used a more democratic or participative
style than men, and men used a more autocratic
and directive style than women
• Men and women were equally assertive
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Key Positive Leadership Traits
• Recent studies (after 1980s) found the positive
traits, which lead to leadership effectiveness
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Behavioral Theory
• This line of research began during WWII as an
effort to develop better military leaders
• The Ohio State Studies identified two critical
dimensions of leader behavior
- Consideration: creating mutual respect and trust with
followers (Relationship-oriented)
- Initiating structure: organizing and defining what
group members should be doing (Task-oriented)
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Behavioral Theory
High
Hc-Lis
Hc-His
Low
Lc-Lis
Lc-His
Consideration
Low
High
Initiating Structure
• Hc-His combination was expected to yield the best leadership outcomes
• But, research results had been mixed
- There is no one best style of leadership
Situational leadership
• Implication:
- Leader behaviors can be systematically improved and developed
Many leadership development programs were introduced
14-9
Situational Theories
• Situational theories
- After 1960s
- Propose that leader behavior (styles)
should match the situation at hand
- Each situational theory differs in terms of
“leader behavior (leadership styles)” and
“the situation”
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Fiedler’s Contingency Model
•The leadership styles
- Task-motivated leadership
- Relationship-motivated leadership
•The situation
- Situational control – refers to the amount of
control and influence the leader has in his
immediate work environment
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Fiedler’s Contingency Model
• Three Dimensions of Situational Control
- Leader-member relations – the extent to which the
leader has the support, loyalty, and trust of the work
group
- Task structure – concerned with the amount of
structure contained within tasks performed by the
work group
- Position power – the degree to which the leader has
formal power to reward, punish, or otherwise obtain
compliance from employees
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Fiedler’s Contingency Model
Figure 14-1
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Fiedler’s Contingency Model
• Mixed results
• Contribution
- Made others to think leadership in terms of
contingency (“There is no one best style of
leadership)
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Path-Goal Theory
• House
• The leadership styles
- Directive, supportive, participative, achievementoriented
• The situation
- Employee characteristics
• Locus of control, task ability, need for achievement,
experience, need for clarity
- Environmental factors
• Task structure, work group dynamics
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Path-Goal Theory
• Hypotheses (Ex.)
Situation
Appropriate
leader behavior
Influence on
followers
Followers lack
confidence
Supportive
Leadership
Increase in
confidence
Tasks are
ambiguous
Directive
leadership
Understand the
paths for goal
achievement
Tasks are not
challenging
Achievementoriented
leadership
Set higher
goals
• Some
positive supports for the theory
Outcomes
Increases in
efforts,
satisfaction,
performance
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Hershey and Blanchard’s
Situational Leadership Model
• The leadership styles
- Telling, Selling, Participating, Delegating
• The situation
- Readiness (or maturity)
• follower’s ability and willingness to complete a task
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Hershey and Blanchard’s
Situational Leadership Model
Figure 14-3
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Transformational Leadership
• Bass & Avolio
• The theory was suggested as the organizational changes
had become major management issue
- The management needed the leadership that could
bring about successful organizational rebirth
• The full-range model of leadership
- Laissez-faire leadership – transactional leadership –
transformational leadership
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Transformational Leadership
• Laissez-faire leadership
- The leader fails to take leadership responsibility
- The worst outcomes
• Transactional leadership
- Focuses on clarifying employees’ roles and
providing rewards contingent on performance
- Some positive outcomes
- Suitable for maintaining status quo
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Transformational Leadership
• Transformational Leadership
- Focuses on transforming employees to pursue
organizational goals over self-interests
• Tries to engender trust, seek to develop leadership
in others, exhibits self-sacrifice and serve as moral
agents
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Transformational Leadership
• Transformational leader behavior
- Inspirational motivation – establishing an
attractive vision of the future, the use of
emotional arguments, and exhibition of
optimism and enthusiasm
- Idealized influence – sacrificing for the good
of the group, being a role model, and
displaying high ethical standards
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Transformational Leadership
- Individualized consideration – providing
support, encouragement, empowerment, and
coaching to each employee
- Intellectual stimulation – behavior that
encourages employees to question the status
quo and to seek innovative solutions to
organizational problems
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A Transformational Model of
Leadership
• Traits : Extraverted, agreeable, proactive leaders are more likely to be a transformational leader
• Organizational culture : Adaptive and flexible culture provides more chances for a transformational leader
14-24
to surface
Transformational Leadership
• The relationships suggested in the model
has been generally supported
• Research Implications
- The best leader is not just transformational;
they are both transactional and
transformational
- Transformational leadership can be trained
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The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Model of Leadership
• Graen & Uhl-Bien
• Focuses on the quality of relationships between
managers and subordinates as opposed to the
behaviors or traits of either leaders or followers
• Tries to find out the relationship between the
quality of the exchange and organizational
outcomes such as JS, OC, performance
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The Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Model of Leadership
• Assumes that leaders develop unique one-on-one
relationships with direct reports
- In-group exchange - a partnership characterized by
mutual trust, respect and liking
- Out-group exchange - a relationship characterized by a lack of
mutual trust, respect and liking ; mostly limited to formal
relationship
• The JS, OC, and performance of in-group subordinates
are usually higher than those of out-group subordinates
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Shared Leadership
• Shared leadership - simultaneous, ongoing,
mutual influence process in which people share
responsibility for leading
- Ex : CEO teams (Bill Gates & Steve Balmer)
Department Chairperson in Korean universities
Autonomous work teams
• It’s most likely to be needed when people work in
teams, when people are involved in complex
projects, and when people are doing knowledge
work
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Servant Leadership
• Greenleaf
• Servant leadership - focuses on satisfying
(increasing services to) others rather than
oneself
- Respect subordinates’ dignity and value as a
human being, and develop their creative
potentials
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Characteristics of the Servant-Leader
14-30