Student MICHAELA MONSERRAT ONGTANGCO-RAPOSA

Professor DR. JENNIFER OLIVAR , Phd, RN

Course Code NUR 300

Course Title Educational Leadership and Management in Nursing Educational

Institutions

Part 2 Leadership Theories Literature Review

Hersey (2001) introduced trait, attitudinal and situational as the three basic approaches of
leadership theory. According to Huber (2006) “trait method applies on particular characteristics
of leaders, the attitudinal approach measures leaders’ observed behavior and the situational
approach focuses on observed behavior of the leader and how the utilized leadership styles can
be matched to situations.”

Trait Theories of Leadership

The great man theory dates back from 19th century when Thomas Carlyle a Scottish philosopher
delivered a number of teachings on heroism in 1840, depicting the heroic deeds of leaders
showing excellence in wisdom and physical dexterity, later was made public as a literature
entitled On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (Wikipedia contributors “The
Great Man Theory”).

Bennis (1994) concluded there are six components for leadership: a guiding vision, passion,
integrity, trust, curiosity and daring and that leaders are not born but they become one gradually
one step at a time. According to Huber (2006, p. 10) nurses can widen their leadership skills if
they are aware that they can learn, practice and improve it.

Drucker (1996) concluded that there are four factors an effective leader must be knowledgeable
of. The factors are: the only definition of a leader is someone who has followers; popularity is
not leadership, results are; leaders are visible and set examples; and leadership is not rank but
responsibility (Huber, p.10).
Kouzes and Posner (1987) correlated five behaviors of leaders towards leadership excellence.
The authors identified them as: challenging the process; inspiring shared vision; enabling others
to act; modeling the way; and encouraging the heart (Huber, p.12).

Curtin (1989) argued that followers expect some distinct qualities from their supervisor, namely
visibility, flexibility, authority, assistance and feedback. “Visibility is when people went to see
their leaders and have frequent, casual contacts with them; flexibility is when people learn from
leaders who can roll with the punches and tolerate ambiguity and have a sense of personal
empowerment; authority is the right to make decisions, given direction, and accept criticism;
assistance occurs by serving those serve, create, or produce and by creating the environment and
resources necessary to do the job; feedback is when people want their leaders to listen to them
and give them quality feedback as they go about their particular work” (Huber, 2006 p. 12).

There are eight competencies of leaders according to Murphy and DeBack (1991), namely (1)
managing the team; (2) mastery of change; (3) organizational design; (4) anticipatory learning;
(5) taking the initiative; (6) mastery of interdependence; (7) holding high standards of integrity;
and (8) exercising broad-perspective decision making.

Mathena (2002) argues the six core behaviors significant for nursing leadership: (1) visioning;
(2) interdisciplinary team building; (3) workload complexity analysis; (4) work process analysis;
(5) stakeholder analysis; and (6) interactive planning.

Attitudinal Theories of Leadership

In 1945 and the mid-1960’s a new approach of leadership research emerged with the focal point
on measuring the attitudes and predispositions of the behavior of the leader. This era began with
the following: Blake and McCanse’s Leadership Grid, Group Dynamics Studies, Likert’s
Management System, Michigan Leadership Studies and Ohio State Leadership Studies.

According to Ohio State Leadership Studies and Michigan Leadership Studies, behavior of the
leader can be classified into two distinct aspects: (1) initiating structure-consideration; and (2)
employee-production-orientation. The Group Dynamics Studies focused on goal achievement
and group maintenance as key factors for leader behavior. Blake and McCanse developed the
leadership grid which identifies five leadership and management styles, dependent on production
and people: (1) impoverished; (2) country club; (3) authority-obedience; (4) organizational man;
and (5) team. The impoverished style uses minimal effort to get the work done; country club
believes that satisfying the needs of the people will lead to effective work relationships;
authority-obedience focuses on operation effectiveness; organizational man promotes the
significance of balance between task accomplishment and maintaining morale.

Likert studied the relationship, involvement and roles of managers and workers and resulted to
the four systems of management leaderships styles: (1) Exploitative authoritative Style I; (2)
benevolent authoritative system; (3) consultative system; and (4) participative system.
Exploitative authoritative Style I, leaders utilize techniques like threats and fear-based methods
so that workers will follow them, these leaders have low concern for people. Initially, workers
will have excellent outputs and eventually because of the negative environment the performance
of the workers will be less. Downward communication is used entirely and psychological aspects
of the workers are ignored. Teamwork or lateral interaction among the workers are less, workers
are force to exceed the appropriate working time without proper remuneration. Because of the
exploitation from the management and not compensated correctly, workers are less motivated.
The workers are not part of the decision making process because of the lack of trust from the
management. The second style, benevolent authoritative system uses less control over employees
than the exploitative authoritative system. This style uses potential punishments and rewards as
motivation for employees. The upper management limits the decision making process of the
lower-level employees are more involved in the decision making processes, but are still limited
by upper management, although the subordinates takes part in the policy making and problem
solving of the organization. Top management makes the major policy making process and
downward communication prevails as they control the communication among the employees
resulting to unhealthy competition created by this communication being implemented by the top
management. Low to moderately-low satisfaction and fair to good productivity are the
measurement for this style. The third style, similar to the human relations theory is the
consultative system. This style uses rewards and occasional punishments as motivation for their
employees. Employees have more freedom to communicate and make company decisions
relevant to their work. Top management has control over policies and general decisions that
affect an organization but consults the employees about problems and action plans before they
set organizational goals. Downward and upward communication in this system courses regularly,
though upward is more limited. This communication improves relationship of the employees.
Top management consults lower management with the decision process. Satisfaction and
productivity is improved with this system. The fourth style, participative system concurs with the
human resource theory because of the same level of interaction between the employer and the
employee. This fourth style seeks a genuine participation in decision-making and goal setting in
order to promote a workplace where all members equally share information. The participative
system is the most effective form of management within the systems as what Likert argues.
Managers recognize problems that occur when there is little cohesiveness between members of
an organization. Employees are involved with the goals of the organization, given the free-
flowing lateral communication used. Employees are involvement with the setting of goals which
make them more accountable and responsible. Monetary rewards, participation in goal setting,
and encouragement of employees to participate outside of their role, creating connections with
the employees of the organization are some of the motivational techniques utilized by the top
management. Employers are open minded and creative in comparison to systems three previous
systems. This style results to increase production and contentment among the employees.

Situational Theories of Leadership

Contingency Theory

Fiedler (1967) concurs that there is no best way to create an organization, to lead a group or
formulate decision making policies. The best method will be contingent with the internal and
external situation. Therefore an effective leader is able to utilize the best style of leadership
depending on the right situation, thus the contingency theory emerges. Three empirically derived
dimensions created by Fiedler are as follows: (1) leader-member relationship – high if the leader
is generally accepted and respected by followers;(2) degree of task structure – high if the task is
very structured; and (3) leader's position power – high if a great deal of authority and power are
formally attributed to the leader's position. In conclusion, if all the three dimensions are elevated
the situations are helpful to the leader.
Tri- Dimensional Leader Effectiveness Model

The Tri- Dimensional Leader Effectiveness Model was developed by Hersey and Blanchard: (1)
task behavior; (2) relationship behavior; and (3) readiness of the followers. The task behavior
and relationship behavior was created as the initial two dimensional model of leadership. It was
presented on a grid and divided into four quadrants: (a) high task, low relationship; (b) high task,
high relationship; (c) high relationship, low task; (d) low task, low relationship. The four basic
leadership styles: telling, selling, participating and delegating are represented by the four
quadrants. Telling is considered as authoritarian, delegating as democratic, selling is a more
authoritarian and participating more democratic but basically the two are mixed styles. The third
dimension of effectiveness is the readiness of the followers. When the style of leadership
becomes appropriate with the situation then is called effectiveness. Two aspect of readiness are:
(a) ability; and (b) willingness. Job ability is based on past job experience, job knowledge,
problem-solving ability and ability to meet deadlines. Psychological willingness is taking
responsibility and maintaining a positive attitude to accept the obligation for task
accomplishment. Psychological willingness is achievement motivation, wanting to do well,
persistence, work attitude, and independence. The combination of ability and willingness by
Hersey and colleagues (2001) resulted to four levels of readiness. Level 1 is unable and
unwilling or insecure. Level 2 is unable but willing and confident. Level 3 is unwilling or
insecure. Level 4 is able and willing or confident. The levels of readiness is coordinated with the
four leadership styles of level 1 with telling, level 2 with selling, level 3 with participating, and
level 4 with delegating. Leadership style selection can be chosen appropriately by the use of
readiness assessment. The leaders can assess themselves, readiness of the followers, evaluate if
situation is favorable or unfavorable using the leadership theory. Telling is useful leadership
style for beginning followers. Thus task behavior, relationship behavior and readiness of the
followers conceptualizes the holistic view of situational leadership.

Transactional leadership

Transactional leadership is defined as leadership style where leaders and managers promote
compliance of followers using rewards and punishments. Through a rewards and punishments,
transactional leaders are able to keep followers motivated for a short period of time. This style
would not like change to take place in the organization and maintain and manage ongoing and
organizational culture. Leaders using transactional leadership are interested to supervise the task
of the followers to find liabilities and deviations. This style is applicable and effective during
emergency and crisis situations, asking for specific tasks to be performed in a precise way.
Transactional leadership is attributed to two key factors: (1) contingent rewards; and (2)
management-by-exception. The leadership of the contingent reward in the form of bonuses,
merits or recognition is both beneficial and helpful to the leader and follower solely dependent
on a contract made by the leader and the follower. The second factor is management-by-
exception. According to Howell & Aviolio (1993), transactional leaders can be active or passive.
When leaders are constantly evaluating the performance of the followers they are called active
leaders. When assessment of the task is done after performance and setbacks are reported after
they have occurred, passive leadership is utilized. This style expected the productivity and
performance of the followers nothing more and nothing less.

Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership is utilized by a leader working with the team that needs for change
to happen in the organization, building an inspired vision and implementation of the change
decided upon both by the leader and the follower. Transformational leaders motivate the
followers to perform to their full potential over time through a variety of mechanisms like role
modeling to give encouragement to followers, raise their interest in the project; challenging
followers to take greater privileges for their work, and understanding the strengths and
weaknesses of followers, which allows the leader to align followers with tasks that enhance their
performance. Bass (1987) argued the effectiveness of the transformational leader is dependent on
three factors: individualized consideration, charisma, and intellectual stimulation,
Transformational leaders in the organization would reflect characteristics such as strong in the
abilities to adapt to different situations, share a collective consciousness, self-manage, and be
inspirational while leading a group of employees. Bennis and Nanus (1985) conceptualized the
four activities of the transformational leadership: (1) creation of vision; (2) production of a social
design to provide meaning for employees; (3supporting organizational trust; and (4) recognizing
the importance of building self-esteem. The type of leadership most popular in magnet research
studies according to Upenieks (2003) is the transformational leadership and most appropriate for
working professionals. This style produces performance beyond expectation and excellence in
institutional culture.
 References

Bennis, W. (1994). On becoming a leader. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Curtin, L. (1989). Things unattempted yet. Nursing Management, 20(7), 7-8.

Drucker, P.F. (1996). Foreword. In F. Hesselbein, M. Goldsmith, & R. Beckhard (Eds.), The

leader of the future: New visions, strategies, and practices for the next era. San

Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hersey, P., Blanchard, K.H., & Johnson, D.E. (2001). Management of organizational behavior:

Utilizing human resources (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Huber, D.L. (2006). Leadership and Nursing Care Management (3rd ed.). Elsevier’s Health

Sciences Rights Department in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (1987). The leadership challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mathena, K.A. (2002). Nursing manager leadership skills. Journal f Nursing Administration,

32(3), 136-142.

Murphy, M., & DeBack, V. (1991). Today’s nursing leaders: Creating the vision. Nursing

Administration Quarterly, 16(1), 71-80.

Wikipedia contributors. (2020, May 11). Great man theory. In Wikipedia, The Free

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