strategic and formal leadership in organizations. LO9.2 Explain and critically evaluate the trait theory of leadership. LO9.3 Compare and contrast the following leadership behaviours and their consequences: consideration, initiating structure, leader reward, and leader punishment.
theories of leadership: contingency theory and path-goal theory. LO9.5 Discuss participative leadership and how and when to use participative leadership using the Vroom and Jago model. LO9.6 Describe and evaluate leader-member- exchange (LMX) theory and transactional and transformational leadership and their consequences
leadership including empowering leadership, ethical leadership, authentic leadership, and servant leadership. LO9.8 Describe gender differences in leadership and explain why women are underrepresented in leadership roles in organizations.
on the goal achievement of others in an organizational context. • Effective leadership exerts influence in a way that achieves organizational goals by enhancing the productivity, innovation, satisfaction, and commitment of the workforce.
anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to initiate changes that will create a viable future for the organization. • Strategic leaders are open and honest in their interactions with the organization’s stakeholders, and they focus on the future.
executive, supervisor, and department head occupy formal or assigned leadership roles. • They are expected to influence others, and they are given specific authority to direct employees. • Some managers and supervisors fail to exert any influence on others. • Leadership involves going beyond formal role requirements to influence others.
informal leadership roles. • They do not have formal authority. • They must rely on being well liked or being perceived as highly skilled to exert influence.
Are Leaders Born? The Trait Theory of Leadership • Leadership depends on the personal qualities or traits of the leader. • Based on the assumption that those who become leaders and do a good job of it possess a special set of traits that distinguish them from the masses of followers.
Research on Leadership Traits • The search for leadership traits began during World War I. • Traits are individual characteristics such as physical attributes, intellectual ability, and personality. • Many traits are not associated with whether people become leaders or how effective they are as leaders. • However, some traits are associated with leadership.
personality are related to leadership emergence and success. • Of the “Big Five,” extraversion and conscientiousness are the most consistent predictors of leadership effectiveness. • Intelligence is related to leadership effectiveness, however, the relationship is lower than previously thought.
Research on Leadership Traits (continued) • The relationship between traits and leadership effectiveness is stronger for affective and relational measures of effectiveness than for performance-related measures. • The trait approach is not the best means of understanding and improving leadership.
• It is difficult to determine whether traits make
the leader or whether the opportunity for leadership produces the traits. • Does not tell us what leaders do to influence others successfully. • It can lead to bias and discrimination when evaluating a leader’s effectiveness and when making decisions about promoting people to leadership positions.
Limitations of the Trait Approach (continued) • Leadership categorization theory: People are more likely to view somebody as a leader and to evaluate them as a more effective leader when they possess prototypical characteristics of leadership. • The most crucial problem is that it does not take into account the situation in which leadership occurs.
Limitations of the Trait Approach: Summary • Traits alone are not sufficient for successful leadership. • Traits are only a precondition for certain actions that a leader must take in order to be successful. • Leader behaviours have a greater impact on leadership effectiveness than leader traits.
The Behaviour of Leaders • What are the crucial behaviours leaders engage in, and how do these behaviours influence employee performance and satisfaction? • Is there a particular leadership style that is more effective than other styles?
Ohio State University Leadership Study • The most involved, systematic study of leadership took place at Ohio State University in the 1940s. • Employees described their superiors along a number of behavioural dimensions. • The results revealed two basic kinds of behaviour: – Consideration – Initiating structure
and shows personal concern and respect for employees. • The considerate leader is seen as friendly and egalitarian, expresses appreciation and support, and is protective of group welfare.
group goal attainment. • The structuring leader clearly defines and organizes his or her role and the roles of followers, stresses standard procedures, schedules the work to be done, and assigns employees to particular tasks.
The Consequences of Consideration and Structure • Consideration and initiating structure both contribute positively to employees’ motivation, job satisfaction, and leader effectiveness. • Consideration is more strongly related to follower satisfaction, motivation, and leader effectiveness.
The Consequences of Consideration and Structure (continued) • Initiating structure is slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group performance. • The relative importance of consideration and initiating structure varies according to the nature of the leadership situation.
The Consequences of Consideration and Structure: The Nature of the Situation • The effects of consideration and initiating structure depend on characteristics of the task, the employee, and the setting in which work is performed.
with compliments, tangible benefits, and deserved special treatment. • When such rewards are made contingent on performance, employees should perform at a high level and experience job satisfaction.
Leader Reward and Punishment Behaviours (continued)
• Leader punishment behaviour involves the use
of reprimands or unfavourable task assignments and the active withholding of raises, promotions, and other rewards. • When punishment is perceived as random and not contingent on employee behaviour, employees react negatively with great dissatisfaction.
behaviour is positively related to employees’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviour. • Non-contingent punishment behaviour is related to unfavourable outcomes. • Relationships are much stronger when rewards and punishment are made contingent on employee behaviour.
Leader Reward and Punishment Behaviours: Research (continued)
• The manner in which leaders administer
rewards and punishment is a critical determinant of their effectiveness. • Leader reward and punishment behaviours are related to employee attitudes and behaviours because they lead to more positive perceptions of justice and lower role ambiguity.
influence attempts occur. • The basic premise of situational theories of leadership is that the effectiveness of a leadership style is contingent on the setting.
Situational Theories of Leadership (continued) • The setting includes the characteristics of the employees, the nature of the task they are performing, and characteristics of the organization.
Situational Theories of Leadership (continued) • Two situational theories of leadership that are among the best known and most studied: – Fiedler’s Contingency Theory – House’s Path-Goal Theory
and group effectiveness is contingent on (depends on) the extent to which the situation is favourable for exerting influence. • Some situations are more favourable than others, and these situations require different orientations on the part of the leader.
leader describe their Least Preferred Co-Worker (LPC). • Least Preferred Co-Worker is a current or past co-worker with whom a leader has had a difficult time accomplishing a task.
Leadership Orientation (continued) • The leader who describes the LPC relatively favourably (a high LPC score) is considered to be relationship oriented. • The leader who describes the LPC unfavourably (a low LPC score) is considered to be task oriented.
personality trait that reflects the leader’s motivational structure. • The LPC score is not a measure of consideration or initiating structure which are observed behaviours. • The LPC score is an attitude of the leader toward work relationships.
Situational Favourableness (continued) • Factors that affect situational favourableness, in order of importance, are the following: – Leader-member relations – Task structure – Position power
Fiedler’s Contingency Theory (continued) • The model indicates that a task orientation (low LPC) is most effective when the leadership situation is very favourable or when it is very unfavourable. • A relationship orientation (high LPC) is most effective in conditions of medium favourability.
Contingency Theory: Research Evidence • Contingency theory has been the subject of much debate. • The exact meaning of the LPC score is not clear. • A major source of the many inconsistent findings is the small sample sizes used in many studies. • Recent reviews have concluded that there is reasonable support for contingency theory.
situations under which various leader behaviours are most effective. • Path-Goal Theory is concerned with leader behaviours. • Why did House choose the name “path-goal” for his theory?
those that clarify the paths to various goals of interest to employees. • The opportunity to achieve such goals should promote job satisfaction, leader acceptance, and high effort. • The effective leader forms a connection between employee goals and organizational goals.
acceptance, leader behaviour must be perceived as immediately satisfying or as leading to future satisfaction. • To promote employee effort, leaders must make rewards dependent on performance and ensure that employees have a clear picture of how they can achieve these rewards.
depends on the situation that the leader encounters. • Path-Goal Theory is concerned with two primary classes of situational factors: – Employee characteristics – Environmental factors
different forms of leadership: – High need achievers should work well under achievement-oriented leadership. – Employees who prefer to be told what to do respond best to directive leadership. – When employees have low task abilities, they will appreciate directive leadership.
depends on the particular work environment: – When tasks are clear and routine, directive leadership is redundant and unnecessary and participative leadership is not useful. – When tasks are challenging but ambiguous, directive and participative leadership is effective. – When a job is frustrating or dissatisfying, supportive leadership is most effective.
the needs, abilities, and personalities of individual employees. • Effective leaders should take advantage of the motivating and satisfying aspects of jobs while offsetting or compensating for those job aspects that demotivate or dissatisfy.
Path-Goal Theory: Research Evidence • There is substantial evidence that supportive or considerate leader behaviour is most beneficial in supervising routine, frustrating, or dissatisfying jobs. • There is some evidence that directive or structuring leader behaviour is most effective on ambiguous, less-structured jobs.
Path-Goal Theory: Research Evidence (continued) • The theory works better in predicting employees’ job satisfaction and acceptance of the leader than in predicting job performance.
employees in making work-related decisions. • Leaders can vary in the extent to which they involve employees in decision making. • Minimally, participation involves obtaining employee opinions before making a decision. • Maximally, it allows employees to make their own decisions within agreed-on limits.
What is Participative Leadership? (continued) • Participation can involve individual employees or the entire group of employees that reports to the leader. • The choice of an individual or group participation strategy should be tailored to specific situations.
Motivation • Participation can increase the motivation of employees. • Participation can permit employees to contribute to the establishment of work goals and how to accomplish them. • Participation can increase intrinsic motivation by enriching jobs.
decisions. • “Two heads are better than one.” • Participation can also enhance quality because it empowers employees to take direct action and solve problems.
Lack of Receptivity or Knowledge • Employees might not be receptive to participation when the leader is not trusted or when a poor labour climate exists. • Employees might lack the knowledge to contribute effectively to decisions and might not be aware of external constraints on their decisions.
Vroom and Jago’s Situational Model of Participation
• Victor Vroom and Arthur Jago developed a
model that attempts to specify in a practical manner when leaders should use participation and to what extent they should use it. • They began with the recognition that there are various degrees of participation that a leader can exhibit.
Vroom and Jago’s Situational Model of Participation (continued) • For issues involving the entire work group, a range of decision making strategies is plausible: – A stands for autocratic – C for consultative – G for group
employees individually, getting their ideas and suggestions, then you make the decision. • CII: You share the problem with your employees as a group, obtaining their collective ideas and suggestions, then you make the decision.
as a group and together you generate and evaluate alternatives and attempt to reach agreement (consensus) on a solution. • Which of these strategies is most effective?
Vroom and Jago’s Situational Model of Participation (continued) • The most effective strategy depends on the situation or problem at hand. • The leader’s goal should be to make high- quality decisions to which employees will be adequately committed without undue delay. • To do this, the leader must consider questions in a decision tree.
Vroom and Jago’s Situational Model of Participation (continued) • The questions consider decision quality, subordinate commitment, and problem structure. • The questions are oriented toward preserving either decision quality or commitment to the decision. • By tracing a problem through the decision tree, the leader encounters the prescribed degree of participation for that problem.
Vroom and Jago Decision Tree Questions • QR: How important is the technical quality of this decision? (quality requirement) • CR: How important is subordinate commitment to the decision? (commitment requirement) • LI: Do you have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision? • ST: Is the problem well-structured?
Vroom and Jago Decision Tree Questions (continued)
• CP: If you were to make the decision by
yourself, is it reasonably certain that your subordinates would be committed to the decision? • GC: Do subordinates share the organizational goals to be attained in solving the problem?
Vroom and Jago Decision Tree Questions (continued) • CO: Is conflict among subordinates over preferred solutions likely? • SI: Do subordinates have sufficient information to make a high-quality decision?
Vroom and Jago’s Situational Model of Participation (continued) • By tracing the problem through the decision tree, the leader encounters the prescribed degree of participation for that problem. • The tree shows the fastest approach possible that still maintains decision quality and commitment. • If a leader is willing to sacrifice some speed, a more participative approach could stimulate employee development.
Vroom and Jago Model: Research Evidence • The model has substantial research support. • Following the model’s prescriptions is more likely to lead to successful managerial decisions than unsuccessful decisions. • But does participative leadership result in beneficial outcomes?
Participative Leadership: Research Evidence • There is substantial evidence that employees who have the opportunity to participate in work-related decisions report more job satisfaction, higher task performance, and organizational citizenship behaviour toward the organization than those who do not. • These results are partly due to a positive effect on employee empowerment and trust in one’s supervisor.
Participative Leadership: Research Evidence (continued) • Most workers seem to prefer a participative work environment. • However, for participation to be translated into higher productivity, certain facilitating conditions must exist. • When will participation work best?
– Employees feel favourably toward it. – Employees are intelligent and knowledgeable about the issue at hand. – When the task is complex enough to make participation useful. • These conditions are incorporated into the Vroom and Jago model.
leaders and employees develop and maintain high-quality social exchange relationships. • The basis for the effects of LMX is social exchange theory and the norm of reciprocity.
others feel obliged to reciprocate by responding positively and returning that favourable treatment in some manner. • Employees in a high-quality relationship with their supervisor will reciprocate with extra effort and higher commitment and performance.
influence and obligation as well as trust, loyalty, open communication, and respect between a leader and an employee. • In high-quality relationships, employees perform tasks beyond their job descriptions.
obligation, and mutual support. • In low-quality relationships, the leader provides less attention and latitude to employees. • Employees do only what their job descriptions and formal role requirements demand.
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory: Research Evidence • Employees with higher quality LMX have higher self-efficacy, more positive work attitudes, and higher OCB and job performance. • Higher-quality LMX relationships result in positive outcomes for leaders, employees, work units, and organizations.
Transactional Leadership • Transactional leadership is leadership that is based on a straightforward exchange relationship between a leader and followers. • Transactional leadership behaviour involves: – Contingent reward behaviour (leader reward behaviour) – Management by exception
corrective action on the basis of the results of leader-follower transactions. • The leader monitors follower behaviour, anticipates problems, and takes corrective actions before the behaviour creates serious problems.
provides followers with a new vision that instills true commitment. • Transformational leaders change the beliefs and attitudes of followers to correspond with a new vision and motivates them to achieve performance beyond expectations.
Herb Kelleher, Michael Eisner, Steven Jobs, and Carly Fiorina. • Transformational leaders are usually good at the transactional aspects of clarifying the paths to goals and rewarding good performance. • What are the behaviours of these transformational leaders who encourage considerable effort and dedication on the part of followers?
Behaviours of Transformational Leadership • There are four key dimensions of transformational leader behavour: – Intellectual stimulation – Individualized consideration – Inspirational motivation – Charisma
issues, and strategies in new ways. • This contributes to the “new vision” aspect of transformational leadership. • The leader challenges assumptions, takes risks, and solicits followers’ ideas. • It often involves creativity and novelty.
individuals, indicating concern for their needs and personal development, and serving as a mentor or coach when appropriate. • The emphasis is a one-on-one attempt to meet the concerns and needs of the individual in question in the context of the overall goal or mission.
are appealing and inspiring to followers. • Leaders with inspirational motivation have a strong vision for the future based on values and ideals. • They stimulate enthusiasm, challenge followers with high standards, communicate optimism about future goal attainment, and provide meaning for the task at hand. • They inspire followers using symbolic actions and persuasion.
Charisma • The ability to command strong loyalty and devotion from followers and thus have the potential for strong influence among them. • This is the most important aspect of transformational leadership. • Charisma provides the emotional aspect of transformational leadership. • The emergence of charisma is a complex function of traits, behaviours, and being in the right place at the right time.
to follower motivation and satisfaction, leader performance, leader effectiveness, and individual, group, and organization performance. • Charismatic leadership has also been found to be strongly related to follower satisfaction and leadership effectiveness.
Transformational Leadership: Research Evidence (continued) • Compared to other forms of leader behaviour, transformational leadership has been found to be the most consistent predictor of effective leadership. • Some evidence that CEO transformational leadership is positively related to firm performance, especially when the environment is uncertain, and to levels of organizational commitment.
Transformational Leadership: Research Evidence (continued)
• Transformational leadership is especially
effective during times of change and for obtaining employees’ commitment to change. • Overall, the best leaders are both transformational and transactional.
New and Emerging Theories of Leadership • Leadership research has begun to focus on the broader context of the leadership process. • This has led to the emergence of new forms of leadership behaviours and theories: – Empowering leadership – Ethical leadership – Authentic leadership – Servant leadership
conditions that enable power to be shared with employees. • Empowering leaders provide participation and autonomy in decision making. • Employees experience a state of psychological empowerment that consists of feelings of meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact.
Empowering Leadership (continued) • Empowering leadership provides employees with a greater feeling of control over their work and a sense that they can make a difference in their organization’s effectiveness. • Empowering leadership has been found to be positively related to job performance and creativity-relevant behaviours.
of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision- making. • What do ethical leaders do?
appropriate behaviour (e.g., honesty). • They make ethics salient in the workplace. • They set ethical standards. • They reward ethical behaviour. • They discipline those who don’t follow ethical standards and punish unethical behaviour.
Ethical Leader Behaviours (continued) • Ethical leaders consider the ethical consequences of their decisions. • They care about people and the broader society and seek to do the right thing personally and professionally.
• Ethical leadership is positively related to more
favourable evaluations of leaders, more positive job attitudes, and greater performance. • It is negatively related to job strains, turnover intentions, and counterproductive work behaviours. • The relationship between ethical leadership and positive work outcomes is due to trust in the leader.
significant influence on the ethical culture of an organization. • The ethical leadership of immediate supervisors is likely to have the greatest effect on employees.
leadership that involves being true to oneself. • Authentic leaders know and act upon their true values, beliefs, and strengths, and they help others do the same. • Their conduct and behaviour is guided by their internal values.
positively related to the psychological capital of work groups and trust among group members which led to higher group citizenship behaviours and performance. • Team leader authenticity has also been found to be related to team members’ authenticity which was related to higher quality teamwork behaviour and team productivity.
involves going beyond one’s own self-interests and having a genuine concern to serve others and a motivation to lead. • The focus of servant leadership is a concern for the needs of followers and their growth and development. • A servant leader is somebody who wants to serve first and lead second.
Characteristics of Servant Leaders • There are six characteristics of servant leaders: – Empowering and developing people – Humility – Authenticity – Interpersonal acceptance – Providing direction – Stewardship
• Servant leadership is positively related to trust
in management and perceptions of organizational justice as well as more positive work attitudes and higher OCBs. • Employees in departments that had servant leaders were found to have higher perceptions of being treated fairly and were more likely to exhibit helping behaviours.
participative or democratic than men. • Women leaders have been found to be more transformational than men leaders, and to also engage in more of the contingent reward behaviours of transactional leadership.
Gender and Leadership (continued) • Men leaders engaged in more management by exception and laissez-faire leadership which is a passive form of leadership that involves avoidance or absence of leadership and is negatively related to leader effectiveness. • These findings attest to the ability of women to be highly effective leaders. • So do men and women differ in leadership effectiveness?
Gender and Leadership (continued) • A review of 95 studies found that there are some differences but only in certain situations such as whether an organization is male or female dominated. • When various factors are taken into account men and women do not differ in perceived leadership effectiveness.
in Canadian organizations. • Women also hold a minority of senior leadership positions in the United States and Europe. • How can we explain this obvious gender bias in leadership?
Women and Leadership (continued) • For decades the explanation has been the glass ceiling metaphor – the invisible barrier that prevents women from advancing to senior leadership positions in organizations.
Women and Leadership (continued) • According to Alice Eagly and Linda Carli, a more accurate metaphor is a labyrinth because of the many twists, turns, detours, and dead ends that women encounter along their way up the organizational hierarchy. • It is the sum of all of the barriers women face rather than one particular barrier. • It can also be explained by role congruity theory (RCT).
• Prejudice against female leaders is the result of
an incongruity between the perceived characteristics of women and the perceived requirements of leadership roles. • Leaders are perceived as similar to men and not very similar to women. • Men are perceived as having agentic traits while women are perceived as having communal traits.
which convey assertion and control and are generally associated with effective leadership. • Women are perceived as having communal traits, which convey a concern for the compassionate treatment of others. • What can organizations do to increase the number of women in senior leadership positions?
Women and Leadership (continued) • A combination of programs and interventions is required such as reducing the subjectivity of performance evaluations and establishing family friendly human resource practices.
Culture and Leadership (continued) • The Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) research project is the most extensive and ambitious study ever undertaken on global leadership.
distinguish one society from another. • Based on these cultural dimensions, they identified 10 culture clusters. • The culture clusters differ with respect to how they score on the nine cultural dimensions.
that lead to successful leadership in one country lead to success in other countries? • Citizens in each nation have implicit assumptions regarding requisite leadership qualities, something known as implicit leadership theory.
• A theory that states that individuals hold a set
of beliefs about the kinds of attributes, personality characteristics, skills, and behaviours that contribute to or impede outstanding leadership. • Culturally endorsed implicit leadership theory (CLT) refers to belief systems that are shared among individuals in common cultures.
Global Leadership Dimensions • Global leadership dimensions that are contributors to or inhibitors of outstanding leadership: – Charismatic/Value-Based – Team-Oriented – Participative – Humane-Oriented – Autonomous – Self-Protective
Global Leadership Dimensions (continued) • Leadership profiles for each national culture and clusters of cultures were created based on scores on the six global leadership dimensions. • Cultures and clusters differ significantly on all six of the global leadership dimensions. • Canada and the U.S. score high on the charismatic/value-based, participative, and humane oriented dimensions, and low on the self-protective dimension, and medium on the team-oriented and autonomous dimensions.
decisive, motivational, and dynamic were found to be universally desirable and believed to facilitate outstanding leadership in all GLOBE countries. • Some leader attributes such as being loners, irritable, egocentric, and ruthless are ineffective in all GLOBE countries. • Some attributes are culturally contingent – they are effective in some cultures but are either ineffective or dysfunctional in others.
while there are similarities across cultures in terms of what are considered to be desirable and undesirable leadership attributes, there are also important differences. • Managers need to understand the similarities and differences in what makes someone an effective leader across cultures if they are to be effective global leaders.
capabilities required to function effectively in different cultures and the ability to cross language, social, economic, and political borders. • The essence of global leadership is the ability to influence people who are not like the leader and come from different cultural backgrounds.
tolerate high levels of ambiguity, and exhibit cultural adaptability and flexibility. • Global leaders have four characteristics: – Unbridled inquisitiveness – Personal character – Duality – Savvy
effectively in different cultures in which they are required to cross language, social, economic, and political borders. • They relish the opportunity to see and experience new things.
organization savvy. • They need to understand the conditions they face in different countries and be informed of their organization’s capabilities and international ventures.
extensive training that consists of: – Travel to foreign countries – Teamwork with members of diverse backgrounds – Formal training programs – Transfer and overseas assignments • Long-term international assignments are considered to be especially effective.
global in terms of their involvement in world trade and investment such as Canada, tend to produce more global leaders than others given their size. • They are middle-economy countries that are dependent on foreign trade. • Living in a multicultural environment like Canada is excellent preparation for becoming a global manager.
What Style of Leadership is Best? • An effective leader needs to be capable of using different styles of leadership. • The key issue is knowing what style of leadership is required in each situation that a leader encounters. • Key situational variables include the nature of the task, employee characteristics, characteristics of the organization, and national culture. • Leadership will be effective when the style is matched to the situation.