INP4004

13. LEADERSHIP AND POWER IN ORGANIZATIONS

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

Social influence or power

Ability to control & influence others

Directed toward specific goals & objectives

Five types of social power or influence (French & Raven)

Informational or expert: Persuasion through expertise

Target must believe

Information must have importance for target

Referent: Desire for identification & interpersonal attraction

Legitimate: Power in formal role

Must be accepted by target

Reward: Contingent rewards for compliance

Coercive: Punishment

Causes poor relationships with subordinates

TRAIT APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

Good leaders possess certain traits

Born not made

Good supervision a selection problem

Good leaders good in all situations

General approach much like test validation

Identify sample of good & bad leaders

Measure traits

Analyze relations of traits & effectiveness

Mean r of leader effectiveness with I.Q.= .30, Personality = .28

Study: Randle (1956)

Appraisal of 1427 executive from 25 companies

Analysis of background

Ratings by 5 peers

Battery of tests

Interviews (1.5‑3 hr. each)

30 traits found predictive of good managers

Creativity, Drive, Initiative, Intelligence, Motivation

Problems and limitations

Some inconsistency of results

Lack of insight into process

Ignores situational specificity

Counter to zeitgeist, i.e., fell out of favor when I/O abandoned

personality in favor of situational influences

LEADER BEHAVIOR (STYLE) APPROACH

Good leaders do certain things

Leaders made not born

Good supervision as training problem

Styles universal

Styles

Autocratic

Democratic

Laissez Faire

Person oriented

Task oriented

Ohio State Leadership Studies (1950's)

1. Analysis of supervisory behavior (critical incidents)

2. 1800 incidents distilled to 150 items

3. Administered to employees to rate supervisors

4. Factor analyzed to two dimensions

Consideration

Initiating structure

Problems & limitations

Ignores situational differences

Ignores individual differences

CONTINGENCY THEORY APPROACHES

Considers situational and leader variables

Fiedler's Theory

Situational favorability has three components

Task structure

Position power

Leader‑group relations

Leader characteristic assessed with a scale

Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) assesses unknown trait/s

of the leader

Hypotheses (moderately supported)

High LPC leaders most effective in middle favorable

Low LPC leaders best at extremes

Implications

Fiedler argues that person should be chosen to fit the job or job

can be changed to fit the person

He does not recommend trying to change the leader

PATH GOAL THEORY

A more complex contingency theory than Fiedler’s

Basic idea

Supervisors motivate employees by

Increasing value of rewards

Clarifying paths to rewards

Complex theory with many components

Four styles

Achievement oriented

Directive

Participative

Supportive

Contingency factors

Subordinate personality such as locus of control

Perceived ability

Environment

Nature of task (aversiveness)

Theory has a series of hypotheses, e.g.

Leader initiating structure increases instrumentality with

unstructured, nonroutine tasks.

When tasks are frustrating, consideration will increase social

support & reduce negative valence of tasks

Support for the theory

Mixed, with some hypotheses holding and some not

VROOM – YETTON MODEL

Prescriptive model of how decisions should be made

Based on established principles

Focus on decision making

Decision aid

Five decision styles, based on problem attributes

Model indicates which approach should be taken, depending upon the situation

LEADER MEMBER EXCHANGE (LMX)

Leadership as interaction of supervisor & subordinate

Should be studied at level of dyad interaction between both

Supervisors treat different employees differently

In-group are those in the supervisor’s inner circle

Out-group are everyone else

In-group treated better

Competence of subordinate an important determinant of group

membership

Laboratory study

Lowin & Craig (1968)

Subjects asked to act as supervisors for confederates who acted

either competent or incompetent

Competents received high consideration and low structure

Incompetents received low consideration and high structure

Field studies

Danseueau et al. (1975)

Found similar results with real supervisors and subordinates

Spector, Dwyer, Jex (1988) found that job performance related

to subordinate autonomy.

CHARISMATIC AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Leaders with considerable and unusual influence

Can convince followers to do things they would never do alone

Both good and evil

Generally considered a trait theory

Represents a return to focus on personality of leaders

Charisma of supervisor relates to subordinate

Job performance

Job satisfaction

OCB

Organizational commitment

Usually thought of as part of basic personality

Might be trainable

Actors were trained to be charismatic in a lab study

(Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996, Journal of Applied

Psychology)

Bank managers trained in charisma

(Barling et al., 1996, Journal of Applied Psychology)

Are men more charismatic than women?

Same as seen by male and female subordinates or females a

little higher (Bass et al., 1996, Applied Psychology: An

International Review)