Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview
Definitions of Leadership
- Leadership -> is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs
to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to
accomplish shared objectives.
o Further differ in many aspects, like purposes, manners, etc.
o Researchers therefore select, investigate, and interpret data differently.
o Therefore theorists question whether it’s even useful as a scientific construct.
- Should leadership be viewed as a specialized role or as a shared influence process.
o One view: All groups have role specialization, and the leadership role has responsibilities
and functions that cannot be shared too widely without jeopardizing the effectiveness of
the group. The person with primary responsibility to perform the specialized leadership
role is “the leader”. Other members are called “followers”, even though some of them
may assist the primary leader in carrying out leadership functions. A person can perform
both roles at the same time.
Researchers who view leadership as a specialized role are likely to pay more
attention to the attributes that determine selection of designated leaders, the
typical behavior and the effects of their behavior on other members.
o Other view: A shared influence process that occurs naturally within a social system and is
diffused among the members. Various leadership functions may be carried out by
different people who influence what the group does, how it is done, and the way people
relate to each other.
Decisions are made by an interactive process involving many people who influence
each other.
Pay more attention to influence processes among members, the context and
conditions that determined when and how they occur, the processes involved in
the emergence of informal leaders, and the consequences for the group.
- Types of influence process
o Some theorists would limit the definition of leadership to the exercise of influence
resulting in enthusiastic commitment by followers, as opposed to indifferent compliance
or reluctant obedience.
The use of control over rewards and punishments to manipulate is not really
“leading” and may involve the unethical use of power.
o How leadership is defined should not predetermine the answer to the research question
of what makes a leader effective. The same outcome can be accomplished with different
influence methods, and the same type of influence attempt can result in different
outcomes, depending on the nature of the situation.
Even people who are forced or manipulated into doing something may become
committed to it if they subsequently discover that it really is the best option for
them and the organization.
- Purpose of Influence Attempts:
o One viewpoint is that leadership occurs only when people are influenced to do what is
ethical and beneficial for the organization and themselves (= not personal benefits for
the leader).
, o An opposing view would include all attempts to influence the attitudes and behavior of
followers in an organizational context, regardless of the intended purpose or actual
beneficiary.
Acts of leadership often have multiple motives, and it is seldom possible to
determine the extent to which they are selfless rather than selfish.
- Influence based on reason or emotions
o Most of the leadership definitions listed earlier emphasize rational, cognitive processes.
o First mostly focused on rationality, now however more on emotional aspects on
influence.
o According to this view, only the emotional, value-based aspects of leadership influence
can account for the exceptional achievements of groups.
o Leaders inspire followers to willingly sacrifice their selfish interests for a higher cause.
- Direct and Indirect Leadership
o Most theories about effective leadership focus on behaviors used to directly influence
immediate subordinates, but a leader can also influence other people inside the
organization, including bosses and people at lower levels who not report to the leader.
o Direct leadership -> involves attempts to influence followers when interacting with them
or using communication media to send messages to them.
o Indirect leadership -> involves influencing people at lower levels in the organization who
do not interact directly with the leader (for example, direct influence transmitted down
the authority hierarchy; influence over formal programs and systems; leader influence
over the organization culture.
o Direct and indirect leadership are often used together, to magnify their effects. It can be
hard to classify behavior to one category.
- Leadership and Management are different.
o The most extreme distinction assumes that management and leadership cannot occur in
the same person:
Managers value stability, order, and efficiency, and they are impersonal, risk-
averse, and focused on short-term results.
Leaders value flexibility, innovation, and adaptation; they care about people as
well as economic outcomes, and they have a longer-term perspective with regard
to objectives and strategies.
Managers are concerned about how things get done, and they try to get people to
perform better. Leaders are concerned with what things mean to people, and they
try to get people to agree about the most important things to be done.
o Other scholars view leading and managing as distinct processes or roles, but they do not
assume that leaders and managers are different types of people.
o Mintzberg: leadership is one of the 10 managerial roles, including motivating
subordinates and creating favorable conditions for doing the work.
o Kotter: managing seeks to produce predictability and order, where as leading seeks to
produce organizational change. Both roles are necessary, but problems can occur if an
appropriate balance is not maintained. As an organization becomes larger and more
complex, managing becomes more important. As the external environment becomes
more dynamic and uncertain, leadership becomes more important.
o Rost: management is an authority relationship that exists between manager and
subordinates to produce and sell goods/services. Leadership is a multidirectional
influence relationship between a leader and followers with the mutual purpose of
, accomplishing real change. Leadership is therefore important when major changes must
be implemented, to create commitment from subordinates.
- Whenever feasible, leadership research should be designed to provide information relevant
to a wide range of definitions, so that over time it will be possible to compare the utility of
different conceptions and arrive at some consensus on the matter.
Indicators of Leadership Effectiveness
- The indicators also differ per researchers, however, most evaluate leadership in terms of the
consequences of influence on a single individual, a team or group, or an organization.
- Indicators of leadership effectiveness:
o The extent to which the performance of the team or organization is enhanced and the
goals are attained
o Follower attitudes and perceptions of the leader (voluntary turnover, complaints)
o Occasionally measured in terms of the leader’s contribution to the quality of group
processes, as perceived by followers or by outside observers.
o The extent to which a person has a successful career as a leader (promotion, reelection)
- A lot of these indicators can be biased.
- Immediate outcomes -> Whether the followers are willing to do what the leader asks
- Delayed outcomes -> How well followers eventually actually perform the assignment
- The effects of a leader can be viewed as a causal chain of variables, which each mediating
variable explaining the effects of the preceding one on the next one. The farther along in the
causal chain, the longer it takes for the effect to occur (the more delayed). The end-result
criteria are more likely to be influences by extraneous events, when this is the case, it may be
less useful to measure leadership effectiveness by this indicator.
o Immediate and delayed
outcomes can be either
consistent (similar) or
inconsistent (different).
o In many cases a leader has
both immediate and delayed
effects on the same criterion
(like profit).
Major perspective in Leadership Theory
and Research
- A way to classify leadership theory
and research is according to the type
of variable emphasized:
o (1) Characteristics of leaders
o (2) Characteristics of followers
o (3) Characteristics of the situation
- Five Approaches of categorizing:
o Trait approach: emphasizes
attributes of leaders such as personality, motives, values, and skills.
Underlying this approach was the assumption that some people are “natural
leaders” endowed with certain traits not possessed by other people.
o Behavior approach: emphasized what managers actually do on the job.
, How managers spend their time and the typical pattern of activities,
responsibilities, and functions for managerial jobs. Some of the research also
investigates how managers cope with demands, constraints, and role conflicts in
their jobs.
o Power-influence approach: examines influence processes between leaders and other
people.
Some take a leader-centered perspective with an implicit assumption that causality
is unidirectional. This research seeks to explain leadership effectiveness in terms of
the amount and type of power possessed by a leader and how power is exercised.
Participative leadership is concerned with power sharing and empowerment of
followers, but it is rooted in the tradition of behavior research as well.
o Situational approach: emphasizes the importance of contextual factors that influence
leadership processes.
Characteristics of followers, nature of the work, type of organization, external
environment.
Two major subcategories: (1) an attempt to discover the extent to which
leadership processes are the same or unique across different types of
organizations, levels of management, and cultures; (2) an attempt to identify
aspects of the situation that “moderate” the relationship of leader attributes to
leadership effectiveness. The assumption is that different attributes will be
effective in different situations (= contingency theories).
o Integrative approach: involves more than one type of leadership variable.
Example: the self-concept theory of charismatic leadership, which attempts to
explain why the followers of some leaders are willing to exert exceptional effort
and make personal sacrifices to accomplish the group objective/mission.
Level of Conceptualization for Leadership Theories:
- Another way to classify leadership theories is in terms of the level of conceptualization or
type of constructs used to describe leaders and their influence on others:
o (1) An intra-individual process
o (2) A dyadic process
o (3) A group process
o (4) An organizational process
- Intra-individual processes: theories that describe only leader attributes, often to explain the
decisions and behavior of an individual leader.
o Also used to describe and compare leaders.
o To explain the motivation of someone to seek power and positions of authority.
- Dyadic processes: focuses on the relationship between a leader and another individual who
is usually a subordinate or another type of follower.
o These theories usually focus on leadership behavior as the source of influence, and on
changes in the attitudes, motivation, and behavior of an individual subordinate as the
influence process.
o Example: leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, which describes how dyadic
relationships evolve over time and take different forms, ranging from a casual exchange
to a cooperative alliance with shared objectives and mutual trust.
o Since real leaders seldom have only a single subordinate, some assumptions are
necessary to make dyadic explanations relevant for explaining a leader’s influence on the
performance of a group or work unit. One assumption is that subordinates have work
