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Theories of leadership (Style (Renis Likert (supportive relationship…

- - - - quality of leader only
    - - style of leader + responsiveness of followers
    - - style of leader + responsiveness of followers + situation factors
- - - - Moved towards socially acquired traits
    - - putting the candidates through learning and training to help develop necessary traits
      - Personal departments - selection of techniques based on the attempt to identify the elusive qualities associated with leadership
    - - Can help to compile a list of universal traits
      - Very complicated
  - - - 5% of characteristics were common to 4 or more investigations
  - - - Self-assurance
      - Helicopter factor
      - Initiative
      - Intelligence
- - - - Style leadership theorists tend to ignore the situation (third variable)
  - - - more permissive leadership appeared to generate more organisational effectiveness
        
        Lewin wanted to find out why
        
        and establish how various styles of leadership might influence the properties of groups and the behaviour of their members
    - - conducted with 10 yo boys and sought to examine underlying patterns of group behaviour - e.g. authority rebellion
      - Lewin, Lippett and White (1952)
        
        attempted to answer: 'Is not democratic group life more pleasant but authoritarianism more efficient?'
        
        Basis design - 4 clubs of 10yo boys - voluntary basis - each experience 3 types of adult leadership
        
        Authoritarian
        
        determined all policy, dictated each step, decided which each member of the club was to do and praised/criticised personally
        
        Democratic
        
        policies - activities from group discussion, encouraged and assisted by the leader, leader 'objective rather than personal' - praise and criticism
        
        Laissez-faire
        
        freedom for the group/individuals to decide what to do, no leader involvement, willing to supply info when asked + commented very infrequently on member's activity
        
        Main findings
        
        Laissez-faire and democratic leadership - not the same
        
        Laissez-faire - less work done, quality was inferior
        
        preference for democratic leadership
        
        more efficient, not as productive as authoritarian leadership, but originality and motivation if leader was absent - greater in democratic style - more group mindedness and friendliness
        
        no surprise with findings
        
        radical departure from the norms of managerial behaviours
        
        Lewin and his associates had taken findings from the Hawthorne studies a stage further by directly relating different leadership styles to behaviour of small work groups to analyse social dimension + effects on productivity
        
        Further research needed into these findings in the adult world of work and application to management techniques
  - - - Elton Mayo et al
      - Task - establish the optimum working conditions to maximise productivity
      - Issue - confused by fact that there seemed to be little/no correlation between changes in the environment and changes in output
      - Key findings
        
        rise in output was related to style of supervision + the change to human-relations oriented style that generated greater worker morale + increased output
      - Weaknesses
        
        design and conduct of reseach
        
        Did change the way in which people thought about leadership and management
  - - - considered problems in industry arising from forced change
    - - more grievances, low efficiency, restriction of output and a marked increase in aggression towards management
    - - examined the natural shifts in leadership patterns , no stress in organisation and conditions where change was brought about by outside pressure
      - both authoritarian and democratic leadership styles were involved.
        
        democratic was usually the best
        
        success of democracy - cohesiveness within the group and its ability to apply sanctions through social pressure
        
        goal needs to be clear, individuals identify their own objectives with group objectives and agree on how to attain these
      - increased levels of stress result in less clarity and general agreement on goals + paths
        
        the greater the compulsion among group members to give power to a central person - proposes to remove ambiguity + reduce the stress
  - - - 1. increase in decision making process for rank and file groups increases satisfaction, while decrease role in decision making and reduces satisfaction
      - increase in role in decision making for rank and file groups increases in productivity, while decrease in role in decision making decreases productivity
    - - Individual satisfactions of members of work groups significantly under participative and employee centred leadership
        
        significantly decrease in authoritarian, non participative control programme
      - Both experiential and control groups
        
        increase productivity
      - authoritarian, production orientated leaders in control group
        
        generated greater increase in productivity
        
        appearance of 'Hawthorne effect' - discounted by authors
        
        If experiment had continued , the employee centred leadership groups would have produced greater output in the long run
        
        computer simulated using the parameters of their research substantiated this conclusion
  - - - employee centred leadership + encourage a climate where individuals would be self motivated to strive for achievement of organisational goals
      - made number of assumptions which cannot be universally sustained
        
        assumed total harmony of interest across the organisation + ignored the problems of role conflict among groups
        
        Possible for leaders to develop their followers into working teams with high loyalty - necessary for effective action
    - - large proportion of those may be seen as having only an instrumental value
- - - - expectations
        
        most effective teams also be the most close knit (socially)
      - reality
        
        best results were down to leaders who were psychologically distant
      - became the foundation of later work
    - - relationship between leaders and followers
      - not the same as style of leadership used or the product of that style = situational factors therefore more or less effective
        
        leader is accepted
        
        preference for clear instructions
        
        leader is rejected
        
        clear directions were possibly the only way in which high performance could be achieved
        
        certain degree of acceptance - more relationship-orientated behaviour appeared to pay off in terms of better results
    - - leadership behaviour
        
        distinguishable from leadership styles
        
        may be - alter skills training
        
        but leadership style of an individual is likely to remain essentially the same because it derives from that individuals inner needs - unlikely to change
        
        effectiveness of group performance
        
        dependent on whether there is a match between leadership style and characteristics of the situation
        
        Favourableness of the situation
        
        task orientated leaders
        
        better in stuations which are unfavourable/favourable
        
        appropriate management depend on extent to which leaders situation is unfavourable
        
        relationship orientated leaders
        
        better in siutations of moderate favourableness
        
        performance of leaders
        
        dependent on style as with the situation
        
        Definition
        
        'the degree to which the situation enables the leader to exert influence over his group'
        
        3 factors of major importance
        
        position power
        
        degree to which a leaders position makes it likely that they will be supported
        
        Task structure
        
        extent to which the task can clearly be defined and structured
        
        Leader-member relations
        
        extent to which the leader is accepted, respected, liked + trusted. influence followers regardless of their power
    - - most important of 3 factors
        
        leader-member relations
        
        position power came last (but still mattered)
        
        task orientated leaders
        
        more effective in situations which highly favourable/relatively unfavourable
        
        relationship-orientated leaders
        
        more effective in situations - moderately favourable
    - - get rid of the leader?
        
        Maybe, situations might change, cannot always appoint + dismiss leaders as frequently as there new situations
      - Suggestion
        
        leadership performance is improved by fitting the job to the leader
        
        Easy in terms of SMT
        
        range of managers - can choose who to fit each role
      - Criticism
        
        cannot be taken as final word on the subject
      - Useful
        
        encourages people to think about leadership style in relation to the situation + provides a means of analysing situations for their impact on leadership style