House, Robert J. & Aditya, Ram N. (1997) Journal. of Management. vol. 23, No. 3, 409-473

Outline below. Scroll down to see section with notes embedded in the outline.

I Introduction

A review of research from ‘30s to ‘90s.

Assumptions: Western culture based.

1. Individualistic, not collectivistic;
2. follower responsibilities, not rights;
3. hedonism, not commitment
4. centrality of work and democratic values
5. assumptions of rationality

Questions:

1. What were the primary problems with the trait paradigm?
2. What are the most common elements between McClelland’s LMP and Bass’ transformational leadership characteristics?

1. Problems with early trait paradigm
2. Revival of Trait Theory
3. Unrecognized yield from early trait research
4. Recent Trait Perspectives

1. Social Influence Motivation and Leader Motive Profile (LMP) McClelland)
2. Charismatic Leadership Theory (House)
3. Leader Flexibility (Kenny and Zacarro)

1. Summary of Trait Research
2. Leaders Born or Made?

1. Assumptions and Limitations of Leader Behavior Paradigm

1. Fiedler’ Contingency Theory
2. Path Goal Theory (House & Mitchell, 71)
3. Life Cycle Theory (Hersey & Blanchard, ’82)
4. Cognitive Resource Theory (Fiedler, ’87)
5. Decision Process Theory (Vroom & Yetton, ’73; Vroom and Jago, ’88)

1. Validity of the prescriptive model
2. Reformulated Theory

1. Cumulative Contribution of Contingency Theories

1. Leader Member Exchange Theory (LMX) Graen & Uhl-Bien, ’95)

1. Opportunities for Further Development of LMX Theory (from VDL)

1. Implicit Leadership Theory (Lord et al. ’78)

1. Future directions for Implicit Leadership Theory

1. Neocharismatic Theory (Burns, Bass, ’78)

1. Short Scale to measure Charismatic Leadership (MLQ)
2. Future directions for Neocharismatic paradigm

1. Leadership vs. management Supervision
2. Need for more Organizational Focus
3. Strategic Leadership
4. Generic Leadership Functions and Specific Leader Behaviors

1. Generic functions and specific behavioral manifestations of leadership

1. Leadership Styles
2. Management of Diversity
3. Cross Cultural Leadership

1. Theory of cross cultural leadership

1. Toward a Theory of Political Leadership
2. Distributed Leadership Revisited

1. Delegated Leadership
2. Co-leadership
3. Peer leadership
4. Future opportunities for research on distributed leadership

1. Management training and development
2. Universal or near universal effective behaviors

1. Cultural Limitations of Extant Theory
2. The cumulative Gain
3. Some prevailing problems

The Social Scientific Study of Leadership: Quo Vadis?

By House and Aditya

Introduction:

• Study of leadership did not begin until the early 1930’s
• 98% of the empirical evidence at hand is rather American in character: individualistic rather than collectivist, stressing follower responsibilities. Rather than rights, assuming hedonism rather than commitment to duty, assuming centrality of work and democratic value orientation and emphasizing assumptions or rationality rather than asceticism, or religion

• Research concerned with leadership first focused on the search for individual characteristics that universally differentiate leaders from non leaders
• Large number of personal characteristics were study: gender, height, physical energy, appearance, as well as psychological traits and motives such as authoritarianism, intelligence, need for achievement and need for power
• Research at the beginning did not support the trait idea
• Recently trait theory have reappeared and there is empirical support

• Little personality theory to lead the way for leadership traits
• Traits operationally defined differently
• Situations were not considered in leadership
• Sample composed of adolescents, supervisors, lower level managers, rather than individuals in significant position of leadership

• Began 1970’s
• Have now clarified when and how traits are likely to explain individuals behavior
• Empirically traits are more predictive of behavior for some people
• Mischel made the important observation that the behavioral expression of disposition is likely to be suppressed by highly constraining "strong" situations, but that dispositions will likely be enacted in "weak" situations
• Strength of situations had not been considered in earlier research
• Earlier critics of trait theory argued that traits must be stable and predict behavior over substantial periods of time and across wide variety of situations
• Recent research states that traits are predictive of an individuals characteristics behavior in select situations rather than across all situations
• Also recently observed that ind.’s disposition may be stable over extended periods of time but not necessarily for life
• When adolescents are excluded from earlier studies results show rather consistent set of relationships between some traits, followers’ perceptions and indicators of leadership
• More consideration for intelligence, prosocial assertiveness, self confidence, energy, task relevant knowledge

Achievement Motivation Theory

• 1940’s
• a non-conscious concern for achieving excellence in accomplishments through one’s individual efforts
• Ach. Motivated inds set challenging goals for themselves, assume personal responsibility for goal accomplishment, persistent in pursuit of goals, take risks, use feedback
• Theory suggests that ach. Motivation will be positively related to the effectiveness of leaders of small task-oriented groups and companies, negatively related to large complex orgs.

• Thought that social influence motivation as measured by power motivation measures desire for influence or measures of prosocial influence motivation will be predictive of managerial success and effectiveness – this is supported
• This lead to Leader Motive Profile LMP
• McClelland 1975 argued that the following combination of nonconscious motives are generic to and predictive of leader effectiveness; high power motivation, high concern for the moral exercise of power and power motivation greater than affiliation motivation
• Power motivation is defined as a nonconscious concern for acquiring status and having impact on others
• Affiliation Motivation is defined as a nonconscious concern for establishing, maintaining, and restoring close personal relationships with others
• LMP is predictive of managerial effectiveness under conditions where leaders need to exercise social influence in the processes of making decisions and motivating others to accept and implement decisions
• LMP is limited to the boundary conditions of moderate to large, nontechnolically oriented orgs and to managers who are separated from the work of the org by at least one organizational level
• Several studies have supported theory
• Need to look more at the behaviors

• speculated that charismatic leaders are exceptionally self confident, are strongly motivated to attain and assert influence and have strong conviction in the moral correctness of their beliefs
• Charismatic leaders are persistent in the face of obstacles, advocate change and challenge status quo therefore resist those that defend status quo
• More recent version of Charismatic leadership theory incorporates LMP as an antecedent to charismatic leadership emergence and effectiveness
• Charismatic leaders, to be effective, must mobilize a critical mass of followers in the interest of the leader’s vision, thus need a high power motivation
• They also need to be resist to criticism thus need a low affiliation motivation

• Leader flexibility and social sensitive are needed for leadership emergence process
• Empirically supported

• Three salient points emerge from trait theory and research

1. There appears to be a number of traits that consistently differentiate leaders from others

• Physical energy, intelligence greater than average follower, prosocial influence motivation, adjustment, self confidence, achievement motivation, and motives of LMP

1. The effects of traits on leader behavior and leader effectiveness are enhanced to a great extent by the relevance of the traits to the situation in which the leader functions
2. Traits have a stronger influence on leader behaviors when the situational characteristics permit the expression of ind. Dispositions

• Weak vs. strong situations

• Began after trait theories
• Identified two broad classes of leader behaviors – task-oriented vs. person-oriented
• Developed specific behaviors for each

• Used observation with lower level managers, students rather than high level managers – trait theory had same criticism
• Limitations of measurement because lack of theoretical background
• Little thought about specific role demands of leaders, the context in which they function, or differences in dispositions of leaders or followers

Fielder’s Contingency Theory

• First to specify how situational variables interact with leader personality and behavior
• Posited two way interaction between a measure of leader task motivation versus relationship motivation, and a measure of situational control
• Situational control is the degree to which the leader can control and influence the group process
• As predicted task or relationship motivated people were shown to manifest the same behavior (e.g. consideration, structuring) under selected different conditions of situational control and different behaviors under the same conditions of situational control
• Criticized for conceptual reasons and inconsistent empirical findings
• Hypothesized that task motivated leaders perform best in situations of high or low control while relationship motivated leaders perform best in moderate control situations

• Developed to reconcile prior conflicting finding concerning task and person oriented leader behavior
• Theory specifies several moderators of the relationship between task and person oriented leadership and their effects
• Not adequately tested

• A situational leadership theory of leadership
• Postulated four leadership styles: telling, selling, participating, and delegating each was appropriate for a certain type of situation defined by subordinates level of maturity
• Leadership style contingent upon followers maturity, defined as the degree to which followers are ready and willing to tackle the task facing the group

• A person by situation theory in which the
• person variables are leader intelligence and experience
• situational variable is stress experienced by leader and follower
• considerable empirical support
• Low stress – intelligence positively correlates and experience negatively correlates with performance
• High Stress – intelligence negatively correlates, experience positively correlates with performance
• Implies under conditions of high stress a highly intelligent person should rely on experience rather than intelligence to be effective

• Intended to help managers make decisions that ensure high technical and economics quality solutions to problems and obtain solutions that are acceptable to subordinates, if acceptability of solutions is important for effective implementation
• Seven decision making methods – range from autocratic to democratic
• Use a decision tree
• More support in filed studies than laboratory studies
• Criticisms
• Theory assumes decision makers’ goals are the same as the orgs goals
• Training is required to use decision tree
• Theory ignores the discussion and conference skills required of the manager to actually solve problems on a group decision
• Complex theory

• Added criterion variable to above – overall effectiveness and decision effectiveness
• Overall effectiveness is composed of decision quality, decision commitment
• Decision effectiveness: the effect of the decision process on subordinate development and time available to make the decision, assumed to be an indicator of decision cost

Leader Member Exchange Theory (LMX)

• Theory about the development and effects of separate dyadic relationships between superiors and subordinates
• Distinguishing feature it that theory looks at relationship rather than traits or behavior
• High degree of mutual influence and obligation between superior and subordinate produces positive outcomes: high performance, citizenship behavior, satisfaction, commitment

(second half)

1. Implicit Leadership Theory

1. Addresses the evaluations people make about leaders, and the cognitive processes underlying evaluations and perceptions of leadership.
2. Leadership – the process of being perceived as a leader
3. All leadership behaviors will not make one a leader unless that person is also perceived as a leader
4. Leadership traits are seen as important constructions of perceivers that help them make sense of social situations.
5. Forming Leadership Perceptions:

1. formed through either deliberate and controlled inferential or automatic and spontaneous recognition-based processes
2. can be explained in terms of categorization theory.

1. form a number of hierarchically organized cognitive categories which represent a prototype.
2. prototypes are formed through exposure to social events and interpersonal interactions
3. person is categorized based on his/her fit with a prototype

1. Categorization perspective

1. has implications for organizational leadership

1. different prototypes exist for different roles and contexts

1. Neocharismatic Theory

1. Major paradigm shift in the mid 1970’s

1. New paradigm of leadership theories emerged under a common genre

1. Theory of Charismatic Leadership
2. Theory of Transformational Leadership
3. Attributional Theory of Charismatic Leadership

1. This class of theories is referred to "the New Leadership Theories"

1. Common characteristics:

1. they all attempt to explain how leaders are able to lead organizations to attain outstanding accomplishments
2. They also attempt to explain how certain leaders are able to achieve extraordinary levels of follower motivation, admiration, respect, trust, commitment, dedication, loyalty, and performance
3. They all stress symbolic and emotionally appealing leader behaviors
4. The leader effects specified in these theories include follower self-esteem, motive arousal and emotions, and identification with the leaders vision, values, follower satisfaction and good follower performance

1. Differences in the theories:

1. they differ with respect to their leadership behaviors

1. House and Shamir (1993) provide a theoretical integration of the leader behaviors of charismatic, transformational, and visionary leadership theories

1. Lindholm (1990) says the term charisma refers primarily to socially undesirable and destructive behaviors
2. Howell and House (1992) disagree and distinguish b/n 2 types of charismatic leadership:

1. personalized

1. self-aggrandizing, exploitative, and authoritarian

1. socialized

1. altruistic, collectively-oriented, egalitarian

1. Bass (1997) argues that transformational leadership theory subsumes Charismatic leadership theory
2. House and Shamir (1993) see transformational, charismatic, and visionary leadership as the same
3. Other minor differences b/n the theories

1. Measurement of Charismatic Leadership

1. MLQ

1. most widely used
2. 3 subscales

1. charisma
2. individualized consideration
3. intellectual stimulation

1. Future directions

1. These theories offer inadequate explanations of the process by which the theoretical leader behaviors are linked to, and influence, the affective states of followers
2. 2. Transformational rests on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which has been disproven by empirical tests
3. There is little evidence that charismatic, transformational, or visionary leadership does indeed transform individuals, groups, or organizations as they claim they do.

1. Future research

1. Leadership v. Management

1. what’s the difference?

1. Need more research on strategic leadership
2. Generic v. Specific leadership functions

1. Research needs to prove what the difference is b/n the two