Chapter 10

Leader-Member Relationships

Limitations of Leadership Theory and Research

• Executive Leadership

• Leadership in the Dyad

• The Leader as Individual

Traditional Perspective

• Theories of Leadership Behavior• Leadership as Development• Motivation and Control• Satisfaction and Communication Climate• The Motivational Limits of Leadership and

Supervision• Member Behavior Toward Leaders

Theories of Leadership Behavior

• Leadership as Trait

• Leadership as Style

• Situational Theory

• Leader-Member Exchange Theory

Leadership as Trait

• The earliest theories of leadership attempted to distinguish leaders from non-leaders on the basis of certain personality traits (intelligence, responsibility, character and others)

• Years of trait research have not produced any agreement about their relevance to leadership

Leadership as Style

• Early Style Theory

• The Leadership Grid™

• Transformational Leadership

Early Style Theory

• Laissez-faire

• Authoritarian

• Democratic

The Leadership Grid™Blake and McCanse (1991)

Managerial/Leadership Styles as a product of:

• Concern for Production (1-9 range)

• Concern for People (1-9 range)

Model yields eight styles, Five are discussed in grid

The Leadership Grid™• Impoverished (1,1)

• Authority-Obedience (9,1)

• Country Club (1,9)

• Middle-of-the-road (5,5)

• Team Leader (9,9)

Transformational Leadership

• Based on exchange principles, i.e., by providing rewards that are contingent on accomplishing goals and complying with leadership

• Transformational leaders change members’ values by motivating them to perform beyond expectations

Transformational Leadership

• Eight leadership styles that differ from earlier stylistic models in at least three respects– The styles are assumed to operate on a

continuum of performance effectiveness– Any given manager or leader may exhibit any or

all of the styles– While traditional leadership theories rely on

concepts of rational processes, transformational theory is concerned with emotions, values, symbolic behavior, and the role of the leader in making events meaningful for followers

Transformational Leadership

Least Effective/Marginal Performance• Laissez-faire• Passive Management-by-exception• Active Management-by-exception

Produces Performance at Required Levels• Contingent Reward

Transformational Leadership

Progressively Produces Performances Beyond Expectations

• Individualized consideration

• Intellectual stimulation

• Inspirationally motivating style

• Idealized influence

Situational Theory

Three Factors Influence Leader Effectiveness• Leader-member relations: the degree of

confidence and trust that members have in the leader.

• Task structure: the degree of certainty and routine as opposed to ambiguity and unpredictability in the task

• Position power: the influence inherent in the leadership role (legitimate authority and ability to reward or punish)

Situational Theory

Fiedler’s Studies

Directive or permissive styles of leadership should be chosen based on varying conditions of leader-member relations, task structure, and position power

Leader-Member Exchange [LMX] Theory

• Rather than behaving in a consistent manner toward all group members, leaders discriminate significantly in their behavior toward members– In-Group Members: worked under conditions of

mutual trust, influence, and support with the manager

– Out-Group Members: worked under conditions involving low trust and support along with exercise of the manager's formal authority

– Middle-Group Members: fall between the conditions of in-group and out-group members

LMX Theory

Leader-Member Communication

• In-group communication emphasized supportiveness, collegiality, and similarity.

• Out-group leader-member exchange involved face threats and competitive conflict, implying an openly contentious and adversarial relationship.

• Middle groups reflected both accommodating and polarizing interactions [Fairhurst, 1993]

LMX Theory

• Some recent LMX research has taken a prescriptive turn, suggesting that LMX can range from high to low in quality, and the level of exchange quality predicts a variety of positive outcomes (Hochwarter, 2005)

• An unresolved issue in LMX research is whether leaders should or should not differentiate among their members

Leadership as Development

• Mentors lead protégés in a developmental sense

• A mentor may be a protégé's immediate superior, however, the mentor frequently occupies another role (e.g., a higher-level manager or a more experienced peer at the same level of the organization).

• The mentor role entails teaching, guidance, counseling, appraisal, and other developmental activities, including sponsorship and promotion of the protégé's career advancement

Motivation and Control

• Management promotes compliance by promoting morale and satisfaction

• Morale and satisfaction depend on effective interpersonal relations; namely, empathy, sensitivity to social needs, receptivity, and two-way communication

Satisfaction and Communication Climate

• Defensive Communication Climate– Evaluation, Control, Strategy, Neutrality,

Superiority, Certainty

• Supportive Communication Climate– Description, Problem-Orientation, Spontaneity,

Empathy, Equality, Provisionalism

• Supportive, “people-oriented” styles of communication promote satisfaction

Motivational Limits of Leadership and Supervision

• Employee job satisfaction depends on a complex set of relationships among several factors

• Job satisfaction was negatively related to role ambiguity and positively related to fatigue that employees experienced

• Apparently, satisfying work is tiring work [Ray & Miller, 1991]

Motivational Limits of Leadership and Supervision

Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory• Satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposite

conditions. The opposite of satisfaction is simply the absence of satisfaction.

• The factors that lead to job satisfaction and, therefore, to motivation are different from the factors that lead to job dissatisfaction.

• The satisfiers are called motivators, and the dissatisfiers are called hygiene factors

Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory

Motivators: • Achievement• Recognition• Advancement• The work itself• Responsibility• Potential for personal growth

Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory

Hygiene Factors• Policy and administration• Technical supervision• Relationships with supervisor• Relationships with peers• Relationships with subordinates• Salary• Job security• Personal life• Work conditions• Status

Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene Theory

• Failure to provide for members' hygiene needs will lead to job dissatisfaction and poor performance, but merely meeting these needs does not produce motivation to improve performance

• Positive relationships between leaders and members may prevent dissatisfaction, but relationship quality will not lead to better performance

• Better performance depends on incorporating the six motivators into the work environment

Member Behavior Toward Leaders

• Feedback and Distortion

• Upward Influence

Feedback and Distortion

• As mobility aspirations go up, accuracy goes down

• Increased trust is associated with increased accuracy

• Distortion is more likely to occur in rigid, machinelike organizational climates than in open, “organic” climates [Young, 1978]

Feedback and Distortion

• Members are more likely to distort unfavorable information in a task situation

• Members relay unfavorable information more accurately than favorable information in a non-task situation

• Pratfall Effect: a person's admission of errors or mistakes actually increases his or her credibility with others [Krivonos, 1982]

Upward Influence

• Members in high quality LMX conditions used open, logic-based tactics rather than covert, deceptive tactics in the attempts to influence leaders [Krone, 1992]

• One benefit for leaders in fostering undifferentiated, high quality LMX may be that members are likely to be more honest, direct, and reasonable with attempts at influencing those leaders

Upward Influence

• Followers working under participative styles of leadership tended to use reasoning tactics in upward influence attempts [Ansari & Kapoor, 1987]

• Where leadership style is low in both initiation and consideration (i.e., laissez-faire), members will use so-called hard tactics [Chacko, 1990]

Interpretive Perspective

• Leadership, Structure, and Meaning

• Leadership and Ethics

Leadership, Structure, and Meaning

• Vallaster and de Chernatony (2006) studied how organization members align their actions with the identity of the organization in a corporate context.

• The term, brand, refers to corporate identify and internal brand building refers to the alignment process.

Leadership, Structure, and Meaning

• Successful leaders consistently and repeatedly communicate messages to employees about the brand identity and commitment to living the brand’s promise

• By showing their own commitment to the brand values and identify, successful leaders act as facilitators between structures and individuals, creating a framework that encourages brand supporting employee behaviors

Leadership and Ethics

Leader Responsibilities• Communicating appropriate values to create

a moral climate• Maintaining adequate communication to be

informed of organizational operations• Maintaining openness to signs of problems

Leadership and Ethics

Enron’s Unethical Leaders• Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling modeled values of

privilege, wealth, and arrogance, and the acceptability of power abuse and rule breaking when it suits one’s ends to do so

• Andy Fastow, the chief financial officer, concocted schemes to hide Enron’s debt

• Enron’s energy traders manipulated electricity supplies to spike prices in California and flourished in a culture of corruption

Critical Theory

• Leader as Individual Agent

• Leadership Discourse in General

• The Discourse of Resistance

Leader as Individual Agent

• Harrison and Young (2005) studied the government agency that administers Canada’s system of socialized health care

• The agency was subjected to a major reorganization, including formation of an entirely new and large branch over a four-month period

• They studied the discourse of the person who was appointed to lead the new branch in an effort to understand how a leader’s concealed messages contribute to the success or failure of discursive events, specifically at a time of organizational transformation

Leader as Individual Agent

• The leader used a concealment strategy regarding “hot issues” involved in the reorganization by depersonalizing decisions about those issues

• The leader’s offer at the outset of a seemingly participatory system was interpreted as a sham, and people knew they were being moved around like pawns on a chessboard

Leadership Discourse in General

Managerial pseudo-jargon: Terms and phrases that one does not generally hear in ordinary language outside corporations and institutions

Thinking Outside the Box Tasked With

Repurposed Strategic Vision

Customer Focused Rightsizing

Driving Forward the Mission Value-Added

Performance Metrics Seamless Process

Managerial Pseudo-Jargon

• Use metaphors to make abstract aspects of organizational life seem to be concrete– Sports metaphors, e.g., hit a home run, scoring

inside the red zone, and playing hurt

• Use language to reinforce and legitimize the power of leadership and management– Selecting the right metrics to assess effective

leveraging of resources in an integrated process to realize the strategic vision (sounds authoritative)

Discourse of Resistance

• Members may resist the efforts of leaders to influence and control them

• Resistance studies focus on the communicative actions of members