Nicolas Morton
HComm 3364: Leadership and Effective Communication
Dr. Thompson
Abstract first draft
Due: February 6 th , 2016
Many bosses of fortune 500 companies have different leadership styles, which appear to be effective in different ways, but the employees are not necessarily happy with certain leadership styles. Southwest is a better company to work for than Walmart. Both are very good companies in terms of moneymaking and production, but both CEO’s have different ways they treat their employees.
Southwest promotes their employees to pitch ideas and they put their employees over their customers. Walmart on the other hand treats their employees very poorly and has them under constant fear rather than being incredibly excited to work for them. This connects to chapter two’s concept of task oriented communication and interpersonal communication. The article I found relating to leadership styles and communication with employees was from Management Science journal. The article title was Leadership Style and Incentives. In the article, it explained the study of relationship between a firm’s environment and its optimal leadership style.
Companies can be successful with many different leadership styles, but some companies can maximize profits by changing up their leadership style to better suite the employee.
In the study, Romberg and Saloner used a model that correlates a firm and the manager’s relationship when being vague and not straightforward with directions. Their goal was to figure out that if leadership style, whether it is the

organizational structure or the personality of the leader, influenced production. The conclusion states that leaders whom empathize with their employees are more likely to gather brilliant ideas and when the environment in a workplace isn’t conducive to productivity, the leader seems to typically be autocratic. The conclusion puts it simply that, “leadership style matters because it can achieve this aim (Rotemberg and Saloner 1317)”. The conclusion also points to Fred Fiedler’s research that proves that leaders who are interact positively with their “least preferred” co-worker, tends to have better communication and a better production due to their human-relations. Fiedler also concluded that autocratic leadership is successful in military, athletics, surveying teams, and open hearth furnace shops
(Rotemberg and Saloner 1317). This would make more sense because in these types of professions, there tends to not be as much leeway in job production and in creativity. For example, in military combat or basketball, you either get the job done correctly or it doesn’t get done at all. There is no improvisation in these lines of work. Danny Miller and Jean-Marie Toulouse used Fiedler’s research and tried to focus their research on personality traits and how those influenced strategy and structure. They found out that people who tend to have an internal locus of control are more innovative and are more likely to be a delegator (Rotemberg and Saloner
1317). They also considered flexibility as a personality trait and discovered that people who are more flexible with their employees are usually more adaptable and adventurous in decision-making. Their last trait they looked at was the need to achieve. Generally, “individuals with high nAch (need for achievement) set relatively difficult goals for themselves and try to achieve them with little outside help

(Rotemberg and Saloner 1318)”. Rotemberg and Saloner simply put that CEO’s with higher empathy for employees were more willing to spend time with others, and thus have incredibly innovative employees.
The article was clear in terms of words and understanding what was being said, however, it was incredibly difficult to follow the equations and graphs in the article. The graphs were included to show correlation between employee relationship with their boss and the projected profits from a company. The reason why it was so hard to understand was because the graph had too many variables which required me to continuously reference the page before to refresh my memory on what symbol meant what. It was easier to trust the words I read and I allowed
Rotemberg and Saloner to spell out the graphs and the crazy symbols instead of try and calculate their formulas. What I enjoyed with the article though is that it did use qualitative data really well. It was a little difficult when they cited a study like
Fiedler’s and didn’t give background of the data Fiedler used in his study.
This article relates to our class because in chapter two, we learned about different leadership styles and how they pertained to employees and business structures. In class, we learned more about the Michigan and Ohio State studies and also Blake and McCanse’s leadership grid. The Michigan study charted employee- versus production-oriented leadership and Ohio State study discussed and claimed there was a two dimensional view of leadership. On the X-axis, the chart is ‘initiating structure’ and on the y-axis, we have consideration for employees (Hackman and
Johnson 52-53). Blake and McCanse’s leadership grid is a lot similar to Ohio State’s grid in the sense that there is an axis for concern for people. The difference is the

other axis is concern for production. Blake and McCanse use a very visual oriented grid, which is easy to read (Hackman and Johnson 54-55). In class, we learned more about where management styles land on particular charts, whereas Rotemberg and
Saloner explain how personalities influence spontaneity and creativity, which in turn impacts production. Despite having many different leadership styles, Romberg and Saloner, along with the other studies we found in class, prove that the more interactive the boss is with their employee, the more likely the employee will work hard; which makes production go up along with profit.
References:
Fiedler, Fred E., "Engineer the Job to Fit the Manager," Harvard Business Review, 43
(Sept.-Oct. 1965), 115-122.
Miller, Danny, Manfred F. R. De Vries, and Jean-Marie Toulouse, "Top Executive
Locus of Control and Its Relationship to Strategy Making, Structure and
Environment," Academy of Management I., 25 (1982), 237-253.
Hackman, Michael Z. and Craig E. Johnson, Leadership: A Communication Perspective.
Long Grove, Illinois: Waveland Press, 2009. Print.
Romberg, Julio J. and Garth Saloner. “Leadership Styles and Incentives,”
Management Science, 39.11 (Nov. 1993). 1299-1318.