Chapter Ten
Leadership of
Groups and
Organizations
Thomsom South-Western
Wagner & Hollenbeck 5e
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Chapter Overview
 This chapter examines the following topics:
– The Integrated Leadership Model
– Universal Approaches to Leadership
• Leader Traits
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Leader Decision-Making Styles
Leader Behaviors
Transformational Leadership
Leader Irrelevance
– Characteristics of Followers and Situations
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The Leadership Motivation Pattern
Vertical Dyad Linkage
Life-Cycle Model
Substitutes for Leadership
– Comprehensive Theories of Leadership
• Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
• Vroom-Yetton Decision Tree Model
• Path-Goal Theory
– The Integrated Leadership Model Revisited
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Introduction
 Leadership is the force that
energizes and directs groups
 Given the centrality of
leadership to the behavior of
people in groups and to
organizational achievement,
it is important to understand
how leaders emerge and
what qualities make them
effective
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The Integrated Leadership Model
 Most people have a difficult time expressing exactly
what the word leadership means
 One characteristic shared by people that are classed
as strong leaders is the ability to influence others
 A leader’s influence must be sanctioned by followers
 A complete definition of leadership must describe the
context in which leadership occurs and the symbolism
captured by the leader
 For the purposes here, leadership will be defined as
the use of noncoercive and symbolic influence to
direct and coordinate the activities of the members of
an organized group toward the accomplishment of
group objectives
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The Integrated Leadership Model
 In defining leadership, it is important to
distinguish between leaders and managers
 According to Mintzberg, leadership deals
explicitly with guiding and motivating
employees
 Edward Hollander has suggested that the
leadership process is best understood as
the occurrence of mutually satisfying
interactions among leaders and followers
within a particular situational context
– The locus of leadership appears where the
forces of leaders, followers, and situations
come together
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Universal Approaches to
Leadership
 Not all theories about
leadership emphasize the
three-dimensional character
of the leadership process as
proposed by Hollander
 Universal theories emphasize
the traits and abilities, typical
behaviors, and decisionmaking styles that make
leaders different from
nonleaders
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Leader Traits
Leader Decision-Making Styles
 The earliest approaches to leadership 
held that leaders were born not made
 Large-scale research projects suggest
that the perceived amount of time and
energy that the leader devotes to the
job is a major determinant of ratings
of leader effectiveness
 General cognitive ability seems to be
one of the best overall predictors of
leadership ability
 Specific technical skills and
knowledge about a group’s task also 
show modest relationships with
success in leadership
 The weak relationship with personal 
traits prompted research in this area
Three decision-making styles
have been examined:
– Authoritarian leader: makes
virtually all decisions by
himself or herself
– Democratic leader: works
with the group to help
members come to their own
decisions
– Laissez-faire leader: leaves
the group alone to do
whatever it wants
Results of studies suggest that
most groups prefer a
democratic leader
Studies revealed modest
correlations between leader
style and follower behavior 7
Leader Behaviors
 Researchers have concluded that two general classes of
supervisory behavior exist:
– Employee-oriented behavior: aims to meet the social and
emotional needs of group members
– Job-oriented behavior: focuses on careful supervision of
employees’ work methods and task accomplishment
 Researchers also concluded that most supervisory behaviors
could be assigned to one of two dimensions:
– Consideration structure: closely resembles the employeecentered orientation
– Initiating structure: resembles the job-centered orientation
 Blake and Mouton developed the notion of the managerial grid,
proposing that a leader needs to rate highly in terms of both
concern of people and production to be truly effective
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Transformational Leadership
 The theories of transformational
leadership emphasizes the ability of
the leader to communicate new
visions of an organization to
followers
 Transformational leaders can be
characterized by their:
– Traits: often called charismatic
leaders
– Behaviors: raise follower's awareness
– Decision-making styles: often
autocratic, but are experts at getting
subordinates to commit
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Leader Irrelevance
 Advocates of leader irrelevance, a
situation-based approach to understanding
leadership, emphasize that situations are
much more important determinants of
events than leader characteristics for
several reasons:
– Factors outside the leader’s control tend to
affect profits and other critical elements
more than anything a leader might do
– Leaders at relatively high levels tend to
have unilateral control over only a few
resources
– The selection process filters people such that
those in leadership positions tend to act in
similar ways
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Characteristics of Followers and
Situations: The Leadership Motivation
Pattern
 The theory behind the leadership motivation pattern
(LMP), an early interaction theory, grew out of
David McClelland’s research on characteristics of
the leader
 This theory focuses on the interaction between the
traits of the leader and the characteristics of the
situation
 The leadership motivation pattern is a composite of
three specific characteristics:
– A high need for power
– A low need for affiliation with others
– A high degree of self-control
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Characteristics of Followers and
Situations: The Leadership
Motivation Pattern
 McClelland suggested that two types of leadership
situations exist:
– Entrepreneurial situation: occurs in small
organizations or in small technical units in large
organizations where a few key people do most of
the work themselves
– Bureaucratic situation: found in the context of
large, formalized, tightly structured organizations
 Findings strongly suggest that the effect of a set of
leader characteristics on a leader’s success depends on
the situation in which the leader is performing
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Vertical Dyad Linkage
 An approach to leadership that emphasizes
the characteristics of followers is the
vertical dyad linkage
 This approach places more emphasis on
leader behaviors
 A vertical dyad consists of two persons who
are linked hierarchically
 This approach suggests that leaders tend to
classify subordinates as either in-group
members, those who are willing and able to
do more than the task outlined in a formal
job description, or out-group members,
those who will not or cannot expand their
roles beyond formal requirements
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Life-Cycle Model
 According to the life-cycle model developed by Paul
Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, the effectiveness of a
leader’s decision-making style depends largely on
followers’ level of maturity, job experience, and
emotional maturity
 This model proposes two basic dimensions on which
decision-making style may vary: task orientation and
relationship orientation
 The model suggests these two dimensions combine to
form four distinct types of decision styles: telling,
selling,participating, and delegating
 According to Hersey and Blanchard, the type of
decision-making style that a leader should adopt
depends on the level of maturity of the followers
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Substitutes for Leadership
 The substitutes for leadership
theory emphasizes leader
behaviors and the situation
 One review of the scientific
literature on this topic
suggests that the most
powerful substitutes for
leadership relate to both
characteristics of the task and
the organization as a whole
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Comprehensive Theories of
Leadership
 The comprehensive leadership theory
deals with all three forces (leader,
follower,situation) simultaneously
 Each of the three comprehensive
theories differ only in that each tends to
focus on a particular leader
characteristic, either a personal
characteristic, a behavioral orientation,
or a decision-making style
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Fiedler’s Contingency Theory
 The leader’s orientation toward either task or relationships
is the central piece of this complex and controversial theory
of leadership that was proposed by Fred Fiedler
 This model is called a contingency theory because it holds
the effectiveness of a leader depends on both the followers
and the situation
 A leadership situation can be placed along a continuum of
favorability depending on three factors:
– Leader-follower relations: followers trust and respect the
leader
– Task structure: the group has clear goals and clear means of
achieving them
– Position power: ability to reward or punish subordinates for
their behavior
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Vroom-Yetton Decision Tree Model
 The decision tree model of leadership developed by Victor Vroom
emphasizes the fact the leaders achieve success through effective
decision making
 Vroom’s model recognizes four general styles of leadership:
– Authoritarian
– Consultive
– Delegation
– Group-based
 These are then broken down into seven specific decision styles
– Three that are appropriate to both individual and group
decisions
– Two that are appropriate only to decisions involving
individual followers
– Two that are appropriate only to decisions that involve an
entire group of followers
 The decision tree model proposes that the most effective
leadership style depends on the characteristics of both the
situation and the followers
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Path-Goal Theory
 The most comprehensive
 This approach is based
theory of leadership to date
on the expectancy theory
and the theory that best
of motivation and
exemplifies all aspects of
emphasizes the three
the transactional model is
motivational variables
the path-goal theory of
that leaders may
leadership
influence through their
behaviors or decision At the heart of this theory
making styles:
is the notion that the
– Valences
leader’s primary purpose
– Instrumentalities
is to motivate followers by
– Expectancies
clarifying goals and
identifying the best paths
to achieve those goals
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Path-Goal Theory
 The job of the leader, according to this theory, is to
manipulate these three factors in desirable ways
 This theory proposes that four behavioral styles can
enable leaders to manipulate the three motivational
variables:
–
–
–
–
Directive
Supportive
Participative
Achievement-oriented
 Because of the complexity of this theory, no one has yet
undertaken a comprehensive study that tests every
variable
 The framework provided by this theory is an excellent one
for generating, testing, and understanding the complexities
of the leadership process
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The Integrated Leadership Model
Revisited
 The first key to applying this model to
your own leadership situation is to engage
in self-assessment to learn your standing
on several traits
 The second key is to make a critical
assessment of those people who are
following you to determine the degree of
match between their characteristics and
yours
 The third key is that leaders need to study
the situation they are in to determine what
kinds of leadership will be most effective
with this specific configuration of followers
and situation
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