Employee Centered Leadership Style Complete Solution
CHAPTER 3
LEADERSHIP THEORIES
Learning Outcomes;
After studying this chapter, you
... [Show More] should be able to:
1. Describe similarities and differences between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University leadership models.
2. Discuss similarities and differences between the University of Michigan and the leadership Grid
3. Discuss similarities and differences among the three process motivation theories.
4. Explain the four types of reinforcement.
5. State the major differences among content, process and reinforcement theories.
3.0 INTRODUCTION
The leadership behavior
Late 1940’s, most of the leadership research had shifted from traits theory paradigm to the behavioral theory paradigm, which focuses on what the leader says and does. Unfortunately, no leadership behaviors were found to be consistently associated with leadership effectiveness. Today research continues to seek better understanding of behavior, it complexity, and its effects on employee performance.
3.1 LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOUR IS BASED ON TRAITS
Leaders’ behavior is much based on their traits and skills. It is also said that a good predictor of employee retention is the relationship between manager and employee. The good relationship between employee and leader is likely to be motivated. Therefore, the relationship is based on the manager’s leadership personality traits and attitudes, which directly affect his or her behavior with the employee.
The search for traits or characteristics that differentiate leader from nonleaders, through done in a more sophisticated manner than our on-the-street survey, dominated the early research efforts in the study of leadership. However, attempts to identify traits consistently associated with leadership have been more successful. Six traits on which leaders are seen to differ from nonleaders include drive, desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, and job-relevant knowledge. These traits are briefly described in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1: Six Traits That Differentiate Leaders from Nonleaders
1 Drive. Leaders exhibit a high effort level. They have a relatively high desire for achievement, they’re ambitious, they have a lot energy, they’re tirelessly persistent in their activities, they show initiative.
2 Desire to lead. Leaders have a strong desire to influence and lead others. They demonstrate the willingness to take responsibility.
3 Honesty and integrity. Leaders build trusting relationships between themselves and followers by being truthful or nondeceitful and by showing high consistency between word and deed.
4 Self-confidence. Followers look to leaders for an absence of self-doubt. Leaders, therefore, need to show self-confidence in order to convince followers of the rightness of goals and decisions.
5 Intelligence. Leaders need to be intelligent enough to gather, synthesize, and interpret large amount of information and to create visions, solve problems, and make correct decisions.
6 Job-relevent knowledge. Effective leaders have a high degree of knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leaders to make well-informed decisions and to understand the implications of those decisions.
Yet traits alone do not sufficiently explain leadership, which will result in the ignorance situational factors. Possessing the appropriate traits will make an individual an effective leader. Results indicated that what is right in one situation is not necessarily right for another situation. So, even though some interest in traits has reemerged during the past two decades, a major movement away from traits theories began as early as the 1940s.
3.2 LEADERSHIP STYLES
Leadership styles are the combination of traits, skills, and behaviours leaders use as they interact with followers. Behaviour is the most important component beside traits and skills, as it relatively consistent pattern with the characteristics of a leader.
This derived the autocratic and democratic leadership styles by Kurt Lewin in the 1930s, University of Iowa.
• Autocratic Leadership Style – decisions, tells/instruct employees, and supervise workers all by leader himself.
• Democratic Leadership Style – leader encourages participation in decisions, work together with employees upon tasks, give freedom to work without muc supervision.
This lead to an era of behavioural rather than traits research, to be discussed below;
3.2.1 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AND OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY STUDIES
(Mid - 1940s to Mid – 1950s)
Leadership research was conducted at Ohio State and the University of Michigan at about the same time during the mid-1940’s to mid 1950s. These studies were not based on prior autocratic and democratic leadership styles, but rather sought to determine the behaviour of effective leaders, term as leadership bahaviour.
UNIVERSITY of MiCHIGAN : Job-Centered and Employee-Centered Behavior
The studies was conducted to determine leadership effectiveness. The researchers identified two styles of leadership behavior, which they called job centered and employee centered. The U of Michigan model stated that a leader is either more job centered or more employee-centered. See Figure 3.2 for the University of Michigan Leadership Model: a one-dimensional continuum between two leadership styles.
Figure 3.2: The University of Michigan Leadership Model: Two Leadership Styles, One Dimension
Job-Centered Leadership Style. The job centered style has scales measuring two job-oriented behaviors of goal emphasis and work facilitation. Job centered behavior refer to the extent to which the leader take charge to get the job done. The leader closely directs subordinates with clear roles and goals, while the manager tells them what to do and how to do it as they work toward goal achievement.
Employee-Centered Leadership Style. The employee-centered style has scales measuring two employee-oriented behaviors of supportive leadership and interaction facilitation. Employee-centered behavior refers to the extent to which the leader focuses on meeting the human needs of employees while developing relationships. The leader is sensitive to subordinates and communicates to develop trust, support and respect while looking out for their welfare.
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY: Initiating Structure and Consideration Behaviour
The Personnel Research Board of Ohio State University was identifies four leaderships styles based on two distinct dimensions which eventually called initiating structure and consideration. The initiating structure behavior (leadership style), is essentially the same as the job-centered leadership style; it focuses on getting the task done. The consideration behavior (leadership style), is essentially the same as the employee-centered leadership style; it focuses on meeting people’s need and developing relationships.
Because a leader can be high or low on initiating structure and/or consideration, four leadership styles are developed. The Ohio State University Leadership Model identifies four leadership styles; low structure and high consideration, high structure and high consideration, low structure and low consideration, and high structure and low consideration..
Figure 3.3: The Ohio State University Leadership Model: Four leadership styles
and two dimensions.
Leader with high structure and low consideration behavior use one-way communications, and decision are made by the managers, whereas leaders with high consideration and low structure use two-way communications and tend to share decision making.
3.2.2 THE LEADERSHIP GRID THEORY
The Leadership build on the Ohio State and Michigan studies; it is based on the same two leadership dimensions, which called concern for production and concern for people. The concern for both people and production is measure through a questionnaire on scale from 1 to 9. Therefore. The grid has 81 possible combinations of concern for [Show Less]
