Chapter 12 Leadership Page
CHAPTER
12
Leadership
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
12-1. Summarize the conclusions of trait theories of leadership.
12-2. Identify the central tenets and main limitations of behavioral theories.
12-3. Contrast contingency theories of leadership.
foundational theories.
12-5. Discuss the roles of leaders in creating ethical organizations.
building trust and mentoring.
12-7. Identify the challenges to our understanding of leadership.
INSTRUCTOR RESOURCES
Instructors may wish to use the following resources when presenting this chapter:
Text Exercises
• Career OBjectives: How Can I Get My Boss To Be A Better Leader?
• Myth or Science?: Top Leaders Feel the Most Stress
• MyLab Management
oPersonal Inventory Assessment: Ethical Leadership Assessment
oWatch It!: Leadership (TWZ Role Play)
oTry It!: Leadership and Teams; Leadership
• An Ethical Choice: Holding Leaders Ethically Accountable
• Point/Counterpoint: CEOs Start Early
• Questions for Review
• Experiential Exercise: What’s in a Leader?
• Ethical Dilemma: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Text Cases
• Case Incident 1: Sharing is Performing
• Case Incident 2: Leadership by Algorithm
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Instructor’s Choice
This section presents an exercise that is NOT found in the student’s textbook. Instructor’s Choice
reinforces the text’s emphasis through various activities. Some Instructor’s Choice activities are
centered on debates, group exercises, Internet research, and student experiences. Some can be
used in class in their entirety, while others require some additional work on the student’s part.
The course instructor may choose to use these at any time throughout the class—some may be
more effective as icebreakers, while some may be used to pull together various concepts covered
in the chapter.
Web Exercises
ideas for researching OB topics on the Internet. The exercises “Exploring OB Topics on the
Web” are set up so that you can simply photocopy the pages, distribute them to your class, and
make assignments accordingly. You may want to assign the exercises as an out-of-class activity
or as lab activities with your class.
Summary and Implications for Managers
Leadership plays a central part in understanding group behavior, because it’s the leader who
usually directs us toward our goals. Knowing what makes a good leader should thus be valuable
in improving group performance. The Big Five personality framework show strong and
consistent relationships between personality and leadership. The behavioral approach’s major
contribution was narrowing leadership into task-oriented (initiating structure) and
people-oriented (consideration) styles. By considering the situation in which the leader operates,
contingency theories promised to improve on the behavioral approach. Contemporary theories
have made major contributions to our understanding of leadership effectiveness, and studies of
ethics and positive leadership offer exciting promise. Specific implications for managers are
below:
For maximum leadership effectiveness, ensure that your preferences on the initiating
structure and consideration dimensions are a match for your work dynamics and culture.
Hire candidates who exhibit transformational leadership qualities and who have
demonstrated success in working through others to meet a long-term vision. Personality
tests can reveal candidates higher in extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness,
which may indicate leadership readiness.
Hire candidates whom you believe are ethical and trustworthy for management roles and
train current managers in your organization’s ethical standards to increase leadership
effectiveness and reduce abusive supervision.
Seek to develop trusting relationships with followers, because, as organizations have
become less stable and predictable, strong bonds of trust are replacing bureaucratic rules
in defining expectations and relationships.
Consider investing in leadership training such as formal courses, workshops, rotating job
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responsibilities, coaching, and mentoring.
The chapter begins with a discussion about the leadership style of Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. Leaders like
Brian Chesky possess a “special something” that sets them apart. However, theirs is not the only type of effective
leadership. In this chapter, we’ll look at all types of leaders, and what differentiates leaders from
nonleaders. First, we’ll present trait theories of leadership. Then, we’ll discuss challenges to the meaning and
importance of leadership. But before we begin, let’s clarify what we mean by the term leadership.
We define leadership as the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals. But not
all leaders are managers, nor are all managers leaders. Just because an organization provides its managers with
certain formal rights is no assurance they will lead effectively. Leaders can emerge from within a group as well as
by formal appointment. Nonsanctioned leadership—the ability to influence that arises outside the formal structure
of the organization—is often as important, or more important, than formal influence. Organizations need strong
leadership and strong management for optimal effectiveness. We need leaders to challenge the status quo, create
visions of the future, and inspire organizational members to achieve the visions. We need managers to formulate
detailed plans, create efficient organizational structures, and oversee day-to-day operations.
BRIEF CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Trait Theories
A. Strong Leaders
1. Trait theories of leadership focus on personal qualities and characteristics.
2. Comprehensive reviews of the leadership literature organized around the Big Five
framework has found extraversion to be the most important trait of effective leaders,
but it is more related to the way leaders emerge than to their effectiveness.
3. Leaders who like being around people and can assert themselves (extraverted) as well
traits in common.
4. Another trait that may indicate effective leadership is emotional intelligence (EI),
discussed in Chapter 4.
a. A core component of EI is empathy.
5. Although the association between leaders’ self-reported EI and transformational
leadership (to be discussed later in this chapter) was moderate in size, it is much
smaller when followers rate their leaders’ leadership behaviors.
7. Based on the latest findings, we offer two conclusions.
distinguishing between effective and ineffective leaders.
II. Behavioral Theories
A. Introduction
B. Ohio State Studies
1. The most comprehensive theories resulted from the Ohio State Studies, which sought
to identify independent dimensions of leader behavior.
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2. Beginning with more than a thousand dimensions, the studies narrowed the list to two
employees: initiating structure and consideration.
4. Consideration is the extent to which a leader has job relationships that are
characterized by mutual trust, respect for employees’ ideas, and regard for their
feelings.
a. A leader high in consideration helps employees with personal problems, is
friendly and approachable, treats all employees as equals, and expresses
appreciation and support.
C. GLOBE Study
1. Some research from the GLOBE study suggests there are international differences in
preference for initiating structure and consideration.
a. Based on the values of Brazilian employees, a U.S. manager leading a team in
Brazil would need to be team-oriented, participative, and humane.
b. Leaders high in consideration would succeed best in this culture.
c. A leader high in initiating structure (relatively task-oriented) will do best and can
make decisions in a relatively autocratic manner.
D. Summary of Trait Theories and Behavioral Theories
1. In general, research indicates there is validity for both the trait and behavioral
theories.
2. Parts of each theory can help explain facets of leadership emergence and
effectiveness.
a certain outcome.
b. The second is in exploring which combinations of traits and behaviors yield
certain outcomes.
c. The third challenge is to determine the causality of traits to behaviors so that
predictions toward desirable leadership outcomes can be made.
III. Contingency Theories
A. Introduction
1. Some leaders seem successful in difficult times, but tend to be dismissed when the
environment improves.
2. Situational factors that influence success or failure need to be explored further.
B. Fiedler Model
1. Introduction
2. Identifying leadership style
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a. Fiedler believed that a key factor in leadership success is the individual’s basic
for this purpose.
b. It purports to measure whether a person is task- or relationship-oriented.
c. The questionnaire contains 16 contrasting adjectives (such as pleasant-unpleasant,
efficient-inefficient, open-guarded, supportive-hostile).
d. It asks respondents to describe the one person they least enjoyed working with by
adjectives.
e. Fiedler assumes that an individual’s leadership style is fixed.
3. Defining the situation
a. Leader-member relations—the degree of confidence, trust, and respect members
have in their leader.
variables.
e. Fiedler states the better the leader-member relations, the more highly structured
the job, and the stronger the position power, the more control the leader has.
4. Matching leaders and situations (Exhibit 12-1)
a. Altogether, by mixing the three contingency variables, there are potentially eight
effectiveness.
c. Fiedler concluded that task-oriented leaders tend to perform better in situations
that were very favorable to them and in situations that were very unfavorable.
d. Fiedler would predict that when faced with a category I, II, III, VII, or VIII
situation, task-oriented leaders perform better.
situations—categories IV, V, and VI.
f. Fiedler has condensed these eight situations to three.
g. Given Fiedler’s findings, you would seek to match leaders and situations. Because
Fiedler views an individual’s leadership style as being fixed, there are only two
ways to improve leader effectiveness.
5. Evaluation of Fiedler
a. There is considerable evidence to support at least substantial parts of the model.
b. There are problems and the practical use of the model that need to be addressed.
6. Other contingency theories
a. Situational leadership theory
i. Situational leadership is a contingency theory that focuses on the followers.
ii. Successful leadership is achieved by selecting the right leadership style, which
is contingent on the level of the followers’ readiness.
iii. SLT has an intuitive appeal. Yet, research efforts to test and support the theory
have generally been disappointing.
b. Path-goal theory
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i. The theory:
(a) One of the most respected approaches to leadership is the path-goal
theory developed by Robert House.
(b) It is a contingency model of leadership that extracts key elements from
research on initiating structure and consideration and the expectancy
theory of motivation.
ii. According to path–goal theory, whether a leader should be directive or
supportive or should demonstrate some other behavior depends on complex
analysis of the situation.
c. Leader-participation model
i. The final contingency theory we cover argues that the way the leader makes
decisions is as important as what she or he decides.
ii. Leader-participation model relates leadership behavior and participation in
decision making.
iii. Like path–goal theory, it says leader behavior must adjust to reflect the task
structure.
IV. Contemporary Theories of Leadership
A. The leader-member exchange (LMX) theory argues that because of time pressures,
leaders establish a special relationship with a small group of their followers.
B. These individuals make up the in-group—they are trusted, get a disproportionate amount
of the leader’s attention, and are more likely to receive special privileges.
C. The theory proposes that early in the history of the interaction between a leader and a
given follower, the leader implicitly categorizes the follower as an “in” or an “out” and
that relationship is relatively stable over time.
1. How the leader chooses who falls into each category is unclear.
2. The leader does the choosing on the basis of the follower’s characteristics.
3. In groups have similar characteristics. (Exhibit 12-2)
D. The theory and research surrounding it provide substantive evidence that leaders do
differentiate among followers.
V. Charismatic Leadership
A. Introduction
behaviors.
B. Charismatic Leadership
1. What is charismatic leadership?
a. According to House’s charismatic leadership theory, followers make attributes
of heroic or extraordinary leadership abilities when they observe certain
behaviors. (Exhibit 12-3)
achieved, and exhibit extraordinary behaviors.
2. Are charismatic leaders born or made?
a. Individuals are born with personality traits that make them more charismatic, on
average.
b. People can learn to be a charismatic leader.
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to follow.
iii. Third, the individual brings out the potential in followers by tapping into their
emotions.
3. How charismatic leaders influence followers
a. Articulating an appealing vision.
i. Vision statement
ii. High performance expectations
iii. A new set of values
satisfaction exists among followers.
5. Does Effective Charismatic Leadership Depend on the Situation?
a. Charisma appears to be most appropriate when the follower’s task has an
ideological component or when the environment involves a high degree of stress
and uncertainty.
life-threatening crisis.
c. Another situational factor apparently limiting charisma is level in the
organization.
d. Finally, people are especially receptive to charismatic leadership when they sense
a crisis, when they are under stress, or when they fear for their lives.
6. The dark side of charismatic leadership.
c. It’s not that charismatic leadership isn’t effective; overall, it is.
C. Transactional and Transformational Leadership
1. Introduction
a. A stream of research has focuses on differentiating transformational and
transactional leaders. (Exhibit 12-4)
them.
c. Transactional leaders guide their followers toward established goals by
clarifying role and task requirements.
d. Transactional and transformational leadership complement each other.
e. The best leaders are transactional and transformational.
2. Full range of leadership model (Exhibit 12-5)
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leadership, individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation,
inspirational motivation, and idealized influence.
b. Laissez-faire is the most passive and least effective type.
c. Management by exception (active or passive) is slightly better.
d. Contingent reward leadership can be effective.
i. Individualized consideration
ii. Intellectual stimulation
iii. Inspirational motivation
iv. Idealized influence
3. How transformational leadership works?
and relatedness needs (see self-determination theory, Chapter 7).
b. Companies with transformational leaders also show greater agreement among top
managers about the organization’s goals, which yields superior organizational
performance.
4. Evaluation of transformational leadership
ii. A great deal of research suggests that the stress and demands surrounding the
context affects whether or not transformational leadership improves health
outcomes and work engagement (see Chapter 3).
iii. Transformational leaders can help reduce emotional exhaustion and improve
pressures are high.
iv. Transformational leadership may also be more effective when leaders can
directly interact with the workforce to make decisions (when they have high
task autonomy) than when they report to an external board of directors or deal
with a complex bureaucratic structure. One study showed transformational
power distance and collectivism.
v. The characteristics of the leader and the followers may also matter for how
effective transformational leadership is as well.
D. Transformational versus Transactional Leadership
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research suggests that transformational leadership is highly related to contingent
reward leadership, to the point of being redundant.
3. Contrary to the full range of leadership model, the four I’s of transformational
leadership are not always superior in effectiveness to transactional leadership;
E. Transformational versus Charismatic Leadership
1. Charismatic leadership places somewhat more emphasis on the way leaders
communicate (are they passionate and dynamic?), while transformational leadership
focuses more on what they are communicating (is it a compelling vision?).
2. Still, the theories are more alike than different. At their heart, both focus on the
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