An Integrative Theory of Leadership

Martin Chemers

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780805826784
• eBook ISBN: 9781317778394
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

A definition of leadership that would be widely accepted by the majority of theorists and researchers might say that "leadership is a process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task."

The major points of this definition are that leadership is a group activity, is based on social influence, and revolves around a common task. While this specification seems relatively simple, the reality of leadership is very complex. Intrapersonal factors (thoughts and emotions) interact with interpersonal processes (attraction, communication, and influence) to have effects on a dynamic external environment. Each of these aspects brings complexity to the leadership process. It is the purpose of this book to make that complexity a bit more manageable, increasing the ability to understand what effective leadership is.

This volume offers a comprehensive analysis and integration of the empirical research literature and major theories of leadership. It employs a functional analysis stressing what leaders must do to be effective and specifies the processes related to each function. The chapters provide an extensive review of the major approaches to leadership. Each chapter is discussed with an eye to explaining the basic principles, the research evidence, and where appropriate, the relationship of the theory or research program to other theories. In addition, this volume offers the most comprehensive treatment of cultural and gender factors in leadership of any recent book. The question of male-female differences in leadership style and performance is carefully analyzed against the empirical findings. The ultimate goal of this review of the literature is to provide a basis for the presentation of an integrative model of leadership that brings together function and process and provides an armature for integrating what is known.

Chapter 1

The Functions of Leadership in Organization

THE NATURE OF THE BOOK

Adefinition of leadership that would be widely accepted by the majority of theorists and researchers might say that “leadership is a process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” The major points of this definition are that leadership is a group activity, is based on social influence, and revolves around a common task. Although this specification seems relatively simple, the reality of leadership is very complex. Intrapersonal factors (i.e., thoughts and emotions) interact with interpersonal processes (i.e., attraction, communication, influence) to have effects on a dynamic external environment. Each of these aspects brings complexity to the leadership process. It is the purpose of this book to try to make that complexity a bit more manageable, thus increasing our ability to understand what effective leadership is.

The contemporary empirical literature on leadership often seems fragmented and contradictory. It is the thesis of this book that a solid structure can be built to organize and integrate what we know about leadership. The key building blocks of that structure will be an understanding of the basic functions of leadership, that is, what leaders must do to be effective, and the critical processes of leadership, that is, how the functions fit together in the accomplishment of the task.

The chapters that follow provide a comprehensive review of the major approaches to leadership. Each is discussed with an eye toward explaining the basic principles, the research evidence, and where appropriate, the relationship of the theory or research program to other theories. The ultimate goal of this review of the literature is to provide a basis for the presentation of an integrative model of leadership that brings together function and process, and provides an armature for integrating what we know.

A Beginning

In this opening chapter, I try to place the leadership role in perspective, illustrating how leadership contributes to the realization of organizational goals. The mechanisms by which organizations create and structure the leadership role is related to the environments in which the organizations function. The discussion concludes with an explanation of how environmental characteristics influence the evolution of organizational types and leadership roles with attendant conceptions of ideal leadership.

ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONS

Groups and organizations are by nature inefficient. If one person could accomplish a job, the creation or assignment of a group would not be warranted. Groups require coordination of the efforts of their members. The time and energy spent in that coordination are diverted from productive activity. Organizations, which are groups of groups, demand even greater resources applied to coordination. Nonetheless, most of the productive activities in modern society cannot be accomplished by one person working alone. Organizations are essential to the realization of the goals of productive endeavor, and leaders are essential to organizational coordination. Let us examine the major functions of organizations and see how leadership is central to the fufillment of those functions.

Internal Maintenance

The primary function that an organization must achieve is the regularization of activities to provide a stable base for productive operation. The organization must maintain an internal integrity that allows it to respond to routine events in reliable and predictable ways.

Every organization is faced with a large number of demands that repeatedly require the same response. Universities must enroll students in classes, assign them to dormitories, collect tuition and housing fees, monitor academic progress, clean facilities, and so on. Many of these activities are uniform or routine in their form and occurrence and are dealt with in the same way each time they happen.

The activities become regularized to save time and energy. If the responses to routine events weren’t standardized, every day would be like the first day of organizational life. The names of the buildings, the distribution of classes, the method of computing grade point averages would all have to be invented daily. The organization would never be able to accomplish anything but these “setting up” activities.

That these activities are properly carried out is essential to the organization’s integrity in the same way that maintaining a state of stable equilibrium is essential to the survival of any living organism. The human body, by analogy, must maintain body temperatures, nervous system activity, blood saline levels, and other systems within narrowly prescribed limits. In order to do this, the organism has sensors to monitor vital systems. When the systemic parameters are outside the prescribed limits, the organism responds with preprogrammed adjustments to restore equilibrium within the limits.

If the sensors detect that blood temperature is above the appropriate level, the body begins to perspire, setting in motion evaporative cooling processes that will restore equilibrium. Blood temperature below normal results in shivering and the burning of stored energy to generate heat.

An organization must maintain similar monitoring and adjustment systems. Rules, regulations, and standard operating procedures must govern everyday activities. The organization is striving for stability so that it may function from one day to the next. The key aspects of this internal maintenance function are reliability, predictability, and accountability.

Reliability means that recurrent events are responded to in the same way every time they occur. The reliability of response enhances predictability. Members of the organization know what is likely to occur and when. The fact that responses are supposed to be reliable and predictable makes accountability possible. If a key activity does not occur, knowing when, how, where, and by whom it was supposed to be accomplished makes it possible to identify the cause of the error and correct it.

The achievement of internal maintenance makes it possible for the organization to make productive movement. Without internal maintenance, an organization cannot exist for long. A human being who couldn’t maintain a stable physiological equilibrium would soon perish. However, the importance of the internal maintenance function can sometimes make organizations overly focused on the attainment of order and stability and consequently, they may lose sight of the other essential organizational function, external adaptability.

External Adaptability

A person with a normal temperature, excellent nutrition, and a clean set of clothes who steps into traffic in front of a fast-moving truck is not going to be a stable organism for long. When an organization maintains a fixed course in the face of a changing environment, it resembles the old Western movie’s driverless stagecoach flying off the cliff when the road takes a sudden turn.

Organizations must know what is going on around them and adapt to changes in the evironment. The ability to change is the critical element of innovation in organizations and is necessary for adaptability. The key aspects of external adaptability are sensitivity, flexibility, and responsiveness.

An organization or system that exists in an environment that is not perfectly static must be sensitive to the changes around it. The organization that does not attend to its environment calls to mind the joke about the airliner that has lost its navigational bearings, but is making “very good time.”

Making good time in the wrong direction is not the hallmark of outstanding organizations. Successful organizations in unstable environments must be sensitive to change and flexible enough to respond. Such organizations have mechanisms for restructuring traditional approaches in light of new conditions.

The McDonald’s hamburger restaurant chain, for example, while a highly structured and internally integrated organization, must be sensitive and responsive to competitor’s products (e.g., chicken sandwiches), or changes in customer tastes (e.g., an emphasis on food items with lower fat content). Such responsiveness results in adaptability to changes in the external environment.

Balancing Contradictory Demands

Although it is easy to say that organizations must ensure both internal stability and responsiveness to change, the fact that these two functions are basically contradictory is the bedevilment of both practicing managers and organizational theorists. Unfortunately, procedures that organizations might adopt to ensure reliability and predictability will usually reduce flexibility and responsiveness. Standard operating procedures are, after all, “standard, ” not flexible or adaptive. Conversely, the strategies an organization might use to enhance its ability to change will make it harder to guarantee that routine events will be handled in exactly the same way each time they occur.

Organizational survival is a question of balance. The appropriate balance between stability and adaptiveness depends on the nature of the organization’s environment. Organizations that live in very stable and predictable environments benefit from the efficiencies of highly regularized procedures. A manufacturing company with predictable markets and suppliers (e.g., a company that makes kitchen matches) can develop highly routinized ways of purchasing materials and producing and marketing their products. Regularity enhances efficiency and reliability.

On the other hand, an organization that must function in a highly competitive and unstable set of conditions (e.g., a computer design company) needs to sacrifice the benefits of reliability to enhance responsiveness. In order to know what the competition is up to and how emerging technologies can be exploited, the company must design its internal structure and devote a substantial portion of its resources to facilitating external adaptability functions. For example, the company’s applied research and development department might play the focal role in short-term planning. It might also build a close linkage with customers into the organization’s information systems.

How does an organization identify and maintain the proper placement on the stability-change continuum? How are these organizational functions realized? The answer to those questions is that leaders play a central role in helping organizations to develop appropriate systems for meeting internal and external demands.

THE ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF LEADERSHIP

The active ingredient in organizations is people. The vital functions of organizational life are accomplished by women and men working together. Thus, when we speak about coordinating organizational activities, we really mean coordinating the efforts of people. Social groups have developed the role of “leader” to accomplish this coordination function.

Leadership is a process of social influence through which one person is able to enlist the aid of others in reaching a goal. A number of activities are included in the leadership role, and it is illuminating to look at these activities in relation to the organizational functions of internal maintenance and external adaptability identified earlier.

When the group or team is functioning in an orderly, structured, and well-understood environment, the leader’s primary responsibilities include guidance and motivation. The leader’s job is to assign people to tasks or responsibilities, to outline what is expected, and to facilitate and encourage goal attainment.

In later chapters, I discuss the behavioral options available to leaders for carrying out the guidance and motivation functions. These activities can be accomplished in a number of ways, but they must be done.

When groups or organizations are operating in less predictable environments that call for an emphasis on external adaptability, the leader’s crucial functions entail problem solving and innovation. The leader must help to create the kind of atmosphere that encourages the sensitivity, flexibility, and creativity that allows the group to deal with the uncertainty of new or complex demands. The leader as change agent must possess a legitimate authority for influencing followers. That legitimacy flows from the leader’s special status.

Status Differentiation

The concept of leadership implies a differentiation of authority and responsibilities between group members. Social psychologists and sociologists refer to this differentiation in power and responsibility as status. Sherif and Sherif (1969) described status as

a member’s position (rank) in a hierarchy of power relations in a social unit (group or system) as measured by the relative effectiveness of initiative (a) to control interaction, decision-making, and activities, and (b) to apply sanctions in the cases of non-participation and non-compliance, (p. 140)

Every human society that has been studied has some sort of status system. In some groups or societies, the relative distinctions between individuals are quite minor, and the system is very simple. For example, among some hunting and gathering societies, such as the Pygmies of the Ituri forest in Zambia or the !Kung bushmen of Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, the only status distinction is the recognition of a “headman, ” usually the oldest male member of the band, who is accorded somewhat more influence in group decision making and a more desirable location for his family’s dwelling. The headman is essentially “first among equals.”

In other societies, such as the imperial bureaucracies of Asia or the hereditary chieftainships of Polynesia, complex and highly differentiated systems of power and privilege are sustained. Some individuals have a great deal more power than others, and one person’s income could be thousands of times that of another. Later in this chapter, I discuss the conditions that give rise to one type of status system or another, but first we must examine the reasons for the pervasiveness of status systems. What is the purpose of differentiating members of a social unit?

The Functions of Status Bestowal

The differentiation of members of a group by status entails both the intended functions that make such differentiation a positive aspect of group life and the negative or unintended functions that can make status differentiation a threat to the viability of the group.

Positive Functions. As noted in the earlier discussion of internal maintenance and external adaptability, many organizational processes are “double-edged swords.” The intended, positive functions of a particular organizational practice are often connected with less desirable, unintended functions. This is very much the case with status differentiation.

The positive functions of status are vital to the sustenance of any organization. If the tasks that faced a social unit were equally important to the unit’s survival, there would be no need to differentiate its members. Any member could do any job, if all jobs were equal in their impact. However, because individuals differ in their abilities, and because the tasks that a social unit faces differ in terms of their importance, it becomes very significant for an organization to assign its most capable members to its most important tasks. We can leave aside, for the moment, the definition of “capable, ” and focus on the question of importance.

If members of the unit are grouped to accomplish a task that is too large, too difficult or, too dangerous for individual effort, a leader is chosen to coordinate the labors of the members. The leader’s actions generally are more important to the success of the endeavor than are the actions of any other individual in the group. It is important then that the person chosen for this responsibility is the one most likely to carry it out successfully. The first purpose of status, then, is the elevation of competence.

If the organization of the unit’s activities are complex enough to necessitate higher level groupings, that is, multiple levels of authority, it will usually be the case that activities of each higher level will be more important to the success of the unit, simply by virtue of the more pervasive impact of those activities. Military organizations provide a straightforward example of this principle. The squad leader commands a group of 8 to 10 soldiers. A platoon leader directs the activities of three or four squads. A company commander is responsible for several platoons, and so on. At each higher level, the leader is responsible for more people, more materials, and for i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The Functions of Leadership in Organization
• 2 Early Research on Leadership
• 3 The Contingency Model and Its Sequelae
• 4 More Contingency Theories
• 5 Transactional and Exchange Theories
• 6 Transformational Leadership
• 7 Cognitive Approaches
• 8 Influences of Culture on Leadership Processes
• 9 Women in Leadership
• 10 A Function and Process Integration
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index