Cards (56)

  • Leader/Boss: people who occupy positions in which they are expected to perform the leadership role, but without any assumptions about their actual behavior or success.
  • Follower: a person who acknowledges the focal leader as the primary source of guidance about the work, regardless of how much formal authority the leader has over the person.
  • A descriptive universal theory may describe typical functions performed to some extent by all types of leaders, whereas a prescriptive universal theory may specify functions all leaders must perform to be effective.
  • A descriptive contingency theory may explain how leader behavior varies from one situation to another, whereas a prescriptive contingency theory describes effective behavior in a specific situation.
  • A contingency theory describes some aspect of leadership that applies to some situations but not to others, and these theories can also be either descriptive or prescriptive.
  • Leadership: The process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.
  • Direct Leadership: Direct forms of leadership involve attempts to influence followers when interacting with them or using communication media to send messages to them.
  • Indirect Leadership: One form of indirect leadership by a CEO is called “cascading.” It occurs when the direct influence of the CEO is transmitted down the authority hierarchy of an organization from the CEO to middle managers, to lower-level managers, to regular employees.
  • The influence of a CEO can involve changes in employee attitudes, beliefs, values, or behaviors.
  • Structural forms and various types of programs can be used to increase control, coordination, efficiency, and innovation.
  • A third form of indirect leadership involves the leader's influence over the organization's culture, which is defined as the shared beliefs and values of members.
  • Leaders may attempt either to strengthen existing cultural beliefs and values or to change them.
  • The behavior approach in leadership theory begins in the early 1950s after many researchers became discouraged with the trait approach and began to pay closer attention to what managers do on the job.
  • The leader contributes to the efficiency of role specialization, the organization of activities, the accumulation of resources, and the readiness of the group to deal with change and crises.
  • Knowledge of intra-individual processes and taxonomies of leadership roles, behaviors, and traits provide insights that are helpful for developing better theories of effective leadership.
  • The power-influence approach in leadership theory examines influence processes between leaders and other people.
  • The integrative approach in leadership theory involves more than one type of leadership variable.
  • The trait approach in leadership theory emphasizes attributes of leaders such as personality, motives, values, and skills.
  • The leader enhances problem-solving and decision-making by the group, and helps to resolve disagreements and conflicts constructively.
  • Roles, behaviors, or decision styles are also used for describing and comparing leaders.
  • Enhancing group cohesiveness, member cooperation, member commitment, and member confidence that the group can achieve its objectives is a key aspect of leadership.
  • The situational approach in leadership theory emphasizes the importance of contextual factors that influence leadership processes.
  • Some ways involve direct influence (e.g., communicating a compelling vision or leading by example), and some involve forms of indirect influence, such as changing the organizational structure, reward systems, and management programs.
  • A person promoted rapidly to positions of higher authority, serving a full term in a leadership position, or elected for re-election is considered successful in leadership.
  • Intra-individual theories in leadership theory use psychological theories of personality traits, values, skills, motivation, and cognition to explain the decisions and behavior of an individual leader.
  • Follower attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs also indirectly indicate dissatisfaction and hostility toward the leader.
  • Multi-level theories of effective leadership provide a way to overcome the limitations of single-level theories, but it is very difficult to develop a multi-level theory that is parsimonious and easy to apply.
  • Empowerment theory describes how followers view their ability to influence important events.
  • Prescriptive theories specify what leaders must do to become effective, and they identify any necessary conditions for using a particular type of behavior effectively.
  • Descriptive theories explain leadership processes, describe the typical activities of leaders, and explain why certain behaviors occur situations.
  • Multi-level theories include constructs from more than one level of explanation (Klein, Dansereau, & Hall, 1994; Rousseau, 1985).
  • Adaptation is improved by anticipating consumer needs and desires, assessing the actions and plans of competitors, evaluating likely constraints and threats (e.g., government regulation, input scarcity, hostile actions by enemies), and identifying marketable products and services that the organization has unique capabilities to provide.
  • An even more complex type of multi-level theory may include leader influence on explanatory processes at more than one level and reciprocal causality among some of the variables.
  • The survival and prosperity of an organization depend on adaptation to the environment and the acquisition of necessary resources.
  • The dyadic approach focuses on the relationship between a leader and another individual who is usually a subordinate or another type of follower.
  • The organizational level theories describes leadership as a process that occurs in a larger “open system” in which groups are subsystems (Fleishman et al., 1991; Katz & Kahn, 1978; Mumford, 1986).
  • The leader-focus is strongest in theory and research that identifies traits, skills, or behaviors that contribute to leader effectiveness.
  • Attribution theory describes how followers view a leader’s influence on events and outcomes, and other theories in the same chapter explain how followers can actively influence their work role and relationship with the leader, rather than being passive recipients of leader influence.
  • A universal theory describes some aspect of leadership that applies to all types of situations, and the theory can be either descriptive or prescriptive.
  • Indicators of Leadership Effectiveness
    1. Extent to which the performance of the team or organization is enhanced and the attainment of goals is facilitated.
    2. Follower attitudes and perceptions of the leader
    3. Leader’s contribution to the quality of group processes, as perceived by followers or by outside observers.
    4. Extent to which a person has a successful career as a leader.