Leadership effectiveness- a multi-factorial model Dr. M. Roussety MBA, M Led, PHD

“Leadership in this new landscape is not about controlling decision making. We don’t have time anymore to control decision making. It’s about creating the right environment. It’s about enablement, empowerment. It’s about guidelines and boundaries and parameters and setting the people free” (Carleton, 2000) and “Business growth and expansion in different parts of the world will increasingly have to be based on alliances, partnerships, joint ventures and all kinds of relations with organizations located in other political jurisdictions” (P. F. Drucker:- Author).

As both Carleton and Drucker suggest, with globalization comes organizational challenges such as: - ethnocentric competition, workforce diversity, total quality management practices, customer sovereignty and employee empowerment, yet still amongst the many challenges facing organizations big and small, there is no bigger, no more complex than the need to better understand how organizations can effectively lead themselves through this dynamic and complex environment.

According to Levinson’s Psychological Verities, all human beings differentiate themselves into groups and all groups follow a leader, who is replaced as the organization adapts to changes in its environment (Levinson, 1994); and expressed differently by De Vries et al., (1999:113), “the need for leadership is the extent to which an employee wishes the leader to facilitate the paths towards individual, group, and/or organizational goals”.

The group-level phenomenon is based on the “relational model” that suggests that groups specify norms concerning fairness (Tyler and Lind, 1992). Group membership is a powerful aspect of social life because the group offers more than material rewards. Individuals are strongly affected by identification with groups: - even when that identification is based on minimal common circumstances (Brewer and Kramer, 1986).

Given those dynamics, individuals (leaders and followers) who voluntarily or as dictated by circumstances, organize themselves in groups do so in search of rewards; in the form of security, status, self-esteem, power, affiliation, and goal achievement. By virtue of the role, the leader assumes a dual symbiotic responsibility to achieve a personal goal and that of the group of followers within the settings of the organization and its environment.

Based on the above proposition, it follows that the organizational phenomena concerning leadership effectiveness ought to be examined in context of group dynamics (leader-follower interaction), decision-making under uncertainty, and contextual influence. Given its compelling significance to organization behavioural science, it is not surprising that this paradigm has advanced the development of prominent theories such as the Average Leadership Style pioneered between the late 1940s and early 1960s (Schriesheim et al.,1999),

which comprises the Ohio, Michigan and Texas studies (Taylor et al., 1972 and Schriesheim et al., 1995); and Blake and Mouton (1985), where they argued that leaders apply consistent behavior styles to all group members. Considerable literary debate also featured other leading models such as, Vertical Dyadic Leadership where behavior style is tailored to in and out groups (Dansereau et al., 1975), Leader-Member Exchange where behaviour style is modified to suit to individual members (Graen et al., 1982), and Contingency where leadership styles are fixed for given situations (Robbins et al., 2004).

Notwithstanding the intellectual determination of scholars, professionals and researchers to refine knowledge about leadership effectiveness, there seems to be a paucity of effort towards a synthesis of these theories, and more particularly towards contemporising a robust and empirical investigation of the synergetic role that leader characteristics, follower characteristics, and situational factors play in leadership effectiveness.

This seems to hold true even for most recent theories that examine the influence processes between leaders and followers, and those that focus on the interaction between leaders and followers. Moreover, the early approaches to leadership theories directed their foci on the identification of leadership traits and behaviours to differentiate effective leaders from others, whereas; Hersey and Blanchard (1974); Fiedler (1978); Vroom-Jago (1988);

Consequently, I find it somewhat enigmatic that whilst researching this review, I have been unable to identify any literary work that purports to synthesize traits, behaviours, situational factors, as well as leader and follower relations in one singular leadership construct.

This phenomenon is best captured by Daft and Pirola-Merlo (2009:37), “each theoretical perspective has something to offer, but none of them can, on its own, give a complete understanding of leadership” and reinforced by Bernstein et al., (2006:741), “having personality traits does not guarantee good leadership ability, however people can be effective leaders in one situation but ineffective in another (Chemers, 2000). The reason is that effective leadership also depends on the characteristics of the group members, the task at hand, and most important, the interaction between these factors and the leader’s style”.

This companion article is organised in four parts, with each part logically progressing discussions, arguments and hypotheses to a valid synthesis.

Part 1 develops a taxonomic model for leader and follower personality and non-biographical dimensions; for Situational Milieu and Leadership Style and presents 8 primary and 12 Sub-Hypotheses for each respectively, culminating in a guiding hypothesis about Effective Leader-Member Relation (PH:9 ELMR).Part 2 synopsizes the evolution and juxtaposition of prominent leadership theories namely, Trait, Average Leadership Style (ALS), Contingency, and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX); then discusses each of these leadership theories in context of Leader, Follower, and Situational Capital.

Responding to this challenge, in a companion article I address the apparent gap in leadership literature, by presenting a case for the explication of leadership effectiveness by identifying commonalities in prominent leadership theories and then combining this knowledge in one eclectically cohesive construct.

More specifically, it is to be noted that the intelligence sought by this review relies heavily on the identification of relationships between variables, antecedent variables and consequences, relating to leaders, followers, and situations. To facilitate this task, information is principally garnered from published work of prominent authors in leadership theory. This article is exploratory, interpretive, and context-bound. It deals with views, opinions, and perceptions of published authors as well as those of the author.

This companion article is organised in four parts, with each part logically progressing discussions, arguments and hypotheses to a valid synthesis.

Part 1 develops a taxonomic model for leader and follower personality and non-biographical dimensions; for Situational Milieu and Leadership Style and presents 8 primary and 12 Sub-Hypotheses for each respectively, culminating in a guiding hypothesis about Effective Leader-Member Relation (PH:9 ELMR).

Part 2 synopsizes the evolution and juxtaposition of prominent leadership theories namely, Trait, Average Leadership Style (ALS), Contingency, and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX); then discusses each of these leadership theories in context of Leader, Follower, and Situational Capital.

Part 3 analyses commonalities of five prominent contingency theories and examines their theoretical construct in context of their contingency set and metacategories of leadership dimensions, to determine congruence with the ELMR hypothesis.

Part 4 reports the findings of the analysis conducted in Part 3 and provides commentary on the implications of these findings on the ELMR hypothesis.

Part 5 concludes the review with a summary of concepts and views articulated, together with a statement regarding the limitations of this review and my recommendations for future research.

Dr. Maurice Roussety is an Executive Consultant at DST Advisory and Lecturer in Small Business, Franchising and Entrepreneurship at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Maurice holds a PhD from the Griffith University in Intellectual Property and Franchise Goodwill Valuation. He also holds a Master’s degree in Leadership and a Master of Business Administration.

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