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.
2. “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).
3. 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.
4. 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”.
5. 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).
6. 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.
7. 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),
8. 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).
9. 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.
10. 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);
11. 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.
12. 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”.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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).
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. 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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