Leadership and Power in Organizations

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Chapter 13

• Leadership and Power in Organizations

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Objectives

• Define leadership
• Explain the five sources of power and the three
  sources of political power
• Summarize the major approaches and theories of
  leadership
• Compare and contrast the major approaches and
  theories of leadership
• Discuss the barriers to womens advancement in
  the workplace

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What is Leadership?

• Leader
• The person in charge or the boss of other people
• Does not mean that others will listen to him or
  her or do what he or she says
• Leadership involves influencing the attitudes,
  beliefs, behaviors and feelings of other people
• Within an organization, leaders are associated
  with supervisory positions
• Being a supervisor does not guarantee that a
  person will be able to influence others
• Informal leaders arise in work groups and may
  have more influence on the behavior of group
  members than do the actual supervisors
• Individual develops the informal leader role
  through interaction with colleagues

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Sources of Influence and Power (I)

• French and Ravens Bases of Power
• Power is the extent to which one person can
  influence another to do something
• Power bases involve individual and follower, or
  between supervisor and subordinate
• Power arise from the interaction between
  subordinate and supervisor
• Expert power
• Based on the knowledge and expertise that the
  supervisor has
• Subordinate is likely to follow the directives of
  person whom he or she believes has special
  knowledge or expertise about the issue at hand
• Enhance the perceived expert power of an
  individual
• Titles, College degrees, Certifications and
  Distinctions

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Sources of Influence and Power (II)

• Referent power
• The extent to which the subordinate likes and
  identifies with the supervisor
• Influenced by another whom he or she admires or
  likes
• Power can be developed through personal
  relationships with other people
• Legitimate power
• The power inherent in a supervisor's job title
• The legitimate right or authority to be in charge
• This power derives from the subordinates values
  about the rights of supervisors
• Reward power
• The ability of the supervisor to reward
  subordinates with bonus, desirable job
  assignments, promotions or raises

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Sources of Influence and Power (III)

• Coercive power
• The ability of the supervisors to punish
  subordinates with disciplinary actions, fines,
  firing or salary reductions
• Supervisors can give out punishments and rewards
• Coercive power was associated with poor relations
• The major limitation of rewards power
• Subordinates might become accustomed to it
• Comply only when the reward is available
• Reward power were associated with good relations
  between college professors and their students
• Yukls Sources of Political Power

Co-opt the opposition
Gain control of decision processes
Political power
Form coalitions
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Sources of Influence and Power (IV)

• Political action
• The process by which people gain and protect
  their power within the organization
• Control over decision processes
• Involves controlling and influencing important
  decisions in the organization
• The power can be achieved by serving on
  appropriate committees or taking on the right
  tasks
• Forming coalitions
• Person enters into agreement with others to
  support his or her position in return for his or
  her support of the others position
• Legislative bodies when different factions agree
  to support each other in favored positions
• Co-optation
• Involves trying to diffuse another factions
  opposition by allowing its members to participate
  in the decision

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Abuse of Supervisory Power (I)

• Power can provide tools to enhance the
  functioning of organizations
• Used to help individuals have positive feelings
  about work and perform their jobs well
• Ethnic harassment
• The mistreatment of employees based on their
  ethnic or racial background
• More abusive behavior from supervisors
• Others at work report lower job satisfaction
• Greater burnout, psychological strain and
  intention of quitting the job

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Abuse of Supervisory Power (II)

• Sexual harassment
• Is unwanted
• Can adversely affect a persons employment
• Interferes with a persons job performance
• Creates a hostile and intimidating work
  environment
• Constitute sexual harassment
• Unwelcome sexual advances and requests
• Unwanted physical contact or touching
• Use of offensive language
• Repeated requests for a data
• Threats of punishment for noncompliance with
  requests

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Abuse of Supervisory Power (III)

• These behavior only become harassment
• When they are unwanted
• Are reported often enough to create a hostile or
  intimidating work environment
• Classified as the less serious behaviors of data
  requests
• Unwanted advances
• Unwanted physical contact (touching)
• Offensive language

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (I)

• The trait approach
• The behavior approach
• The contingency approach
• The leader-member exchange theory and the
  Charismatic/transformational approaches

• Who will make a good leader?
• What do good leaders do?
• Under a given condition, who will be a good
  leader and what behavior is likely to be
  effective?
• How does the interaction between subordinate and
  supervisor affect the subordinates behavior?

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (II)

• The Trait Approach
• The oldest approach to the study of leadership is
  the trait approach
• Good leadership is a function of the person
• A person who is a good leader in one situation
  will be a good leader in any situation
• These might include measures of various
  abilities, job experience, motivation and
  personality
• Relationships between the personal
  characteristics and performance are interpreted
  as the effects of traits on leader performance
• The intelligence, aggressiveness, decisiveness
  and dominance were associated with leader
  emergence
• Being intelligent and trustworthy were
  universally seen as positive characteristics

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(III)

• The Leader Behavior Approach
• Concerned with what leaders do rather than what
  their personal chrematistics are
• The leadership style is a cluster of related
  behaviors that represent an approach to dealing
  with subordinates
• The style of asking advice and having discussions
  about issues is called Participative
• Making the decision and announce it to the group
• The subordinates are given little input that
  called Autocratic
• The Ohio State Leadership Studies (1945) designed
  to uncover the effects of specific supervisory
  behaviors on subordinates
• Developed a 150-item questionnaire on leader
  behavior
• The employees answered each item about their
  supervisors

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (IV)

• Consideration
• The amount of concern that supervisors show for
  the happiness and welfare of their subordinates
• Friendly and supportive behavior that makes the
  workplace pleasant for subordinates
• Initiating structure
• The extent to which the supervisor defines his or
  her own role
• Makes clear what is expected of subordinates
• Assigning tasks to subordinates and scheduling
  the work
• Leader behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ)
• Completed by subordinates about their supervisor
• The grievance and turnover rates were also
  collected for each supervisors work group
• Grievances can be considered behavioral measures
  of dissatisfaction with conditions of work
• Destroy the efficiency of a work group because
  people are spending time in unproductive ways

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (V)

• The two major difficulties
• LBDQ might not be a good indicator of supervisory
  behavior
• May be telling us as much about subordinates as
  about their supervisors
• Drawing causal conclusions from data collected at
  one time in a cross-sectional research design
• The supervisor behavior can be affected by
  subordinate behavior, particularly job
  performance
• The subordinates are filing many grievances might
  become angry and reduce consideration behavior
• More angry and lead them to file more grievances
• Fiedlers Contingency Theory
• States that leadership is a function of both the
  person and the situation
• Fiedler (1978) refers to as the motivational
  structure of the leader
• Assessed with a self-report instrument
• Called the Least Preferred Coworker (LPC) scale

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (VI)

• The scale actually measures a characteristics of
  the leader
• The LPC asks the leader to think about the person
  with whom he or she has had the most trouble
  working
• The co-worker with whom he or she would least
  like to work
• Consists of 18 bipolar adjective items
• The scales in which a person indicates which of
  two words with opposite meanings best describes
  someone
• Situational control
• Concerns the amount of power
• Influence the leader has over subordinates
• The supervisors actions will predictably lead to
  subordinate behavior
• Leader-member relations
• Extent to which subordinates get along with and
  support their supervisors
• Task structure
• The extent to which subordinate job tasks are
  clearly and specifically defined

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(VII)

• Position power
• Refers to the amount of power and influence the
  supervisors has
• Including the ability to give out rewards and
  punishments
• Good leader-member relations, highly structured
  tasks for subordinates
• High position power will be in a situation of
  high control
• The situation is moderately favorable, relations
  are poor
• Task structure is high and the leader has
  moderate power
• The high LPC person should be more effective than
  the low LPC person
• Low LPC leaders are more concerned with getting
  tasks done than with having good relationships
  with subordinates
• High LPC leaders have the opposite motivations
• More concerned with having good relationships
  with subordinates than with getting the job done

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(VIII)

• Leader Match
• Developed the training program
• Better group performance for the trained
  supervisors
• Leaders changing the situation
• Leadership involves the complex interaction of
  leader characteristics with the leadership
  situation
• Path-Goal Theory
• Subordinate job performance and job satisfaction
  result from the interplay of situational
  characteristics, subordinate characteristics and
  supervisors style
• Based on the expectancy theory
• Supervisors can enhance the motivation and job
  satisfaction of subordinates by providing rewards
  for good job performance

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (IX)

• The 4 supervisory styles are
• Supportive Style
• consideration
• Involves showing concern for the needs and
  welfare of subordinates
• Directive Style
• Initiating structure
• Involves structuring job tasks for subordinates
  and letting them know what is expected
• Participative Style
• Involves seeking input from subordinates and
  allowing them to participant in decision making
• Achievement Style
• Emphasizing achievement and good performance
• Setting challenging task goals
• Emphasizing high performance standarrds

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (X)

• Locus of control
• Extend to which subordinates believes that they
  can control rewards in their lives
• Internal locus of control believes that he or she
  is able to control rewards
• External locus of control believes that rewards
  are controlled by others or by outside forces
• Self-perceived ability
• Extent to which the subordinate believes he or
  she is capable of doing the task well
• Different styles within different situations
• Tasks are boring, dangerous, stressful or tedious
• Supportive style will be the most appropriate
• Anxiety lowered and their self-esteem raised by a
  supportive supervisor
• Tasks are unstructured and subordinates are
  inexperienced
• Directive style will increase subordinates
  effort and job satisfaction

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (XI)

• Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory
• Focuses on the subordinate-supervisor dyad rather
  than on the supervisor and work group
• Supervisor treat individuals subordinates
  differently and over time the relationships
  between supervisors and subordinates will evolve
• The cadre or in-group
• Consists of subordinates who are trusted and
  influential members of the work group
• Members cadre were more satisfied with their
  jobs, better relations with supervisors, were
  less likely to quit than were hired hands
• The hired hands, or out-group
• Subordinates who are supervised with a directive
  style and are given little input into decisions

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(XII)

• Training was intended to help supervisors improve
  their relationships with subordinates
• Good relationships with supervisors were less
  likely to intend to quit
• More likely to be good performance
• Engage in organizational citizenship behavior
• High organizational commitment
• Limitations
• Differential treatment of subordinates within a
  work group can be destructive
• Equity theory describes how employees can react
  negatively to unequal treatment
• Make it clear, LMX theory helped to focus
  attention on the relationship between subordinate
  and supervisor
• Understanding that supervisors do not act the
  same way with all subordinates

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(XIII)

• Transformational Leadership Theory
• Deal with leaders who have considerable and
  unusual influence over their followers, or in
  other words are charismatic leaders
• Link traits to performance and attempts to
  determine how leaders affect their followers
• Specifically on charismatic or transformational
  leaders who are unusual in how their followers
  become devoted to them
• Followers become motivated to make personal
  sacrifices to reach the goals set forth by the
  leader
• They engage in behaviors that make them appear to
  be creative, innovative, powerful and trustworthy
• Transformational leaders can convince followers
• Make extraordinary efforts to achieve worthwhile
  objectives

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(XIV)

• Producing a superior product
• Providing an important service
• Solving a social problem
• Finding a cure for a disease
• Help provide direction for an organization
  through their version
• Help motivate employees to pursue that version
• Tend to be high on job performance
• Organizational citizenship behavior
• Organizational commitment
• Satisfaction with supervision
• Vroom-Yetton Model
• Prescriptive model that indicates the supervisory
  approach that is expected to be most effective in
  a particular situation when making decisions

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership (XV)

• The psychological principles that help inform the
  best decision making practices based on
  characteristics of a particular situation
• The following 5 approaches to making a decision
  that range from the autocratic to democratic
• Independently-Supervisor makes the decision alone
• Sharing the decision from merely soliciting
  information-Supervisor gets information for
  subordinates and makes the decision alone
• Discussing the problem-Supervisor discuss the
  problem with some subordinates and then make the
  decision
• Considering others viewpoints-Supervisors
  discuss the problem with all subordinates in a
  meeting and makes the decision
• Turn over the problem to the group-Supervisors
  presents the problem to all subordinates in a
  meeting and lets them decide

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Approaches to the Understanding of Leadership
(XVI)

• The decision-making situation is defined by 7
  characteristics
• Quality requirement for the result
• Sufficiency of information the supervisor has
• Problem structure
• Necessity for subordinate acceptance of the
  decision
• Subordinate acceptance of the decision if made by
  the supervisor alone
• Subordinates commitment to solving the problem
• Subordinates conflict over solutions
• Provided decision tools based on their model
• Help choose a decision-making approach
• Minimize the time necessary for a decision
• Maximize the likelihood of group acceptance the
  decision
• With a paper-and-pencil materials that can use to
  follow the answers to all 7 questions to the
  recommended decision-making approaches

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The role of expectations The Pygmalion effect (I)

• Leaders expectations about their employees job
  performance can influence that performance
• Pygmalion effect
• A self-fulfilling prophecy in which managers
  expectations about the level of their employees
  job performance can influence that performance
• It was more prevalent among men than women
• The low-scoring trainees in the experimental
  groups improved significantly more than did
  low-scoring trainees in the control group
• The squad leaders higher expectations led them
  to except more and demand more from the trainees

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Problems of leadership (I)

• First-line supervisors
• Supervisors may receive no training at all, and
  they are not selected as carefully as people who
  began their careers at high-level management
  positions
• Supervisors promoted from the ranks face
  conflicting demands and loyalties
• Socialized with co-workers off the job
• Their work group gave them a sense of identity
  and belonging that provided a measure of
  emotional security
• Supervisors are the point of contact between
  management and workers, trying to weigh the
  conflicting needs of both sides
• Self-managing work groups are another threat to
  supervisory power and autonomy

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Problems of leadership (II)

• Managers and executives
• Middle-level managers, despite comfortable
  salaries and fringe benefits, typically express
  considerable discontent
• Middle managers also complain about having
  insufficient authority and resources to carry out
  company policy
• Middle managers often experience considerable
  frustration as they vie for the few top
  management slots in the hierarchy
• Middle-level managers reached a plateau and will
  receive no additional promotions
• Employee participation in decision making is
  another source of stress for middle managers

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Problems of leadership (III)

• Massive layoffs create a motivational crisis
  among middle-level managers
• Mergers and layoffs also mean fewer opportunities
  for promotion and more competition for the
  available positions
• A source of stress more common among high-level
  managers is the intense commitment of time and
  energy to he organization
• Executives can work at home and while traveling,
  rarely escaping the demands of the office
• Positive aspects to life at the top of
  organizational hierarchy
• Top executives report high job satisfaction
• The most upper-level executives would remain on
  the job even if they were financially independent

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Women in Leadership Positions (I)

• Glass ceiling phenomenon
• Symbolizes womens difficulty in getting beyond
  the lower levels of management
• Focused on differences between men and women in
  their career preparation and their attitudes
• Found on gender differences on organizational
  commitment or self-ratings of perceived work
  competence
• The attitudes and stereotypes of those at the top
  levels of organizations who make decisions about
  hiring
• The women executives identified several major
  obstacles to successful management careers for
  women

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Women in Leadership Positions (II)

• The persistence of male stereotypes and
  preconceptions about women
• The exclusion of women from informal networks
  such as after-hours socializing
• The lack of general management or line experience
• An inhospitable corporate culture
• Women were more likely than men to report feeling
  they didnt fit with colleagues
• Harder time adapting to management ranks
• Finding colleagues and supervisors less accepting
  of them
• Merely perceive poorer fit is unclear

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Gender and Leadership Style

• Do men and women in leadership positions differ
  in their supervisory styles?
• Women would be more concerned with the feelings
  and emotional well-being of subordinates
  (consideration)
• Men would be more concerned with getting the job
  done (initiating structure)
• The stereotypes of men being high in structure
  and women being high in consideration
• In an organizational setting, environmental
  constraints and requirements may force male and
  female supervisors to adopt similar styles
• Organizations may select women who have
  leadership styles similar to mens

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Future Issues and Challenges

• Future of leadership in organizations concerns
• The increasing diversity of the workplace
• Becoming increasingly female and multicultural
• Hiring of increasing numbers of minority members
• The globalization of the world economy
• Effective leadership is partially determined by
  culture
• Developed for supervisors to deal with a more
  varied group of subordinates
• Cultures and increased sensitivity to issues that
  might not exist in more homogeneous groups
• The problem of the glass ceiling which exists for
  minorities as well as for women
• Achievement-oriented style that holds employees
  accountable for results

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Chapter 13

• -THE END-