Traits and Skills Theories

First, researchers tried to determine those characteristics, or traits, that make a person an effective leader. Midcentury leadership researchers concentrated on this approach. They tried to identify the traits of effective leaders: physical characteristics such as height, intellectual characteristics such as intelligence and foresight, and personality characteristics such as enthusiasm and persistence. They identified many important characteristics such as these, often demonstrating a relationship between these traits and effective leadership, and leadership characteristics of various sorts have remained an important element of leadership research. No one, however, ever identified a common set of traits for excellent leaders (Stogdill, 1974). Leaders come in a variety of sizes, shapes, talents, and dispositions. The quest for universal traits has been replaced by other approaches.

A newer approach has focused on leadership skills and competencies that can be learned and developed rather than on innate traits of leaders. Katz (1955) proposed three categories of essential leadership skills: technical skills (e.g., knowledge and competencies in a specialized area that allow one to analyze a task and specialized tools and techniques); human skills (e.g., being sensitive to the needs and views of others, the ability to motivate and inspire trust, involving others in decisions); and conceptual skills (e.g., ability to analyze problems and think abstractly, ability to set goals and formulate strategies). More recently, Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, and Fleishman (2000) developed a skills-based model of leadership. It focuses on competencies related to leadership effectiveness that can be developed through experience and training, implying that everyone has the potential to be a good leader. The three competencies are problem-solving skills (ability to solve new and unusual problems, to set goals and develop a plan to execute solutions); social judgment skills (ability to understand the attitudes and perspectives of others, have awareness of others' roles and functions, and communicate effectively and persuade others), and knowledge (a schematic understanding of facts and values pertaining to work). To the extent that leaders acquire these competencies, they will make better decisions and improve the performance of their followers. A subsequent study by Mumford, Campion, and Morgeson (2007) revealed that skills akin to Katz's technical and human skills and the social judgment skills of Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, and Fleishman (2000) are more critical to the success of lower-level leaders, but senior-level leaders need all of these skills to be effective.

The Ohio State Leadership Studies

The social sciences developed rapidly during the middle of the twentieth century. More and more studies used new techniques such as questionnaires and computer analysis, and there was an increasing emphasis on systematic observations of human behavior. Drawing on samples from the military, schools, and other organizations, researchers at Ohio State University developed questionnaires that asked people to report on the behaviors of their superiors. After repeated analyses of the questionnaire results, they found that observations about leaders fell into two dimensions: consideration and initiating structure. Consideration refers to a leader's concern for his or her relationships with subordinates. Questionnaire items pertaining to consideration ask whether the leader is friendly and approachable; listens to subordinates' ideas and makes use of them; cares about the morale of the group; and otherwise deals with subordinates in an open, communicative, and concerned fashion. Initiating structure refers to a leader's emphasis on setting standards, assigning roles, and pressing for productivity and performance. The two dimensions tend to be related to each other, but only to a limited extent. These two leadership behaviors would become central issues, under various names, in much of the subsequent work on leadership. For instance, researchers at the University of Michigan identified two leadership behaviors, task-oriented and relations-oriented, that closely resemble initiating structure and consideration, respectively.

This research played a pivotal role in moving the field into empirical research on leadership. It drove the trait approach into disrepute by showing that effective leaders vary on these dimensions and do not display a uniform set of traits. It also set these two dimensions in place in the literature as two key aspects of leader behavior. Bass (1990) reviewed a number of empirical studies on the these two leadership behaviors and found that the most consistent findings were that consideration or relations-oriented behavior is positively related to job satisfaction and initiating structure or task-oriented behavior is positively related to performance and goal achievement. Several decades after the initial Ohio State and Michigan leadership studies, Scandinavian researchers identified a third leadership behavior, change-oriented leadership, representing actions that foster creativity and innovation, risk taking, and adaptability and flexibility (Ekvall and Arvonen, 1991; Lindell and Rosenqvist, 1992a, 1992b). Their empirical analyses revealed that change-oriented leadership was positively related to leadership effectiveness. These findings notwithstanding, leadership researchers have moved off in search of more complete models of leadership in organizations, particularly those that consider different situations in which certain leadership behaviors and styles are more appropriate or effective than others.

The Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid

The Ohio State leadership studies had a significant impact on Blake and Mouton's managerial grid approach (1984) to improving management practices. Blake and Mouton characterized organizations according to two dimensions with clear roots in the Ohio State studies: concern for people and concern for production. Organizations low on the former and high on the latter have authority-obedience management. Those high on concern for people and low on concern for production have country club management. Those low on both have impoverished management. This approach sought to move organizations toward high levels of both factors – to team management – through open communication, participative problem solving and goal setting, confrontation of differences, and teamwork. This framework supported the popular organization development consulting method of Blake and Mouton, which they applied in a broad range of government, business, and third sector organizations.

Fiedler's Contingency Theory of Leadership

Researchers still sought more complete theories, especially theories that would better address the numerous situations that leaders face. Fiedler's contingency theory (1967) received a lot of attention because at the time it offered one of the best frameworks for examining the relationship between leadership style and organizational setting and how that relationship affects a leader's effectiveness. Fiedler used the least preferred coworker (LPC) scale to distinguish between types of leadership styles. The LPC scale asked a leader to think of the person with whom that leader could work least well and then to rate that person on about twenty numerical scales of personal characteristics, such as pleasant or unpleasant, tense or relaxed, boring or interesting, and nasty or nice. After repeated studies, Fiedler and his associates felt that the responses indicated two basic types of leaders: High-LPC leaders gave relatively favorable ratings to this least preferred associate, and low-LPC leaders rated the associate much more unfavorably. The responses of high-LPC leaders showed that they had more favorable dispositions toward coworkers and thus were relationship-oriented. The low-LPC leaders were task-oriented; they concentrated on task accomplishment over relationships with coworkers, and found less desirable coworkers more irritating because they hindered successful work.

Fiedler's theory holds that either type of leadership style can be effective, depending on whether it properly matches the contingencies facing the leader. According to the theory, the key contingencies, in order of their importance in determining effective leadership, are leader-member relations, marked by the degree of friendliness, trust, initiative, and cooperativeness of the leader and the subordinates; task structure, shaped by the clarity and specificity of what must be done; and position power of the leader, determined by the amount of formal power the leader has.

Leadership situations vary on each of these dimensions, from good to bad. Obviously, a leader enjoys the most favorable setting when all three are good and the least favorable when all three are bad. Moderately favorable settings have a mixture of good and bad conditions, such as good leader-member relations but an unstructured task setting and weak position power. Fiedler contended that low-LPC (task-oriented) leaders perform most effectively in the very favorable or very unfavorable settings, whereas high-LPC (relationship-oriented) leaders do best in the intermediate settings.

Fiedler's rationale for this conclusion evades easy explanation, but the logic appears to go like this: low-LPC leaders do well in the best situations because everything is in place and the subordinates simply need to be given direction (and they accept the leader as authorized to give such direction). For example, the leader of an airplane crew who has the benefits of clear power, a strong task structure, and good relations with subordinates does best if he or she concentrates on giving orders to accomplish the task. The low-LPC type also does well in very bad situations that have so much potential disorder and disaffection that worrying about establishing good personal relations simply wastes time. In such settings, the leader might as well go ahead and press for structure, order, and output. High-LPC leaders do best in the intermediate situations because an emphasis on good relations can overcome the one or two bad dimensions and take advantage of other favorable aspects of the setting. For example, a weakly empowered chair of a newly formed, poorly structured interdepartmental committee who has good relations with the committee members can take advantage of those good relations, encouraging participation and opinion sharing, to overcome the committee's other problems.

Fiedler argued that his theory shows that rather than trying to train leaders to fit a particular setting, organizations must alter the setting to fit the leader. He and his colleagues developed a leader match procedure, in which leaders use questionnaires to assess their own style and their leadership situation and then consider ways of changing the situation to make it better fit their style.

While studies provide some support for the theory (Peters, Hartke, and Pohlmann, 1985), critics questioned the adequacy of Fiedler's evidence and the methods he used. Clearly, the theory includes a very limited picture of the possible situational factors and variations in leadership styles. Still, it raises key issues about leadership processes and has advanced the effort to develop more complete theories.

The Path-Goal Theory of Leadership

The path-goal theory of leadership draws on expectancy theory of motivation described in Chapter Nine. Expectancy theory treats motivation as arising from expectations about the results of actions and the value of those results. Similarly, path-goal theory holds that effective leaders increase motivation and satisfaction among subordinates when they help them pursue important goals – that is, when they help them see the goals, the paths to them, and how to follow those paths effectively. Leaders must do this by showing subordinates the value of outcomes over which the leader has some control by finding ways to increase the value to subordinates of those outcomes, by using appropriate coaching and direction to clarify the paths to those outcomes, and by removing barriers to those paths and frustrations that arise along the way.

The theory also considers a variety of leadership styles, characteristics of subordinates, and situational factors that affect the proper approach to a leader's path-goal work (Filley, House, and Kerr, 1976; House, 1971; House and Mitchell, 1974). House and Mitchell considered four leadership styles: directive, when the leader gives specific directions and expectations; supportive, marked by encouraging, sympathetic relations with subordinates; achievement-oriented, when the leader sets high goals and high expectations for subordinates' performance and responsibility; and participative, when the leader encourages subordinates to express opinions and suggestions.

Which style is best depends on various situational factors, such as whether the task is structured and provides clear goals, whether subordinates have well-developed skills and a sense of personal control over their environment (locus of control), how much formal authority the leader has, and whether the work group has strong norms and social relationships. When factors such as these provide weak path-goal indications and incentives, the proper leadership style can enhance them. The leader must avoid behaviors that impose redundancies and aggravations, however.

Researchers have predicted and tested relationships such as these:

• Directive leadership enhances satisfaction and expectancies if the task is ambiguous, but hurts them if the task is well structured and clear.
• Clear tasks already provide clear paths to goals, and subordinates may see more directions from a leader as redundant and irritating.
• Supportive leadership enhances satisfaction when tasks are frustrating and stressful, but can be inappropriate when the task, the work group, and the organization provide plenty of encouragement. In such situations the leader need only clarify directions as needed and set high standards.
• Achievement-oriented leadership increases performance on ambiguous tasks, either because those conditions allow (or require) ambitious goals more often than simple tasks do, or because achievement-oriented subordinates tend to select such tasks.
• Participative leadership works best for ambiguous tasks in which subordinates feel that their self-esteem is at stake, because participation allows them to influence decisions and work out solutions to the ambiguity. For clear tasks, however, participative leadership is effective only if subordinates value self-control and independence.

As these examples show, the theory weaves together leadership styles and situational factors to make sufficiently subtle predictions to capture some of the complex variations in real leadership settings. However, a lot of research based on the theory produced mixed results and much debate concerning its validity (Pinder, 2008; Yukl, 2001). House (1996) offers an elaborate reformulation of the theory, the adequacy of which remains to be established in research. Whether validated or not, the theory offers a number of interesting and useful suggestions for leaders to consider, about how to adapt leadership approaches to particular situations.

The Vroom-Yetton Normative Model

Vroom and Yetton (1973; see also Vroom and Jago, 1974) proposed an elaborate framework for leaders to use in deciding how and how much to involve subordinates or subordinate groups in decisions. The framework takes the form of a decision tree that guides the leader through a series of questions about how important the quality of the decision will be, whether the leader has the necessary information to make a high-quality decision, whether the problem is well structured, whether acceptance of the decision by subordinates is important, and whether conflict among them is likely. The decision-making process guides the leader in selecting from various ways of handling the decision, such as delegating it or making it after consulting subordinates.

Life-Cycle Theory

Hersey and Blanchard (1982) developed another form of contingency theory. Their life-cycle theory suggests that leadership styles must fit the level of maturity of the group being led. Mature groups have a higher capacity for accepting responsibility because they are well educated, experienced, and capable at accomplishing group tasks, and they have well-developed relationships with one another and with the leader. With groups that are very low on these dimensions, however, leaders must engage in telling, emphasizing task directions more than developing relationships with the group, to move the group toward better task capabilities. As the group moves higher on some dimensions of maturity but remains at a low level of maturity overall, the leader must do more selling, or heavy emphasizing of both tasks and relationships. As the group moves to moderately high maturity, participating becomes the most effective style. The leader relaxes the emphasis on task direction but still attends to relationships. Finally, for a very mature group, delegating becomes the effective approach. The leader deemphasizes his or her role in directing tasks and maintaining relationships and shifts responsibility to group members.

Loosely defined concepts plague the theory. Moreover, empirical support for the theory has been limited (Yukl, 2010). Nevertheless, it makes important points. Leaders often face the challenge of assessing just how much delegation the group can accept (how much it needs someone to take charge and set directions), and determining how to move the group toward a greater capacity for handling tasks and relationships independently.

Attribution Models

Social psychologists have developed a body of theory about how people make attributions about or attribute characteristics to one another. Some leadership researchers have applied this perspective to leadership and produced useful insights. They look at how leaders draw conclusions about how and why their subordinates are behaving and performing as they are and how subordinates form impressions about leaders. As leaders decide how to respond, they interpret the apparent causes of subordinate behavior and performance. They take into account the uniqueness of the particular task to the performance, the consistency of the behaviors, and how the behaviors compare to those of other subordinates. Some of the research shows that when a subordinate performs poorly, leaders tend to attribute the problem to the subordinate if he or she has a bad record. If the person has a good record of past performance, however, leaders often conclude that the problem results from the situation surrounding the person and is not his or her fault. For their part, subordinates often attribute the lion's share of credit or blame for the group's performance and characteristics to the group's leader. If the group has performed well in the past, they tend more readily to give the leader credit for current successes, even rating him or her higher on certain leader behaviors and interpreting these as causes.

Attribution theories obviously offer a partial approach that does not cover the full topic of leadership, but they clearly point to important processes for leaders to keep in mind. Leaders always face the challenge of managing others' impressions of them and of trying to form valid impressions of their colleagues and subordinates. These attribution processes pertain especially to problems in public management, in which political appointees come in at the top of agencies and must establish relations with career civil servants. Frequently the political appointees anticipate resistance and poor performance from the careerists, and the careerists anticipate amateurishness from the political appointee. When problems come up, the two types tend to interpret them according to their preconceptions about each other, aggravating the problem of developing effective working relationships. The careerists and appointees often come to respect each other, but attribution processes often slow this process (Golden, 2000; Heclo, 1978; Ingraham, 1988; Light, 1987).

Leader–Member Exchange Theory

The leader–member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership concentrates on the dyadic relationships between a leader and individual subordinates, and on the development of low-exchange and high-exchange relationships (Dansereau, Graen, and Haga, 1975). Low-exchange relationships involve little mutual influence between the leader and subordinate, and the subordinate generally follows formal role requirements and receives standard benefits such as salary. According to the theory, leaders tend to establish high-exchange relationships with a small set of trusted subordinates, with whom they engage in mutually influential relations. These subordinates usually receive benefits in the form of more interesting assignments and participation in important decisions, but they incur more obligations, such as meeting the leader's expectations of harder work, more loyalty, and more responsibility than is expected of those not included in the group. The leader, of course, incurs corresponding forms of obligation and benefit in these high-exchange relationships. Scholars developing this theory have devoted attention to measuring the existence of such relationships with questionnaires, analyzing the determinants of such relationships, and theorizing about how the relationships develop and mature over time. LMX theory has received more recent attention than a number of the other theories described previously and later in this chapter, sparking debate and criticism (Schriesheim, Castro, and Cogliser, 1999; Yukl, 2010). Studies indicate that high-exchange relationships are positively related to performance ratings of leaders, satisfaction with supervision, overall subordinate satisfaction, and role clarity and that they are negatively related to role conflict and turnover intention (Gerstner and Day, 1997). In addition, high-exchange relationships seem to encourage employees to go beyond the requirements of their formal role to assist their leaders and contribute to organizational efforts and success (Ilies, Nahrgang, and Morgeson, 2007). However, researchers have used different definitions and measures, leaving a lot of unresolved questions about the definition and nature of the exchange relations – that is, about how the relations develop and relate to group and individual performance. As with the other theories, LMX theory adds interesting suggestions about matters for leaders to consider in the leadership of individuals and groups.

Operant Conditioning and Social Learning Theory Models

The operant conditioning and behavior modification perspectives described in Chapter Nine have found their way into the search for leadership theories. Some early behavior modification approaches emphasized reinforcement of outcomes over concern with internal mental states. Proponents argued that these approaches offered significant improvements for leadership techniques, for several reasons. They stressed observations of behavior rather than dubious inferences about what happens in a person's head. For example, they said that managers should look at behaviors and performance outcomes rather than at whether a person has a “good attitude.” They called for close attention to the consequences of behavior, saying that leaders must attend to the behaviors they reinforce or extinguish by associating consequences with those behaviors. They emphasized positive reinforcement as the most effective approach.

Later approaches began to take into account developments in social learning theory. Albert Bandura (1978, 1997) and other psychologists demonstrated that operant conditioning models needed to expand to include forms of learning and behavioral change that are not tightly tied to some reinforcement. People learn by watching others, through modeling and vicarious learning. They use mental symbols, rehearsal, and memorization techniques to develop their behaviors. Taking these insights into account, social learning theory models of leadership have added analysis of internal mental states and social learning to their assessments of leadership (Kreitner and Luthans, 1987). This has led to additional suggestions about leadership practices. Because internal mental states and social learning (in addition to feedback and after-the-fact reinforcement) also affect behavior, leaders can use feed-forward techniques to influence behavior. They can anticipate problems and actively avoid them by clarifying goals. They can enhance employees' acceptance of goals by having them participate in their development, and through social cues (by acting as a good role model). They can also emphasize the development of self-efficacy and self-management, both for themselves and for their subordinates. This involves managing one's own environment by recognizing how environmental factors influence one's behavior, and through personal goal setting, rehearsal, self-instruction, and self-rewards (see, e.g., Sims and Lorenzi, 1992).

Cognitive Resource Utilization Theory

Researchers continue to work on additional theories. Among recent ones, Fiedler's cognitive resource utilization theory has received the most validation from supporting studies (Fiedler and Garcia, 1987). It extends the Fiedler contingency theory, specifying when directive (low-LPC) behaviors affect group performance, but also drawing in the effects of the leader's intelligence, competence, and stress level. Fiedler and Garcia reported the unexpected finding that considerate (high-LPC) leader behavior has little effect on group performance. If the group supports such a leader and the task requires cognitive abilities, then the cognitive abilities of the group determine its performance. If the group does not support the leader, then external factors, such as task difficulty, determine performance.

For directive leaders with much control over the situation, performance depends on whether the leader is free of stress, whether the task requires cognitive abilities, and whether the group supports the leader. If these conditions hold, the leader's intelligence strongly predicts performance. If the leader is under stress, however, the leader's experience becomes the best predictor of performance, because stress prevents the effective use of intelligence and brings experience more strongly into play. Also, if the task does not require cognitive skill or the group does not support the leader, then the leader's intelligence has little or no effect on performance. As the authors state, their theory and research suggest the “not surprising conclusion that directive leaders who are stupid give stupid directions, and if the group follows these directions, the consequences will be bad” (Fiedler and Garcia, 1987, p. 199). Directive leader behaviors result in good performance only if coupled with high leader intelligence and a supportive, stress-free setting. The theory offers useful new insights into such leadership process variables as stress, which leaders can strive to manage (House and Singh, 1987).

Scholars in organizational behavior and organizational psychology have developed other, less-prominent theories that this review does not cover (see Yukl, 2001). Yet arguably the most striking departure in leadership research in recent decades addresses transformational and charismatic leadership, and that body of research and theory needs attention. Before covering this approach, however, it is useful to review a body of research on managerial roles and behaviors to which the transformational leadership research reacts, and then to cover transformational and charismatic leadership, which have important linkages to the discussion of organizational culture that follows.

Shared Leadership

Throughout most of its history, the study of leadership has focused on the top-down influence of a single leader on his or her subordinates. More recently, however, various scholars have proposed a new conceptualization of leadership as a role shared broadly among senior leaders, middle managers, team managers, supervisors, and even low-level employees (Ensley, Pearson, and Pearce, 2003; Gronn, 2002; O'Toole, Galbraith, and Lawler, 2002; Pearce and Conger, 2003; Pearce and Sims, 2000, 2002). According to Fletcher and Kaufer (2003), shared leadership is a social process that is dynamic and multidirectional and involves a series of shared practices undertaken by people at all levels of the hierarchy. In a similar vein, Pearce (2004) defines shared leadership as a simultaneous and ongoing process of mutual influence within a group in which all members are fully engaged in the leadership role, some as official leaders and others as unofficial ones. He notes that shared leadership is especially appropriate when workers are highly interdependent, when the task requires a significant amount of creativity, and when the task is highly complex. A meta-analysis by Wang, Waldman, and Zhang (2013) that examined the findings of many studies of shared leadership in teams found that shared leadership was positively related to team effectiveness. Shared leadership also improved work-related attitudes like job satisfaction and commitment and team processes like cooperation. Importantly, research suggests that shared leadership and vertical or top-down leadership are complementary. Ensley et al. (2006) and Pearce and Sims (2002) compared vertical with shared leadership in top-management teams and found both approaches to be effective, although the effect of shared leadership outweighed that of vertical leadership.

Servant Leadership

The concept of servant leadership has been gaining in popularity among leadership researchers. It turns the idea of leadership on its head, stressing that the primary role of leaders is to understand and serve the needs and aspirations of followers, help them achieve their objectives, and promote their well-being. Since Greenleaf (1977) introduced the concept in the 1970s, a variety of definitions of servant leadership have emerged, making it difficult to arrive at any clear consensus on its meaning (Spears, 1995; Laub, 1999; Russell and Stone, 2002; and Patterson, 2003). Van Dierendonck (2010) notes, however, that most definitions appear to share six characteristics of servant leaders. First, servant leaders instill confidence in followers and empower them with resources and authority to achieve their goals. Second, servant leaders exhibit humility by acknowledging their own limitations, recognizing the capabilities and contributions of others, and admitting that to succeed they rely on the efforts of others. Third, they demonstrate integrity and are true to their values, interests, and perspectives. Fourth, servant leaders possess the ability to empathize, accept others as they are, and create an atmosphere of trust. Fifth, they provide direction and hold followers accountable for success while giving them latitude. Finally, servant leaders eschew control and advancement of their self-interest in favor of stewardship and achievement of collective aims, in part by setting examples of how to act in the common interest. Although research on servant leadership is in its early stages, findings about its consequences are promising. Studies show that servant leaders generate interpersonal trust (Joseph and Winston, 2005), increase job satisfaction (Chan and Mak, 2014), and improve team and organizational performance (Irving and Longbotham, 2007; Peterson, Galvin, and Lange, 2012; Chiniara and Bentein, 2016).

Authentic Leadership

Like servant leadership, which also emphasizes integrity and being true to oneself, authentic leadership has emerged within the last two decades as a prominent approach to leadership. Authentic leadership is a complex, multidimensional concept and definitions of it abound. One prominent definition was offered by Avolio, Luthans, and Walumbwa (2004), who characterize authentic leaders as having a strong moral character; possessing the cognitive capabilities of confidence, optimism, hope, and resilience; being attentive to their environment; and having deep awareness of their values and capabilities and those of others with whom they work. In a similar vein, Shamir and Eilam (2005) define authentic leaders as true to themselves even in the face of pressure to conform; informed by their uniquely personal point of view; and motivated by their values and personal convictions rather than personal gain or status. Ladkin and Taylor (2010) reviewed various definitions of authentic leadership and found that many included the idea that authentic leaders have a strong sense of who they truly are; that their thinking and behavior is guided by and consistent with their self-awareness; that they strive to be moral; and that they are perceived as charismatic. Authentic leaders motivate followers and increase their commitment by appearing confident and credible; creating an appealing vision and modeling appropriate behaviors; and appealing to their sense of morality, honesty, and integrity. A modest but growing body of research on authentic leadership points to the advantages of this leadership approach. Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, and Dickens (2011), who undertook a broad review of the literature, found evidence of authentic leadership being positively related to employee attitudes like satisfaction, commitment, engagement, and well-being; interpersonal trust in the workplace; and organizational citizenship behavior and performance.

Variations Among Cultures

Analysts also emphasize variations among cultures. One such distinction points out that organizational cultures can vary from strong to weak. In organizations with strong cultures, the members share and strongly adhere to the organization's basic values and assumptions. In weak cultures, members feel little consensus and commitment. DiIulio (1994) described how some employees of the US Bureau of Prisons feel a very strong commitment to the mission and values of the bureau, to the point that some retirees will rush to the scene of a crisis in the prison system to volunteer their services.

There may be multiple cultures and subcultures within an organization (Trice and Beyer, 1993, chapters 5 and 6). Subcultures can form around occupational specializations, subunits or locations, hierarchical levels, labor unions, and countercultural groups such as rebellious units. Public agencies often have a single dominant occupational or professional specialization (Mosher, [1968] 1982; Warwick, 1975). Strong differences between cultures or subcultures obviously complicate the challenge of forging consensus on cultural changes and priorities.

Another source of variation is the role of external societal cultures and their influences on an organization. During the 1980s, e.g., interest in the successes of Japanese management led to analyses of their more consensual decision-making processes, their group-oriented norms, and other characteristics of Japanese corporations that reflect their distinctive external societal culture (Ouchi, 1981).

Assessing the Culture

As suggested earlier, the task of developing an understanding of an organization's culture imposes a major challenge on managers and researchers alike. The concepts and dimensions listed in Table 11.2 can serve as focal points for such an assessment. Researchers use elaborate procedures for measuring and assessing culture. Table 11.3 suggests references and sources for this undertaking.

Khademian (2002, pp. 42–47) proposes a cultural roots framework for analysis of public organizations. The cultural roots are three basic elements of every public agency or program: the public task to be done, the resources available to do it, and the environment in which the agency or program has to operate. These three elements become integrated in ways that produce commitments or rules about how the job gets done. To influence the organization's culture, Khademian argues, public managers must concentrate on influencing the ways in which these basic elements or roots are integrated, using strategies described later.

The Communication of Culture

Various forms that transmit an organization's culture serve as sense-making mechanisms for people in the organization as they interpret what goes on around them (Trice and Beyer, 1993, p. 80). The forms transmit information about the organization's basic values and assumptions. In analyzing their organization's culture, leaders and teams must determine the current roles of these forms and the ways they need to be transformed.

Symbols. Physical objects, settings, and certain roles within an organization convey information about its values and basic assumptions. The uniforms in the example about Rickover are one example. Goodsell (1977) studied 122 government agencies and found various physical conditions that symbolized either authority or service to clients. For example, flags, official seals, and physical distance between employees and clients symbolized authority. Symbols of a client service orientation included comfortable furniture and descriptions of services available.

Employees use symbols, too. In a large service center of the Social Security Administration, members of a problem-ridden subunit held a funeral for the subunit, complete with black balloons, a small black coffin, and the singing of hymns. Later, when the director had effectively resolved their concerns, the members gave him the coffin with the balloons deflated inside it, as a symbol that the problems were over.

Physical settings can have potent symbolic effects. Zalesny and Farace (1987), in a study of a public agency in a Midwestern state, found that a change to a more open office design – with no interior walls or partitions – had significant psychological effects on employees. Lower-level employees saw the change as promoting more democratic values. Managers felt they had lost status.

Language. Slang, songs, slogans, jargon, and jokes can all carry the messages of a culture. Maynard-Moody, Stull, and Mitchell (1986) described the transformation of the culture of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. One way that cultural changes were instituted was through derogatory references to “the old way of doing things” that debunked the assumptions and values of the former culture.

Narratives. The people in an organization often repeat stories, legends, sagas, and myths that convey information about the organization's history and practices. Bennis and Nanus (1985) reported that in a large computer company, a manager lost a lot of money on an aggressive project. When he offered his resignation, his superior asked, “How can we fire you when we have just spent ten million dollars educating you?” Repeated around the organization, such a story can send a powerful message about the organization's support of reasonable risk taking and aggressiveness.

Practices and Events. Repeated practices and special events, including recurrent or memorable one-time incidents, can transmit important assumptions and values. These events may include rites and ceremonies such as graduation ceremonies, induction and initiation ceremonies, annual meetings, annual banquets or holiday parties, and homecomings. Rites promote changes and goals such as passage, renewal, elevation or degradation of individuals, conflict reduction, and integration of the group. Leaders' actions at times of crisis, memorable and widely noted speeches, and outbursts can all have such influences. Organizations have taken particular steps to support employees or customers during times of crisis or hardship, leading to legends and stories that symbolize and communicate organizational values.

Generalizations About the Distinctive Context of Public Service

Although virtually everyone accepts the premise that all executives and managers face very similar tasks and challenges, a strong and growing body of evidence suggests that public managers operate within contexts that require rather distinctive skills and knowledge. For years, political scientists writing about public bureaucracies argued that the political processes and government institutions in which managers in government settings work make their jobs very different from those of business executives. Those writers did not, however, do as much empirical research on leadership as the organizational behavior and management researchers did. Clear evidence of differences remained rather scarce, and many management scholars noted the evidence of similarities among all managerial roles and rejected such notions as crude stereotypes.

More recently, however, greater attention to the topic of public management has produced additional evidence concerning its distinctive nature. Some of this evidence comes from executives who have served in both business and government and have written about the differences they have seen between the two roles (Allison, 1983; Blumenthal, 1983; Chase and Reveal, 1983; Hunt, 1999; IBM Endowment for the Business of Government, 2002; Rumsfeld, 1983). Although their experiences and opinions have been diverse, they have agreed that the constraints, controls, and political and administrative processes in public organizations weighed heavily on their managerial behaviors. Though these elements of the context of leadership in the public sector have been discussed in earlier chapters, it may be useful here to review a number of them:

• Jurisdiction-wide rules for personnel, purchasing, budgeting, and other administrative functions, usually with an oversight agency administering them, which limit executive authority
• Legislative and interest-group alliances with subgroups and individuals within the organization, which dilute executives' authority over those groups or individuals
• Control by legislatures, chief executives, and oversight agencies over resource and policy decisions, and strong demands for accountability on the part of the agency head for all matters pertaining to the agency
• The influence of the press and the imperative that executives concern themselves with media coverage
• The short tenure of many top executives, which limits their time to accomplish goals and weakens their influence over careerists
• The absence of clear and accepted performance measures for their organizations and the activities within them, and the need to take a particularly broad range of interests and issues into account in decision making

Federal executives report from a very special perspective, of course. There are more than a dozen such reports (Hunt, 1999; IBM Endowment for the Business of Government, 2002; Perry and Kraemer, 1983; Shalala, 1998). Yet more structured academic research paints a similar picture. Various studies of public managers show a general tendency for their roles to reflect the context of political interventions and administrative constraints.

Much of this evidence comes not from studies of leadership practices but from analyses of managerial roles. In his seminal study, Mintzberg (1972) found that the work of all the managers fell into his now well-known role categories. Yet the public manager in the sample (a school administrator) and the quasi-public manager (a hospital administrator) spent more time in contacts and formal meetings with external interest groups and governing boards and received more external status requests than did the private managers. Later, Kurke and Aldrich (1983) replicated the study, including its findings about public management; they pointed to public-versus-private comparisons as an important direction for future research on managerial roles. Lau, Pavett, and Newman (1980), also using a technique based on Mintzberg's, found the roles of civilian managers in the US Navy comparable to those of private manufacturing and service firm managers. Yet they also added the role of technical expert to the role categories for the navy managers and noted that these managers spend more time in crisis management and “fire drills” than private managers. Ammons and Newell (1989), conversely, conducted a survey of mayors and city managers using Mintzberg's categories and found somewhat different results. Comparing the sample of mayors and city managers to private sector samples from previous studies, Ammons and Newell found that these city officials spent no more time in formally scheduled meetings than did the private sector managers. This contradicts the findings of Mintzberg and of Kurke and Aldrich. Yet a closer look shows that the mayors and city managers did spend more time making phone calls and conducting tours than did the private sector managers. Ammons and Newell noted that they could not really say what the phone calls involved, and that they may well represent contacts with external groups and political actors.

A study by Porter and Van Maanen (1983) supported this interpretation. They compared city government administrators to industrial managers and found that the city administrators felt less control over how they allocated their own time, felt more pressed for time, and regarded demands from people outside the organization as a much stronger influence on how they managed their time. At the level of state government, Weinberg (1977) reported on a case study of the management of New Jersey state agencies by the governor, concluding that “crisis management” plays a central role in shaping public executives' decisions and priorities.

In an observational study of six bureau chiefs of large federal bureaus, Herbert Kaufman (1979) found that they spent much of their time in classic, generic management functions such as motivating employees, communicating, and decision making. The political environment figured crucially in their roles, however. Relations with Congress outweighed relations with the higher executives of their departments. Clearly, they operated within a web of institutional constraints on organizational structure, personnel administration, and other matters. The study of legislators and administrators in six countries by Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman (1981), described in Chapter Five, supports this depiction of congressional influence as stronger than that of agency heads.

Boyatzis (1982) conducted a study of managerial competencies that compared managers in four federal agencies and twelve large firms. He found that private managers were higher on “goal and action” competencies; he attributed this to clearer performance measures, such as profits, in the private sector (see Hooijberg and Choi, 2001, for a similar finding). The private managers also scored higher on competencies in “conceptualization” and “use of oral presentations.” Boyatzis suggested that more strategic decision making in the private firms and more openness and standard procedures in the public sector account for this. Interestingly, Boyatzis's findings correspond to those of earlier studies. Like Guyot (1960), he found that public managers show higher levels of need for achievement and power. Yet their lower scores on goal and action competencies reflected less ability to fulfill such needs. Boyatzis's interpretation agreed with that of Buchanan (1975). They both regarded their findings as evidence that fairly ambitious and idealistic people come to managerial work in government but appear to experience constraints within complex government agencies and policymaking processes.

Chase and Reveal (1983) discussed the challenges of public management on the basis of Chase's extensive experience in government, especially in large urban agencies. Their depiction of the key challenges in managing a public agency concentrated on those challenges posed by the external political and institutional environment: dealing with elected chief executives who have shorter-term, more election-oriented priorities competing for a place on their agenda; coping with overhead agencies such as civil service commissions, budget bureaus, and general service agencies (for travel, purchasing, space allocation); dealing with legislators (including city councils); and managing relations with special-interest groups and the media.

Although these studies differ in their findings and types of managers studied and in other important ways, they confirm the general observation that public managers carry out their work under conditions marked by constraints and interventions from the political and administrative environment. The form of influence or constraint may vary between mayors, public school superintendents, governors, and middle managers in federal agencies, but it shows up consistently in one form or another. Formal meetings with controlling groups; fire drills; crisis management; phone calls; external demands on time and priorities; and the power of legislators, media, and interest groups – all are indications of the exposure of the public sector manager to the political process and to the administrative structures of government.

Surveys of Leadership Practices

A number of studies by government agencies and surveys of government employees that included their ratings of their supervisors have provided mixed evidence about the quality of leadership in government organizations (National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life, 1978; US Merit Systems Protection Board, 1987; US Office of Personnel Management, 1979, 2000, 2003). These surveys and studies tend to find that, in general, public sector employees and managers express favorable impressions of the leadership practices in their agencies. Yet the evidence also indicates some public sector problems and a degree of private sector superiority in developing leaders, participativeness of leaders, and some other leadership practices and conditions. For example, the survey reports sometimes compare government employees' responses to comparable responses in surveys of private employees, and a couple of them have found that about 10 to 15% more of the private employees give favorable ratings of the supervisors and leadership in their organizations (National Center for Productivity and Quality of Working Life, 1978; US Office of Personnel Management, 2003). These results coincide generally with some of the concerns about constraints on leadership in government expressed by the authors cited earlier. Yet they also place those concerns in perspective by showing the inaccuracy of overstatements of the problem. Although governments probably do face constraints in encouraging and developing excellent leadership practices, many excellent leaders and managers serve in government.

Attention to Management and Leadership

Although many observers claim that public managers pay insufficient attention to leading and managing their organizations, the evidence clearly shows otherwise, at least in many specific cases. Critics say that public managers show too little attention to long-range objectives and internal development of their organization and human resources. But critics of business management, especially in recent years, complain that similar problems plague industry in the United States and that firms place too much emphasis on short-term profit. Critics also accuse business leaders of concentrating on achieving huge financial returns for themselves, even when the firm's performance lags. These criticisms of businesses and executives make it hard to depict government as inferior.

Moreover, abundant evidence shows that many government managers work very hard. Ammons and Newell (1989) reported that mayors, city managers, and their immediate executive assistants say they work about sixty to sixty-six hours per week. Executives from the private sector who have served in Washington regularly report their impressions of how hard the staff members and executives in the federal government work (Volcker Commission, 1989).

Do they spend much of this time on political gamesmanship, as some critics of federal executives suggest? Consider the city level: several surveys have asked city officials to report on the time they spend in managerial roles (staffing, budgeting, evaluating, directing, and so on), policymaking roles (forming policy about the future of the city, meeting with other city officials, and so on), and political roles (dealing with external political groups and authorities, such as state and federal officials and active community groups, and engaging in public relations activities such as speeches and ceremonies). Ammons and Newell (1989) found that the mayors, city managers, and executive assistants in their survey reported, on average, devoting 55% of their time to managerial roles, 28% to policy roles, and 17% to political roles. As might be expected, mayors ranged above these averages in their concentration on political activities, and assistants paid more attention to management tasks.

Ammons and Newell asked questions about the importance of the various roles to the officials' success. Most mayors placed the greatest importance on the political role, although 23% emphasized the managerial role as most important. The city managers emphasized the policy role more frequently than other roles, but they also heavily emphasized management; about 40% rated the managerial role as most important. The executive assistants overwhelmingly rated the managerial role as most important. In sum, city officials see themselves as devoting substantial amounts of time to managerial roles.

Similarly, the small sample of federal bureau chiefs in the Kaufman (1979) study noted earlier indicated that they spent much of their time in typical managerial activities, such as motivating the people in their bureaus. This orientation does not square with the complaints that public managers do not manage conscientiously. What explains this distance between various observers and researchers on a key point such as this?

Contingencies and Variations

Obviously, many variations in context and in the individual officials surveyed account for the different views revealed in the preceding section. The bureau chiefs that Kaufman studied tended to be longer-term career civil servants, at levels lower than the short-tenure political appointees who commonly head government agencies. The level of the manager and the institutional context make a lot of difference. As pointed out earlier, officials vary by elected versus appointed status, level in the agency hierarchy, distance from the political center (such as Washington, D.C., versus a district office, or the state capitol versus a state district office), political and institutional setting of the agency (such as executive and legislative authority in the jurisdiction; weak-mayor, strong-mayor, and council-manager structures at the local level), level of government, and other factors. These variations have great significance. At virtually all levels and in virtually all settings, public managers must to some degree balance managerial tasks with policymaking and with handling the political and institutional environment (oversight agencies, legislative and other executive authorities, clients and constituents, and the media). Yet some managers in public agencies (and in many private nonprofit agencies) face intense challenges of the latter sort, whereas others operate in virtual isolation from political intrusions.

Meyer (1979) provided one of many examples of the effects of the variations and contingencies in the contexts of public managers. He concluded from a large study of heads of state and local finance agencies that those in stronger positions politically – those who are elected or who are career civil servants rather than political appointees – show more ability to defend their agency against pressures for change in structure and against the loss of units to other agencies, apparently because of their greater ability to draw on support from political networks. As another example, Kotter and Lawrence (1974) reported an analysis of the variations in the contexts and behaviors of mayors. They concluded that effective mayors must “coalign” major components of their context. These include the mayors' own personal characteristics (cognitive and interpersonal skills, needs, and values), their agendas (tasks and objectives in the short and long runs), their networks (the resources and expectations of city government members and their relationship to the mayor), and characteristics of the cities themselves (such as size and rate of change). For example, they argue that the mayor's cognitive style must align with the variety and variability of information about the city that must be processed. A technician orientation, emphasizing the analysis of discrete amounts of information, best aligns with a small, homogeneous, stable city, where information varies little and can be analyzed relatively easily. A professional orientation fits a large, heterogeneous city with unstable, hard-to-analyze information. The professional mayor emphasizes using his or her professional judgment and applying professional guidelines and knowledge. Between these extremes, an engineering mayor works best in a large, diverse, stable city where information is highly varied but analyzable. A craftsman most effectively deals with the less varied but less analyzable information in a small but unstable city. This typology draws on Perrow's ideas (1973) about information contingencies of tasks (see Chapter Eight).

Anderson, Newland, and Stillman (1983) also proposed a typology based more on a framework akin to Blake and Mouton's managerial grid (1984), described earlier in this chapter. They argued that cities have varied levels of demand for their officials to display either a people orientation or a technical orientation. Growth communities create high demand both for orientations and for a chief-executive-type manager who works for change within regular organizational structures. Caretaker communities demand maintenance of existing services and an administrative caretaker, a leader with a technical orientation. Arbiter communities require much conflict resolution and therefore more of a people orientation than a technical one; a community leader mode of management best satisfies these requirements. A consumption community demands the most public services for the least cost and hence needs an administrative innovator who will follow the direction set by elected council members and seek innovations for the sake of efficiency and service delivery (that is, less emphasis on people, more on technical skill).