Managerial Leadership: A Review of Theory and Research

This study provided a meta-analysis of the relationship of the Ohio State leadership behaviors— Consideration and Initiating Structure—with leadership. Overall, 163 independent correlations for Consideration and 159 correlations for Initiating Structure were analyzed. Results revealed that both Consideration (.48) and Initiating Structure (.29) have moderately strong, nonzero relations with leadership outcomes. Consideration was more strongly related to follower satisfaction (leader satisfaction, job satisfaction), motivation, and leader effectiveness, and Initiating Structure was slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group– organization performance. Validities did vary by leadership measure, but in most cases validities generalized regardless of the measure used. Overall, the results provide important support for the validity of Initiating Structure and Consideration in leadership research.

http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Piccolo,%20&%20Ilies%20(JAP%202004).pdf

The forgotten ones? The validity of Consideration and Initiating Structure in leadership research

Leadership depends on the situation. Few social scientists would dispute the validity of this statement. But the statement can be interpreted in many different ways, depending, at least in part, on what one means by leadership. This article begins with a definition of leadership and a brief description of 3 historically important theories of leadership. The most recent of these, contingency theories, is argued to be most consistent with existing evidence and most relevant to professional practice. The Vroom, Yetton, and Jago contingency models of participation in decision making are described in depth, and their work provides the basis for identifying 3 distinct ways in which situational or contextual variables are relevant to both research on and the practice of leadership.

/pdf/the-role-of-the-situation-in-leadership-237br9cbkv.pdf

The role of the situation in leadership.

While the phenomenon of leadership is widely considered to be universal across cultures, the way in which it is operationalized is usually viewed as culturally specific. Conflicting viewpoints exist in the leadership literature concerning the transferability of specific leader behaviors and processes across cultures. This study explored these conflicting views for managers and professional workers by empirically testing specific hypotheses which addressed the generalizability of leadership behaviors and processes across five nations in North America and Asia. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for conceptual and measurement equivalence for all six leader behaviors employed in the study. The findings showed cultural universality for three leader behaviors (supportive, contingent reward, and charismatic), and cultural specificity for the remaining three leader behaviors (directive, participative, and contingent punishment).

Leadership in Western and Asian countries: Commonalities and differences in effective leadership processes across cultures.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between employees’ 
perceptions of their immediate supervisors’ relations-oriented and task-orientedleadership 
behaviors and different types of organizational commitment. 
Bass & Avolio's (1995) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ Form 5X) was used 
to measure relations-orientedand task-orientedleadership behaviors. Meyer & Allen’s (1997) 
Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) was used to measure organizational 
commitment. 
Participants in the research included 361 employees who worked for the city of 
Charlottesville, Virginia. These employees were located in eight departments that varied in the 
area of technical functioning, size, and academic levels. 
Factor analyses, with principal component extraction and varimax rotation, were 
performed to determine how the MLQ Form 5X items would load onto a 2-factor model of 
relations-orientedand task-orientedleadership behaviors. The task-orienteditems of contingent 
reward loaded with the relations-orienteditems, and the non-leadershipitems of laissez-faire 
loaded with the task-orienteditems. These findings resulted in an arrangement of relationsoriented and task-orientedsubscales that was different than the arrangement proposed by Bass & 
Avolio (1995). 
Correlations for the MLQ Form 5X revealed multicollinearity among all the relationsorientedsubscales and two of the task-orientedsubscales, preventing any interpretations about 
the amount of variance that any particular type of relations-orientedor task-orientedleadership 
behavior might explain in organizational commitment. Factor scores were used to perform 
regressions and investigate the amount of variance relations-orientedleadership behaviors and 
task-orientedleadership behaviors explained in organizational commitment. Relations-orientedleadership behaviors explained the greatest amount of variance in 
affective commitment, somewhat less variance in normative commitment, and no variance in 
continuance commitment. The results for task-orientedleadership behaviors revealed the same 
pattern of relationships with the different types of organizational commitment, only weaker. 

Keywords: Leadership, Relations-Oriented, Task-Oriented, Commitment

Employees' Organizational Commitment and Their Perceptions of Supervisors' Relations-Oriented and Task-Oriented Leadership Behaviors

A meta-analysis of path-goal research was undertaken in order to assess the direction and strength of the "mixed results" obtained in past research. The meta-analysis, based on 48 studies with 11,8...

Julie Indvik

Papers

Path-Goal Theory of Leadership: A Meta-Analysis.