scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Does leadership make a difference to organizational performance

Alan B. Thomas
- 01 Sep 1988 - 
- Vol. 33, Iss: 3, pp 388-400
TLDR
The results of a study of large retail firms in the United Kingdom, designed to overcome the methodological problems of earlier studies of leadership and performance, are presented in support of this argument as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract
? 1988 by Cornell University 0001 -8392/88/3303-0388/$1 00 This paper evaluates research on the impact of chief executive officers on corporate performance, taking Lieberson and O'Connor's pathbreaking study as its starting point Although that study is commonly regarded as the principal source of empirical support for the view that leaders have little impact on organizational performance because they are constrained by situational factors, it is argued here that the study and its derivatives have provided consistent and compelling evidence that individual leaders do make a difference The results of a study of large retail firms in the United Kingdom, designed to overcome the methodological problems of earlier studies of leadership and performance, are presented in support of this argument

read more

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Human resources and the resource based view of the firm

TL;DR: The impact of the resource-based view on the theoretical and empirical development of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has been explored in this article, where the fields of strategy and SHRM are beginning to converge around a number of issues.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Social Scientific Study of Leadership: Quo Vadis?

TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the history of the social scientific study of leadership and the prevailing theories of leadership that enjoy empirical support and identify the contributions of the trait, behavioral, contingency and neocharismatic paradigms and the results of empirical research on prevailing theories.
Journal ArticleDOI

Managerial Leadership: A Review of Theory and Research

TL;DR: This paper reviewed and evaluated major theories of leadership and summarized findings from empirical research on leadership and presented an integrating conceptual framework to show how the different theories and lines of research fit together to improve managerial practice.
Journal ArticleDOI

On the Efficiency of Internal and External Corporate Control Mechanisms

TL;DR: Fama and Jensen as discussed by the authors argued that the individual owner has little interest in conducting, or even closely monitoring, the day-to-day activities in all of the firms in which he or she has a financial interest.
Journal ArticleDOI

CEO Characteristics and Firm R&D Spending

TL;DR: It is found that CEO characteristics explain a significant proportion of the sample variance in firm R&D spending even when corporate strategy, ownership structure, and other firm-level attributes are controlled, and that CEOs, over time, may mold R&d spending to suit their own preferences.
References
More filters
Book

The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective

TL;DR: The External Control of Organizations as discussed by the authors explores how external constraints affect organizations and provides insights for designing and managing organizations to mitigate these constraints, and it is the fact of the organization's dependence on the environment that makes the external constraint and control of organizational behavior both possible and almost inevitable.
Journal ArticleDOI

Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers

TL;DR: In this article, the authors synthesize these previously fragmented literatures around a more general "upper echelons perspective" and claim that organizational outcomes (strategic choices and performance levels) are partially predicted by managerial background characteristics.
Book

Organizations and Environments

TL;DR: Aldrich's organizational change model as mentioned in this paper focuses on the processes of variation, selection, retention, and struggle of an organization and its environment, rather than a set of focal organizations.
Journal ArticleDOI

That's Interesting!: Towards a Phenomenology of Sociology and a Sociology of Phenomenology

TL;DR: The Sociology of the Interesting as discussed by the authors is a new field that is intended to supplement the socology of knowledge, which is phenomenologically oriented and sociologically oriented in so far as it will focus on the movement of the audience's mind from one accepted theory to another.
Journal ArticleDOI

Leadership and organizational performance: a study of large corporations

TL;DR: It appears that the importance of external restrictions, and hence the maximum possible leadership influence, may range widely between specific performance criteria, which suggests a perspective on organization performance that may be applied to the leadership influence in other large organizations and political bodies.
Related Papers (5)