Suchergebnisse

Leadership theory has been conceived in two different and incompatible ways. Hersey and Blanchard's analysis entails arithmetic combinations of the task and people variables, whereas Blake and Mouton's approach involves znteraction of the two. Examined in this way, Hersey and Blanchard's model eliminates a "9,9" or "one-best-way" orientation. When 9,9 options were added to this model, managers and mental health experts uniformly chose the 9,9 alternative and rejected situationally prescribed answers. This generalization held for all maturity levels. This fundamental difference in how leadership is conceived is then used to reinterpret major leadership research since World War II. Instruments based on adding magnitudes of variables, such as Fleishman, Reddin, and Hersey and Blanchard, among others, have shown no validity from an empirical standpoint, whereas instruments based on an interaction of variables—such as those by Likert, Argyris, and Blake and Mouton—have consistently demonstrated predictive validity. This paper provides a resolution for the controversy between situationalism and the one-best-style approach and indicates the validity of the latter and the lack of predictive value of the former.

138 M S's at the U of Texas served as S's for a study designed to test the hypothesis that strength of plea & knowledge of others' reactions governs the endorsement rate in petition signing. A minor campus issue was selected as the ostensible motivation for a petition which was circulated among the students. Variation in the 2 factors to be tested was controlled through the use of an assistant who feigned both positive & negative reactions to the petition while S's waited to read it, & by varying the strength of requests for signatures from weak to intermediate to strong. 3 tables present findings which indicate that signing is a joint function of both factors & that in order to validly interpret petition signatures it is necessary to seek endorsements under conditions which are as nearly standardized as possible. The res is seen as demonstrating the uses of exp'al soc analysis for soc engineering. L. Tumin.