Leadership Profiles, Situation and Effectiveness

Abstract

The paper provides a research report on leadership styles studied in a range of countries, industry types and organization levels. Unequivocal evidence has been found for a three factor model of style, incorporating the well‐known, task‐oriented/people‐oriented factors, and a change‐oriented factor. The new factor is presumed to be a consequence of more turbulent environments. Further analysis of the leader reports (supplied by 3,857 respondent ‘followers’) found ten clusters of ‘blends’ of style, of which three ‐ labelled super‐leaders, gardeners and MBO leaders ‐ were consistently rated more effective and most liked by subordinates. A significant theoretical implication is that the results showed no evidence of contingency effects, i.e. variations in effectiveness, across broad contexts such as branch, function or hierarchic level, although the clusters differed with regard to representation in the different contexts.