An examination of the relationship between leaders' behavioral repertoire, social power bases, and leadership effectiveness.

摘要

Leaders' ability to exhibit a complex set of behaviors is becoming increasingly important in today's organizations (Govender & Parumasu, 2010). Therefore, it is vital to understand how different factors are associated with leaders' ability to exhibit multiple behaviors. To better understand such factors, two goals were established for the present study. The first goal was to examine the relationship between behavioral repertoire, social power, and leadership effectiveness. The second goal was to identify if behavioral repertoire changes with tenure. Behavioral repertoire is the variety of behaviors a leader is able to perform (Hooijberg, Hunt, & Dodge, 1997), and social power is an individual's influence potential over a target person's attitudes and behaviors (Yukl, 1989). The goals of the study were accomplished by measuring 202 management level individuals' social power, behavioral repertoire, and leadership effectiveness. The data was gathered by utilizing a multirater feedback, electronic survey methodology from 1,238 direct reports. The analysis supported four out of five hypotheses. In Hypothesis 1, correlational analysis found a significant, positive relationship between the amount of social power leaders possess and their behavioral repertoire. Hypothesis 2 was also supported; personal and position power had a significant, positive relationship with behavioral repertoire. The association between personal power and behavioral repertoire was significantly stronger than the association between position power and behavioral repertoire, which supported Hypothesis 3. Support was also found for Hypothesis 4; the social power and behavioral repertoire of leaders had a significant, positive relationship with leadership effectiveness. Finally, in Hypothesis 5, no significant relationship was found between behavioral repertoire and the organizational tenure of leaders. The support found for Hypotheses 1 to 4 has utility in leadership development programs. Training and development professionals may utilize these findings to better educate, assess, and develop leaders capable of greater performance within their respective organizations. Development programs should strongly consider incorporating methods to increase leaders' position and personal power, however additional focus should be placed on personal power. Personal power's greater influence on leaders' ability to exhibit multiple, competing behaviors makes clear the precedence to ensure leaders build their expertise and develop methods to increase the desire of followers to identify with them. Moreover, organizations can apply the findings to understand how organizational change may impact leaders' social power, behavioral repertoire, and leadership effectiveness.