Leader Behavior, Situational Moderators, and Group Performance: An Attributional Analysis.

摘要

The paper proposes that many of the findings currently reported in the leadership literature are confounded by an attributional process. While much leadership research assumes that the elements associated with higher scores on leader behavior and/or situational dimensions lead to better group performance, the present paper argues that the causality may actually be reversed. Specifically, it was hypothesized that perceptions of good group performance could lead to higher ratings on leader behavior and situational measures than would perceptions of poor group performance. Three studies were conducted in which subjects were led to believe that a group either performed well or poorly, and then were asked to rate the leader on The Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (Stogdill, 1963) and some situational variables (Situational Favorableness as assessed by Fiedler, 1967). Substantial support for the hypothesis was found for the situational factors while the leader behavior results were mixed but generally supportive. The implications of these findings for leadership research are discussed.