Edwin P Hollander State University of New York at Buffalo

On the central role of leadership processes

Introduction

Leadership is vital to the effectiveness and well-being of an organization and its people. The quality of leadership not only affects mutual activity - it sets the tone of the organizational climate or culture. Among Gunnar Westerlund’s many contri- butions to organizational studies was his early field experiment entitled Group Leadership (1952) in which he found that supervision in the form of ‘group leadership’ favourably affected the performance and attitudes of telephone operators in a large Stockholm exchange. His focus was on the introduction of supervisors as group leaders readily available to the operators, as against the more impersonal, less group-oriented ‘functional’ supervision that had been practised there. This work was in the tradition of Mayo (1933), Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939), Maier (1946) and Lewin (1947), and showed the power of leadership processes involving active leader-follower relations. The present paper pays tribute to Westerlund and those others in that tradition.

The nature of leadership processes

In a broad sense, almost anything in organizational life is a function of leadership processes. These can include decision-making, goal- setting, uncertainty-reduction, and those standard structural elements associated with authority-direction of the task, division of labour and communication patterns. Moreover, leadership involves more than the leader’s actions alone: it also involves a system of relationships including followers, their expectations and commit-

International Review of Applied Psychology (SAGE, London, Beverly Hills and New Delhi), Vol. 35 (1986), 39-52

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ments, and task demands. Such concerted activity usually centres about the leader in the focal role, as the person commanding most of the attention. Leaders typically show greater activity and are more likely to be seen to get things done than are followers. Yet their ac- complishments require responsive followers who contribute to the outcome, even though it is credited to the leader.

For too long, ideas about leadership were dominated by a view of the leader and followers bound into fixed roles. The more dynamic realities of leadership, especially regarding change, were mainly disregarded. Among these is the problem the leader may have in maintaining legitimacy in the face of challenges from below, from alongside, and from above, in whatever organizational setting. Also, all leaders in such hierarchies are followers to some extent, and followership holds potential as an active role which can become a leader role. While it is granted that there is an imbalance, influence can be exerted by those in both roles. Effective leadership is achieved by the active involvement of responsive followership.

Since organizations require followership from leaders arrayed at all levels of a hierarchy, the subordinate showing the quality of being responsive will call attention to his or her ‘leadership potential’ and perhaps gain consideration for a higher position. Therefore, behaviours seen as representing effective leadership include attributes of good followership, even though a sharp separation between the two is usually maintained in language. In fact, leadership relies heavily on people being mutually responsive, whoever bears the ‘leader’ label.

An essential point here is that the leader and leadership are not one and the same. Although only a few people occupy the status of leader at a given time in a particular setting, the qualities needed to be a leader are not possessed solely by them. In any group or organization, there is a range of leadership functions to be fulfilled, and the leader cannot do everything, though he or she might try. These include such roles as director of activity, problem-solver and planner, communicator, adjudicator of conflict, advocate, and external liaison. Being a leader is therefore a complex of roles, and the functions of leadership these encompass demand assistance through distribution of labour by delegation.

Many situational elements can affect the processes of leadership, apart from the leader and followers. Among them are such factors as the nature of the activity, its history and actors, the availability of human and material resources and the quality of leader-follower

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relations. The latter are of course affected by the leader’s attributes, including not least his or her perceived competence, motivation and personality characteristics, and those of the followers. To some degree, any of these factors can play a part in shaping followers’ perceptions and responses to the leader.

Approaches to leadership in transition

Until about twenty years ago, it was quite common to present the complexities of leadership sharply in terms of leader traits or situational factors. Also intrciduced into this simplistic distinction were the separable issues of who becomes a leader, and what produces effective leadership. Since then, two departures have occurred which have largely set aside this sharp dichotomy. One has been the development of ‘contingency models’, which consider leadership effectiveness as a joint function of leader qualities and situational demands serving as contingencies to make those qualities variously appropriate to the task at hand (see for example Fiedler, 1967; Vroom and Yetton, 1973). The other departure has been the emergence of a process-oriented approach to leadership, recognizing the implicit transaction that exists between leader and followers in producing effectiveness (see Hollander, 1964, 1978; Hollander and Julian, 1969).

The transactional approach accords well with contemporary social science views about the significance of persuasive influence rather than dominance and mechanical compliance in organ- izational leadership (see for example Katz and Kahn, 1978). However, it is still true that a power motif infuses organizational ideas and practices regarding leadership. Exemplifying this motif at the extreme is a comment from a corporate head, quoted by Menzies (1980) in Fortune, saying that ‘leadership is demonstrated when the ability to inflict pain is confirmed’. Not just the use of power but also the threat of its use is involved in coercing others to do one’s bidding. On the relatively benign side is the power that provides benefits, which is illustrated in the phenomenon of ‘ingratiation’ analyzed by Jones (1964).

Another motif is seen in Freud’s (1922) affective conception of leadership in terms of psychological identity. He considers the leader to be an ‘ego-ideal’ with whom followers are bound together in a shared identification and allegiance. This psychological quality he

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said distinguished leadership from sheer dominance through the use of coercive power. Therefore, influence through persuasion can be seen as a motif which is a companion to the concept of psychological identity because it emphasizes communicative contact between leader and followers. Also involved are mutual attention and commonality of purpose in fostering identification and trust.

Influence, innovation and idiosyncrasy credit

Influence and power represent different processes, but they may be intertwined insofar as leaders may use one or the other depending upon the circumstances and the particular followers involved. Even appointed leaders, ‘put in charge’ within an organization, must rely on persuasive influence, rather than on coercive power alone. In its unfettered use, power can be dysfunctional by generating resistance and lingering negative feelings. The exercise of power has costs, both to the power wielder and to the person at whom it is directed (see Kipnis, 1976; Mulder, 1959, 1981). Not least, there may be resentment when one person can exercise power over another, and the imbalance in their relative strength is thereby made explicit. Appointed as well as elected leaders are therefore called upon to use persuasion instead of the ‘full power’ supposedly at their disposal.

One approach to studying reciprocal influence between leader and followers in turn provide the leader with a readiness to respond to (Hollander, 1958). It applies a social exchange perspective that considers the leader and followers to be involved in an implicit transaction. The leader gives followers benefits, such as direction and a sense of worth through recognition of their efforts. The followers in turn provide the leader with readiness to respond to influence, greater status and esteem (Hollander and Julian, 1969). Hence, the ‘transaction’ offers the basis for mutual regard and two- way influence, including demands made on the leader by followers who are considered to have a more active role, even in prodding the leader to action. Homans has summed up this process in noting that ‘influence over others is purchased at the price of allowing one’s self to be influenced by others’ (1961 : 286).

The IC model is most directly applicable to leadership as ‘accorded status’, where followers have a role in giving legitimacy to the leader by a process of emergence, including election, but it has implications for appointive leadership situations as well.

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Furthermore, the model is non-normative and descriptive, since it does not take a position on how things ought to be but reflects more how they seem to be in relatively non-coercive, less power-oriented situations. The essential formulation in the model is that credits are earned over time in the perceptions of others by competence in helping to achieve the group’s task goals, and conformity to the group’s norms, as a sign of loyalty. This leads to the prospect that early signs of competence and conformity will permit later nonconformity, in the form of innovations, to be better tolerated. This was verified in an early experiment with groups of male engineering students involved in a group-decision task (Hollander, 1960), and has subsequently been supported elsewhere.

Other factors may contribute to the accumulation of credits. Seniority is one of these that operates widely, though obviously not with uniform impact. A person may also benefit by having ‘derivative credit’, in the form of a favourable reputation from another group, or from the society at large, as seen for example in high socio-economic status. Most usually, however, a new member of a group is in a poor position to assert influence, especially in the direction of change, unless he or she has a unique qualification, such as an idea that helps deal with a major group problem, or a badly needed skill. In these circumstances credit is gained by maximizing on the competence factor. A benefit may also result from calling attention to oneself in a figure-ground sense, ifthe outcome for the group is positive.

Relatedly, Ridgeway (1981) has contended that nonconformity may be a greater initial source of influence and has presented experimental evidence that appears contradictory to the 1C model. Certainly it is true that within a brief time a person may draw attention to himself or herself by manifest nonconformity to prevailing norms. However, this will be evaluated in due course by the standard of the task contribution made. As Hollander has indicated: ‘Actions which call attention to a person may lead him to a position of influence because of favorable outcomes. Then, since his activity now becomes more crucial to the group’s attainment of goals, his visibility is even further increased’ (1964: 227). Here we have a parallel to the influence generated early by the sheer quantity of talking in discussion groups. However, both these effects are doubtless non-linear, and a point of dysfunctionality may be reached where rejection can result.

A person’s perceived conformity to group norms is largely based

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on surface observations that are matched against expectancies, including that person’s perceived competence in helping the group attain favourable outcomes. Central to the IC model is consider- ation that behaviour seen to be nonconforming by one group member may be perceived otherwise by another. Associated with this consideration is that conformity and nonconformity are not fixed to a single norm applicable to everyone as in, say, the traditional ‘J Curve’. Rather, nonconforming behaviour can be seen to be variously defined by the group, depending on how the actor himself is perceived, especially in regard to status (see for example Alvarez, 1968; Hollander, 1961).

The fact that the behaviour of a person perceived to have higher status is evaluated differently from that of one of less status provides a useful bridge for understanding the potential for innovation associated with leadership. As indicated above, leaders may be initiators of change, perhaps in seemingly nonconforming ways, but they may be conforming to group norms in establishing their position initially.

Nonconformity can also be viewed with regard to the distinction between common expectancies for group members, as well as those particular expectancies associated with higher status. While there is greater tolerance of nonconformity for the high-status person in some ways, there are restrictions imposed regarding particular expectancies that can be thought of as role behaviours associated with higher status. At least two reasons explain why these restrictions may be imposed. First, because status is usually perceived to carry with it greater self-determination, those of higher status are assumed to be more responsible for their actions. Second, having greater status means having more potential for affecting important outcomes for the members of a group (Hollander, 1964: Ch. 20).

Underlying this is a process of making attributions that clearly is significant in determining influence, as Heider (1958) and Jones (1979) among others indicate. An example is Heider’s distinction between ‘can’ and ‘will’, which may be applied respectively to attributions about a leader’s ability and motivation. One of the most basic of such follower attributions is that regarding a leader’s legitimacy, which is the issue of the source of a leader’s position of authority and influence.

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Leader legitimacy

How a leader is seen to attain that role has considerable importance in shaping followers’ perceptions. Leader legitimacy, as Read has stated, ‘involves a complex interaction of attitudes toward the leader and his source ‘of authority, with the a leader’s actual behavior contributing substantially to his task influence and continuing legitimacy’ (1974: 203).

A major difference has been found to exist in the realm of appointment or election as sources of leader’s authority. In both cases, the possibility of being perceived to be‘ a leader, and acting as one, depends to some degree on validation from others who are to be followers. The election case is of course a more obvious instance of emergence, and more closely approximates the IC model.

In an early experiment varying the basis of legitimacy, Goldman and Fraas (1965) had leaders in male groups selected by three methods: election by a vote, appointment by competence, or appointment randomly, plus a control condition without a leader. The task used was the game ‘Twenty Questions’, and the dependent measures were time required, and number of questions needed, to reach a solution. Groups with leaders appointed for their com- petence performed best, with those having elected leaders performing a close second. Groups with randomly appointed leaders and no leaders showed poorer performance, which was attributed to the weak basis of their legitimacy.

In general, {here is substantial evidence for the proposition that election creates in followers a greater sense of responsibility and higher expectations for the leader’s success (Hollander and Julian, 1970, 1978). One explanation is to view this as a social exchange in which the group gives the leader a ‘reward’ in advance, by electing him or her, and then group members feel a claim on him or her to ‘pay back’ by producing favourable outcomes (Jacobs, 1970). It is also true that the support of followers places higher demands on the leader. Elected leaders have a stronger basis for feeling support from followers, but they are also more vulnerable to having greater ex- pectations imposed on them. In an experiment with the leader as group spokesman (Julian et al., 1969), leader appointment- election, competence-noncompetence and success- failure were independently manipulated. Appointed leaders who represented the group position successfully were favourably evaluated, even if their initial competence was in question. Elected leaders more often

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required both competence and success to be endorsed to continue in this function.

Another experiment with appointed or elected leaders (Hollander et al., 1969) studied the effects of disagreements with their followers. The essential purpose was to determine the leader’s willingness to deviate from group decisions, with a ‘strong’ or ‘not strong’ support treatment cutting across the leader’s election or appointment. Within the IC model, it was expected that elected leaders who had been told they had strong group support would be likely to show more total reversals of their group’s decision, and this was confirmed. On about half the critical trials, significantly more than in the other condition, these leaders showed such total reversals. In addition, the elected leaders with strong support were found to have a lower rate of conciliation in their responses to group judgments, based on a content analysis of their messages to the group. Evidently, the elected leaders in this condition felt freer to expend their credits by challenging group judgments.

Firestone et al. (1975) conducted an experiment in which male college students elected their group’s leader, after being observed and rated in a leaderless group discussion (LGD). In the condition where the person with the highest LGD rating was elected leader, the groups performed most promptly when faced with an emergency. On the other hand, the worst performance was found in groups where the election had been contrived so that the member with the lowest LGD rating was elected leader. The main conclusion was that the leader who is legitimated by the group through election, after a process of emergence, was in a strong position to achieve prompt action.

Further in the line of research on the source of leaders’ authority, Hollander et al. (1977) conducted experiments with leaders who were elected or appointed and whose groups were told that they had done well (‘success’) or had not done well (‘failure’) after their first phase of activity. In the main experiment, twelve groups composed of four male college students each were presented with typical urban problems, and asked to arrive at a ranking of programmes to alleviate these problems. Elected leaders were generally found to have greater influence than appointed leaders in these rankings. Moreover, the influence of elected but not appointed leaders increased after the initial failure feedback and decreased after success feedback. This effect was interpreted in line with Hamblin’s (1958) concept that a ‘crisis’, in this case created by an apparent

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failure, produces a ‘rallying around’ the elected leader, at least initially. In the success condition, with no crisis, group members acted out of agreater securityin their own judgments, and the leader did not gain that benefit. When the groups were studied for still another phase, however, the elected leader in the failure condition showed a distinct loss of status, with credits depleted and followers willing to depose him. Interestingly, before the group learned how they were performing, a group member could be identified who was gaining influence as the likely successor to the elected leader. That member emerged as the group’s choice when another election was held after the failure had persisted.

As noted at the outset, the processes occurring within a group or organization are affected by the leader’s psychological closeness to followers. To examine this phenomenon in instances of appointed or elected leadership, Ben-Yoav et al. (1983) conducted an experiment with 21 groups of male college students organized into groups of four to make decisions about urban problems, in a task similar to the one used in the experiment just mentioned. A primary focus was to study interaction processes by having two observers independently rate the groups from behind one-way mirrors.

Significant effects were found indicating that elected leaders were more likely than appointed leaders to be seen to contribute to the group’s discussion, and to receive greater responsiveness and subsequent support on the post-interaction ratings. On the ratings by followers, elected leaders in this experiment were evaluated more favourably on responsiveness to followers’ needs, interest in the group task and competence. These results again point up differential effects of the leader’s source of legitimacy and are in accord with the IC model regarding effects induced by the group’s greater involvement in the elected leader’s status.

Criticisms and comments

Leaders and leadership are demonstrably important to group and organizational processes. Yet there has been a set of criticisms of this view in recent years. One of these is represented in the point that a view of leadership as interpersonal influence is overstated, and that there are task and other organizational qualities, such as traditions, norms, roles and rules, that are ‘substitutes for leadership’ (see for example Kerr and Jermier, 1978). Indeed, these may be considered

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to be in the nature of leadership processes, insofar as they maintain an ongoing, stable enterprise. A change of leaders may alter this pattern, however, as is well known in the phenomenon of succession. I t matters a great deal in everyday affairs who the new boss will be.

In a related vein, there is the attributional perspective which contends that a good deal of leadership exists in preconceptions and other perceptions held by followers about leaders and leadership. Calder (1977) and Pfeffer (1977) are among the proponents of a position that considers ‘leadership’ to be largely inferential, and even attributed to leaders after the fact. The process may stem from an ‘implicit leadership theory’ that is the basis for factors found in followers’ ratings of leaders (Rush et al., 1977). Furthermore, positive or negative outcomes are also attributed more readily to the leader, and when things go wrong he or she is more likely to be faulted and even removed. In Pfeffer’s causal attribution terms, leaders are symbols. If something goes wrong, the whole staff or entire team cannot be fired, but firing the manager can convey a sense of rooting out the basis of the problem.

One effect of the attributional view is to make more explicit the significance of followers’ and others’ perceptions of the leader in shaping ‘leadership events’. Clearly, at least to some degree, leader performance needs to be assessed objectively. Without the expect- ations that leader competence and motivation mattered, and could be identified and enhanced, organizations would be unlikely to support executive and management training programmes. The larger issue at stake is how to secure better performance indicators, which is the outcome question. It asks what a sequence of actions, presumed to be initiated by the leader, has produced by way of consequences. Too often in past research the answer has been based on whether the leader was influential, and to what degree, without asking toward what ends.

Another lack in research on leadership is that so much of it has been directed to the effects of leaders on followers that the bases for leader actions have been neglected. Especially ignored is the prior question of origins rather than of effects (see Green and Mitchell, 1979). One result of this omission is a poorly developed picture of the motivational factors that underlie the actions of individual leaders. An enlarged perspective on the foundations of leader action could consider the constraints that followers create by their expectations, and the intentions perceived to be beh.ind it. If leaders are to be able to do different things in different ways, then there needs to be

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positive responsiveness from followers which depends upon how they perceive the leader’s course and motives; on the other side of this coin is the leader’s need to preserve the basis for discretionary choice (Stewart, 1982). More research in depth, extended over time, is required to establish the links between leader motives, aspirations and actions.

Some implications for leadership effectiveness

Organizational leaders are primarily seen to direct activity. In fuller terms they can be considered a resource providing for the attainment of group goals by bringing human and physical resources together to achieve desired ends. The thrust of the transactional approach stressed here is the significance of followers in this process. Even with some of the scepticism noted above regarding the interpersonal aspects of leadership, it is a core element of the executive, managerial and supervisory role. While the importance of other aspects of the role discussed earlier cannot be denied, leadership remains essentially a social process.

The transactional approach anticipated many of the current concerns about excellence and the nature of high-performance systems. To understand the leadership processes at work in such favourable outcomes, attention to the involvement of followers is essential. Their perceptions of and responsiveness to the leader are clearly significant with particular regard to the two factors of system progress and equity. These represent, respectively, effectiveness in attaining mutual goals, and attending to individual needs for participation and recognition along the way. Clearly, there are considerable possibilities here for improving the quality of leadership including the traditional outcomes of performance and satisfaction.

Although much of the research presented here has been at the interpersonal, ‘micro’ level, it also has implications for leadership at the ‘macro’ level. This occurs where a leader directs multitudes at a distance, as in large organizations, or in politics through mass- communication efforts at persuasion. Such leadership also matters quite clearly in the goal-setting, planning and other strategic functions of corporate executives. In this mode, the leader is not indifferent to followers, but the interpersonal realm is not as central. Indeed, the leader may serve them well by providing a ‘better’

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picture of social reality, and giving needed direction for change. This process is central to what Burns (1984) speaks about when he says that some political leaders are capable of achieving ‘transform- ational leadership’. Although such leadership involves a larger-scale exercise in influence directed at change, it can be seen as a particular kind of transaction in which the leader provides followers with a strong message about social reality and a sense of knowing where they are headed.

In general, leadership effectiveness requires clear goal-setting, as well as implementation, evaluation and feedback to followers. These stages in the communication link between leader and followers provide a unified view of the common purpose. Open communi- cation obviously facilitates this process, as do signs of the leader’s dependability and fairness, not least of which is the willingness of the leader to have others contribute and develop their capabilities by greater involvement. Identification and trust are the precious relational qualities most likely to be encouraged by this process, with consequent benefits in outstanding performance.

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A propos du r61e central des processus de leadership

Le leadership est essentiel a la qualitk de la vie des groupes et des organisations et affecte donc le bien-ttre des individus. Le leadership implique plus que l’activite du leader lui-mCme puisqu’il concerne aussi ceux qui executent ainsi que les exigences de la tiche. Dans une perspective transactionnelle, les executants sont vus cornme jouant un r6le plus actif et comme exigeant, au nom de 1’Pquifk et d’un systerne dynarnique, la poursuite de buts communs et comme manifestant un besoin de participation et de prise en compte. La manikre dont le leader a atteint sa position hierarchique, par election ou par designation, entraine des reponses differentes au niveau des conduites du leader et des executants. Les relations leader- executant restent un element central de l’efficacite du leadership, dans la mesure ou l’identification et la confiance produisent des performances exceptionnelles.