Stogdill, 1948

Journal of Management 1979, Vol, 5, No, 2, 157-165

The Impact of Ralph M. Stogdill and the Ohio State Leadership Studies on a Transactional Approach to Leadership Edwin P, Hollander National Academy of Sciences

A personal recollection of Ralph M. Stogdill is presented, and the contribution of the OSU Leadership Studies to the understanding of leader behavior is reviewed with respect to the intermediate phase between the leader-trait and situational approaches to leadership. Together with the use of critical incidents and peer nominations, these studies formed the context for developing a transactional approach to leader-follower relations. This newer approach stresses the two-way influence and social exchange processes involved in leadership, with an emphasis on the two factors of system progress and equity. The results of research applying the transactional approach are summarized, with especial attention to leadership effectiveness. Ralph M. Stogdill: A Personal Appreciation

My recollections of Ralph Stogdill's work go back to his classic paper on "Personal factors associated with leadership" (1948) and his integrative book titled Individual Behavior and Group Achievement (1959), The latter was pubhshed in New York by Oxford IJniversity Press whose Psychology Editor then was an admirable bookman, Paul Whitfield. He asked Ralph to comment on the manuscript I had submitted for my book. Leaders, Groups, and Influence (1964), Ralph recommended that Oxford publish it. Some years later, I had the opportunity to read and comment on Ralph's manuscript for the Handbook of Leadership (1974) and offered some criticisms that I hoped would prove productive, I also said that the The author is on leave from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Edwin P, HoUander, Study Director, National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Ability Testing, Room JH-813, 2101 Constitution Avenue, N,W,, Washington, D,C, 20418 Copyright 1979 by the Southern Management Association 0149-2063/79/005201 57$2,O0/O

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Handbook was a monumental undertaking that had to be appreciated for its sweep and scope, aside from each of its particulars, Ralph accepted some of my comments but not others, as it should be. Throughout, he was appreciative in a friendly way and, subsequently, commented very graciously on my new book Leadership Dynamics (1978). Therefore, I had good reasons over the years to think of Ralph Stogdill as a generous, gracious, and thoughtful colleague. Yet I never had the pleasure of meeting him, much to my regret. We had these associations only through correspondence and review of each other's work. The Context Set by the Ohio State Leadership Studies

A great deal has been made of the historic transition to a situational approach to leadership. That development, with its emphasis on the context in which the leader and followers functioned, and the demands it made for various quahties of leadership, was a counterweight to the longdominant leader-trait approach. In fact, Ralph Stogdill's just noted 1948 review of pertinent literature helped further that transition. However, there was a significant break that occurred when leader behavior was given attention, even before. This intervening and sometimes overlapping step has often been missed in reconstructing the sequence of events that produced modern-day approaches to leadership. The Ohio State Leadership Studies, in which Carroll Shartle and Ralph Stodgill played such a pivotal role, were among the most significant works ever done on leader behavior (see Shartle, Stogdill, & Campbell, 1949; Stogdill & Shartle, 1948), Beginning soon after World War II, these studies looked at patterns of leader behavior which characterized positions, and also those which cut across different positions. A great deal of this research was done initially in mihtary commands. From it, a questionnaire was developed and administered to members of many organizations who were asked to describe their leaders by the frequency with which they displayed various behaviors, from "always" to "never." When these ratings were analyzed, they were found to represent four major factors. As is by now well known, two chief factors, accounting for the bulk of leader behavior, were consideration and initiation of structure (see Fleishman, 1973; Stogdill, Wherry, & Jaynes, 1953). It should be evident that a major need in assessing leader behavior was to know more about how followers perceived such behavior and were affected by it. The "trait approach" to leadership h a ' tried unsuccessfully to specify characteristics that differentiated effective from ineffective leader behavior. However, traits were not measured by actual behavior but by personality tests (see Mann, 1959). A link was usually assumed to exist between these tests and the leader's behavior. The Ohio State studies therefore represented a landmark in research on the behavior of leaders which was to have redounding effects (see Van Fleet, 1974).

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Other Early Developments

Another significant departure in the assessment of leader behavior by followers was the critical incident technique developed by Flanagan (see 1954) and used first to evaluate pilots in World War II, Basically, critical incidents are reports of actual behaviors observed and evaluated by those on the scene as examples of a class of behaviors that are particularly effective or ineffective. The observer, or respondent, chooses the incidents to report afterwards, and without actual names, of course. These two lines of research, using follower impressions of leader behavior, were important to the setting of my own earliest studies of leadership, I started these while on duty as a Naval Aviation Psychologist at Pensacola in the early 1950s (see Hollander, 1954a, 1954b, 1954c, 1954d). During this period, I began a line of research with the rather simple notion initially of using peer nominations and ratings to assess effective and ineffective leadership in groups of Naval Aviation Cadets, I also first met Ed Fleishman then, while he was doing research at Lackland Air Force Base, He had recently completed his doctorate at Ohio State where he was involved in the leadership studies. My work at Pensacola indicated, among other findings, that peer nominations predicted successful completion of Naval Air Training, Then, in another study, our results showed that leadership and foUowership nominations were highly related and that this relationship was relatively unaffected by friendship ties (Hollander & Webb, 1955). My impression then, which has since been bolstered by other systematic research I have done at the Navy OCS at Newport (see Hollander, 1956a, 1956b, 1956c, 1957, 1965), was that peer nominations tap a reservoir of interpersonal perceptions of considerable value for predicting complex, later performance. I have reiterated the point in subsequent work (see Hollander, 1964, chap, 8). We also brought the critical incidents technique to bear as an attitudinal measure in a study comparing Cadets who successfully completed Basic Fhght Training with those who voluntarily withdrew (Hollander & Bair, 1954). All of those respondents were asked to describe their "best" and "worst" flight instructors. Content analyses revealed a significant difference in the descriptions given by the two categories of Cadets. While those who successfully completed training more often described their 'I3est" and "worst" instructors with regard to interpersonal qualities, those who withdrew from flight training emphasized the instructors' competence as teachers. We interpreted these findings as suggesting that personal identification with the instructor was a factor associated with success in this program. Here again the element of interpersonal perception, especially in its evaluative sense, was involved in a leader-follower relationship. In a later series of experiments on leader authority, with respect to the leader's latitude for exerting influence and innovating, which I called "idiosyncrasy credit," this point came through (see Hollander, 1958,

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1960, 1961a, 1961b; Hollander & Julian, 1970, 1978), The followers' perceptions of the leader affected their responsiveness to the leader and their willingness to have the leader take initiatives and retain authority. Among the chief findings of this work were these points: The leader's legitimacy, or source of authority in appointment or election, created different effects on the leader's ability to exercise influence with followers. This process was moderated by their initial perception of the leader's competence, and his subsequent success or failure in producing favorable outcomes. The leader's motivation, or interest, is critical here. If a leader is perceived to be competent but fails to produce good results, it is attributed most often to a lack of motivation. That is more serious for the standing of an elected leader than an appointed one, because of the obvious stake that followers have in the leader who is elected. But the bad effect is not trivial for the appointed leader, even if the followers can do much less about it (see Julian, Hollander, 6f Regula, 1969). This work generated a view of leadership as a two-way influence process that involves a transaction between leader and followers, which I therefore

called a "transactional approach," Features of a Transactional Approach In a transactional approach to leadership, the stress is on two-way influence and a social exchange relationship between the leader and those who are followers. In this relationship, the leader gives something and gets something. Social exchange refers to benefits that are given and received as rewards. It also has to do with the expectations people have about fairness, equitable treatment, and justice (see Homans, 1974), Although the leader may have power, influence depends more on persuasion than coercion. A leadership process usually involves a twoway influence relationship aimed primarily at attaining mutual goals, such as those of a group, organization, or society. Therefore, leadership is not just the leader's function, it requires the cooperative efforts of others (see Hollander, 1978a), Typically, a leader is expected to give direction, producing successful results for the group, organization, or larger social entity. In return, the followers give the leader greater esteem and status, and the responsiveness that makes influence possible. However, some minimum degree of success is necessary for the leader's position to be supported because a lack of success removes a major benefit that the leader can provide in a "fair exchange" (see Jacobs, 1970). Therefore a fair exchange would be one where the leader performs well and desc rves the advantages of status. If the leader fails to do well, especially because of an evident lack of effort, then followers are likely to have a sense of injustice. They may also be discontent if the leader seems to disregard their interests along the way. When a leader's poor performance results from not listening to followers, there may be a feeling among them that blunders are being made because the leader fails to "be in touch."

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Followers may feel left out and blame the leader for not maintaining the other end of the transaction with them. In fact, I was recently asked to do a paper on this "crisis of leadership" theme (Hollander, 1978b). The leader is usually the central figure in moving the group toward its goals. When the leader has the resources but routinely fails to deliver, there is bound to be dissatisfaction. If, for example, the leader appears to be deviating from the accepted standards, such nonconformity will be tolerated initially. This is a feature of the idiosyncrasy credit concept that emphasizes sources of earned status and the leader's related latitude for innovation (Hollander, 1958,1964), But when the leader's nonconformity seems to produce unsuccessful outcomes, the leader is likely to be blamed (see Alvarez, 1968), It is as if the group said: "We expect good results from your actions. If you take an unusual course, we will go along with you and give you some latitude. But you are responsible if the outcome is that the group fails to achieve its goals," A fair exchange also involves a climate in which the leader ensures that rewards are provided equitably. Basic to the exchange process is the

belief that rewards, such as recognition, will be received for benefits given. However, it is difficult to accomplish this routinely. Even if that were done, the rewards would take on less value due to their frequency, since the scarce reward is usually valued more than the abundant one. Nevertheless, some attention to their contributions, even if not frequent, is necessary for people to feel fairly treated. Furthermore, as Graen (1975) has pointed out, all followers are not the same. Some may have a closer relationship with the leader than others. This can produce greater benefits for them, in part because of the resources the leader commands. But there also can be higher costs because of the direct association with the leader. Therefore, the actual "profit" of those close to the leader may be no greater than for the other followers who receive less but who also have lower costs. Summing up these points, the transaction between a leader and followers includes the two factors of system progress and equity. The first deals with attaining group goals and the second with the follower's sense of being treated fairly along the way. Simply put, where they have a choice, followers require a sufficient sense of being fairly rewarded to remain inside the group and to participate. This sense of equity often depends upon a comparison with what others, of comparable characteristics and responsibihty, are receiving relative to their inputs. However, the leader especially needs to be alert to perceived inequities since, as a determiner of rewards, he will likely be blamed for them. These perceptions are subjective judgments—rewards and costs are always relative to the people involved. All in all, a transactional approach sees followers as having an active and responsive role rather than a passive one. All actions do not depend upon the leader, nor must all benefits come from the leader. Furthermore, the leader's posture is not necessarily fixed, but may accommodate the expectations followers have for the leader's behavior.

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Indeed, a distinctly productive feature of a social exchange perspective on leader-follower relations is to help check egoism and the abuse of power (see Gouldner, 1960), More realistically, power can be diffused and shared in an organization rather than tightly held in one place (see Tannenbaum, 1968), Leadership Effectiveness Now we come back to an essential question that Ralph Stogdill and his colleagues pursued: What makes for effectiveness in leadership? The answer is neither simple nor general, as should by now be obvious. Nor did Ralph and his co-workers think it was. In fact, their work brought us to the more elaborate conceptions embodied in contingency models and the transactional approach. Nevertheless, I want to pay homage to Ralph by giving a brief summary of some of the things about leadership effectiveness which have been provoked in my work and thought by his earlier contributions. And without seeming negative, let me quickly say that I am least comfortable now with definitions of effectiveness that are based upon the leader's ability to influence followers without our asking toward what end that influence is directed. Influence in the abstract tells us little about the progress of the system represented by "leader-with-foUowersseeking-results." A crucial factor in the exchange between leaders and followers is that the leader be seen as competent in producing results. Therefore, the effectiveness of the leadership process is bound to become a basis for judging whether an exchange is fair. After all, the organization and group members reward the leader more liberally than anyone else, and good results are expected. Although often subjective, judgments about "getting results," "showing ability," and other such qualities carry weight in followers' perceptions of the leader. This factor is also the initial source of idiosyncrasy credit, which allows the leader latitude for influence and innovation. Those results that matter in leadership effectiveness are of two kinds. First are the standards measured with regard to quantity and quality of performance. Second are the uxiy things are done in achieving goals, and the benefits provided for the individuals in the group. A related consideration is how well the available resources are used. Communication plays an especially significant role in the leadership process, Leadership effectiveness requires goal-setting, implem ' i tation, evaluation, and feedback. These are steps in a communication link between the leader and followers which give a unified view of the group's common purposes and goals. The leader's skills contributing to effectiveness also include the ability to show foresight and planning in dealing with new conditions. Imagination and a sense of "what might be" are essential to this process. Training individuals in skills for leadership effectiveness is quite possible, even though some can be identified who

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have greater potential as a result of capacity and experience. Maintaining the role of leader is another important aspect of effectiveness. It depends upon fulfilling expectations for performance, and being adaptable to changing requirements. Leadership effectiveness also grows out of the leader's legitimacy and authority. Legitimacy may come from appointment, election or the willing support of followers. It is the basis for the acceptance of the leader's assertions of influence, which is the operational meaning of authority. A leader's authority is related to the nature of the rules governing the activity. The followers' perceptions of the leader's direction as consistent with organizational and individual goals are also pertinent. Responsibilities go with authority, but these may or may not be matched by the authority granted. Often, a leader's authority is enhanced by the followers' view of the leader as competent and motivated. In addition to competence, motivation, and legitimacy, a leader has other personal qualities that are perceived by followers and affect their responsiveness to the leader. Indeed, there is now a resurgence of interest in people who fill the leader role, especially where it is possible to relate their characteristics to task demands and other aspects of the situation. Therefore, it is not possible to make sweeping generalizations about the appropriateness of a particular "leader style," Such bi-polar contrasts as are applied to style, including democratic or autocratic, and taskoriented or human relations oriented, do a disservice to the richness of content in leader-follower relationships that need to be understood in their context. Style is a relational concept, and fundamentally different from the idea of a trait because its effect and utility very much depend upon the reaction of followers. I daresay that this formulation has origins in the seminal work of Ralph Stogdill, and would be quite congenial with it. For this and other reasons I have expressed, I am honored to be part of this tribute to him. References Alvarez, R, Informal reactions to deviance in simulated work organizations: A laboratory experiment, American Sociological Review, 1968, 33, 895-912, Flanagan, J, C, The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin, 1954,51, 327-358, Fleishman, E, A, Twenty years of consideration and structure. In E, A, Fleishman &J, G, Hunt (Eds,)., Current Developments in the Study of Leadership. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973, CJouldner, A, W, The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement, American Sociological Review, 1960, 25, 161-179, Graen, G, Role-making processes within complex organizations. In M, D, Dunnette (Ed.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Chicago: Rand McNaUy, 1975, Hollander, E, P, Authoritarianism and leadership choice in a military setting. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1954, 49, 365-370, (a) Hollander, E, P, Buddy ratings: Military research and industrial implications. Personnel Psychology, 1954, 7, 385-393. (b)

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Hollander, E, P, Peer nominations on leadership as a predictor of the pass-fail criterion in naval air training. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1954, 38, 150-153, (c) Hollander, E, P, Studies of leadership among naval aviation cadets. Journal of Aviation Medicine, 1954, 25, 164-170, 200, (d) Hollander, E, P, A better military rating sy,'item through peer ratings, ONR Research Reviews, July 1956, 16-20, (a) Hollander, E, P, The friendship factor in peer nominations. Personnel Psychology, 1956, 9, 435-447, (b) Hollander, E, P Interpersonal exposure time as a determinant of the predictive utility of peer ratings. Psychological Reports, 1956, 2, 445-448, (c) Hollander, E, P, The reliability of peer nominations under various conditions of administration. Journal of Applied Psychology. 1957, 41(2), 85-90. Hollander, E, P Conformity, status, and idiosyncrasy credit. Psychological Review, 1958, 65, 117-127, Hollander, E, P, Competence and conformity in the acceptance of influence. Journal of Ahnormal and Social Psychology, 1960, 61, 361-365 Hollander, E, P, Emergent leadership and social influence. In L, PetruUo & B, M, Bass (Eds ), leadership and interpersonal behavior. New York: Holt, 1961, (a) Hollander, E, P, Some effects of perceived status on responses to innovative behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63, 247-250, (b) Hollander, E, P, Leaders, groups, and influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964 Hollander, E P, Validity of peer nominations in predicting a distant performance criterion. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1965, 49, 434-438, Hollander, E, P, Leadership dynamics: A practical guide to effective relationships New York: Free Press/Macmillan, 1978, (a) Hollander, E, P, What is the crisis of leadership? Humanitas, 1978, 14(3), 285-296, (b) Hollander, E, P,, & Bair, J, T, Attitudes toward authority-figures as correlates of motivation among naval aviation cadets. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1954, 38, 21-25, Hollander, E, P,, & Julian, J, W, Studies in leader legitimacy, influence, and innovation. In L, Berkowitz (Ed,), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (\'ol, 5), New York: Academic Press, 1970, Hollander, E, P,, & Julian, J, W, A further look at leader legitimacy, influence, and innovation. In L, Berkowitz (Ed,), Group processes. New York: Academic Press, 1978, Hollander, E. P,, & Webb, W, B, Leadership, foUowership, and friendship: An analysis of peer nominations. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1955, 50, 163-167, Homans, G, C, Social behavior: Its elementary forms. (Rev, ed,) New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, Jacobs, T, O, Leadership and exchange informal organizations. Alexandria, Va,: Human Resources Research Organization, 1970, Julian, J, W,, Hollander, E, P,, & Regula, C, R, Endorsement of the group spokesman as a function of his source of authority, competence, and success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1969, 11, 42-49, Mann, R, D. A review of the relationships between personality and performance in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 1959, 56, 241-270, Shartle, C, L,, Stogdill, R, M,, & Campbell, D, T, Studies in naval leadership, i olumbus: Personnel Research Board, Ohio State University, 1949, Stogdill, R, M, Personal factors associated with leadership. Journal of Psychology, 1948, 25, 35-71, Stogdill, R, M, Individual behavior and group achievement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, Stogdill, R. M, Handbook of leadership. New York: Free Press, 1974, Stogdill, R, M, & Shartle, C, L, Methods for determining patterns of leadership behavior in relation to organization structure and objectives. Journal of AppUed Psychology, 1948, 32, 286-291,

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Stogdill, R, M,, Wherry, R, J,, & Jaynes, W, E, Patterns of leader behavior: A factorial study of navy officer performance. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1953, Tannenbaum, A, S, Control in organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, Van Fleet, D, D, Toward identifying critical elements in a behavioral description of leadersiiip. Public Personnel Management, 1974, 3(1), 70-82,