The situational analyses
use your judgements on the 11 situational factors to
generate predictions of the effects of the five
leadership styles on each of four outcomes:
- Decision
Quality
- Decision Implementation
- Cost
of Making the Decision
-
Development of the Group or Team
In addition, you are
provided with an overall estimate of the effectiveness of
each choice termed Overall.
To some extent, you can control the weights attached to
each of these outcomes in the overall total by your
judgements on four of the eleven situational factors.
Thus your judgement on Decision Significance affects the
weight attached to Decision Quality; your judgement on
Importance of Commitment affects the weight attached to
Implementation; your judgement on the Value of Time
reflects the weight attached to Cost; and your judgement
on the Value of Development reflects the weight attached
to Development. Selecting the lowest of the five possible
values (No Importance and No Significance) for one of
these factors will result in assigning no weight to the
corresponding outcome. For example, attaching no
importance to Development will render all alternatives
equal (and zero) reflecting the irrelevance of contributions to the
development of group members.
As you increase your judgement of the importance or
significance of an outcome, you will note that the
numbers on the vertical axis of the bar graphs increase
but the relative position of the five alternatives
remains the same. You should note, however, that there
are limits to your ability to control the importance of
each of these outcomes. For example, the same rating
(e.g., High Significance or High Importance) will assign
more weight to Decision Quality followed, in turn, by
Implementation, Cost, and Development. In other words,
holding constant your judgement of importance, the
byproducts of the decision process (cost and development)
are deemed less consequential than implementation which,
in turn, is less consequential than decision quality.
Let us now turn to how the software converts your
judgements to predictions about the few outcomes. This is
accomplished via four equations one for each of
Quality, Implementation, Cost, and Development. In the
section which follows, we will briefly summarize the
factors in each of these equations and the way in which
they effect the recommendations. You may test each of
these by observing what happens when you change your
judgements.
Decision Quality
- Decision Significance: This term interacts with all other
terms to follow in this equation. The effects of
each term will be zero when the factor has no
significance and will reach a maximum when
significance is critical.
- Leader Expertise:
Assuming some degree of significance, the
predicted quality of decision will decrease if
"Decide" is selected. A low level of
leader expertise not only penalizes autocratic
behavior but it also drives a search for the
likelihood of synergy in the group (see Term 5
below).
- Goal Alignment
: Assuming some degree of significance,
the quality of the decision is predicted to
decrease when either "Facilitate" or
"Delegate" is employed in situations in
which the group does not share the organizational
objectives.
- Group Expertise and
Team Competence: Assuming some degree of decision
significance, the quality of the decision is
predicted to decrease when either
"Facilitate" or "Delegate" is
employed in situations in which the group lacks
the knowledge and/or the ability to work together
collaboratively in using that knowledge.
- Group Expertise, Team
Competence, and Goal Alignment: These three
situational factors are believed to produce a
high level of synergy when all are present. They
are believed to interact multiplicatively so that
a deficiency in any one will reduce the benefits
from the other two. As mentioned previously, the
amount or value of synergy declines as Decision
Significance declines and as Leader Expertise
increases.
- Goal Alignment and
Likelihood of Disagreement: There is increasing
evidence that dissent and disagreement may play a
key role in postponing premature agreement and in
increasing the depth of analysis before making a
decision. We believe that disagreement and
conflict may contribute constructively to
decision quality when group members possess a
common goal. Thus these two terms combine
multiplicatively and predict progressively higher
Decision Quality for "Consult Group,"
"Facilitate," and "Delegate"
in situations in which there is shared support
for the objectives.
Decision Implementation
- Importance of
Commitment: As was the case for Decision
Significance, this term interacts with each of
the terms in its equation. Commitment to the
decision and the understanding of it by the group
(both of which result from participation) is of
value only to the extent to which group members
are affected by the decision. This is most likely
to be true when the group will be responsible for
its implementation.
- Likelihood of
Implementation: While Importance of Commitment is
a necessary condition for the positive effects of
participation, it is not a sufficient condition.
Sometimes the group`s commitment to a decision
can be treated as a "given." The group
members are likely to enthusiastically support
the leader`s decision because they view him/her
as the expert or as the person with the
legitimate right to make the decision. When the
groups' commitment to the leader`s decision is
certain (i.e., Likelihood of Commitment is Very
High), all styles are equally effective in
achieving effective implementation. As the
likelihood of the leader`s decision being
accepted becomes less certain, the contribution
of participation increases.
- Likelihood of
Disagreement and Likelihood of Commitment: The
benefits of the more participative styles are
also dependent on the initial level of
disagreement among group members. A high level of
such disagreement poses more of a threat to
implementation and increases the desirability of
the more participative styles aimed at working
out differences before decisions are made.
Cost
- Value of Time: As was
the case for Decision Significance and Importance
of Commitment, this factor interacts with those
which follow. The effects of other terms become
more important as the Value of Time increases. It
is assumed that the style consuming the least
amount of time is "Decide," that
"Consult (Individually)" and
"Consult (Group)" will consume
approximately the same amount of time, and that
the most time consuming are
"Facilitate" and "Delegate"
(both approximately equal).
- Likelihood of
Disagreement: The length of the group meeting and
the number of hours consumed should increase with
the amount of disagreement among group members
about the nature of the problem to be solved or
about the steps to be taken to solve it.
- Team Competence: The
length of the group meeting and the number of
hours consumed should decrease with increased
competence and experience of group members in
working together.
Value of Development
- Value of Development
interacts with all other terms in the equation.
As the importance attached to development
increases, the difference in development
associated with style increase; as it approaches
zero, these differences disappear. It is assumed
that the relationship between participation and
development is linear, being minimum at
"Decide" and increasing progressively
to "Delegate".
- Decision
Significance: The amount of development is
assumed to depend on the importance or
significance of the decision. Development of
group members does not occur on trivial decisions
but is increasingly likely with enhanced
significance of the decision.
- Goal Alignment
and Likelihood of Disagreement:
Disagreement among group members about their
positions on issues is likely to be a source of
learning when there are shared goals and when
leadership styles (such as "Consult
Group," "Facilitate," and
"Delegate") are used, giving them
opportunities to work together to resolve
differences. Furthermore, resolution of such
differences is likely to contribute to the
ability of the group to work together. We also
acknowledge that differences can also weaken the
ability or motivation of the group to work
together and, consequently, their value to the
organization. This outcome is predicted by the
model when there is a high level of disagreement
accompanied by no shared objectives.
A Note on Interaction
Constraint
When there are serious
time constraints (as in emergencies) and/or
insurmountable geographical distances among group
members, leadership styles requiring interaction among
group members ("Consult Group,"
"Facilitate," and "Delegate") are
inefficient, if not impossible. The interaction
constraint equation imposes a penalty on those processes
over and above the time used in the cost equation. The
operation of this variable may be observed by selecting
"yes" for Interaction Constraint.
We believe that there is a theoretical or empirical basis
for the mechanisms that we have built into the model. We
do not deny the existence of other situational factors to
be considered or that the particular manner in which we
have integrated them is the only way in which this could
be done.
If you desire to inspect the equations themselves, click
on Technical Data.
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