Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

In our discussion of leadership, we will focus on two major tasks of those who lead

in organizations: managing those around them to get the day-to-day tasks done (lead-

ership as supervision) and inspiring others to do the extraordinary (leadership as vision).

LEADERSHIP ASSUPERVISION

As Hurricane Katrina rushed closer to the New Orleans coastline, people in authority in both

Louisiana and Washington were trying to figure out how best to handle the situation. Some won-

dered whether hundreds of thousands of people should be evacuated from New Orleans before

the storm hit or whether everyone could simply ride out the storm. Michael Brown, then head

of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), sent a small emergency response

team to Louisiana to review evacuation plans the weekend before the levees broke. Frustrated

that Mayor Ray Nagin did not seem to be acting quickly enough to get New Orleans evacuated,

Brown called President George W. Bush to advise him of the situation. He also asked the pres-

ident to phone the mayor directly to tell him to evacuate the people of New Orleans. The pres-

ident’s response, “Mike, you want me to call the Mayor?” illustrates the different roles of

managers and leaders. The president was not expecting to micromanage an evacuation plan and

did not really consider it his role. As the “big picture person,” his job might have been to make

sure that strategies were developed for emergency situations, not to develop the strategies or

implement them. Nevertheless, did President Bush do all that was needed to make sure his

followers could carry out their tasks?

In this section we discuss theories of leadership that were developed before 1980. These

early theories focused on the supervisory nature of leadership—that is, how leaders

managed the day-to-day functioning of employees. The three general types of theories

that emerged were (1) trait theories, which propose leaders have a particular set of traits

that makes them different from nonleaders; (2) behavioural theories, which propose that

258 Part 4Sharing the Organizational Vision

2 Are there specific

traits, behaviours, and

situations that affect

how one leads?

EXHIBIT 8-1 Distinguishing Leadership from Management

Management Leadership

1. Engages in day-to-day caretaker activities: Formulates long-term objectives for reforming the
   Maintains and allocates resources system: Plans strategy and tactics


2. Exhibits supervisory behaviour: Acts to make others Exhibits leading behaviour: Acts to bring about change in
   maintain standard job behaviour others congruent with long-term objectives


3. Administers subsystems within organizations Innovates for the entire organization


4. Asks how and when to engage in standard practice Asks what and why to change standard practice


5. Acts within established culture of the organization Creates vision and meaning for the organization


6. Uses transactional influence: Induces compliance in Uses transformational influence: Induces change in values,
   manifest behaviour using rewards, sanctions, attitudes, and behaviour using personal examples
   and formal authority and expertise


7. Relies on control strategies to get things done Uses empowering strategies to make followers internalize
   by subordinates values


8. Status quo supporter and stabilizer Status quo challenger and change creator

Source: R. N. Kanungo, “Leadership in Organizations: Looking Ahead to the 21st Century,” Canadian Psychology39, no. 1–2 (1998), p. 77.