2.1.3.1 The Choice of Style
In the 1970s Victor H. Vroom and Philip W. Yetton, researchers at the University of
Michigan, developed a leadership model (see Vroom/Yetton 1973), identifying five
possible styles for upper-level management which differ from each other in the
degree of the employees’ involvement. The styles range from a completely authori-
tarian style to the complete transfer of decision-making power to the employees.
Between these two extremes, there is a model in which leaders receive all necessary
information from their employees in order to make decisions based on the informa-
tion provided; a model involving the discussion of problems with individual emplo-
yees and taking their suggestions into account before making decisions; and finally
a model incorporating open group discussions, with employees helping to make
decisions.
Apart from these five styles of leadership, Vroom and Yetton differentiate
between seven organizational, technical and task-oriented aspects of situations
that determine the style of decision-making; however, these aspects are of little
use in practice and therefore will not be discussed here. Vroom and Yetton’s app-
roach is normative. This means that it prescribes how managers should proceed in
order to meet certain company goals. Objectives of the manager or employee are
disregarded, as are questions of decisions’ coordination, enforcement and monitor-
ing – this is problematic, as just because a manager knows which leadership style
would be correct in theory, there is no guarantee that he or she can effectively
implement it (see Neuberger 2002, p. 501 ff).
I also find other aspects of this approach disturbing, as it reduces managers to
machines, programming them to automatically select leadership style Z in situation
XY; as such, the only contribution of managers is their assessment of the situation.
But this is (thankfully) not how the leading of individuals by individuals works.
Each manager has a unique and individual style of leadership that cannot be neatly
defined and is never identical to that of another upper-level manager, even in the
same situation.
2.1.3.2 Classic Leadership Styles
The classical leadership styles involve the authoritarian style, in which the manager
has control over everything while the subordinates cannot give any input, the
patriarchal and advisory styles, and the cooperative style, where the leader serves
as the coordinator and moderator for decisions made as a group (Fig.2.2).
However, this description of leadership styles as a linear continuum is not suffi-
cient to illustrate the variety of alternatives observable in daily practice. Apart from
the level of control over decision-making, other characteristics of leadership styles
can be identified. These include the level of participation of upper-level managers
in work group processes; the degree to which managers bindingly assign tasks; the
level of control used by managers; the frequency with which they make decisions
2.1 The Craft of Leadership 49