, 1972; Ashour, 1973).
Furthermore, over the years, many scholars have come to the realization that leadership is situational and hence there are many realistic settings like the environment, the employees, the resources, etc. that determine the characteristics needed in a leader as well as his/her business approach (Hershey and Blanchard, 1977, 1984). This is why it is important to first understand the different types of scenarios that a leader can face and then use those scenarios as the foundation on which most leadership techniques and approaches are built. This idea of leadership being situational is very helpful in outlining the methods through which leadership can be developed and has taken up a good part of the last three-decade of research (Mckenna, Boyd and Yost, 2007).
There were many studies that simultaneously started concentrating on what actually was the leadership approach within many corporations instead of what they thought ought to be the approach. This brought out many more varieties in the leadership styles and methodologies that were adapted from autocratic to democratic to partnership to group decision-making. Vroom and Yetton (1973) explained in their research that the choice of the leadership style or approach was dependent upon many external factors; the most important of which were the capability and motivation of the follower, the association between follower and follower as well as follower and leader, the nature and extent of the project along with the significance or value of the assessment that needs to be taken (Vroom and Yetton, 1973).
Flamholtz (1986) in his study added insights into the notions of leadership styles and approaches that previously existed (e.g., Tannenbaum and Schmidt, 1958; Likert, 1961; Vroom and Yetton, 1973). His overall mock-up consisted of six leadership styles that the leaders could always use depending on the situations that they face, even though he emphasizes the importance of sticking with one style consistently. In his design he integrated the new laissez-faire or "hands-off" methodology. This new methodology mainly gave the leaders the option to analyze the situation and the followers and then depending on the conclusions that they made let the followers self-manage the situation and be accountable for its success or failure (Flamholtz, 1986).
Hershey and Blanchard (1988), in their study designed a model by the name of Leader Effectiveness and Adaptability Profile which has served as a very useful model to determine the vital situational approaches of a leader. In this model, they have highlighted or outlined four basic choices that a leader can chose to do in different situations based purely on the development or willingness of his/her employees which are:
Direction i.e. The leader can clearly indicate the approaches that need to be adopted for the attainment or completion of a project,
Authenticating and advertising i.e. The leader is able to clearly elucidate the reason for choosing an approach,
Contribution i.e. The leader is able to make the task an all-encompassing one by making the employees more involved in the decisions being made, and Allotment i.e. The leader is able to trust the employees and encourage the employees to complete an assignment or attain success in a project.
In this study, they also highlighted four elements of employee development or willingness, which match up to the approach adopted by the leader. This simply means that the approach chosen by the leader from the four mentioned above is based around these four elements, which are:
Capable, enthusiastic and determined employees;
Capable yet unenthusiastic employees;
Incapable yet enthusiastic employees.
Incapable, unenthusiastic and ill-determined employees.
Dictatorial Leadership
Dictatorial format of leadership and its realistic aftermaths have also been the focus of numerous studies. The two most popular studies that focus on this form of leadership were the ones carried out in the years 1950 and 1960 at the Universities of Michigan and Ohio (Yukl 1989). The results of these studies show that the leadership styles that incorporate the employees and are more monitoring then dictating result in higher employee performance, loyalty and contentment. These studies, even though, were very helpful in outlining the approach that the leaders should develop for durable success and support from the employees; they still lacked in giving thorough results related to the leadership styles in other dimensions such as how well the objectives of the group were met, how much was the profit percentage affected, etc.
The researches that have focused on dictatorial leadership thus far have only been able to make concrete conclusions on how the behavioral approach of a leader...
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