On the Death and Transfiguration of Lead- Ership Training

This paper presents a new Interpretation of leadership experience and leadership training In an effort to explain why the literature reports no consistent relations between these methods of leadership development and organizational performance. The basis for the reconceptualization is derived from the Contingency Model which postulates a contingent relationship between leadership motivation as measured by the LPC score and the favorableness of the leader's situation (i.e., the degree to which the situation enables the leader to control and influence the group.) According to the model, task-motivated (low LPC) leaders perform better in favorable or unfavorable situations while relationship-motivated leaders perform better in intermediate situations. Let us now interpret leadership experience or training as improving situational favorableness by making the task more structured and by improving the leader-member relations. It then follows that the same type of training will be beneficial for one type of leader but detrimental for another. This hypothesis is tested in a variety of situations and supports the hypothesis of the Contingency Model. ON THE DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING Fred E. Fiedler University of Washington This paper tests the hypothesis derived from thr Contingency Model that experience and training differentially affect the performance of relationshipand task-motivated leaders. It thus hopes to resolve the puzzling and frustrating findings which indicate that leadership experience and training do not seem to increase organiiiatior.al effectiveness. Campbell, Dunnette, Lawler, and Weick (1970) recently reviewed the management training literature. The authors found numerous studies relating training to "internal criteria" of managerial attitudes and perceptions. However, only eight investigations used a control group as well as "external criteria" of organizational performance, i.e., criteria based on the supervisor's changes in job performance. This review led Campbell et al. to conclude that changes in managers' attitudes and perceptions have been observed as a result of training, howevei, "...with regard to the bulk of the literature on training effects, it remains to be demonstrated v.'hether the changes in criteria used to measure training effects have any importance for the organizations goals (p. 325)." Others (e.g., House, 1967; Odiorne, 1964; Fleishman, 1953; Fleishman, Harris, and Burt, 1955) have come to essentially similar conclusions. To the studies cited by Campbell, et al., should be adtkd two experiments which compared trained and untrained leaders under cont:oiled experimental conditions, and two correlational studies relating amount of training to organizational performance.