Concerning the Efficacy of the Style Approach, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory, and the Contingency Approach for the Criminal Justice Field, Research Paper Example

Different approaches to leadership theory offer a number of different ways to answer one crucial question: what makes a good leader? Of course, this question invites many others: to what degree do leaders depend upon particular circumstances for success? How do leader appraisals of their followers, and followers of their leaders, affect overall performance? All of these and many other questions can be answered in somewhat different ways through a number of different competing frameworks. Where the style approach to leadership emphasizes personality factors of the leader and how they go about the business of leadership, the leader-member exchange theory emphasizes the creation of the in-group and the quality of the interactions between leader and followers, while the contingency theory emphasizes the importance of contingent variables.

The style approach to leadership offers a remarkably fascinating way to analyze leadership: in terms of the style that the leader brings to the table, both with regard to their task behaviors and their relationship behaviors (Northouse, 2010, p. 69). According to this theory, a leader’s task behaviors are important because they determine how efficaciously goals are accomplished within the organization, while relationship behaviors are important because of how they impact the relationship between the leader and their followers (p. 69).

In this vein, the now-famous University of Michigan studies in the 1960s differentiated between two great categories of leadership behaviors, those that are oriented on the employees and have a strong human resources aspect, called employee orientation behaviors, and those oriented upon the tasks and projects and goals of the organization, called production orientation behaviors (Northouse, 2010, p. 71). The conceptualization is that leaders fall along a continuum, with some displaying greater tendencies towards employee orientation behaviors and others displaying greater tendencies towards production orientation behaviors (p. 71).

But even before this, in the 1930s researcher Kurt Lewin and his colleagues at the University of Iowa conducted studies on leadership styles, at a time when the trait approach to leadership was the dominant paradigm (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 70). What these authors found was a seminal distinction between leadership styles that were autocratic, i.e. marked by a very top-down, no-questions-asked, micro-managing approach, and leadership styles that were democratic, and thus far more participatory (p. 70).

Researchers Blake and Mouton, similarly, highlighted the seminal distinction between leadership behaviors guided by concerns for production and those guided by concerns for people (Rowe & Guerrero, 2012, p. 105). Their model describes leadership according to five different styles, the first of which is the authority-compliance style (p. 105). The authority-compliance style of leadership is seen in leaders who are obsessed with results and care not at all for people, except as the means by which the organization achieves its goals (p. 105). These leaders are task-and performance-oriented, but their lack of focus on the wellbeing, perspectives, and happiness of their followers often makes them unpopular, meaning they have difficulty eliciting genuine loyalty and admiration from their subordinates (p. 105).

The second style is the complete inverse. This is the country club style of leadership, which describes leaders marked by a very high concern for the wellbeing and happiness of their employees, and very little concern for results (Rowe & Guerrero, 2012, p. 105). Whereas the authority-compliant leader cares only for results, the country club leader cares only for people. They may not be the most effective in securing organizational productivity, but their people-friendly focus can go a very long way towards securing employee loyalty and commitment (p. 105).

The third style is different yet again: this is the impoverished management style, by far the most ignominious of the lot (Rowe & Guerrero, 2012, p. 105). The impoverished manager cares for neither results nor people, and generally does the bare minimum necessary to avoid termination. Productivity and employee morale suffer under the tenure of such a manager, who can never be truly called a leader (p. 105). Fourthly, middle-of-the-road leaders have some concern for results, and some concern for people. They tend to treat these two concerns or needs in terms of the trade-off, trying to balance the requirements of both without pushing either one unduly (p. 105). In other words, they are production-oriented to a certain point, certainly more than the impoverished manager, but they are not nearly so production-oriented as the authority-compliant manager, and the reason for this is that they hold the concerns pertaining to production in tension with those pertaining to people (p. 105). With respect to their followers, therefore, middle-of-the-road managers are similarly moderate, recognizing the importance of their followers’ needs and perspectives to a certain point, but again holding these in tension with concerns pertaining to production (p. 105).

The essential flaw of the authority-compliant manager is their lack of regard for people; conversely, the essential flaw of the country club manager is their lack of regard for production. The impoverished manager is irredeemable, and has no business holding authority over anyone or anything. The middle-of-the-road manager is competent and well-balanced to a certain point, but operates in terms of a significant strategic and operational weakness: the idea that production concerns and people concerns exist as a simple trade-off. This is the limitation in the thinking of the middle-of-the-road manager: they perceive attention and focus on these two concerns in terms of a zero-sum game, whereby to focus upon one is to diminish the other correspondingly. To wit, this prevents them from attaining the best results in either field: they will have less turnover than an authority-compliant manager, all other factors being accounted for, and probably more production than the country club manager, but they will remain in all respects rather middling.

But there is a fifth style of leadership in the model, and it rectifies all of the shortcomings of the others. The team management style manager perceives concerns pertaining to production and concerns pertaining to people as both being important and, moreover, existing in an integral relation to each other such that they can be used to operate a virtuous cycle, a positive feedback loop (Rowe & Guerrero, 2012, p. 105). The team management-style manager emphasizes people concerns, thereby ensuring the loyalty and the respect of the employees, as well as their capabilities for the performance of their necessary duties. This in turn contributes, by means of higher morale and commitment, to better production results, which are also emphasized (p. 105). To wit, for the team management-style leader, concerns pertaining to production and concerns pertaining to people exist in a positive-sum relationship: emphasizing both in intelligent and competent ways can indeed lead to better and more generally efficacious outcomes for both (p. 105). This is why this style of leadership is beyond question the best: not only does it produce competent, motivated, and loyal employees, but it also produces good results pertaining to the organization’s objectives.

Still another way of analyzing leadership styles was that proposed by Henry Mintzberg, on the basis of his findings in a study of CEOs (Palestini, 2009, p. 4). In the performance of their duties, leaders will exhibit different tendencies based on their style, and these tendencies can be broadly grouped into a number of distinct categories or roles which describe the context of leadership (p. 2). Three of these roles pertain to the leader’s interpersonal contact: their role as figurehead, their role as leader, and their role as liaison (p. 2). These are relatively self-explanatory: here, ‘figurehead’ means that the leader is very much the symbol of the organization’s power structure. As leader, the leader makes decisions and sets the example. As liaison, the leader serves as the intermediary between various employees in the case of confusion or disputes, and as the intermediary between the organization and outside parties (p. 2).

The next three roles involve information processing: the role of the leader as monitor, the role as disseminator, and the role as spokesperson (Palestini, 2009, p. 2). The leader monitors the information internal to the organization as well as external to it, making important decisions about what information they need to disseminate to others. As spokesperson, the leader represents the organization to outside parties, and also serves as the mouthpiece of the organization’s goals. Finally, the leader has four key roles pertaining to their role as a decision maker: the role of entrepreneur, the role of disturbance handler, the role of resource allocator, and the role of negotiator (p. 3). How well the leader performs in these roles, and the degree to which they emphasize one as opposed to another, are seminal determinants of their style and thus their efficacy as leaders.

The style approach is certainly of considerable interest to the criminal justice field. It highlights the degree to which leaders do or do not express consideration for their employees’ needs and ensure their satisfaction (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 207). Indeed, the seminal distinction between task-oriented and people-oriented leadership behaviors has become foundational to modern theories of leadership generally: as such, it is of quite considerable importance to the criminal justice field (Landy & Conte, 2009, p. 554). The criminal justice field is certainly one that involves a great deal of risk and many challenges; consequently, the insights of the behavioral or style approach are especially relevant. In particular, this approach has highlighted the importance of leaders responding to their employees’ needs through relationship-oriented behaviors: these behaviors are in turn correlated with high employee satisfaction (p. 554).

A focus on human relations as well as production is the best style to adopt according to this style-focused approach. By so doing, leaders in the field of criminal justice can expect efficacious outcomes in the workplace and well-satisfied, loyal personnel. The positive-sum game of the team leader style is a powerful model indeed for efficacious leadership in action, and it is one that has a great deal of potential in all fields. In order to initiate such a virtuous cycle, the leader must give due consideration to both the concerns of production and the concerns of their followers: by so doing they can reap the rewards of a high-performance workforce, one that is motivated to carry out its duties and do them well. In a field such as criminal justice, with the many responsibilities, challenges, and dangers attendant upon successful performance, this imperative could be no greater.

From the perspective of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, ties of affect and experience influence the quality of the exchanges between leaders and followers (Lussier & Achua, 2010). The “exchanges” in question describe interactions between leaders and followers, and LMX theory specifically emphasizes perceptions and affect: high quality interactions are achieved when leaders win the trust and affections of their followers, such that the relationship between leader and followers is characterized by mutual respect, by trust, and by positive affect (p. 247). This encourages followers to engage in and display behaviors that are in accordance with the organization’s goals and objectives, i.e., they become good citizens of the organization (p. 247). Conversely, the theory holds, lower quality interactions are not marked by trust and positive affect, but rather by mistrust, suspicion, low morale, and the like. Employees who experience such interactions with their leaders are less likely to be good citizens of the organization, and will not respond positively to directives from the leader (p. 247).

However, it is absolutely seminal to LMX theory that the same leader can and will have interactions of greatly differing quality with a variety of followers (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 247). The reasons why are not difficult to see: people in general differ in their personalities, skills, and temperament. Accordingly, any given leader will get along better with certain followers, who will be more amenable and receptive to the leader’s personality and style. Even if the leader is scrupulously and consistently fair in evaluating employees solely on the basis of merit, these personality differences and idiosyncrasies are likely to affect the character of the leader’s interaction with different followers in different ways. And, too, office politics must be considered: whether due to followers’ tendencies to respond differently to the leader based on personal proclivities, or to other factors, in a sufficiently large organization there will almost inevitably arise an in-group clustered about the leader (p. 247).

These in-group members have very high quality interactions with the leader, but the leader faces the higher costs of maintaining these relationships as well: they must dole out the fruits of patronage, whether in the form of praise or power or some other reward, in return for the crucial support of this key stratum of organizational members (Lussier & Achua, 2010, pp. 247-248). The in-group, then, is characterized by a very high level of social capital: because of their position in the hierarchy of the organization, whether formal or informal, they have privileged access to resources and can participate more fully in the organization’s decision-making processes (p. 248). This relationship between leader and in-group members is seen throughout history: Roman emperors and Medieval European monarchs alike were beholden to secure the interests of their respective noble cohorts. In today’s offices, the pattern is broadly similar: the leader maintains control through favors, providing connections, and elevating in-group members to positions of privilege and influence (p. 248). The leader’s ability to do this gives them their own form of social capital (p. 248).

What, then, of the followers who are not in the in-group? According to LMX theory, their situation is relatively easily summarized: they have much lower morale than in-group followers, are less keen to align their own personal goals and objectives with those of the organization, and generally perceive it as a less supportive and positive environment than the in-group followers do (Lussier & Achua, 2010; Northouse, 2010). Communication is generally less effective between the leader and the out-group followers, since the rapport that characterizes the leader’s relationships with the in-group is lacking (Northouse, 2010). They have less autonomy than the members of the in-group, and are more likely to be tasked with the performance of undesirable and mundane duties (Griffin & Moorhead, 2012). Since they experience lower quality interactions with their leader, the out-group followers tend to be less motivated and less likely to see the leader in a good and positive light (Daft, 2008).

To be sure, however, these relationships between leader and followers do not spring up overnight: instead, they develop over some period of time, passing through the three phases of the LMX model (Daft, 2008; Northouse, 2010). In the first phase, the leader and the follower are strangers to each other, and each must ascertain the character of the other (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 249). Both have to manage the impression that they give the other if they want it to be a favorable one: in other words, image management is very important at this stage. Things are often delicate, fluid, and uncertain in this stage, as the employees most eager for advancement or simply desirous of being helpful seek to ingratiate themselves with the leader (p. 249). Of course, social skills are very important here: not only can followers fail to impress leaders if they do not evince sufficient enthusiasm, responsiveness, helpfulness and ability, but they can also overshoot and forever tarnish themselves as self-serving social climbers in the leader’s eyes (p. 249).

In the second stage, the leader and the follower have each taken the measure of each other, and now begin to develop the character of the roles that will obtain between them (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 250). In this stage, the initially fluid, delicate psychosocial and relational landscape between follower and leader begins to gel into a recognizable shape. The follower begins to accustom themselves to the behavior and the expectations of their leader, and the leader to the behavior and response of the follower. Of course, there is a great deal of give and take here, as each will reveal something of their own expectations for the working relationship (p. 250). On the other hand, some leader-follower relationships are not able to reach even this stage, and remain perpetually trapped in the first stage, in which case the follower will be a member of the out-group (p. 250). The central idea of the model concerning this stage is that it is here that leader-member exchanges start to have real quality. However, some relationships remain trapped at this stage, and these tend to be of middling quality at best: if a relationship between leader and follower remains trapped at this second stage, it will remain primarily marked and driven by the concerns of each party for their own self-interest, rather than the higher qualities of mutual trust, respect, and commitment that may begin to manifest in this stage but really take hold in the third stage (p. 250).

In the third stage, something truly marvelous happens, if the leader and the follower can get this far: whereas in the second stage self-interest was the defining motive driving the relationship, in stage three mutual trust, respect, and commitment prevail (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 250). What this means, quite simply, is that there is now a strategic alignment between the goals of the individual and the organization: the individual sees that their interests are reasonably aligned with the organization and the leader as the embodiment of its power structure. Again, though, the only way that this can happen is if both parties do their part, and feel a genuine mutual respect for each other, based on trust and commitment.

Taken to its logical conclusion, LMX theory can explain follower loyalty in terms not only of powers delegated and favors granted, but also in terms of a model of subordinate stewardship (Kulkarni & Ramamoorthy, 2011). Although whether or not this happens will depend, of course, upon the situation and the individuals involved, the stewardship model proposes a compelling framework for understanding and interpreting the loyalty of followers to their leaders and their organizations. The model argues that rather than simply seeking to advance their interests and their power, followers may be motivated by feelings of loyalty to their leaders, based on high-quality interactions with them and the perception that the followers have been given the responsibility to steward certain trusts (pp. 2771-2772). The followers may be stewards of positions of power and influence in the organization, but this concept arguably applies to any set of job duties: all represent certain trusts on the part of the leader to the follower (pp. 2774-2775).

The seminal feature of this stewardship model is its emphasis on loyalty: it is loyalty to the leader that inspires the follower to protect the organization’s interests (Kulkarni & Ramamoorthy, 2011, p. 2778). In order to be able to inspire such loyalty, the leader must evince a high degree of competence: they must evince that they genuinely know what they are doing. This is crucial, because leaders with poor judgment or a lack of proper professionalism do not inspire trust and admiration, which are necessary prerequisites for loyalty of this sort (Kulkarni & Ramamoorthy, 2011; Zigarmi, Blanchard, Edeburn, & O’Connor, 2004). Leaders also need to be able to exercise influence, including through the use of such tactics as persuasion by means of appealing to the qualities or the ideas or the values that the employees may hold (Kulkarni & Ramamoorthy, 2011, p. 2779). This is of foundational importance, since leaders who rely only on the more formal attributes or capacities of their position to influence employees, i.e. by using the power of their office, are not likely to motivate them nearly so much or so well (p. 2779).

The leader-member exchange theory clearly has much to offer the field of criminal justice. It shows the importance of recognizing the in-group and the out-group, and what makes each group what it is. This theory also highlights the processes by which leaders and followers become acquainted and progress in their relationship or stagnate. This is again of considerable interest to the criminal justice field, with its high stakes and many challenges and dangers, all of which necessitate a sound understanding of the interactions between leaders and their followers, and the quality of such interactions.

Leaders who inspire their followers, then, are more likely to achieve high-quality interactions with them, and these interactions can lead to follower loyalty. Loyal followers understand themselves to be stewards of organizational responsibility and resources, carriers of their leader’s trust. As such, they do not want to let their leader down, and will work hard and skillfully in the service of the organization’s objectives. Followers who are stewards still have their own motives, to be sure, but owing to their great loyalty to their leader and their sense of responsibility they are not acting out of simple self-interest. These rather more complex and deep-seated motivations of the stewardship-minded employee demonstrate that such employees are infinitely preferable for an organization to work with than are employees who are motivated solely by their own self-interest.

The situational, or contingency, theory of leadership is different yet again from either of the aforementioned theories. In fact, it is arguably the most distinct. Here, the key argument is that in fact, leadership styles are not a one-size-fits-all proposition: depending upon the situation and the people involved, different styles of leadership may be required (Lussier & Achua, 2010, p. 152). One famous contingency model is that provided by Fiedler (1967), who included relatively fixed attributes such as leadership style, defined in terms of people- or task-oriented characteristics (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 208). The model developed a special scale for measuring leaders’ experiences with their least-preferred coworkers (LPCs), and found that relationship-oriented leaders were better at looking beyond their less-than-desirable experiences with the LPC and find some redeeming value (p. 208). The significance of this in the model is Fiedler’s own idea that it serves as a good metric or gauge of the leader’s overall style in managing: how well they treat their employees, and so on (p. 208).

In addition to fixed attributes, of course, the model had a number of variables the value of which was expected to change in accordance with the situation (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 208). The first of these contingency variables in the model is the group atmosphere: depending on the atmosphere of the group, Fiedler argued, the leader will interact with followers in different ways, and the same for the followers and the leader. The more that the leader is accepted, trusted, and admired by their staff, the better the results the leader will be able to obtain (pp. 208-209).

The second contingency variable is task structure, which is important because it defines what, exactly, the leader is asking the followers to do (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 209). More complex and demanding tasks will require more training and more support, and the leader will have to be more vigilant to ensure that the team are committed, on task, and sufficiently supported with any necessary resources. Of course, a much easier task will probably require far less supervision (p. 209). The third contingency variable is position power, which describes the actual dimensions of the leader’s power (p. 209). As any student of history is well aware, leaders have historically relied on rewards to their followers, coercion or the threat thereof, and legitimacy, a rather more abstract concept that captures the degree to which the followers see the leader as holding their office by some right, whether through merit and ability or the mandate of some higher authority (p. 209).

Fiedler found that leaders with different styles perform more or less effectively in different situations (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 209). In other words, depending on the type of leader a leader was, they performed more or less effectively depending or contingent upon the circumstances. Specifically, Fiedler’s model suggested that task-oriented leaders had a style that was most suited to circumstances possessing an extreme of either very favorable or very unfavorable characteristics. By contrast, relationship-oriented leaders seemed to perform best in circumstances that were moderately favorable (p. 209).

If the leader has the advantages of a great deal of support from their team, a very secure and well-established power position, and a soundly and thoroughly structured task, then a task-oriented leader can excel: the situation is so favorable that it is not difficult for them to secure the active and enthusiastic participation of everybody towards a very well-defined objective (Allen & Sawhney, 2009, p. 209). This is why task-oriented leaders perform so well in highly favorable situations. On the other hand, very unfavorable situations also call for task-oriented leaders, but here the challenges are very different: the leader has to establish the nature of the task and secure their power position, all while dealing with an uncooperative team. The reason task-oriented leaders are good for this is simple: because they do not care about affronting their subordinates, they will not tolerate their subordinates’ bad attitudes, lack of respect, or laziness (p. 209). Consequently, they can achieve results that in all probability no other kind of leader could: the completion of tasks that are ill-defined in very unfavorable circumstances.

It is arguably much to its credit, then, that the contingency approach has introduced the idea of situational variables into analyses of the efficacy of leaders and followers. Indeed, one of the seminal things that the theory considers is the quality of the decisions made by the leader, wherein quality is defined in terms of the comprehensiveness of the impact of the decision upon the processes of the group, and also the acceptance of the decision by the subordinates (Rahim, 2010, p. 57). Of course, a key ramification of this theory is the prescription that, as seen, in those situations wherein the leader finds their power challenged and the task unclear, then the autocratic and task-oriented style is the more appropriate to the completion of whatever processes the group is tasked with completing (p. 57).

And to be sure, there are many more contingency factors. As Van Wart (2011) explained, the leader’s perceptions of the overarching goals are very important, inasmuch as these will drive the leader’s decisions (p. 43). This is a key point that warrants further analysis: the leader’s perceptions will probably depend on many things, including the information they posses, the atmosphere of the group, the degree to which the group accepts their power, the performance of the organization, and doubtless more besides. In other words, many contingent factors may in theory, and doubtless do in practice, influence the leader’s perceptions of what the overall goals of the organization should be. But leader perceptions in turn constitute another contingency variable, since they will play a key role in crafting the leader’s decisions, which will in turn shape organizational outcomes.

Other contingency factors include the skills of the followers, and the effort they evince. A leader who perceives their workers as low in skill may decide to take things easier until they have learned the necessary skills, or they may put them through a grueling regimen of catch-up (Van Wart, 2011, p. 43). Either way, this is a contingent variable, since it affects the decisions that the leader must make. And the same is true again of follower effort: if the leader perceives that this is poor, then they need to find a way of boosting follower morale. If it is high, on the other hand, then they have more options in their decision-making processes (p. 43). How the leader judges their followers will thus have a potentially tremendous impact on the character of the decisions that the leader will make for the organization. Of course, the judgments may be favorable or unfavorable, and they may be correct or incorrect, and these dimensions will in turn affect the leader’s style and the organizational outcomes accordingly (p. 46).

And, too, one must consider the followers themselves, and the differences that may well obtain between them (Daft & Lane, 2009, p. 418). The model articulated by Hersey and Blanchard specifically accounts for the fact that different followers will have different levels of readiness: some will be very ready, on point, focused, and generally very capable (p. 418). Others will not be so capable, and may require far more coaching and guidance. Again, these variables will call for different leadership practices.

In fact, this model calls for the application of the five styles of leadership addressed previously: the authoritative compliant or telling style; the country club or participating style; the impoverished style, here repackaged as the delegating style; the middle-of-the-road style, and the selling style or team management style (Daft & Lane, 2009, pp. 418-419). Now, the argument is that depending upon the situation, a different approach will be called for: ergo, depending on what is required. Foundationally, then, this is what is required if one is to use this model and use it well: match the right kind of leadership style to the right situation.

How applicable, then, is the contingency model to the criminal justice field? First and foremost, it should be noted that the criminal justice field contains a number of different situations and different kinds of tasks. If leaders can perform well at many such tasks, perhaps this approach is not the best description of leader-follower behavior, nor the best prescriptive framework for designing organizations and selecting leadership. On the other hand, one could make a very strong case that certain organizational cultures and environments call for specific kinds of leadership, and the criminal justice field, with its many challenges and dangers, will naturally have a more restrictive spectrum of acceptable and high-performance leadership styles than a great many other sectors. Much to the credit of this approach, it makes a compelling case for the kinds of leaders one should rely on in particular situations, and why. And, too, it provides a useful framework for analyzing leaders and followers, including the perceptions that each have of the other. As such, this approach has some very valuable insights to offer the criminal justice field, and should certainly be taken into consideration.

The leadership theories of the style approach, the leader-member exchange (LMX) approach, and the contingency approach offer significantly different lenses through which to view the phenomenon of leadership. Ultimately all three have much to offer the field of criminal justice, with its many challenges and often dangers. In particular, the style approach lends insight into how leaders’ behaviors in exercising leadership have an impact on their followers, and to what effect: task- versus people-oriented leaders, for example, and the five different great styles of leadership. The leader-member exchange approach provides a great deal of insight regarding the creation of in-groups and the quality of leader-member interactions. Finally, the contingency approach highlights the role of situational, contingent variables, which may call for different leadership approaches.

References

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