Ralph M. Stogdill

Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A Survey of the Literature

(1948). Personal Factors Associated with Leadership: A Survey of the Literature. The Journal of Psychology: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 35-71.

Toward a contingency theory of leadership based upon the consideration and initiating structure literature

Abstract The Ohio State Leadership Studies have been criticized on grounds that they lack a conceptual base, and fail to take situational variables into account. This article reviews the published literature involving the leader behavior dimensions “Consideration” and “Initiating Structure,” for the purpose of developing some situational propositions of leader effectiveness. Among the variables found by researchers to significantly moderate relationships between leader behavior predictors, and satisfaction and performance criteria are the following: subordinate need for information, job level, subordinate expectations of leader behavior, perceived organizational independence, leaders similarity of attitudes and behavior to managerial style of higher management, leader upward influence; and characteristics of the task, including pressure and provision of intrinsic satisfaction. The article concludes by presenting ten situational propositions, and linking them to form two general postulates of leadership effectiveness.

Brief Report: Some Possible Uses Of Factor Analysis In Multivariate Studies.

Factor analysis is used in item selection in the hopes of producing a small number of factors each of which will represent a unidimensional sub- scale. If item analysis has been successful in producing truly independent subscales, it might be hoped that the number of factors would equal the number of subscales and that each factor would be highly defined by a single subscale. Factor analysis when used in studies of organization, is not assumed to produce factors that represent unidimensional scales. Rather, factor analysis is used to reveal various substructures that exist within an organization. If several variables are loaded on a single factor, the variables can be regarded as nodes of interaction between measured dimensions of organization.

THE STRUCTURE OF ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR.

The subjects were 25 foremen, 5 general foremen, and the production manager of a manufacturing plant. Each supervisor described the leader behavior of his immediate superior, and each in turn was described by several subordinates. Both superiors and the subordinates of a supervisor rated or described the productivity, morale, and cohesiveness of the group that he supervised. Thirty variables were intercorrelated and factor analyzed. The resulting 14 factors describe dimensions of employee satisfaction, supervisory behavior and status, and group performance.