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Book ReviewMorgan W McCall, Jr.
Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, by Bernard M.
Bass.New York: The Free Press, 1985, 191 pp. $26.50.
There's a movement afoot in the social science approach to
leadership.After decades of contingency models (cost-benefit
formulations, as Basscalls them, based on contingent reinforcement)
there is a trace of freshair. Earlier harbingers of this shift were
James MacGregor Burns whose1978 book. Leadership, provided a
lengthy discourse on transforma-tional vs. transactional
leadership. About the same time, Peter Vaill wastalking about "high
performing systems" (1978), by which he meantgroups or
organizations that achieved inspirational excellence. Petersand
Waterman (1982) found excellence, Bennis and Nanus (1985)
foundvision. Bob House (1977) found charisma.
The drift of this movement seems to be that something special
hap-pens in excellent organizations, something almost mystical or
at leastoutside of our conventional variables. The behavior of
people can't beexplained by performance-reward linkagesthey
transcend them-selves, do more than is expected. The leaders don't
just set goals, moni-tor performance, and dispense rewards: They
are inspired and inspir-ing. It's about time we began to take these
elusive and largely intangiblequalities seriously.
Bernard Bass set out to understand transformational leadership,
andhas searched far and wide for insight. Drawing on Freud,
political scien-tists, psychohistorians, as well as the more
traditional motivational andleadership literatures, he attempts to
build a model of the transforma-tional leaderthe kind who engenders
from others "performance be-yond expectations."
According to Bass, there are four major factors comprising
transfor-mational leadership:
1. Charisma"Charismatic leaders have insight into the needs,
val-ues, and hopes of their followers. They have the ability to
build onthese needs, values, and hopes through dramatic and
persuasivewords and actions."
2. Inspirational leadership" A subfactor within
charismaticleadership behavior" in which "nonintellectual,
emotional quali-ties" are used to arouse and heighten motivation
among followers.Most charismatics are inspirational, but one need
not be charis-matic to inspire.
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3. Individualized considerationPaying "attention to each of
theirsubordinates, sharing their concerns and development needs,
andtreating them as individuals."
4. Intellectual stimulation" The arousal and change in
followersof problem awareness and problem solving, of thought and
imagi-nation, and of beliefs and values "
Bass describes each of these factors in detail, reviewing the
relevantliterature, describing the processes involved, examining
their anteced-ents, and providing guru-like examples (Iacocca,
Roosevelt, Kennedy).These transformational qualities are then
contrasted with the character-istics of transactional leadership
(two factors: first, use of contingentreward, and second,
management-by-exception, negative feedback, andcontingent aversive
reinforcement). Transactional leaders are " moreconcerned with
efficient processes than with substantive ideas. They aremore
interested in what will work rather than in what is true."
Bass argues that transformational qualities are not restricted
to a fewgreat heroes, but can be present to varying degrees in a
wide variety ofpeople and places. And, while transformational
leaders can be powerfulforces for positive change, the same
qualities may be used in sinisterways.
Emergence of transformational leadership depends, according
toBass, on external environment (more likely in times of distress
orchange), the internal organizational environment ("organic"
organiza-tions are more likely to see it), and the personality and
values of theleader.
The interplay of all these components is not as simple as this
briefreview implies. There are 15 schematic diagrams in the book
summariz-ing the hypothesized relationships among elementsa total
of about175 boxes containing one or more variables. In spite of
this complexity,there is a decided white hat/black hat tone to the
book: Transformationalleaders are more proactive, moral,
innovative, flexible, etc., than theirmundane transactional
colleagues. While "the ordinary manager iskept busy with his inner
id-superego struggles. ., fitting into themold, not making waves,
defending his turf " the transformationalleader is out there
changing the organizational culture. It worries methat the
difference is so stark, especially since I don't think Bass
intendsit to be. Perhaps that's the inevitable result of using
historical giants asexamples: It's hard for most of us to relate to
George Patton or JohnKennedy. The point perhaps is that the
capacity for leadership of ahigher order is more widely distributed
than we might believe. Part ofthe problem is that we too easily
accept manipulation of goals and re-wards as the essence of
leadership.
The book itself is an interesting set of contradictions. On the
onehand, its core is based on factor analytic studies of survey
data. On theother hand, it relies heavily on clinical analyses,
including psychohistor-
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ian interpretations of the personality and motives of historical
figures.At times the book is extremely thorough, reading like an
academic re-view of the literature. At other times it's
superficial, for example, divid-ing managers into stereotypical
categories like "profit maximizers,""trustee oriented managers,"
and "quality of life management." At onepoint, Bass slams the work
of Peters and Waterman ("Their popularstyle and selective
interviewing suggests that they appear to have foundwhat they went
looking for"), yet at various points in the book folkloreabout
companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, leaders like Iacocca
andJobs, and even the Peters and Waterman findings are used to make
hisown case.
One of the strengths of this particular framework is its
empirical base.In the style of a murder mystery, the reader is
continually frustrated byallusions to an answer, but "who dunnit"
is not revealed until the lasttwo chapters. Here we find the
details of a series of studies based onconvenience samples of MBA
students, social science students, under-graduates, educational
administrators, military students and officers,managers and
professionals in New Zealand, and managers from a U.S.corporation
who filled out various questionnaires. The method is nei-ther good
nor bad, it is simply one of our time, but it symbolizes themajor
weakness of this book. There is little "feel" for what it's like to
bea managertransformational or otherwisein a real organization.
Inthis sense the concepts presented are abstractions in the
academic tradi-tion that seem disconnected from the reality of the
trenches. This resultis foreshadowed in the preface, where the
author states one purpose ofthe book as filling the gap in "theory
and research between social andorganizational psychology, on the
one hand, and political science andpsychohistory, on the other."
The book may in fact contribute to this,but I wonder if this is the
gap we should be filling. A case could be madethat the most
significant gap is the one between the abstract, academicview of
leadership and the reality of trying to manage day-to-day incomplex
organizations. My greatest fear is that the recent idolization
ofthe "transformational leader" with super-hero qualities will
become yetanother stereotype (a more elegant version of "manager
versus leader")that consumes leadership researchers and human
resource personnel,not to mention the managers out there who have
yet another "ideal" tolive up to (it's probably easier to live with
not being a 9-9 leader than tobe accused of lacking vision and
inspiration). That Bass provides a ques-tionnaire to measure
transformational and transactional qualities is in-deed a mixed
blessing.
In the final part of the book, Bass quotes Kelvin as saying that
"if youcan't measure it, you don't know what you are talking
about." But assome of Kelvin s own findings later showed, just
because you can mea-sure something doesn't mean that you understand
it. The findings inthis book need to be taken seriously and
integrated into our slowlygrowing understanding of what leadership
is all about. But we need to
McCall: Review of Leadership and Performance I 483
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remember our past"great man theory," leadership styles, human
re-lations, contingency theory, trait theoryeven while we look
eagerlyfor more parsimonious explanations. The book begins with the
hopethat it will be a "major breakthrough in understanding what it
takes forleaders to have great effects on their followers." My hope
is that it willadd some richness to the ways we think about
leadership and open upsome new possibilities. But until theorists
and researchers learn moreabout leaders on linethe problems, the
torments, the victories thatconfront managers on a day-to-day
basiswe run the risk of chasing yetanother rainbow.
On the other hand, it's time we began to expect more from our
leadersand to inspire them to expect more from themselves. It is
encouraging tosee research aimed at understanding the intangible
and sometimes mys-tical qualities of inspired leadership. It is a
modest beginning, but abeginning nonetheless.
Morgan W. McCall, Jr., PhD is Senior Behavioral Scientist and
Director ofResearch at the Center for Creative Leadership,
Greensboro, North Carolina.
References
Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. Leaders: The strategies for taking
charge. New York:Harper & Row, 1985.
Bums, J. M. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.House,
R. J. A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In Hunt, James G.,
and
Larson, Lars L., Leadership: The cutting edge, pp. 189-207,
Illinois: SouthernIllinois University Press, 1977.
Peters, T. J., and Waterman, R. H., Jr. In search of excellence:
Lessons from America'sbest-run companies. New York: Harper &
Row, 1982.
Vaill, P Toward a behavioral description of high-performing
systems. InMcGall, Morgan W., Jr., & Lombardo, Michael M.,
Leadership: Where else can wego?, pp. 103-125, Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1978.
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