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Value Based Leadership Theory

“Leaders are dealers in hope” Bonaparte Napoleon

“We will build a winning tradition” Vince Lombardi to the Green Bay Packers

Consider the above quotations. These statements of leaders reflect commitment to a value position. In this paper I am going to describe a brand new theory of leadership, developed by Professor House - the Value Based Leadership Theory. I will also present a preliminary test of several hypotheses derived from Value Based Theory. The tests of hypotheses are based on data descriptive of 25 relationships between chief executives and their immediate subordinates. As a concrete example, I am going to present the results of the real interviews, which took plase in Russia in 1999 among the CEOs. In the process of testing these hypotheses I replicate the study of charismatic leadership in the U. S. presidency conducted by House, Spangler & Woycke (1991) using a sample of chief executive officers and different measurement methods. What I am trying to prove in this paper is the following: It was considered to think that managers are always the leadres in the organization. This opinion was proved to be wrong. According to the first research which appaered in press in the end of 70-s: manager is the position, and leader is the person who leads others to the desired result. According to the personal trends and characteristics, managers should be leaders, and they are, but not always. The question of leadership is a very interesting topic for me, personally.

I am deeply interested in the question of leadership, and I do think, that this question and the existing theories have a long life to live. Leadership is a real fact, which has already been proved. You can be a born leader, but you also can create the leader in yourself. You can manage to influence, motivate and enable others. You can succeed, because there is nothing impossible for a human being. Especially, if he is intelligent on the one hand and really wishes to achieve something on the other.

A BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW

During the period between the mid-seventies and the present time a number of theories have been introduced into the leadership literature. These new theories and the empirical research findings constitute a paradigm shift in the study of leadership. The theories to which I refer are the 1976 Theory of Charismatic Leadership (House, 1977), the Attributional Theory of Charisma (Conger & Kanungo, 1987), and the Transformational Theory (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985), and Visionary Theories of Leadership (Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Sashkin, 1988; Kousnes & Posner, 1987).

I believe these theories are all of a common genre. They attempt to explain how leaders are able to lead organizations to attain outstanding accomplishments such as the founding and growing of successful entrepreneurial firms, corporate turnarounds in the face of overwhelming competition, military victories in the face of superior forces, leadership of successful social movements and movements for independence from colonial rule or political tyranny. They also attempt to explain how certain leaders are able to achieve extraordinary levels of follower motivation, admiration, respect, trust, commitment, dedication, loyalty, and performance.

The dependent variables of earlier theories are follower expectations, satisfaction, and normal levels of performance. The dependent variables of the more recent theories include a number of affective consequences such as followers’ emotional attachment to leaders; followers’ emotional and motivational arousal, and thus enhancement of follower valences and values with respect to the missions articulated by leaders; followers’ trust and confidence in leaders; and values that are of major importance to the followers. These more recent theories also address the effect of leaders on several follower conditions not addressed in earlier theories, such as followers' self-worth and self-efficacy perceptions, and identification with the leader’s vision.

Earlier theories describe leader behavior that are theoretically instrumental to follower performance and satisfy follower needs for support, generally referred to as task-and person-oriented leader behaviors (Fleishman & Harris, 1962; Katz & Kahn, 1952; Likert, 1961; Feidler, 1967; House, 1971, House, 1996). In contrast, the more recent theories stress the infusion of values into organizations and work through leader behaviors that are symbolic, inspirational and emotion arousing.

Earlier theories take follower attitudes, values, desires, and preferences as given. The more recent theory claim that leaders can have substantial, if not profound effects on these affective and cognitive states of followers. Accordingly, leaders are claimed to transform both individuals and total organizations by infusing them with moral purpose, thus appealing to ideological values and emotions of organizational members, rather than by offering material incentives and the threat of punishment, or by appealing to pragmatic or instrumental values.

Also, McClelland (1975) introduced a theory intended to explain leader effectiveness as a function of a specific combination of motives referred to as the Leader Motive Profile (LMP). As will be shown below,