THE CONTENT OF THE BOOK

 

It is quite difficult to speak about leadership as a psychological phenomenon since the theme of leadership has already long ago exceeded the bounds of psychology and now undoubtedly become one of the most popular concepts of modern thinking. School children are eager to be leaders in studies, sportsmen in sports, scholars in science. The companies strive to maintain leadership positions in the market, political parties rest their hopes upon new, young leaders. The heads of democratic states and brutal dictators are not at all against an additional title of a “leader”, which newsmen hastily provide them. Even the whole nations are eager to declare themselves as global leaders.

Today people live in the atmosphere of democratic values, individualism, aspiration to rivalry, thirst of success and completeness of a life. And, perhaps, in a phenomenon of leadership this pathos of time is expressed atmost.

To be the leader – means to be more purposeful, more capable, cleverer and more industrious than others and consequently to have the moral right to lead them after oneself. In this context leadership acts as a modern ideal of behaviour which is based not on the origin or the status, but on personal and professional advantages of an individual.

Studying of such a complex and contradictory phenomenon as leadership is an interdisciplinary problem and demands efforts of many sciences: philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, genetics, physiology, etc. And still the priority undoubtedly belongs to psychology which during last seventy years has brought the decisive contribution in studying this phenomenon. Since K. Levin and R. Lippit’s works (Lewin, Lippitt, 1938), psychological research of leadership have got the status of the recognized scientific direction: numerous experiments have been conducted, fundamental discoveries have been made, numerous theories have been developed, detailed monographs and classical textbooks have been written (Zhuravlyov, 2005; Меnegetti, 2002; Parygin, 1973; Bennis, Nanus, 1985; Conger, 1990; Locke, 1991; Vroom, 1973; Vroom, Jago, 1978; Yammarino, Bass, 1990; Yukl, 1994; Blake, Mouton, 1964; Fielder, 1967; Hеrsey, Blanchard, 1993; Stogdill, 1974).

“Virus” of leadership for last decades has infected all mankind, but at the same time at closer sight in a mirror and around of oneself each of us like the known expert in the field of organizational psychology Bennis Warren will perplexedly ask: “And where are the leaders?” Here, perhaps, it will be pertinent to quote the author: “There are no leaders in America today. Where all of them have got to? Why it does not have any potential president who could inspire and excite the nation?.. In the American business a landscape nowadays is very flat, any knob, any eminence above the general level. All great captains of business (Ford, Edison, Rockefeller, Morgan, Schwab, Sloan, Kettering) lived in the past, all have quitted the stage. And it is not a surprise, that the majority of the most glorified American businessmen are those who have spent the days for struggle against other companies, instead of on creation of a new firm.

So where leaders have got to? They have got lost among product lines of the plants and factories, having merged with an industrial landscape. They have got lost in far orbits in a pursuit of momentary benefits. Instead of inspiring people, they are capable to intimidate only threatening with misfortunes and necessity to reckon with realities of today. Leaders today are necessary to us. Are necessary because the quality of CEOs became worse, are necessary because the problems facing to the country, have become, as never, sharp. And as the person cannot live and operate without mind, the society cannot do without leaders, its brain centers” (Bennis, 1989).

Thus, we face a real paradox: on one side there is an obvious lack of real leaders, on the other, hundreds of recruiters and HR-departments are continuously searching for new leaders for management positions in organizations. And by increasing number of such agencies, they cope with the task quite successfully.

Lack of leaders, perhaps, is not the most terrible trouble. All of us it is more often collided with examples of destructive leadership when a leader pursuing mercenary, antisocial or even criminal purposes, leads after oneself other people, bringing damage to them and to the society as a whole.

Huge popularity of ideas of leadership in the modern world should be accompanied inevitably by splash in research interest to a problem. However, unfortunately, we do not observe development of new approaches and increase in number of works in this area. On the contrary, interest to a problem of leadership has noticeably decreased last decades. It is caused, in our opinion, by the following reasons.

First, the huge volume of experimental and empirical data is cramped in existing theoretical frameworks, and this situation hampers the further development of knowledge in the area. Today leadership, on the one hand, is still investigated as exclusively group phenomenon describing a certain stage of group dynamics, on the other hand – is often treated much wider: as the major organizational process. With this contradiction reflecting already accomplished expansion of leadership through group borders, many leadership researchers are at a loss, being unable to define a subject of the research. But till now this transformation of leadership has not received neither de-facto recognition, nor theoretical judgement, and did not become a subject of experimental researches as well.

Secondly, approaches to leadership which have been generated by present time, consider it as 1) a specific set of personal properties, 2) a behavioural technology, or 3) interaction of the specified properties and behavioural reactions with the limited set of situational variables. The image of the leader in many respects is represented as a mechanical set of features, reactions and variables behind which leader’s personality is lost. Neglecting leader’s consciousness, its multidimensionality and cultural-historical determination, we cannot understand, why leadership acts not only as the form of behaviour in the certain organizational conditions, but also as the complex mental phenomenon capable to development and self-development. As the major task of psychological research, in our opinion, is the analysis of leader’s personality and consciousness.

In the third, researches of leadership in many respects ignore requirements of the system approach according to which any phenomenon should to be investigated as the subsystem functioning within the limits of the system of the higher level. Serious difficulties, with which the psychology has faced in leadership research, in many respects are connected with underestimation by psychologists of a specific social context in which leadership is realized. We mean the modern organization – a social unit which has become for last hundred years the major factor of global development. Only considering leadership in a context of the complete organization and its basic characteristics, we can study this phenomenon as organizational process.

Thus, there is a contradiction between growing importance of leadership research and an inadequate scientific paradigm. Terrorism, corruption and the world economic crisis have pushed the mankind to reconsider many ideas, models and concepts which before seemed so firm, proved and checked up by time. There is necessity of such reconsideration, in our opinion, of traditional approaches to leadership. The purpose of the monography – to present a new paradigm of leadership research.

The book consists of five chapters. In Chapter 1 “Leadership research: the history and a modern state-of-art” the history of leadership research is tracked, main theories, approaches and achievements are summarized and critical analysis of current situation in leadership research is presented. It was shown, that among researchers and experts so called behavioural approach is still the most popular. Within this approach two basic dimensions of leadership behaviour have been outlined: orientation towards results and concern for people. First is concerned with actions that enable leader and his or her followers to achieve results; the second reveals itself in relations and attitudes towards the followers. The degree of actualization of these factors allows to differentiate various styles of leader behaviour. The majority of researchers have come to conclusion that the style when both of the factor are expressed at most, is the most effective. This two-factor model is used as a basis for numerous training approaches and programs which have been successfully used for many decades by many organizations (Likert, 1961 were created; Blake, Mouton, 1964; Hersey, Blanchard, 1982; Fiedler, 1967; Мисуми, 1984; Сидоренко, 2011).

Despite of the wide usage of the leadership concept in all spheres and at all organizational levels, scientific researches are still conducted exclusively at a group level. Moreover the dominating behavioural approach often neglects mental and personality aspects of leader’s activities simplifing complexity of this phenomenon. In this connection there is an actual need of a wider research approach to leader’s personality and of overcoming of the group-centered leadership paradigm bringing it in a wide organizational context.

Chapter 2 “Leadership as a principle of organizational design” is devoted to the analysis of the reasons why the concept and ideas of leadership have become so popular in modern thinking and acting. It is affirmed, that the development of leadership in XX century is connected with the history and design principles of the modern organization, formulated by its founders – F. Taylor and H. Ford. Comparative analysis of the principles of traditional and modern organizations has demonstrated that leadership is one of the major principles of functioning of the modern organization. The theory of exelocentric organizational norm as a basis for development of psychological and behavioural models of leadership is suggested.

It is proved, that in a traditional organization under passive role of management the core organizational unit was a working group, which herself defined key parameters of labour process. Under these conditions the traditional medicentric (medius (lat. ) – mean ) norm dominated in the organization. Accoding to this norm the key person of organization was a certain average worker, whose behaviour and professional qualities served as a model for all organization members, and the whole system of organizational requirements were oriented towards this example. This norm acted as a form of protection of the workers from higher management requirements, assured working conditions convenient enough for group majority, and “binded” group efficiency to average indices, never allowing potentially more effective members of the group to achieve higher results.

F. Taylor never spoke about leaders and leadership, but according to his theory and practical implementation the central reference figure of organization should become a certain ideal worker considerably surpassing the majority of other employees by his efficiency and professional qualities. Now all the employees and all the system of allowing potentially more effective members of group to reach their maximal results and become… leaders. The analysis of the development and wide expansion of this principle which we named exelocentric (excelus (lat. ) – outstanding, prominent, distinguished) organizational norm, has allowed to reveal conditions and the reasons of the emergency of leadership phenomenon. This organizational norm that has quickly spread in all spheres of life facilitated to development of specific personal features – a neurotic personality, that is in many respects is the consequence of the highest individual requirements to a person in modern organizations. This problem for the first time was studied by K. Horny, S. Freud follower, who associated it with the features of the western culture as a whole (Horny, 1997). Our analysis has binded this problem with more solid basis – principles of modern organization functioning.

The analysis also has allowed to refine the traditional view on the history of leadership research in the organizations. Usually it is associated with the research conducted by K. Levin and its colleagues in the late 30-s (Levin, Lippitt, 1938). We have shown, that the priority in development of the leaders’ institute in modern organization belongs to H. Ford (Ford, Crowther, 1922, 1926; Michailov, 1930). After introduction of the assembly line in 1908 the monthly turnover at Ford’s plants has increased up to 30 % due to excessive work intensity. Within each three months the whole replacement of the personnel took place. Under these conditions Ford started to use as a model of effeciency and endurance specially trained and motivated workers who were placed in every 5–7 “ordinary” workers. These employees Ford called… “leaders”. Thus, the first leaders of the modern organization were not managers, but ordinary performers. The interest to leadership at the managerial level has arisen only twenty five years later (see Chapter 1).

Thus we have suggested a new approach to leadership as a principle of modern organizational design which can be formulated as follows: every organization gets serious competitive advantages if at every possition it can place an employee surpassing by his/her the professional qualities the majority of potential candidates to this working place. This has enabled to reconsider the view of leadership as a prerogative of management and exclusively group process, as well as to define more exactly the date of leadership emergency in organizations, removing it on a quarter centuries ago (from the late 30-s to the beginning of the XX century).

Chapter 3 “Leadership as organizational process” is devoted to examination of leadership in the context of basic organizational processes. It proves that leadership has overpassed group borders and is playing now an extremely important role in organization. In 2000 we have proved that organizational power as a process providing steady orientation of the individual goals within direction of common organizational goal is the basic organizational process determining its survival (Zankovsky, 2000).

Following this approach, we have proved, that structure and functions of organizational leadership can be understood only within the frame of the power system of organization. With all this going on organizational leadership has especially important role as it acts as the form of the organizational power realized primarily by personal resources.

Leadership research has outlined two basic factors of leader’s behaviour: orientation to results and concern for people. We have found that at various levels of organizational hierarchy the degree of the manifestation of these factors for successful leadership is different: middle level and top managers are getting success using the specified factors in much smaller degree, than low level managers. Thus, there are certain qualitative distinctions in realization of effective leadership at different organizational levels, and traditionally outlined factors of leadership are able to describe fully leadership behaviour only at a group level.

The organizational power is based on the power resources being at manager’s disposal. Following types of power resorces are traditionally marked out: 1) force power (violence); 2) encouragement power (compensation); 3) legitimate power; 4) information power; 5) expert power (popwer of knowledge); 6) referent (charismatic) power. The last two resources we relate to personal power resources. We have suggested, that for effective leadership at various levels of organizational hierarchy various power profiles are required. A questionnaire for evaluation of manager’s power resources profile has been developed.

The effective leaders at all levels of organizational hierarchy are distinguished by significant accent on the use of personal power resources, as well as on information power resource. Actually we see, that effective leaders apply two distinct groups of power resources: information-personal and organizational with obvious domination of the first. The top management in a greater degree, than other administrative levels, uses informational resource, middle level management mainly relies on expert power, and low level managers gain their leadership positions mainly using charismatic qualities.

Besides effective leaders are always trying to minimize the usage of violence. In particular it is peculiar to low and middle level management. Relatively high indicators of violence resource use by the top management are, apparently associated with the right to apply the strongest form of organizational violence – employee dismissal.

At higher organizational levels the effective leadership is realized by a wider scope of power resources. The personal resources are desirable here, but are not decisive. Thus, the hypothesis that there are essential differences between group and organizational leadership in specific profiles of power usage has been proved.

We have proved, that the process of organizational power essential for functioning of any organization, is not connected with character of the goals to which it can serve. It in many respects it becomes “Achilles’ heel” of the modern organization: the subject of organizational power can direct the organization on achievement of almost any goal. The basic determinant of goal setting quite often hidden behind beautiful declarations, is the personality of the power subject of authority, i. e. the personal resources of power or as it was already specified, – organizational leadership.

Besides, the Chapter discusses an important theoretical problem – specification of two notions: “group” and “organization”. The research subjects of social and organizational psychology cannot be identified without such differentiation. A number of the properties differentiating both notions are presented and a new I/O psychological definition of the organization is offered.

The existing approaches to leadership research (and the behavioural approach in particular) are not capable to investigate multidimensionality and complexity of leader’s personality. The new approaches, allowing to study not only behaviour, but also leader’s consciousness, his or her ethical sphere are necessary.

Such approach is offered and realized in Chapter 4 “In the search of ethic dimension of leadership: from formal questionnaires to consciousness analysis”. The research results of managers’ values, including longitudinal and crosscultural research are presented. It is shown, that traditional methods of value research possess serious restrictions. They mainly define a “surface” level of individual values, closely tied to the declared values of the organization. The deeper levels of ethical behaviour determining leader’s activity in this case is not accessible to research.

These restrictions are removed in a new axiosematic approach to leadership which is based on experimental psychosemantic (Petrenko, 2005, 2010; Artemyev, 1980; Shmelev, 1983). The aim of psychosemantic is to study the genesis, structure and functioning of the individual system of meanings through which an individual perceives the world, other people and him/herself. In this context an individual holds a certain picture of the world, a specific macrocosm of individual meanings. The psychosemantics permits to reveal deep, unconscious structures, which underlay rational levels of the consciousness (Petrenko, 2010). The concept of “meaning” as a basic element of consciousnesses plays here the key role. Tracing the genesis of meaning from its elementary forms to the most advanced, i. e. scientific concepts, the researcher is able to to study the ontogenesis of consciousnesses (Vygotsky, 1934; Petrenko, 2010).

Transforming the psychosemantic approach we first of all have focusted on the reconstruction of individual value systems. This has allowed us to see deep, value-laden coordinates according to which a leader perceives the world and builds his or her activity. This approach in many respects is opposed to the behavioural approach that is still dominating in leadership researches. The leader thus is considered not as a set of behavioural characteristics, but as a holder of a certain composition of value-laden meaning deeply integrated in his or her consciousness.

The analysis of the data obtained has allowed to reveal quantitative, qualitative and spatial characteristics of leaders’ individual representations and to find out implicit relations between mental reflections of various organizational phenomena.

Chapter 5 “Corporate culture as a value-laden reference frame of organizational leadership” builds a bridge between individual consciousness of the leader and corporate culture of the organization. Individual consciousness from the very beginning is a product of the social experience, of human culture (Vygotsky, 1934; Leontyev, 1975). Within axiosemantic approach the corporate culture is a form of organizational consciousness transferred by means of a natural language and other symbolical means. Thus, the corporate culture acts as some kind of the software of consciousness (Matsumoto, 2010), as a value-laden frame of reference of organizational leadership.

The culture of any organization can be studied at three levels: a level of surface manifestations, a level of declared values and a level of deep, core representations. The essence of organizational culture can be revealed only at a level of the core representations underlying its activity (Schein, 2000), however this level, practically is not investigated. The use of axiosemantic approach has allowed us to reconstruct collective, deep representations and to correlate them with the structures of the individual consciousness of leaders. We have proved that the degree of similarity between individual value systems and the system of corporate values can serve as a predictor of organizational leader efficiency and can be considered as a key dimension of leadership behaviour.

The corruption scandals which have occured in largest transnational companies last years, testify how difficult for organizational leaders to find balance between personal and organizational goals and interests. As a system of the value-laden reference frames corporate culture can secure ethical orientation of organizational leadership and protect organizations of serious theats. A new three-dimensional model of organizational leadership has been developed, where traditional two-factor paradigm (Bass, 1985; Yukl, 1994; Blake, Mouton, 1964; Fielder, 1967; Hеrsey, Blanchard, 1993; Misumi, 1984) was added by culture/value dimension. Obtained data have allowed us to develop a new model of leadership including culture/value dimension. The model was theoretically proved and empirically verified. A diagnostic questionnaire has been developed, allowing to estimate three specified factors: orientation towards results, concern for people and culure/value orientation. The new model enabled to develop a new typology of leadership behaviour, which includes ethical aspects of behaviour Model validization was made on a wide sample of Russian and foreign managers. It has been proved, that the corporate culture is not only formed by the organizational leader (the traditional approach), but also influences his or her value orientations, improving organizational efficiency and assuring high social responsibility. In the Conclusion the main research results are summarized and the perspective directions of the further work are outlined.

 

[1]Medius (лат .) – средний.

 

[2]Еxcelus (лат. ) – выдающийся.

 

[3]Homo constitutionalis (лат. ) – человек организационный.

 

[4]Модератор – участник групповой дискуссии, выполняющий функцию ведущего (от англ . moderator – посредник, арбитр, ведущий, председатель собрания).

 

[5]Предложенный нами перевод названий двух первых стилей лидерства в большей степени отражает содержательную характеристику терминов, однако не полностью передает их риторический шарм, столь важный в работе консультантов по управлению (которыми являются авторы рассматриваемой теории). Поэтому считаю целесообразным дать и их английский вариант с дословным переводом: «директивный» – telling (говорящий, указывающий); «поддерживающий» – selling (продающий).

 

[6]В последней версии теста используется стандартное отклонение в 16 баллов, что свидетельствует об увеличении разброса показателей вокруг центрального значения распределения. Любопытно, что при стандартизации теста для японской выборки стандартное отклонение составило 8 баллов!

 

[7]Medius (лат. ) – средний.

 

[8]Aurea mediocritas (лат .) – золотая середина (понятие, введенное древнеримским поэтом Горацием).

 

[9]KPI – key performance indicator (англ .) – ключевые индикаторы деятельности.

 

[10]Excelus (лат .) – выдающийся.

 

[11]Имеется в виду известное выражение: «Будь нос Клеопатры чуточку короче, история сложилась бы иначе».

 

[12]CEO – chief executive officer (англ .) – главный исполнительный директор (высший руководитель корпорации, отвечающий за важнейшие аспекты ее текущей деятельности). CFO – Chief Financial Officer (англ .) – главный финансовый директор (высший руководитель корпорации, ответственный по финансовым вопросам).

 

[13]В данном случае под определением «организационная» мы понимаем власть, организующую целенаправленную совместную деятельность в ЦСО.

 

[14]Харизма – харюца (гр.) – благодать, божественный дар. Исключительная одаренность; наделенность какого-либо лица особыми качествами исключительности в глазах приверженцев или последователей.

 

[15]Так, 6 октября 2001 года американская компания «Энрон» («Enron»), крупнейший в мире продавец энергоносителей (20 % всего американского энергетического рынка), выпустила пресс-релиз по результатам третьего квартала: «Общая чистая прибыль выросла до 393 млн долл. в сравнении с 292 млн долл. год назад». Президент «Энрона» Кеннет Лей (Kenneth L. Lay) оценил свою работу следующим образом: «Увеличение дохода на 26 % – это впечатляющий результат нашего основополагающего бизнеса в сфере оптовой и розничной торговли энергоресурсами и природным газом. <…> Лидирующее рыночное положение „Энрона“ позволяет нам с уверенностью говорить об увеличении дохода и в будущем». Однако лидер „Энрона“ кривил душой, пытаясь скрыть списание компанией единоразовых расходов на сумму более 1 млрд долл.(!) Неудивительно, что 2 декабря 2001 г., когда выяснилось реальное положение дел, компания была вынуждена официально объявить о своем банкротстве. Сегодня эксперты считают, что к краху «Энрон» подвели непродуманная инвестиционная политика, махинации с отчетностью и использование аффилированных, оффшорных структур, то есть те действия, которые полностью лежат на совести ее бывшего лидера.

 

[16]Интересно отметить, что в немецком языке понятие «призвание» (die Berufung) является однокоренным с понятием «профессия» (der Beruf).

 

[17]Понятия «организационной» и «корпоративной» культуры рассматриваются нами как очень близкие по содержанию. Подобно тому как «организация» является более широким (родовым) понятием по отношению к «корпорации», так и организационная культура охватывает все типы организаций. В то же время крупные современные корпорации являются эталонными моделями для всех иных организационных форм.

 

[18]Experto crede (лат .) – верь знающему (эксперту).