Nursing and Leadership

Nursing and Leadership

Summary of the article

Throughout much of the social science literature there is a

great deal of evidence relating to the concept of leadership

in a number of organizational settings. However, little of

this research has been focused on the relation, if any,

between leadership styles and leadership effectiveness.

The area of leadership effectiveness is so complex and at

times confusing that any summary will, of necessity, be

rather superficial. Some preliminary generalizations can be

made on the basis of a brief review of the literature despite

the limitations delineated. One of the earliest studies was

carried out in the early 1940's by Lippitt and White [2] at

Ohio. They studied groups of boys at a summer camp and

organized them into three broad types: 'autocratic groups',

where leaders were appointed by the researchers and were

subsequently often unpopular; 'democratic groups', where

leaders were appointed by the group members themselves;

and 'laissez-faire groups', where there was no leadership or

organization at all. The three groups were men set to

performing certain tasks. The main result was that the

'laissez-faire' was most unproductive and that the

'autocratic' was felt to be slightly more productive than the

'democratic', In this instance, it would seem reasonable to

put forward the argument that leadership styles directly

determine leadership effectiveness, which in turn

dramatically affect output.

Clearly, these characteristics of leadership style —

consideration, generality, democratic learning and

punishment tendency - all appear to play a critical part in

determining the efficacy of leadership utilized in a work

setting.

Many of the generalizations forwarded have been criticized,

if not actually disproved. These criticisms have arisen

through the historical development of leadership studies,

beginning with the psychologist's search for characteristic

traits or inherent qualities in the leader, passing through a

human-relations phase in which leadership was regarded as a

'group-function', and reaching the current phase in which

critical features such as the context in which the leadership

styles occur, the nature of the work under supervision, and

the nature of the personnel involved are all analysed.

The above discussion has shown that the problem of

leadership and supervision in industrial organizations is one

that has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years.

Some writers in management have gone so far as to contend

that the quality of leadership is the single most important

factor determining the success or failure of such

organizations. But while the importance of this factor may

be over-stressed, there is an increasingly impressive body of

research on this question which does suggest that it is a very

significant factor, that variations in production levels, in

absenteeism, in labour turnover, in grievances, and

employee commitment and co-operativeness can be directly

traced to variations in the quality of leadership within such

organizations.

These criticisms levelled against the current theory and

practice of leadership and leadership training can be

examined more closely from three points of view. Firstly,

the nature of the qualities associated with good and poor

supervision in different work situations needs to be

determined. As the above analysis has attempted to show,

early work in the field, while recognizing the importance of

the technical skill or expertise of the individual, tended to

stress that this can more accurately be regarded as only a

necessary condition for leadership effectiveness and that

without the necessary social skills involved in managing

people it alone could ...