Posted by Two years ago, we wrote an article with Dr. Adrian Pyszka from the University of Economics in Katowice on how to measure managerial styles using my TransistorsHead.com managerial tools. We published this article as part of the XXV conference “INDUSTRY 4.0 A MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTION ENGINEERING” organized by the Polish Production Management Association, the Polish Innovation Management Association and the Production Engineering Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Why did we consider this topic important in the context of managerial automation? Well, management styles are one of the main mental constructs used to describe a manager and his work. I wrote more on this topic here:
Management styles have been known in the management literature for decades. Consideration of this topic falls under the subject of leadership and the role of the leader in a team. Referring to the management classics, it can be pointed out after Stoner and Wankel (1994, p. 382) that managerial leadership is “(…) the process of directing and influencing the task-related activities of group members.” Within this definition, three important issues arise, i.e. leadership involves people, leadership is an unequal distribution of power between leaders and group members, leaders can not only give orders and commands, but also influence subordinates (Stoner, Wankel 1994).
In the literature, one can find research in the area of leadership that focuses on the characteristics of a leader and his or her behaviors that allow for effective leadership regardless of the situation. Fleishman, Mumford, Zaccaro et al. (1991) noted that a common theme in almost every identified classification system of leadership styles was the trend to divide behaviors into one of two categories: task-related (i.e., task-focused) and behaviors that facilitate team interaction and/or development (i.e., person-focused). There has been a great deal of empirical research in this view of management styles, described extensively in the literature (Albaum, Herche, Murphy 1995; Clear, Dickson 2005; Yeh, Hsieh 2017). Under task-oriented leadership, the following leadership behaviors emerge: transactional, initiating structure and boundary spanning (Afsar, Badir, Saeed et al. 2017). In the case of people-oriented leadership behaviors emerge: transformational, empowerment, motivational (Afsar, Badir, Saeed et al. 2017).
And we used this division of leadership behaviors – goal-orientation and people-orientation – in our research. What criteria we adopted and how we can apply the results to manager automation, read in upcoming posts on my blog.
Stoner J.A.F., Wankel Ch. [1994], Kierowanie, PWE, Warszawa
Fleishman E.A., Mumford M.D., Zaccaro S.J., Levin K.Y., Korotkin A.L., Hein M.B. [1991], Taxonomic efforts in the description of leader behavior, A synthesis and functional interpretation, “Leadership Quarterly”, nr 4, s. 245-287.
Albaum G., Herche J., Murphy B. [1995], Decision making style influences on the valuation and use of information by managers, „Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice”, nr 3(2), s. 1-19.
Clear F., Dickson K. [2005], Teleworking practice in small and mediumesized firms: management style and worker autonomy, „New Technology, Work and Employment”, nr 20(3), s. 220-233.
Yeh Chung-Huang, Hsieh Ting-Ya [2017], A study on management styles and job satisfaction on employees at Taiwan’s architectural firms, „International Journal of Organizational Innovation”, nr 10(1), s. 185-201.
Afsar B., Badir Y.F., Saeed B.B., Hafeez S. [2017], Transformational and transactional leadership and employee’s entrepreneurial behavior in knowledge–intensive industries, “The International Journal of Human Resource Management”, nr 28(2), s. 307-332.