Behavioral theory in leadership and its application

Behavioral Era (Behavioral theory :1940s-1950s)

Behavioral theory of leadership is based on the behaviors of leaders. This theory is most popular in 1940s- 1950s era. In this era two research studies were famous. Those are: study at university of Michigan and study at Ohio state university. This theory encompasses leaders has two specific behaviors such as task oriented behavior and employee oriented behavior. According to that, job centered and employee centered leadership styles can be find out. It means there are leaders who have the behavior of considering about employees and considering about the job.

 

1.      Study at Ohio state university.

These research studies discovered two dimensions of leadership behavior. Those are initiating structure and consideration. The leaders who have initiating structure behavior involves with scheduling work, assigning people to task and determining performance level. They always think about the task. Hence the leader behavior is task oriented. The leader who consideration oriented every time concerns about the employees, respect for employees’ ideas, build friendship and mutual trust and concern about the feelings of others. It means the leader’s behavior is relationship oriented.

 

 

 

 

2.      Study at university of Michigan.

Through this study job centered and employee centered leadership behavior can be identified. Leaders who possess job centered leadership behavior involves with low worker satisfaction and high turnover. Given more attention about the job responsibilities and task structure. It is similar to the initiating structure. Leaders who employee oriented care about the workers who employed in an organization. It is similar to consideration.

Application of the behavioral theory

Practicing of purely job centered leadership or purely employee oriented leadership is not possible at all the time in an organization for a leader. Because, if the leader is purely employee oriented, he cares about the employees and provide more freedom for subordinates. It will lead to failure of achieving organizational performance. In other hand if the leader is purely job centered, his attention is only for work assignment and there is not freedom for employees. It will result to reduce the job satisfaction and high employee turnover. This will affect to company operations and performance. Therefore, a successful leader has to play the both leadership styles according to the situational changes. It is the practical application of behavioral leadership theory. One of a weakness of the theory is not address for situational and environment factors of the leader.

Those limitations provide the ideas of future researches and continuation of research studies entitle to develop/ evolve the contingency theory of leadership.