Determinants of management styles in business and nonbusiness organizations.

Abstract

Bass and Valenzi (1974) postulated that power and information are major factors m determining the extent to which five leadership styles are used and presented a set of hypotheses concerning the way power and information affect these styles. This study set out to test the Bass-Valenzi hypothesis and to analyze the impact, if any, of aggregating data from business and nonbusiness organizations on the results. It found that the effect of power and information was not the same across organizations. In business organizations, direction and power were positively correlated, and in nonbusiness organizations they were negatively correlated When the samples of executives from both business and nonbusiness organizations were aggregated, no correlation was found between power and direction, because the opposite relationships between the two factors in business and nonbusiness organizations cancelled each other out The methodological aspects of using aggregate data in tests of the Bass-Valenzi hypotheses, including regression and SSA, are discussed. It is shown that such procedures may cause aggregation bias This article provides a possible explanation for the negative correlation (that is, contrary to the Bass-Valenzi propositions) between power and direction in nonbusiness organizations and suggests that the Bass-Valenzi hypotheses are more applicable to business than to nonbusiness organizations. It found that senior officials of nonbusiness organizations tend to employ more of the direction style and less of the participation style of leadership than executives in business organizations The results, however, also indicate that interorganizational differences in styles are mainly attributable to differences m organizational norms, climate, and structure, and not to differences in power and information. This study also investigated the effect of hierarchical level on the leadership styles of senior executives. It found that the use of participation and delegation styles was positively correlated and that the use of direction and negotiation styles were negatively correlated with hierarchical level.

A comparison of the effect of job demand, dicision latitude, role and supervisory style on self-reported job satisfaction

“…Further work (Bass et a/. 1975, Shapira 1976, Chitayat and Venezia 1984 confirmed the validity of the scales, but also showed high correlation among all measures except delegation and direction (Shapira 1976). This suggested that these two scales alone would provide two independent measures of key components of supervisory style.…”

Decision type, participative decision making (PDM), and organizational behavior: An experimental simulation

“…Each of these characteristics limits the generalization of the results (Chitiyat & Venezia, 1984). Furthermore, Sagie et al did not examine the effect of PDM and decision type on performance.…”

Effect of Participation in Strategic and Tactical Decisions on Acceptance of Planned Change

“…The simulated organization in this study was of an academic, nonwork nature (Evans, 1970). Would the results also hold in simulated business settings (Chitayat & Venezia, 1984)? Would they hold in real (i.e., long-term) organizations?…”