LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE MODEL

Leader-Member Exchange Model

Leader-Member Exchange Model

Introduction of In-group and Out Group

In-groups are an essential part of organizations. Because a common goal is fundamental to task completion in In-groups, much past research on conflict and its resolution has concentrated on situations in which members have apparent opposing goals (Cosier and Rose, 1999). In a review of Out-group research, Levine and Moreland (2001) addressed research on social dilemmas, bargaining, and coalition formation, all of which assume a basic conflict of goals within the Out-group. But in many organizational In-groups, group members largely agree about individual and group goals yet they still find themselves in conflict. Kabanoff (2001: 114) suggested that people may have difficulty working together effectively; even when they generally agree on goals and "believe they should be working together," and that conflict "develops primarily from people's normal attempts to cooperate or coordinate their efforts." Even when group members work on the same project, have mutual interests in completing it, and similar ideas of how to complete the project, they still may experience conflict. Conflict theory and research has primarily focused on disagreements about ends, but conflict can just as easily occur about means, even when ends are shared, as they are in most organizational In-groups. The means versus ends distinction provides a framework for examining various types of conflict that can occur in organizational Out-group.

Situation

Effective is defined in the Macquarie Dictionary as “serving to effect the purpose; producing the desired result”. Leadership actually has no definition in the dictionary, but a Leader is defined as “a guiding or directing head”. So from this we can take that Leadership Effectiveness is, when “Our guiding or directing personnel are serving to effect the purpose they have been given or are producing the desired result”. So given this definition, how as HR practitioners do we make sure this is happening?

Firstly, it is very important that the organisation defines who its Leaders are. Pivotal to this is recognising that not all Leaders are formally appointed to a management/supervisory/team leader role, and that some people become leaders simply because of where they sit in a room, and how others perceive them. The choice then becomes of course, do we ignore the informal leaders (even if they serve a purpose and are quite effective), and only concentrate on those formally appointed? Or do we seek to take advantage of the informal leaders as well?

Describe the role of relationship development and management in effective leadership and use the concepts in improving leadership effectiveness

Once all Leaders have been identified, the next question becomes what is it that we need them to do/achieve/aspire to? and, how will we know when they are doing it well enough so that they are being effective? The crux of this task is to first outline and distinguish between management behaviours and leadership behaviours, as they are in my experience two very different things.

These "trait" investigations were followed by examinations of the "situation" as the determinant of leadership abilities, leading to the concept ...