PathGoal Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

PathGoal Theory - Essay Example The articles are different in the way that Chester A. Schriesheim and Linda L. Neider provide more research and literature review on the theory while Jim Bolt discusses the modern leader and importance of changing the dimension of a modern manager's role in the company. Schriesheim and Neider begin their article by mentioning the developers' definition of a leader and the functions that are supposed to be held by a modern manager of an organization. They stress that, the function of a leader is to increase "personal pay-offs to subordinates for work-goal attainment and make the path to these pay-offs easier to travel by clarifying it, reducing road blocks and pitfalls, and increasing the opportunities for personal satisfaction en route" (House, 1971, p. 324). Effective leaders assist employees in their career path that is aimed at individual fulfillment of employees and organizational benefit. Most of the investigations of House's path-goal theory have concentrated on exploring relationships between leadership behaviors (e.g., consideration and initiating structure) and outcome measures (e.g., satisfaction) while studying the impact of different moderator variables (such as task structure). House (1971), for example, found preliminary support for t he contention that situational variables may moderate the relationship of perceived initiating structure as well as consideration and such effectiveness measures as subordinate job satisfaction. The authors of the article cite Bass (1990) noting that the leader "needs to complement only what is missing in a situation to enhance the subordinate's motivation, satisfaction, and performance" (p. 627). Mentioning about over 100 studies published on the theory of path-goal leadership, Schriesheim and Neider continue the article by outlining the findings of few studies. The results of a meta-analysis of over 40 studies, Resulted in a support for the basic propositions of the theory, particularly with respect to the role of initiating structure, moderated by taskcharacteristics, on employee satisfaction. The results with respect to performance as an outcome variable and with respect to leader consideration behaviors appear to be far less consistent, and this may account for the removal of subordinate performance from the most recent statement of the theory. Another study provided by Szilagyi and Sims (1974) found that "while task characteristics moderated the relationship between initiating structure and employee satisfaction, the same was not true with respect to the relationship between initiating structure and performance". Further, Schriesheim and Schriesheim (1980) found that perceived consideration appears to be strongly related to employee satisfaction levels regardless of situational characteristics. Specifically, supportive leadership explained 63% of the variance in supervisory satisfaction scores, even after instrumental leader behaviors were paialled out. This finding is also consistent with the meta-analyses conducted by Fisher and Edwards (1988) and Wofford and Liska (1993), both finding support for a positive relationship between leader consideration and subordinate job satisfaction. Both of these meta-analyses also, however, provided only mixed results regarding the theory's proposed moderator relationships. In contrast to Schriesheim and Neider, Bolt does not refer to any studies in his article but