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The Relationship of Perceived Leadership Behaviors to Organizational Efficacy

October 31, 2003 

"The issue of leadership has been an ongoing discussion for decades (Kotter, 1990; Truske, 1999; Posner & Kouzes, 1987; Bennis, 1989; Bennis & Nanus, 1985) and has roots as far back as 1921 (Hughes, Ginnett & Curphy, 1999, p. 8). 

As far back as 1987, researchers recommended that tools be developed to measure Organizational Efficacy (Gist, 1987).  In its most basic form, organizational efficacy is a sense of 'can do.'

 To gain insight into how people perceive this issue, a study was conducted to assess what people say builds their confidence that an organization 'can do.'  The goal of the study was to assess what people attended to when assessing organizational efficacy.  This was performed using a sentence completion exercise via e-mail.  An e-mail was sent to a random group of educators, independent consultants, and instructors for a large private University in the Midwest during November 1999.  To take the study to a more specific level, a group of vice-presidents was given the same uncompleted sentence and asked for a response. 

 To ground the research, the researcher conducted three interviews at various strata of the same Fortune 150 corporation

 The research question is: Do perceived leadership behaviors have a relationship with the factors of organizational efficacy?  The begs the question: how are leadership behaviors defined?  Specifically, we are defining leadership behavior from the input derived through the interviews and open-ended questions.

 619 persons in eight organizations across the Midwest were asked for responses to these statements, along with statements concerning perceptions of organizational efficacy.  This was accomplished by means of an anonymous survey conducted through a third party organization in cooperation with the researcher.

 73% of the respondents were male; 25% of the respondents were female, and the remaining 2% declined to identify gender.  3.9% of the respondents were African American; 86.4% were Caucasian, 2.7% were Native American; 1.8% were Latin American; 3% were Pacific Islanders; .8% were Asian-Americans and .3% were Other of declined to identify ethnicity.

 6.3% of the respondents identified themselves as executives; 24.3% were Middle Management; 9.7% were Supervisors; 18.7% were Line workers; 40.7% were staff, and .2%% declined to identify their role.

 Of primary importance is the variation of perceived leadership between companies.  Analysis of variance was applied to the sample to assess statistical differences.  Thus Organization accounts for 14% of the variance in leadership.  This variation is not happening by chance.  People do see their leadership differently in these organizations.

 The relationship between Leadership and Collective Capacity is exceptionally strong.  This would strongly suggest that leaders influence the capability of teams and organizations to work together.  There is a smaller correlation for sense of Resilience and leadership.  This indicates that while leaders are important in the sense of resilience, employees perceive leaders do not control the whole destiny of the organization.

 The results show conclusively what one would expect: leadership has a direct relationship to a perception of Organizational Efficacy.  In other words, how leaders behave influences an overall perception of how the organization will perform.  This is significant for leaders to understand, since they may be unaware of how their behaviors impact their employees.

 Correlations between Leadership and the factors of Organizational Efficacy showed that leadership is most strongly related to collective capability.  This makes sense: leaders orchestrate teams, show direction, apply resources, and give encouragement to stay on course.  The high correlations between organizational efficacy and individual leadership behaviors is more striking since they show how leader consistency, leader communication, leader track record, and leader focus relate to perception of organizational efficacy.

 Organizational Efficacy (OE) is a generative capacity within an organization to cope effectively with the demands, challenges, stressors, and opportunities it encounters within the business environment.  The development of this capacity is clearly influenced by leaders.  Leaders have the capability to show vision, organize teams, stay the course, and ultimately help the whole organization win.  This research is a quantitative assessment of what the leadership literature has suggested for some decades: leaders influence perceptions of organizational efficacy (Bohn, 2002,  p. 65-79)."

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Reference: Bohn, J.G. (2002).  The relationship of perceived leadership behaviors to organizational efficacy. The Journal of Leadership Studies, 9, No 2.

The Journal of Leadership Studies is available on loan from the OSU Leadership Center.  A complete listing of all the Leadership Center's resources is available on our website http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu

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Created: 2008-01-09, Updated: 2009-02-17