Substitutes for Leadership Theory

Substitutes for leadership theory states that different situational factors can enhance, neutralize, or substitute for leader behaviors[10] (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001).

Substitutes are variables that make leadership unnecessary for subordinates[11] and reduce the extent to which subordinates rely on their leader[12]

• Characteristics of the subordinate
  • Subordinate ability[13]
  • Subordinate's professional orientation[13]
• Characteristics of the task
  • Unambiguous and routine task (when all subordinates are performing menial labor, there is little role leadership can play; Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001)
  • Task that provides its own feedback as to how well the task is being done[13]
  • Task that is intrinsically satisfying[13]
• Characteristics of the organization
  • Cohesive work groups (a tight-knit group of employees has less need for a leader; Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001)
  • Organizational formulation (clear job goals that are written down, performance appraisals that are written down;[14] Kerr and Jermier, 1987)
  • Self-managed work teams (employees rely on each other, not their leader)[15]

Enhancers are variables that serve to strengthen leaders influence on subordinate outcomes[16][11] (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001

• • Characteristics of the subordinate
    • Subordinates having experience (those more experienced will be able to translate even the most ambiguous instructions into results [1])
  • Characteristics of the task
    • Task is non-routine [2].
  • Characteristics of the organisation
    • Having group norms that encourage cooperation with leaders (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001)
    • A leader having the ability to reward subordinates [1]

• Neutralizers are variables that serve to weaken or block the leader's influence on subordinate outcomes [1] (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001).

• • • Characteristics of the subordinate
      • Subordinates are indifferent when it comes to rewards [1].
    • Characteristics of the organisation
      • Whether or not subordinates are rewarded is not the leader's decision [1].
    • Kerr & Jermier never specified an example of a task characteristic that acts as a neutralizer. [17]

• • The original scale to measure the effects of various substitutes was developed by Kerr and Jermier. They assessed leadership substitutes via a questionnaire that contained thirteen subscales with a total of 55 items. The items were on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (almost always untrue or completely untrue) to 5 (almost always true or almost completely true). The subscales included were:
    1. Ability, experience, training, and knowledge
    2. Professional orientation
    3. Indifference towards organisational rewards
    4. Unambiguous, routine, and methodically invariant tasks
    5. Task-provided feedback concerning accomplishment
    6. Intrinsically satisfying tasks
    7. Organisational formalisation
    8. Organisational inflexibility
    9. Advisory and staff functions
    10. Close-knit, cohesive, interdependent work groups
    11. Organisational rewards are not within the leader's control.
    12. Spatial distance between superiors and subordinates
    13. Subordinate need for independence

Kerr and Jermier tested nine of these subscales in a lab setting and found that they were independent and had adequate internal reliability. They claim that the subscales produce easily interpretable data that describes the extent to which substitutes for leadership are present or absent in a given work situation.  They went on to test their subscales in a field setting using police officers and concluded that the subscales met acceptable standards of reliability and can be used to assess the validity of the substitutes for leadership construct in future studies.

Podsakoff, Niehoff, MacKenzie, and Williams noted that studies testing the substitutes for leadership model had not been fully supportive of the theory and believed that one reason for this may be that the quality of the scale developed by Kerr and Jermier to measure the substitutes constructs may be to blame. In response to this, they designed their own 74-item list of substitutes for leadership. To test their scale, they administered it to 372 business students. Their analyses of the psychometric properties of the revised measure revealed their scale to be superior to Kerr and Jermier's scale, as evidenced by the better dimensionality and reliability of the revised scale. [18]

[24]

Bass (1990) suggested that autonomous work groups could substitute for formal leadership. In this scenario, employees are divided into groups that are responsible for managing their own day-to-day work (i.e., collective control over the pace, distribution of tasks, organisation of breaks, recruitment, and training; Gulowsen, 1972). A quasi-experiment found that implementing autonomous workgroups of 8 to 12 shop-floor employees in a manufacturing setting positively affected both the intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction of employees while obviating some supervisory positions.  

Self-management is defined by Thoresen and Mahoney (1974) as occurring when an individual behaves in a way he would not normally behave and there are no external forces dictating that the person maintain that behavior. Self-management requires self-observation (e.g., keeping a log of what one has discussed with others on the phone), specification of goals (e.g., being responsible for setting one's own schedule and priorities), cueing strategies (e.g., putting a checkout board by the exit to remind an employee to let their secretary know where they are going and when they expect to return), rehearsal (e.g., recording one's presentation to clients and making corrections as needed), self-evaluation (e.g., using a chart to keep track of work quality and quantity), and self-reinforcement (accomplished by building intrinsic rewards for the performance of tasks; Bass, 1990; Manz & Sims 1980). These strategies can be understood as substitutes for leadership. Instead of requiring that a supervisor monitor a subordinate's progress on a work task, a subordinate can self-manage by utilising one of the strategies listed above. This makes the supervisor's guidance unnecessary for the subordinate.

Dionne and colleagues argued that the significant effects of substitutes found in prior studies may be a statistical artefact due to common-source bias, or bias occurring when independent and dependent variables are collected from the same person or group of people. In a study sampling 49 organisations, Dionne and colleagues controlled for the effect of common-source bias and found no moderating or mediating effects of substitutes on the relationship between leader behaviour and group effectiveness. [25]

[26]

In a study by Podsakoff and Mackenzie, the predictor variables, as well as the job attitude and role perception variables, were both taken from individual employees, while the performance measures were taken from supervisors. They found that their predictors accounted for a higher proportion of variance in job attitudes and role perceptions than in employee performance. They posit that the reason for this was that their predictors shared a common source with the job attitudes and role perception criterion measures but not with the employee performance criterion measures. They suggested that common-source bias may not be the only reason for this, but that it should be controlled in future research.  

[27]

Keller conducted a longitudinal study in which he pointed out that the vast majority of studies conducted on substitutes for leadership theory are cross-sectional in nature, making it more difficult to discern a causal relationship between substitutes and their effects on employee performance. Cross-sectional research is focused on finding relationships between variables at a specific point in time, whereas longitudinal studies involve taking multiple measures over a longer period of time. Keller's longitudinal study of the effect of substitutes on research and development teams found that two of the seven substitutes (ability and intrinsic satisfaction) affected team performance over time.  

Yukl (1998) pointed out that it is hard to identify specific substitutes and neutralizers for broad behaviour categories and that an improvement on the theory would be to use more specific behaviours in place of "supportive and instrumental leadership haviors." Yukl said that recent studies testing the theory have used specific behaviours (e.g., contingent reward behaviour and role clarification); however, the development of the theory does not reflect these developments.

The contingency model of leadership was developed by Fred Fiedler in the 1960s after Fiedler spent 12 years collecting data from over 800 groups of employees. This model predicts that the most effective method of leadership will vary depending on the situation. A study that supported the model was one Fiedler did with 48 petty officers and 240 recruiters at a Belgian naval training centre (Fiedler, 1965). Fiedler found that a leader's fit with the group and the task was more important in predicting outcomes than the leader's characteristics. For example, controlling leaders work best with heterogeneous groups with low positional power. [28] (Fiedler, 1965). There are many different theories within the contingency paradigm that differ on what situational factors change leadership effectiveness. The most influential theory within this model is the path-goal theory (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001).

Proposed by Robert House in 1971, path-goal theory predicts that subordinates will be satisfied with their leader if they feel their leader's behavior will lead them to satisfaction. Also, subordinates will be motivated when they feel that their satisfaction depends on their performance and their leader acts in a way to help them reach goals (Den Hartog & Koopman, 2001; House, 1971). Path-goal theory predicts that when goals and the paths to those goals are clear, subordinates may not need leader guidance (Kerr & Jermier, 1978).