The Effect of Path-Goal Leadership Behaviors on Subordinates’ Innovativeness

1
The Effect of Path-Goal Leadership Behaviors on
Subordinates Innovativeness

• David Morgan
• University of Baltimore

2
My Interest

• Recruiting
• U.S. Navy
• Innovation
• What is it?
• What causes it?
• Leadership
• Path-Goal (House Mitchell, 1974)

3
Purpose

• Specifically, this study presents evidence that
  Houses path-goal theory can be applied such as
  to induce innovation in the organizational
  setting.

4
The Problem

• Explanations of innovativeness in organizations
• Size of a company
• Education level and tenure of top managers
• Public v. private
• Influence of leaders (i.e., transformational
  leadership)
• Not path-goal theory

5
The Literature

• Organizations undeniably benefit from sufficient
  leadership, especially in todays constant
  pursuit of new and innovative means to reach an
  industry-leading end.
• Successful leaders (Arad, Hanson, Schneider,
  1997 Aragón-Correa, García-Morales,
  Cordón-Pozo, 2007 Damanpour Schneider, 2006
  Howell Higgins, 1990)
• Motivate employees
• Effectively evaluate employee behaviors and
  outcomes
• Facilitating success
• Provide a clear mission and
• Adopt organizational policies and resources in
  support of a broader vision

6
The Literature

• Innovation (Arad, Hanson, Schneider, 1997
  Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, 2007 Sternberg,
  Pretz, Kaufman, 2003 Nyström, 1990)
• Potential outcome of leadership styles that are
  conducive to fostering pioneering cultures
• A product of the interaction between strategy
  (e.g., leadership) and structure, with
  organizational culture and climate as important
  intervening variables
• Innovative outcomes require effective leadership

7
Houses (1974 1996) Path-Goal Theory

• Effective leaders engage in behaviors that
  harmonize with the abilities of subordinates
• Motivational functions of leaders lead to
  personal gain for subordinates via a clear path
  to the goal
• Reducing or eliminating road blocks along that
  path are important determinants of subordinate
  satisfaction and motivation

8
Houses (1974 1996) Path-Goal Theory

• Four leader behaviors
• Directive leadershipfocuses on coordinating work
  tasks, and is best used with subordinates with
  limited job-related abilities
• Supportive leadershipconcerns subordinates
  well-being through a supportive work environment,
  and is best demonstrated when characteristics of
  subordinates work environments call for a more
  caring leader

9

• Achievement-oriented leadershipfocuses on
  causing subordinates to have increased confidence
  in their ability to meet goals, and is best used
  when it is imperative that subordinates have the
  resources they need in order to thrive
• Participative leadershipdirected toward
  subordinate input with respect to decision-making
  and influence, and is best utilized when
  subordinates elicit a great deal of declarative
  and procedural knowledge

10
The Study

• Research hypothesis
• Participants assigned to the achievement-oriented
  leadership group condition (i.e., the condition
  where the team leaders have received formal
  training in using achievement-oriented
  leadership) would display higher mean
  innovativeness acceptance as compared to those
  assigned to the control group condition (i.e.,
  the condition where the leaders did not receive
  formal leadership training)

11
The Study

• IVs
• type of leadership received by each group
• leader biological sex
• leader experience
• Covariate
• leader agetested for its role as a concomitant
  variable
• DV
• a measure of attitudes and beliefs about the
  innovation(s) employed (Real Poole, 2005)

12
Method

• Participants
• n 195 randomly selected from a Federal list of
  current enlisted recruiters, or subordinates,
  in the Navy
• 50 male (23.5 mean age) and 50 female (22.5
  mean age)
• n 65 officer-level recruitment leaders
• 60 male and 40 female
• 63 experienced and 37 inexperienced
• 98 held Bachelors degrees

13
Design and Procedure

• 2 pilot studies
• relationships between three leadership styles
• the effect of leader experience (represented by
  two levels) on subordinate innovativeness and
  three path-goal leadership styles
• Subordinates randomly assigned to a group (3-4
  participants), with n 65 groups (to the
  experimental or control condition)
• Leaders randomly assigned to achievement-oriented
  training condition (a 1 hour training based on
  Houses 1974 1996 theory of achievement-oriente
  d leadership) or the control condition (no formal
  training), and again randomly assigned to lead
  one of the groups
• Administrative leave

14
Design and Procedure

• Each group of subordinatesfacilitated by a
  recruitment leadergiven a scenario in which they
  devised a web-based recruitment strategy given
  limited instruction
• no previous exposure to newly a developed web
  design software package
• 2 hours to complete
• Questionnaire was used to evaluate subordinate
  attitudes
• total innovation acceptance score
• r .86

15
Results

• Pilot study 1
• positive significant relationship between the
  achievement-oriented leadership style and
  innovativeness (r .44, p .02)
• as use of achievement-oriented leadership style
  increases, the potential for organizational
  innovativeness increases as well
• significant negative relationship between the
  directive leadership style and innovativeness (r
  -.37, p .05)
• as use of directive leadership increases, the
  potential for organizational innovativeness tends
  to decrease

16
Means, Standard Deviations and Correlations for
Innovativeness and Three Path-goal Leadership
Styles
Note. n 30. p .05.
17
Results

• Pilot Study 2
• significant effect of leader experience on
  subordinate innovativeness, F(1, 28) 4.62, p
  .04
• leader experience affects subordinate
  innovativeness
• significant effect of leader experience on
  achievement-oriented leadership style, F(1, 28)
  4.73, p .04
• ANOVA examined the effects of leader experience
  on leadership style and subordinate
  innovativeness
• leader experience affects achievement-oriented
  leadership style
• no significant effects found for leader
  experience on either supportive or directive
  leadership styles

18
Analysis of Variance for the Effect of Leader
Experience on Innovativeness and the Three
Path-Goal Leadership Styles
19
Results

• 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects factorial ANCOVA
  design
• leader gender and experience, and experimental
  condition as IVs, leader age as a covariate
• advantages over a regular ANOVA design
• with the latter, only cell means can be compared
• with the former, cell means can be compared after
  covarianceleader age in this caseis adjusted
  out
• between-group differences that do not contribute
  to the effects of interest, i.e., differences
  between leaders experience on subordinate
  innovativeness, are minimized
• smaller error termmore power to detect a
  significant effect

20
Results

• after adjusting for the covariates, leadership
  type varied significantly with subordinate
  innovativeness F(1, 181) 4.62, p lt .05, ?²
  .14
• subordinate innovativeness did not vary
  significantly with leader biological sex, F(1,
  181) 3.52, p .06, ?² .02
• subordinate innovativeness, however, was higher
  for female leaders (M 41.66, SD 14.51) than
  for male leaders (M 39.22, SD 12.51)
• statistically significant main effect of
  experience, F(1, 181) 7.23, p lt .05, ?² .12

21
Results

• not a significant three-way interaction between
  achievement-oriented leadership, leader gender,
  and leader experience, F(3, 181) 2.03, p .11,
  ?² .01
• as a covariate, leader age contributed a
  significant effect on subordinate innovativeness,
  F(1, 181) 11.03, p lt .01, ?² .11

22
Analysis of Covariance for Effects of Types of
Leadership, Leader Biological Sex and Leader
Experience on Subordinate Innovativeness, with
Leader Age as a Covariate
Note. n 195. p lt .05. p lt .01.
23
Discussion

• Hypotheses supported
• leaders adoption of an achievement-oriented
  leadership results in higher mean subordinate
  innovativeness than the control (no specific
  leadership style)
• certain leader qualities and characteristics
  influence organizations potential for
  innovativeness
• Houses (1974 1996) path-goal theory can be
  applied such as to induce innovation

24
Discussion

• Leaders concerned with setting challenging goals,
  making sure innovative resources are available,
  providing development opportunities, etc., share
  relationships with environments where innovation
  is present
• Amount of leadership experience predicts
  subordinate innovativeness and achievement-oriente
  d leadership style
• Leaders with fewer years of experience in a
  leadership role tend to cause higher subordinate
  innovativeness,
• why? younger leaders more open to new ideas?
• Leaders with fewer years of experience exhibited
  higher means for achievement-oriented leadership
• moderates the relationship between younger
  leaders and their subordinates innovation
  outputs?

25
Conclusion

• Applications
• selecting achievement-oriented leaders to lead
  subordinatesat least in the realm Naval
  recruitmenthas a substantial impact on
  innovation
• more experienced leaders should be trained to
  increase their awareness and techniques of
  achievement-oriented path-goal behaviors

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Conclusion

• Implications
• Longitudinal cohort effects taking place, or some
  other mechanism not identified?
• Further research should be conducted to examine
  these effects more closely
• Leader experience should be further segmented to
  study the experience effects supported in this
  study and consistently found in other research
• Replicate these findings in other workplace
  settings (addresses a limitation of this study)

27
References

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