Journal of Management

A multidisciplinary program of leadership research was initiated at Ohio State in 1945. Leader behavior in organizations was the principal thrust with relationships shown to other sets of variables. The program had its roots in occupational research performed on a wide scale in the U.S. Department of Labor and the War Manpower Commission beginning in 1934.

The Ohio State Leadership Studies have contributed in general to the fields of management and organizational behavior, and specifically to the field of leadership. These contributions can be summarized in several categories. Process contributions include the use of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of leadership phenomena as well as a consistent emphasis on performing high-quality research. Conceptually, the Ohio State studies helped to shift the focus of the field from a universal trait approach to a more situational, behavioral-based view. Methodologically, the Ohio State studies contributed a model of programmatic construct validation and investigation, and provided future researchers with useful research instruments. In sum, these contributions are substantial and are worthy of continued recognition.

In reviewing his involvement in leadership research, Rensis Likert discusses early influences on his thinking, the university-connected Institute for Social Research and the criteria on which it was based, as well as the first leadership and management studies of the Survey Research Center. Likert's System 1-4 theory was derived from research data about high-producing managers and how they differ from low-producing managers. Later research demonstrated the real need to use the Current Value approach of Human Resources Accounting to assess the leadership behavior of managers accurately.

A personal recollection of Ralph M. Stogdill is presented, and the contribution of the OS U Leadership Studies to the understanding of leader behavior is reviewed with respect to the intermediate phase between the leader-trait and situational approaches to leadership. Together with the use of critical incidents and peer nominations, these studies formed the context for developing a transactional approach to leader-follower relations. This newer approach stresses the two-way influence and social exchange processes involved in leadership, with an emphasis on the two factors of system progress and equity. The results of research applying the transactional approach are summarized, with especial attention to leadership effectiveness.

This paper proposes that when empirical research on the technology-structure relationship is classified by organizational level and by type of technology studied, the evidence favoring a technological imperative is quite consistent. The only studies which have yielded inconsistent results have been those focusing on the total organization, where the measurement of both the transformation technology and structure has been particularly problematic. At the workflow or subunit level of organizations, generally strong technology-structure relationships have been observed. The same is true for system level studies where technology was operationalized in terms of the characteristics of environmental inputs or outputs rather than of the transformation process itself. It is suggested that the consistency and value of future research results on the technology-structure connection can be considerably enhanced if researchers take greater care to specify their organizational levels of analysis as well as the way in which they operationalize their technology and structure variables. Some preliminary suggestions are also made for the development of a general theory of the technology structure link.

The predictive power of two models (work unit structure and job design) in association with employee job satisfaction were compared. Job design was also tested as an intervening variable in the work unit structure-employee job satisfaction relationship. The results indicate the work unit structure did not have a significant association with employee job satisfaction. Instead, job design emerged as an intervening variable in the work unit structure-employee job satisfaction relationship.

This study attempts to reconcile inconsistencies in the literature concerning the job attribute preferences of full-time and part-time workers. The data reveal that the worker's sex and occupation influence preferences. For male and female blue-collar workers and professional/managerial employees only minor differences exist between full- and part-time employees. However, significant differences in the preference rankings of job attributes were found between full- and part-time female clerical employees. Further, the data suggest that for female clerical employees, marital and family status could influence their job attribute preferences.

Union officials and managers from several federal facilities rank-ordered 11 elements identified as necessary for successful union-management relationships. No significant differences were found in the subject's rankings, from different samples, from union or management positions, or from high or low successful relationships. The results are used to develop a three-tiered hierarchy of importance of the elements. In addition, the hierarchy and the elements can be employed as part of a strategy for evaluating and improving union-management relations.

This article focuses on a significant and neglected issue - the impact of flexible workhours programs on first-line supervisors. Relevant data come from two sources: a substantial panel of Flexi-Time studies, often with a short time-frame; and "sensing group" meetings with 43 supervisors who had over three years of experience with flexible workhour variants. The data converge to a direct conclusion: Flexi-Time variants have a range of effects on supervision, but these appear within the abilities and tolerances of almost all supervisors, who seem motivated to make any adaptations by the positive features for employees and supervisors of such programs.