Leadership and Decision-Making Book

It has become a truism that 'leadership depends upon the situation,' but few behavioral scientists have attempted to go beyond that statement to examine the specific ways in which leaders should and do vary their behavior with situational demands. Vroom and Yetton select a critical aspect of leadership style...the extent to which the leader encourages the participation of his subordinates in decision-making. In the first three chapters they describe a normative model which show the specific decision process called for in different classes of situations. The model is given in terms of a 'decision tree' and requires the leader to analyze the dimensions of the particular problem or decision confronting him in order to determine how much and in what way to share his decision making power with his subordinates. The next three chapters present research on how leaders do, in fact, behave in different situations. These chapters answers such questions as: What differences exist among leaders in their leadership styles? Which situations induce people to display autocratic or participative behavior? Chapter 7 is a comparison on how leaders behave and how the normative model indicates how they should behave. These differences become the basis for a new approach to leadership development described in chapter 8. The book ends with an examination of the implications of the findings.Read More