Leadership and Management

Effectiveness: A Multi-Frame,
Multi-Sector Analysis

I Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal I

Bolman and Deal (1984,1991) have developed four perspectives, orframes, for under-
standing organizations and leadership: structural, human resource, political, and sym-
bolic. This paper reports two studies that operationalize that model. The first study uses
critical incidents written by managers to assess how many and which frames they use.
Most incidents show the use of one or two frames; wry few contain all four. In every
population, the structural frame was used frequently while the symbolic frame was rarely
evident. Across different populations, the use of the human resource and political frames
varied substantially. The second study used survey instruments to assess managers'frame
orientations. Regression analyses show that their orientations, as perceived by colleagues,
are diferentially related to perceived effectiveness as manager and leader. Managerial
effectiveness is related to an emphasis on rationality and organizational structure. Lead-
ership effectiveness is linked to symbols and culture. For men and women in comparable
positions, gender is unrelated to leadership orientations or to their effectiveness as manag-
ers or leaders. 0 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Consider the saga of Roger Smith. Shortly after he became chief exec-
utive officer of General Motors in 1981, Smith was hailed as a bold and
visionary leader. Six years later, Smith (Fortune, August 3,1987) himself
ruefully said, "I'm not as smart as people said a few years ago, and not
as dumb as they say now" (p. 26). Business Week ran a cover story under
the title, "General Motors: What Went Wrong? Eight Years and Billions
of Dollars Haven't Made its Strategy Succeed."
In 1979, General Motors earned $3.5 billion on sales of $63 billion, and
it held nearly half the American car market. During Smith's tenure,
G M s earnings, adjusted for inflation, were stagnant. In 1987, Ford
earned more than General Motors for the first time in 60 years. By the
time Smith retired in August, 1990, he had made history. He closed
more plants, laid off more workers, and reduced GMs market share
more than any of his predecessors. Despite this record, Smith was al-
ways sure that he was on the right track and continued to see success
just around the comer (Bolman & Deal, 1991).
Roger Smith shared a problem with many other leaders-his thinking
and strategies stayed on the same course, despite abundant evidence

Human Resource Management, Winter 1991, Vol. 30, Number 4, Pp. 509-534
0 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0090-4&48/92/040509-26
that something different was needed. Smith was trapped in a structural
and technological view of the world (Bolman & Deal, 1991, pp. 427-430).
He restructured all of G M s vehicle operations, and spent billions of
dollars on his vision of a corporation with paperless offices and
robotized assembly plants. Even though the changes were dramatic and
far-reaching, GM got steadily weaker. Smith had a limited understand-
ing of human resource (HR) management. He assumed that the main
problem with G M s workers was that they were overpaid; he never
considered that they might be underled. Nor did he seem to understand
the symbolic dimension of leadership. When, during Chrysler’s darkest
days, Lee Iacocca cut his own salary to $1 a year as a symbolic gesture,
Smith missed the point and was unimpressed (Lee, 1988).He missed the
same point again in 1982 when he announced an improved bonus pro-
gram for top executives “about a month after a UAW had agreed to a
new contract involving an estimated $2.5 billion in wage and benefit
concessions under a principle that management and employees would
share equally in financial sacrifice” (Kanter, 1983, p. 347). Douglas
Fraser, the union president, said that the workers felt ”double-crossed,”
and that he had never seen them so upset (Kanter, 1983, p, 347).
Leaders, like everyone else, view their experience through a set of
preconditioned lenses and filters. They often resist questioning their
view of how an organization works-or might work better. When their
frames of reference fit the circumstances, they can understand and
shape human experience. When they do not, their frames freeze into a
distorted picture that traps them in their misconceptions. They explain
failure by blaming circumstances rather than questioning their own in-
ability to read and respond to the situation at hand.
Over the years, scholars have spent considerable time and energy
trying to identify the characteristics, traits, or styles of effective leaders.
Policymakers and others have spent even more on programs designed to
improve leadership skills. Yet research and training often have produced
disappointing results. Why? Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong
place and have been giving too little attention to how leaders think. A
faulty diagnosis rarely leads to effective action, and misreading the sit-
uation can undermine even a leader of exceptional stature and skill. In
this paper, an effort to operationalize a model of how leaders see their
worlds is reported. Are there patterns in the images or lenses they
employ? Are leaders with multiple frames more effective than those
with a singular focus? Under what conditions can leaders learn to be
more flexible in defining situations accurately?

LEADERSHIP IMAGES OR FRAMES

The concept of frames has many synonyms in the social science liter-
ature-schema or schemata (Lord & Foti, 1986; Fiske & Dyer, 1985;

510 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

 mmC Leadcr k Lendcrchlp P m 6 r
Social architect Analysis, design

Iroiii)cri Advwte Advocacy, coalition-

huilding
I
ISymbolic Prophet, poct
I Inspiration, framini
experience
I
Figure 1. Reframing leadership.

Fiedler, 1985), maps (Weick & Bougon, 1986), images (Morgan, 1986),
frames of reference, representations (Lesgold & Lajoie, 1991; Frensch &
Sternberg, 1991; Voss & Wolfe, 1991), paradigms (Gregory, 1983; Kuhn,
1970), pictures (Mitroff, 1985), and implicit organizing theories (Brief &
Downy, 1983). The different labels share an assumption that individuals
see the world in different ways because they are embedded in different
world views. Because the world of human experience is so complex and
ambiguous, frames of reference shape how situations are defined and
determine what actions are taken. The research here uses the framework
developed by the authors (Bolman and Deal, 1984,1991), which divides
theories of organizations into four traditions which we have labeled
frames (see Figure 1).

Structural Frame

The first of those perspectives, the structurul frame, emphasizes goals

and efficiency. It posits that effective organizations define clear goals,
differentiate people into specific roles, and coordinate diverse activities
through policies, rules, and chain of command. Structural leaders value
analysis and data, keep their eye on the bottom line, set clear directions,
hold people accountable for results, and try to solve organizational prob-
lems with new policies and rules or through restructuring.

Human Resources Frame

The human resource frame focuses attention on human needs and as-
sumes that organizations that meet basic human needs will work better
than those that do not. Human resource leaders value relationships and
feelings; they seek to lead through facilitation and empowerment. They
tend to define problems in individual or interpersonal terms and look for

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 511

ways to adjust the organization to fit people-or to adjust the people to
fit the organization (for example, through training and workshops).

Political Frame

The political frame views organizations as arenas of continuing con-

flict and competition among different interests for scarce resources. Po-
litical leaders are advocates and negotiators who value realism and
pragmatism. They spend much of their time networking, creating coali-
tions, building a power base, and negotiating compromises.

Symbolic Frame

The symbolic frame sees a chaotic world in which meaning and pre-
dictability are social creations, and facts are interpretative rather than
objective. Organizations develop cultural symbols that shape human
behavior unobtrusively and provide a shared sense of mission and iden-
tity. Symbolic leaders instill a sense of enthusiasm and commitment
through charisma and drama. They pay diligent attention to myth, ritu-
al, ceremony, stories, and other symbolic forms.

Origins of Multi-Frame View

We initially developed the frames "as a way to survive each other

(Bolman & Deal, 1984, p. xii)." Educated in different disciplines, at differ-
ent institutions, on opposite coasts, we were assigned to team-teach a
course on organizations at Harvard. Immediately, we found ourselves
disagreeing on almost everything-what to teach, how to teach it, and
whether we were teaching with the right colleague. With necessity as
the mother of invention, we developed the frames inductively in an
effortto capture the differences in our own world views and in different
strands in the organizational literature.
A number of students of management and organizations have argued
the benefits of multi-frame views of organizations (including Allison,
1971; Elmore, 1978; Morgan, 1986; Perrow, 1986; Quinn, 1988; Scott,
1981). The perspective that most closely parallel's our four-frame theory
is the "competing values" perspective developed by Quinn and his col-
laborators (Kimberly & Quinn, 1984; Quinn & Cameron, 1985; Quinn,
1988).
Quinn argues that effective management requires the ability to use
different models, even when they are based on different and competing
values. Both our model and Quinn's divide the world into four different
perspectives. Both argue that managers often impede their own effec-

512 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

 SYMBOLIC

Human RcIatkms Opn S p t m

(Cultural Redevelopment) (Political Adaptation)

HUMAN RESOURCE POLITICAL

Internal Pmcess Ratimol Goal

(Structural routhimtion) (Strategic readjustment)

STRUCTURAL

The labels in italics in each quadrant arc the competing values models from Quinn (1988, p. 48).
Labels in parenthcscs arc from Kimberly and Quinn (1984, p. 304).

Figure 2. Relationship of BolmanlDeal fiames to Quinn's competing val-

ues framework.

tiveness by clinging to some perspectives and ignoring others. Quinn

(1988) builds the model along two basic axes: (1) control vs. flexibility,
and (2) internal focus vs. external focus. From those, he constructs four
different "models" or frames: human relations, internal process, rational
goal, and open systems. Figure 2 shows an approximate correlation of
Quinn's framework with that of Bolman and Deal. The main axes in our
model are different. An axis running between the symbolic and struc-
tural frames represents two different forms of cognition: artis-
tic/expressive/metaphoric vs. rational/linear/sequential. A second
human resource/political axis represents competing orientations to-
ward the social environment: caring/trusting/collaborativevs. realistic/
skeptical/competitive.

STUDYING LEADERS' FRAMES

This article reports two investigations into how leaders use frames:
how many they use, which ones, and with what consequences. The first
study is a qualitative investigation of how leaders frame their experi-

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness / 513

ence. The second is a quantitative study of how leaders are perceived by
those with whom they work. Qualitative methods provide a more direct
measure of frames as constructs, because they can tap the subtleties and
complexities of leaders’ internal worlds. The quantitative study used
survey instruments to measure perceived patterns in managers’ actions.
Operationally, the instruments resemble a number of instruments that
have been used to assess leader styles. There is no perfect way to mea-
sure thinking; perceptual measures of how leaders behave provide only
indirect evidence of how they frame experience. Essentially, researchers
have two options: (a) ask people how they think, or (b) study how they
perform on tasks which should reflect their thinking. The first method is
problematic because people often do not know what theories they use
(Argyris & Schon, 1972; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), or may not know until
after the fact (Bem, 1967; Weick, 1979). Studying performance is prob-
lematic because it requires that inferences be made about the thinking
processes associated with performance. Our survey instrument is con-
structed on the assumption that managers’ behavior mirrors their inter-
nal cause maps (Weick, 1979) or theories for action (Argyris & Schon,
1972). In a world of complexity and equivocality (Weick, 1979), managers
use their maps to know what to attend to, what sense to make of it, and
what to do about it. We assume, for example, that leaders cannot dem-
onstrate consistent patterns of political sophistication in their behavior
unless their mental maps contain corresponding political elements. Rec-
ognizing the limits of this approach, we have tried to capitalize on both
internal reflection and external observations.

Qualitative Investigations: The First Study

What frames are embedded in narratives that managers and admin-

istrators provide about their experience? We have asked participants in a
number of executive programs to provide brief, written, critical inci-
dents that describe a situation that was ”challenging and raises issues of
how to provide effective leadership.” We have used those narratives to
answer two questions: (a) How many frames do leaders use? (b) Which
ones? The coding was based on criteria summarized in Table 1.
Table 2 shows the frames prominent in critical incidents from three
different samples of educational administrators. The first is a sample of
145 higher education administrators, from colleges and universities
throughout the United States (and about 5% came from outside the
United States). They held positions ranging from department chair to
president. The second includes two groups of school administrators: 48
principals from Broward County, Florida and 15 superintendents from
school districts in Minnesota. The third is a sample of more than 220
administrators, mostly school principals, from the Republic of Sing-
apore. In all cases, the respondents were participating in institutes or

514 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Table 1. Criteria for Coding Frame Responses

Frame Frame-Related Issues Frame-Related Actions

Structural Coordination and control; Reorganizing,

clarity or lack of clarity implementing, or
about goals, roles, or clarifying policies and
expectations; references procedures; developing
to planning, budgeting, new information,
and evaluation; budgeting, or control
discussion of analysis or systems, adding new
its absence (for example, structural units, planning
feasibility studies, processes
institutional analysis);
issues around policies
and procedures.
Human Discussions of individuals’ Processes of participation
Resource feelings, needs, and involvement (task
preferences, or abilities forces, open meetings,
(for example, problems of etc.), training, recruiting
individual performance or new staff, workshops and
staff quality); references retreats, empowerment,
to the importance of organization
participation, listening, development, and
open communciations, quality-of-work life
involvement in decision- programs
making, morale;
discussion of
interpersonal
relationships; emphasis
on collaboration, win-
win, and a sense of
family or community
Political Focus on conflict or tension Bargaining, negotiation,
among different advocacy, building
constituencies, interest alliances, and networking
groups, or organizations; with other key players
competing interests and
agendas; disputes over
allocation of scarce
resources; games of
power and self-interest
Symbolic Discussions of institutional Creating or revitalizing
identity, culture, or ceremonies and rituals,
symbols; discussions of working to develop or
the image that will be restate the institution’s
projected to different vision, working on
audiences; discussion of influencing organizational
the symbolic importance culture, using self as a
of existing practices, Symbol
rituals, or artifacts (for
example, symbolic
attachment to an old
building on campus);
emphasis on influencing
how different audiences
will interpret or frame an
activity or decision
Table 2. How Many Frames Do Leaders Use?

Higher American Singapore

How Education School School One-way
Many Administrators Administrators Administrators Analysis of
Frames? (N = 145) (N = 63) (N = 220) Variance

One 24% 16% 26% F = 3.44*

Two 50% 58 % 55% F = 0.628
Three 20% 19% 13% F = 4.81**
Four 6% 6% 5% F = 1.01

p < .05.
** p < .01.

workshops on leadership. Thus, all are volunteer, convenience samples

(though the Singapore group includes more than half the principals in
that nation).
The results in all three samples show that the critical incidents rarely
contain more than two frames, and almost none describes situations
encompassing all four. In every sample, less than a quarter of the inci-
dents drew on more than two frames, and only about 5%used all four. If
the incidents reflect the way that these administrators define situations,
most use only one or two frames to size things up. Though it is possible
that the choice of incidents influenced the results, or that the descrip-
tions do not reflect what managers typically see, the results are consis-
tent with our observations of managers and leaders in action in organi-
zations around the world.

Which Frames Do Managers Use?

Table 3 reports which frames were employed by the managers in the

three samples. Differences in context have a noticeable effect on the
frames that are embedded in managers’ accounts. For the structural
frame only there were no significant differences among the three differ-
ent populations. Policies, procedures, legal requirements, committees,
and control systems appear to be regular features of managers’ lives
anywhere. The incidents from the three samples were substantially dif-
ferent in the salience of the human resource and political frames. Both
institutional and national context seem to have a significant effect on the
leadership challenges that managers see. For example, Singapore prin-
cipals wrote about political dynamics-issues of conflict, power, scarce
resources, and multiple constituencies-in only a fifth of their cases.
The same themes appeared in more than half the incidents from Ameri-
can school administrators and more than 70% of the incidents from
higher education. (Both the overall analysis of variance and all three

516 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Table 3. Which Frames Do Leaders Use?

Higher American Singapore

Education School School One-way
Which Administrators Administrators Administrators Analysis of
Frames? (N = 145) (N = 63) (N = 220) Variance

Structural 67% 58% 62% F = 0.85

Human 59% 86% 98% F = 59.43***
resource
Political 71% 50% 21% F = 56.96***
Symbolic 17% 11% 17% F = 4.88**

p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.

pair-wise comparisons, using Tukey’s test, were statistically significant

at better than the .01 level.) Americans appear to see more politics than
Singaporeans, regardless of where they work. School administrators,
regardless of national context, see politics less often than officials in
colleges and universities.
We cannot be sure how far it is safe to generalize from such conve-
nience samples, and there is no direct way to disentangle the effects of
frames from context. For example do American school administrators
see more politics because they are more politically oriented or simply
because the world around them is more political? It is probably a mixture
of both. Managers who work in more political environments are more
likely to develop maps of political phenomena, making it more likely
that they will notice politics. Managers who see more politics are likely
to act more politically, which completes the circle by making the en-
vironment more political. We suspect that such processes, embedded in
institutional or national cultures, are at work in many of the differences
observed across our three samples. No one who has worked in univer-
sities is likely to be surprised that political dynamics dominated in that
environment. We have come to expect that most universities are like “a
political jungle, alive and screaming” (Baldridge, 1971, p. 21).

Quantitative Investigations

Measure of Leadership Orientations

The quantitative investigations employ a different methodology,

guided by the same conceptual orientation. A survey instrument,
“Leadership Orientations,” was developed by the authors to measure
the four organizational frames already described. It contains 32 items

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 517

with five-point response scales. The instrument was designed to mea-
sure eight separate dimensions of leadership, two for each frame:

1. Human Resource Dimensions

(a) Supportive-concerned about the feelings of others; supportive
and responsive.
(b) Participative-fosters participation and involvement; listens and
is open to new ideas.
2. Structural Dimensions
(a) Analytic-thinks clearly and logically; approaches problems
with facts and attends to detail.
(b) Organized-develops clear goals and policies; hold people
accountable for results.
3. Political Dimensions
(a) Powerful-persuasive, high level of ability to mobilize people
and resources; effective at building alliances and support
(b) Adroit-politically sensitive and skillful; a skillful negotiator in
face of conflict and opposition.
4. Symbolic Dimensions
(a) Inspirational-inspires others to loyalty and enthusiasm; com-
municates a strong sense of vision.
(b) Charismatic-imaginative, emphasizes culture and values; is
highly charismatic.

The items for each scale were selected from a larger pool generated by
the authors and their colleagues. The instrument was pilot tested on
populations of both students and managers to assess the internal relia-
bility of each scale. The instrument is now in its third iteration, and
internal reliability is very high: Cronbach‘s alpha for the frame measures
ranges between .91 and .93. The instrument has two parallel forms: one
for individuals to rate themselves and another in which their colleagues
(superiors, peers, subordinates, etc.) can rate them.

Measures of Efectiveness

Both forms of the Leadership Orientations survey also contain two

global ratings of perceived effectiveness:one for ”overall effectiveness as
a manager” and one for “overall effectiveness as a leader.” We did not
define leadership or management, nor did we instruct respondents how
to distinguish the terms; instead, we wanted to learn what meaning they
gave to the two terms. We expected the two measures of perceived
effectiveness would be highly correlated, and they are (typically in the
range of .75 to 35). But we also wanted to explore similarities and
differences in the pattern of leaders’ orientations that is associated with
each.

518 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

 Sample

We have collected data from respondents in schools, higher educa-

tion, government, and the private sector. In this paper, we report data
from four samples:

(1) An international corporate sample of 90 senior managers from a

multinational corporation. This sample included managers from more
than 15 different nations in North America, Latin America, Europe,
Africa, Asia, and Australia.
(2) A sample of 145 higher education administrators, mostly from the
United States (from the same population used above in the qualitative
analyses).
(3) Two groups of school administrators: 50 principals from Broward
County, Florida, and 90 principals and central office administrators
from Beaverton, Oregon.
(4) A sample of 229 school administrators from the Republic of Sing-
apore. More than 90% of this sample were school principals; the rest
held various administrative roles in the Ministry of Education.

In each case, we collected both self-ratings and colleague ratings

(from colleagues nominated by the participating manager), but the anal-
yses here focus on the colleague ratings. The presence of multiple raters
for each participating manager creates a familiar problem in leadership
research: the presence of both within-group and between-group vari-
ance. Analytic tools such as within and between analysis (WABA) and
hierarchical linear modeling have been developed to respond to this
problem of multi-level variance, but our primary interest is how manag-
ers differ from one another, rather than how raters differ in assessing the
same person. We chose to employ a model akin to that used in diving
and ice-skating competitions: for each group of raters, we averaged the
ratings to get the best estimate of the ratee's actual performance.

Questions

Our research was guided by two broad hypotheses. The first is that
the capacity to reframe is a critical issue in success as both manager and
leader. In a world of increasing ambiguity and complexity, the ability to
use more than one frame should increase an individual's ability to make
clear judgments and to act effectively. The second hypothesis builds on a
contextual view of leadership: Different situations required different pat-
terns of thinking. In some organizations, for example, an inability to

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness / 519

deal with political dynamics is only a modest handicap; in others it is a
fatal flaw.
We used the data to address several questions that flow out of the
guiding hypotheses:

(1) How well do the frames capture managers’ thinking?

(2) To what degree are there contextual differences in frame patterns?
(3) How well do the frames predict effectiveness as a manager or a
leader?

We alsb examined the relationship between gender and frame orien-

tations for groups that included enough women to support statistical
analysis.

Do the Frames Capture How Administrators Think?

One way to test how well the frames correspond to managers’ think-
ing is to find out whether they see the items from each frame as clus-
tered together. We used factor analysis of responses to the leadership
instruments to explore this question, using both self-ratings (how I see
myself) and colleague ratings (how they see my behavior). The analyses
consistently produced factors associated with the four frames. The factor
structures are somewhat different for self and colleague-ratings, but in
both cases all four frames emerge clearly. Table 4 shows factor analyses
for two different samples of colleague raters: 1,331 higher education
raters (mostly from the United States) and 1,238 raters from Singapore.
The higher education raters were mostly other administrators. The Sing-
apore raters were primarily teachers, but also included administrators
and community members.
Using a conventional procedure (principal components analysis, with
varimax rotation of all factors with an eigenvalue > l), the four largest
factors correspond to the frames. Table 4 shows that the factor loadings
are remarkably similar for the two samples, particularly in the light of
the significant linguistic, cultural, and contextual differences. We have
found similar results for other populations, though the population of
American school administrators was an exception. The factor analysis
there produced three factors: structural and human resource factors that
are very similar to those reported in Table 4, and a third factor that
combines the symbolic and political frames. The factors are usually very
clean. When items do bleed across frames, they arise from overlap of the
symbolic frame with either the human resource or political frames. How-
ever, the political and human resource frames show little overlap with
each other, and none of the other frames overlaps with the structural
dimension.

520 1 Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Table 4. Leadership Orientations Factor Analyses Structural and
Human Resource Factors

Singapore
US Higher School
Education Administration
Sample Sample
Frame (N = 1331 raters) (N = 1238 raters)

Structural
Strongly emphasizes careful .79 .74
planning, clear timelines
Has extraordinary attention to detail .75 .67
Develops and implements clear, .75 .72
logical policies
Approaches problems with facts and .73 .68
logic
Uses logical analysis and careful .72 .70
thinking
Strongly believes in clear chain of .67 .60
command
Human resource
Shows high sensitivity and concern .85 .74
for others’ needs
Shows high support and concern for .84 .74
others
Is consistently helpful and .a3 .76
responsive to others
Builds trust through open, .77 .71
collaborative relationships
Listens well and is unusually .71 .72
receptive to others’ input
Gives personal recognition for work .64 .56
well done
Political
Is politically very sensitive and .78 .67
skillful
Gets support from people with .73 .72
influence and power
Is a very skillful and shrewd .74 .68
negotiator
Is usually persuasive and influential .68 .60
Succeeds in the face of conflict and .63 .54
opposition
Anticipates and deals adroitly with 59 .60
organizational conflict
Symbolic
Is highly charismatic .71 .a
Sees beyond current realities to .63 .50
create exciting opportunities
Communicates strong and .63 .60
challenging sense of mission
Is highly imaginative and creative .57 .59
Models organizational aspirations .51 .56
and values

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 521

 The fact that factor analysis produces results consistent with the theo-
ry is encouraging. Had the factor analysis failed, it would provide strong
evidence either that the instrument was badly designed or that the
frames do not fit with how respondents think. Successful factor analysis
does not prove that respondents know or use the frames, but it does
establish that they saw the items for each frame as both linked to one
another and distinct from the items in other frames.

Are There Contextual Differences in Frame Patterns?

Figure 3 depicts means on each frame for each of the four popula-
tions. The most typical pattern, found in both American samples, is to
have scores on the structural and human resource frames that are some-
what higher than those on the political and symbolic dimensions. The
international corporate sample, on the other hand, is very high on the
structural frame and very low on the symbolic with the human resource
and political frames falling in between. The Singapore school admin-
istrators was similar to the two groups of American educators, except for
an unusually high mean score on the symbolic frame.
There are some mean differences among the samples, though they
may not be very meaningful. For example, the Singapore school admin-
istrators had high ratings on every frame, while the corporate sample

Ilruotura Hummn Rmaourom Polllloml Symbollo

Ratlngr of Manager. by thelr Colleagues

Figure 3. Colleague ratings in four samples.

522 1 Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

had low ratings on everything but structure. The raters in every sample
were presumably making judgments in the context of their own experi-
ence-comparing the ratees to other managers that they had known.
Differences in their experience presumably influenced how they used
the survey scales. Thus, we do not want to conclude that the Singapore
school administrators are necessarily higher in any absolute sense than
managers in any of the other groups.

Do the Frames Predict Efectiveness?

We used regression analysis to explore the link between the frames

and effectiveness. The independent variables were the four frames. The
dependent variables were colleagues' ratings of effectiveness as a man-
ager and effectiveness as a leader. Both the independent and dependent
measures are based on the perceptions of the same colleague raters. The
measures are highly reliable (because of the "diving competition" ap-
proach discussed above), but the statistical results are probably inflated
by the effects of same-source variance. Nevertheless, the regression re-
sults, shown in Table 5, suggest several significant findings.

Table 5. Regression Analyses

Corporate Higher Singapore

Middle Education US School School
Frame Managers Administrators Administrators Administrators

Dependent Variable: Efectiveness as a Manager

Structural .17 .50*** .40*** .26*
Human resource .W* .19*** .05 -.13
Political .w** ?JO*** .14 .15
Symbolic .12 .04 .32** .64***
Multiple R Z .v** .69*** .71*** .59***
N 90 187 205 274

Dependent Variable:Efectiveness as a Leader

Structural -.28* .12* .01 .08
Human resource .31** .18** .10 - .06
Political .36** .28** .24* .!XI**
Symbolic .73*** u*** .53* .w
Multiple RZ .8T** .73*** .72*** .62***
N 90 187 205 274

* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness / 523

 (1) Frame orientations are associated with success as both manager and lead-
er. Across the four populations, the frames predict a minimum of 59% of
the variance in perceived managerial effectiveness, and 62% in lead-
ership effectiveness. For every population, the multiple R2 is higher for
effectiveness as leader than as manager, though the effect is less pro-
nounced for the two groups of school administrators.
(2) Efecctiveness as leader and manager are not the same thing. One of the
more frequently debated issues in the literature on organizational lead-
ership is whether management and leadership are the same or different
(Bass, 1985; Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Gardner, 1989: Kotter, 1990; Kouzes
& Posner, 1988; Maccoby, 1981).These results make it clear that practic-
ing managers and their colleagues see them as distinct, though overlap-
ping. The two measures of effectiveness were highly correlated, but
they were associated with different combinations of frame orientations.
Managerial effectiveness is most consistently associated with a struc-
tural orientation, whereas leader effectiveness is consistently associated
with an orientation toward symbols and politics. For all but the corpo-
rate sample, the structural frame is the best predictor of managerial
effectiveness. It is also the weakest predictor or effectiveness as a leader
in every sample except the corporate one, where it is negatively related
to leadership effectiveness. The symbolic and political frames are the
two best predictors of leadership effectiveness for every group.
(3) What will work depends on where you work. The two groups of school
administrators are similar to one another and unlike the other two sam-
ples. This suggests certain similarities in the job of a school principal,
even if that work is performed in very different institutional and cultural
contexts. The other two groups are different from each other as well as
from the school samples.
It may seem strange, at first glance, that the structural frame is a
significant predictor of management effectiveness for every group ex-
cept the corporate sample. We suspect that this result stems in part from
a ceiling effect and in part from the special characteristics of the particu-
lar company that was included in the study. The corporate managers
showed a unique pattern: They were very high on the structural frame,
very low on the symbolic, and moderately high on the other two. They
worked for one of the worlds largest multinational companies, a profit-
able, engineering-oriented organization with very strong information
and control systems. It is also a company that has repeatedly floundered
when it confronted symbolic issues. At about the time that these data
were collected, the company had an industrial accident that produced
significant environmental damage and brought on a firestorm of public
criticism. The company’s top managers applied a rational, technocratic
logic to dealing with the media and the public, and the results were
catastrophic. Managers in our sample told us that they were embar-
rassed and appalled at how badly the company had handled the public
relations issues. We believe that our data mirror a reality in that com-

524 1 Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Table 6. Summary of Effectiveness Patterns

Corporate Higher Singapore

Middle Education US School School
Variable Managers Administrators Administrators Administrators

Effective Political Structural Structural Symbolic

managers are Human Political Symbolic Structural
highest on: resource Human
resource
Effective leaders Symbolic Symbolic Symbolic Political
are highest on: Political Political Political Symbolic
Human Human
resource resource
Structural

Each cell shows the variables that were statistically sigruhcant in the r e p s i o n , ranked
in order of size of the standard regression coefficient.

pany: It has plenty of structural thinking and more is not better. More
effective managers and leaders in that context tended to be stronger in
those frames where the corporation is weakest.
(4) The optimal pattern offrame orientations is more consistentfor leadership
than for management #ecfimess. Table 6 shows "effectiveness patterns"
for both management and leadership effectiveness for each group, based
on the variables that were significant predictors in the regression equa-
tions. The chart represents a hypothesis, based on our data, about what
managers need to do well in order to be effective in different contexts. To
the degree that the hypothesis is valid, it has important implications for
what managers should try to learn and organizations should try to de-
velop. The symbolic and political frames are part of the leadership effec-
tiveness patterns for all four samples, but there is less consistency for
managerial effectiveness. This raises a question worth further explora-
tion: Are the qualities of effective managers more situational than the
qualities of effective leaders?
(5) Most educational programs for managers focus on management rather
than leadership. Our data strongly suggest that political and symbolic
orientations are keys to effective leadership. Yet the literature and our
own experience lead us to believe leadership development programs
typically focus mostly on structural and human resource issues. For
some fifty years, much of the social psychological research on leadership
(for example, Bales, 1970; Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939; Fleishman &
Hams, 1962) has focused particularly on two dimensions: one relating to
structure and task, the other to people and social interaction. Those
same two dimensions appear in some of the most widely used models
for developing "leadership" (Blake & Mouton, 1985; Hersey, 1984). On
the other hand, Kotter (1985, pp. 12-13) rummaged through some
19,000 pages of management textbooks and found very few instances in

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 525

which political issues were even mentioned. Kotter did not look for
coverage of the symbolic frame, but unless the survey was done very
recently, the results would have been the same. Symbolic and cultural
issues were almost absent from the literature on organizations and man-
agement until about 1980, though they had held a central place in an-
thropology for many years. A variety of factors (including globalization,
discontinuous change, complexity, declining confidence, and faith)
brought us all into an “age of unreason” (Handy, 1990) and a new set of
ideas was in good currency. Deal and Kennedy (1982) rediscovered cor-
porate culture, Peters and Waterman (1982) rediscovered excellence, and
a variety of authors appropriated Burns’ (1978) conception of transfom-
ing leadership (Bass, 1985; Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Conger, 1989). Since
then, there has been in a great upsurge of interest in visionary or charis-
matic leadership; both scholars and practitioners have attempted to un-
derstand what it is and how it can be developed.

Such an upsurge of interest in political dimensions of leadership has

not been so noticeable, except in the scholarly literature (Baldridge,
1971; Frost, 1986; Kotter, 1982,1985; Morgan, 1986; Perrow, 1986; Pfeffer
1978). In all four of our samples, the political frame is a better predictor
of both managerial and leadership effectiveness than is the human re-
source frame. Conceptually, this is not surprising, but the idea of politics
as a good thing runs counter to the beliefs of many human resource and
management development professionals. This negative view of politics
is embodied in one widely used management-style instrument that tells
managers that an effective profile includes a low score on politics. Our
data suggest the opposite-that people who are more adept in under-
standing and using the political frame are perceived by their colleagues,
superiors, and subordinates as better managers and leaders, regardless
of sector, culture, or nationality.

Gender and the Frames

Until recently, the research and writing on leadership focused almost

exclusively on men. There was an implicit, taken-for-granted assump-
tion that leadership is basically a male activity. In the last decade, how-
ever, there has been an upsurge of interest in questions concerning
gender and leadership. Our data shed light on one key question about
gender and leadership: Are men and women different in how they think
about leadership and in how they are perceived by others?
The corporate sample was almost exclusively male, but women were
well represented in the other three groups. Women represented a third
of the higher education sample and a majority in both groups of school
administrators. Stereotypically, it might be expected that women would
be rated higher on the human resource frame (warm, supportive, par-

526 / Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Table 7. Gender Differences on Frames and Effectiveness

Higher Education Women Men

Administrators (N = 66) (N = 121) T Test

Structural 3.97 4.16 0.01

Human resource 4.11 4.14 0.71
Political 3.79 3.86 0.26
Symbolic 3.68 3.76 0.26
Effectiveness as a manager 4.22 4.33 0.22
Effectiveness as a leader 4.06 4.22 0.07

US School Women Men

Administrators (N = 122) (N = 83) T Test

Structural 4.13 3.96 2.38'

Human resource 4.13 3.99 1.87
Political 3.98 3.83 2.12'
Symbolic 3.99 3.82 2.45'
Effectiveness as a manager 4.46 4.31 1.90
Effectiveness as a leader 4.40 4.28 1.43

Singapore School Women Men

Administrators (N = 140) (N = 83) T Test

Structural 4.24 4.25 0.10

Human resource 4.14 4.12 0.38
Political 4.04 3.98 1.07
Symbolic 4.14 4.09 1.04
Effectiveness as a manager 4.46 4.38 1.27
Effectiveness as a leader 4.38 4.29 1.14

Significance levels: * = < .05 by two-tailed test.

tiapative) and lower on the political frame (persuasive, shrewd, well-

connected). Our data (in Table 7) give those stereotypes little support.
Men and women in comparable positions are actually more alike than
they are different. In both the higher education and the Singapore sam-
ples, there were no significant differences between men and women on
any of the variables. Among the American school administrators, there
were some differences, but they were not very great, and they were not
in the direction that the usual stereotypes might lead us to expect. The
women in that group were rated significantly higher than men on the
structural, political, and symbolic dimensions, but not on the human
resource frame (where there was no reliable difference). In self-ratings
from that same population, there was only one sigrufcant difference:
women rated themselves lower on the political frame, even though their
colleagues rated them higher.
These samples consisted by and large of successful men and women

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 527

who were in comparable positions. In the higher education sample, they
held positions ranging from department chair to college president. The
school samples consisted primarily of school principals, but also in-
cluded administrators in more senior roles. We do not know if the re-
sults would generalize to a less selective population, but they are consis-
tent with other quantitative research on leadership, which finds either
no differences between men and women, 'or small differences favoring
women (Edwards, 1991; Weddle, 1991; Wilson & Wilson, 1991). Such
results question conventional stereotypes and suggest a need for further
exploration of the recently popular idea that women bring certain lead-
ership gifts to organizations that men do not (Astin & Leland, 1991;
Fierman, 1990; Rosener, 1990).

CONCLUSION

In this and earlier writings (1984, 1991) we have described four

frames, or perspectives, that we argue exist both in the management
literature and in the minds of practicing managers. We also assert that
an increasingly complex and turbulent organizational world demands
greater cognitive complexity: effective managers need to understand
multiple frames and know how to use them in practice.
This article reports two investigations intended to operationalize our
concepts and test their basic postulates:
(1)A qualitative study used accounts of critical incidents provided by
educational administrators in US colleges and universities, US public
schools, and public schools in Singapore to assess how many frames and
which frames managers drew on in reconstructing critical incidents.
Most incidents showed evidence of only one or two frames; very few
contained all four. In all three populations, the structural frame ap-
peared in about 60% of the cases, whereas the symbolic frame appeared
in fewer than 20%. The three groups varied widely in their use of the
human resource and political frames. In Singapore, human resource
themes were universal and political ones infrequent; for college admin-
istrators in the United States, political themes appeared in more than
70% of the cases.
(2) A quantitative study used survey instruments to assess frame
orientations, effectivenessas a manager, and effectiveness as a leader for
four populations: the three used in the qualitative study and a group of
middle managers from a large, multinational corporation. Factor analy-
ses of the instrument reproduced the frames, showing that respondents
saw the items for each frame as linked to one another and distinct from
those used to measure other frames.
Regfession analyses showed a strong relationship between frame ori-
entations and effectiveness as rated by managers' colleagues. The data
suggest that all four frames contribute to effectiveness, but that, in the

528 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

view of the respondents, effective management and effective leadership
are not the same thing. Usually, managerial effectiveness is associated
primarily with an orientation toward structure and rationality, where
leadership effectiveness is primarily associated with orientations toward
symbols and politics. There were also differences across the four differ-
ent populations. The only group in which the structural frame was not
the dominant predictor of managerial effectiveness was the corporate
sample, in which all participants worked for a corporation where such
thinking is by far the dominant mode. The two groups in which the
human resource frame was not a significant predictor of effectiveness
were the school principals, for whom a human resources orientation is
by far the dominant mode. The school administrators were also the only
group in which the symbolic frame was associated with both managerial
and leadership effectiveness. In the other two groups, it was associated
only with leadership.
Women were almost absent from the corporate sample, but repre-
sented a significant proportion of both groups of educational admin-
istrators. When we examined gender in relation to frame orientations
and effestiveness, we found that men and women in comparable posi-
tions were much more alike than they were different. There were vir-
tually no significant differences between men and women, and the few
that existed were not the ones that conventional stereotypes would pre-
dict. For example, among the US school administrators, women were
significantly higher than men on the structural and political frames, but
not on the human resource frame, which is the opposite of conventional
assumptions about how men and women differ. There were also no
differences in measures of effectiveness as manager and leader. Women
were, on average, rated higher than men in the two groups of school
administrators, and lower in the higher education sample, but none of
the differences was statistically reliable.

Implications for Research

If the results of this study can be validated and extended in subse-

quent research, it would suggest that our four-frame model is an ex-
tremely powerful approach to understanding how managers think, and
how their thinking relates to managerial and leadership effectiveness.
The results support our central assertion that managers often use only
one or two frames, but need to rely on all four to be fully effective as
both managers and leaders.
At the same time, the results need to be interpreted in the light of
several methodological caveats. The qualitative work, based on manag-
ers' accounts of critical incidents, potentially confounds managers' inter-
nal orientation and characteristics of the environment in which they
work. Research is needed that looks directly at the environment and at

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 529

how managers frame it in order to clarify how those are linked to one
another. In particular, if research can be designed that enables the exam-
ination of the same individual in different environments, and the same
environment with different individuals, our argument about the impor-
tance of reframing can be more fully examined.
The quantitative research should be viewed in the context of several
methodological caveats. First, the independent and dependent variables
in our regression analyses are based on the perceptions of the same
individuals. It is likely that they are inflated to an unknown degree by
halo effects. Further research is needed using multiple measures from
multiple sources.
Second, the dependent measures of managerial and leader effective-
ness were both simple and global. They strongly suggest that practi-
tioners make a consistent, implicit distinction between management and
leadership: Implicit because the instrument lets them make distinctions
they would have difficulty generating on their own. We have asked
many managers about the difference between management and lead-
ership. None of them ever said, “That’s easy. Managers are good on
structure and analysis. Leaders are good on symbols and politics.” Hun-
dreds of them made exactly that differentiation when they responded to
our instrument, but we doubt that they knew it as they did it.
Third, qualitative and quantitative research needs to be combined to
validate the instrument and extend our understanding of its meaning.
For example, one of our colleagues conducted an intensive field study of
two school principals from our sample. On the instrument, both were
rated as very effective, but with very different frame orientations. One,
who was rated very high on the structural frame, proudly showed our
colleague the set of color-coded memo sheets he had developed for his
staff: that way, you could tell immediately from the color of the paper
who sent the memo. The other principal, rated high on the symbolic
frame, greeted our colleague by presenting her with a photo album
showing every student and staff member in her school. The field work
made it abundantly clear that the two principals were very different in
ways that directly paralleled their ratings on the frame instrument. More
of this intensive field research is needed to explore both the thinking
and the action of leaders with different frame orientations.

lmplications for Human Resource Management Practice

If future research confirms our basic findings, then our four-frame

model can help human resource professionals enhance their effective-
ness in two basic ways: by applying it to (a) their own practice and (b)
their organizational clients.
If human resource development professionals apply the four-frame

530 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

model and the idea of reframing to their own practices, they may in-
crease both their understanding of what is going on around them and
their ability to do something about it. Historically, human resource prac-
tice has been based primarily on the structural and, particularly, the
human resource frames. It is a field that, until recently, rarely considered
symbols and actively disdained politics. It is not accidental that the field
historically has been symbolically and politically weak and ineffective.
Human resource managers need to study politics and symbols as avidly
as they have studied people and organizations. When they do, they will
likely be surprised by how much more they understand and how many
options they can see. They may also be delighted with an increase in
their impact and effectiveness.
Human resource professionals can also apply the four-frame model to
their programs and their clients. The research here suggests (1) that all
four frames are important, though their salience varies by context and
(2) that managers differ considerably in their understanding of the
frames. Human resource managers can ask a series of critical questions:
(a) Do our activities and programs take account of the issues in all four
frames?
(b) Do we know our organization's strengths and weaknesses in
terms of the frames?
(c) Do we have a way for individuals to know their own strengths and
weaknesses?
(d) Do we have a targeted strategy for helping individuals and organi-
zational units develop the frame competencies that are essential to their
particular situation?
Human resource managers and departments are often at the end of
the organizational food chain. They are the last to be listened to, the first
to go when times get tough, and among the least appreciated and re-
spected. Though they are supposed to focus on people, they often per-
ceived as narrowly bureaucratic or clumsily political. They are also
sometimes the first to get nervous when amorphous, intangible, elusive
symbolic issues are at issue. Human resource leaders need to embrace
and capitalize on positive politics and cultural symbols to serve better
the human resources they are supposed to champion.

Lee G . Bolman is Lecturer on Education and Director of the National Center for
Educational Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A spe-
cialist in leadership and organizational behavior, his publications include Re-
framing organizations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership (written with
Terrence E.Dea1). Bolman has been a consultant to corporations, public agencies,
universities, and public schools in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin
America. At Harvard he has also serued as educational chairperson of hoo execu-
tive development programs, the Institute for Educational Management and the
Management Development Program. He has been director and board chair of the

Bolman and Deal:Leadership and Management Effectiveness / 531

Organizational Behavior Teaching Society and a director of the National Train-
ing Laboratories Institute for Applied Behavioral Science. Bolman holds a B.A.
in History and a Ph. D. in Organizational Behavior, both from Yale University.

Terry Deal received his Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Sociologyfrom

Stanford University. As professor of Education and Human Development at
Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Terry teaches courses in Organiza-
tional Theory and Behavior, Symbolism, and Leadership. He serves as Co-Direc-
tor of The National Center for Educational Leadership (NCEL) and Senior Re-
search Associate at the Center for the Advanced Study of Educational Leadership
(CASEL). Terry previously taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education
and the Stanford School of Education.
Professor Deal specializes in the study of organizations. He ofers consulting
services to a wide variety of organizations in the United States and abroad. These
include businesses, hospitals, banks, schools, colleges, religious orders, military
organizations, and others.
Twry has written several books and numerous articles concerning organiza-
tional issues such as change, culture management, reform, symbolism, theater,
and theory. His most recent book, co-authored with Lee Bolman, is Reframing
Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership (1991, JosseyBass). In
this book, the authors expand upon ideas introduced in their widely acclaimed
Modern Approaches to Understanding and Managing Organizations,
(I984, JosseyBass). Bolman and Deal consolidate key learning from organiza-
tion theory into four practical frames-human resource, structural, political,
and symbolic-that help managers understand what is going on in their organi-
zations and what they can do about it. Corporate Cultures, (1982, Addison-
Wesley), co-authored with Allen Kennedy and translated into 10 languages, was
an American Bestseller and won international acclaim.

REFERENCES

Allison, G. (1971). Essence of decision: Explaining the cuban missile crisis. Boston:
Little-Brown.
Argyris, C., & Schon, D. (1975). Theory in practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Astin, H. S., & Leland, C. (1991). Women of influence,women of vision. San Francis-
co: Jossey-Bass.
Baldridge, J. V. (1971). Power and conflict in the university. New York Wiley.
Bales, F. (1970). PersonaJify and interpersonal behavior. New York Holt.
Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free
Press.
Bem, D. J. (1967). Self-perception: The dependent variable of human perfor-
mance. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 2, 105-121.
Bennis, W., & Nanus, B. Leaders: Strategies for taking charge. New York Harper.
Bensimon, E. M. (1989). The meaning of ‘good presidential leadership’: A frame
analysis. The Review of Higher Education, 12, 107-123.
Bensimon, E. M. (in press). Viewing the presidency: Perceptual congruence
between presidents and leaders on their campuses. The Leadership Quarterly.

532 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991

Blake, R., & Mouton, J. S. (1985). Managerial grid 111. Houston: Gulf Publishing.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1984). Modern approuches to understanding and manag-
ing organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1991). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice and
leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Brief, A. P., & Downy, H. K. (1983). Cognitive and organizational structure: A
conceptual analysis of implicit organizing theories. Human Relations, 36,
1065-1090.
Bums, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York Harper.
Conger, J. A. (1989). The charismatic leader: Behind the mystique of exceptiml leud-
ership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Deal, T. E., & A. Kennedy. (1982). Corporate cultures. Reading, MA Addison-
Wesley.
Edwards, M. R. (1991). In-situ team evaluation: A new paradigm for measuring
and developing leadership a t work. Paper presented at conference on “The
Impact of Leadership,” Center for Creative Leadership, Colorado Springs.
Elmore, R. F. (1978). Organizational models of social program implementation.
Public Policy, 26, 185-228.
Fiedler, K. (1982). Causal schemata: Review and criticism of research on a popu-
lar construct. Journal of Personal and social k y c ~ o g y42,
, 1001-1013.
Fierman, J. (December 17, 1990). Do women manage differently? Fortune, 115-
118.
Fiske, S. T., & Dyer, L. T. (1985). Structure and development of social schemata:
Evidence from positive and negative transfer effects. journal of Personality and
Social ~ C h O l O48,~ , 839-853.
Fleishman, E. A., & E. F. Harris. (1962). Patterns of leadership behavior related
to employee grievances and turnover. Personnel Psychology, 15,4346.
Frensch, P. A., & Sternberg, R. J. (1991). Skill-related differences in chess play-
ing. In Sternberg, R. J., & Frensch, P. A. (Eds.), Complex problem-solving. New
Jersey: Erlbaum .
Frost, P. J. (1986). Power, politics and influence. In Porter, L. W., et al. (Eds.),The
handbook of organizational communication. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Gardner, J. W. (1989). On leadership. New York Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: A n essay on the organizution of experience. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press.
Hersey, P. (1984). The situational leuder. New York: Warner.
Handy, C. (1990). The age of unreuson. Boston: Harvard Business school Press.
Kanter, R. (1983). The change masters; lnnamtions for productivity in the American
corporation. New York Simon & Schuster.
Kotter, J. P. (1982). Thegeneral manugm. New York Free Press.
Kotter, J. P. (1985). Powers and influence: Beyond formal authority. New York Free
Press.
Kotter, J. P. (1990). A force for change: How leudership differs from management. New
York: Free Press.
Kouzes, J. M.,& Posner, B. Z.(1988). The leudership challenge: How to get extraordi-
n a y things done in organizations. San b n a s c o : Jossey-Bass.
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in
experimentally-aeated social climates. Journalof Social Psychology, 20,271-299.
Lord, R. G., & Foti, R. J. (1986). Scheme theories, information processing, and
organizational behavior. In Sims, H. P., Gioia, D. A., et al. (Eds.), The Think-
ing Organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Maccoby, M. (1981). The leuder. New York Ballantine.

Bolman and Deal: Leadership and Management Effectiveness I 533

Mitroff, J. I. (1985). Why our old pictures of the world do not work anymore. In
Lawler, E. E., Mohrman, A. M., Mohrman, S. A., Ledford, G. E., & Cum-
mings, T. G. (Eds.), Doing research that is useful for theory and practice. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organization. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal
reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231-259.
Peters, T. J., & R. H. Waterman (1982). In search ofexcellence. New York Harper &
RoW.
Perrow, C. (1986). Complex organizations: A critical essay, 3rd ed. New York Ran-
dom House.
Pfeffer, J. (1978). Organizational design. Arlington Heights, IL: AHM Publishing.
Quinn, R. E. (1988). Beyond rational management. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Rosener, J. B. (November-December, 1990).Ways women lead. Haward Business
Review, 119-125.
Scott, W. R. (1981). Organizations: Rational, natural and open systems. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Voss, J. F., Wolfe, C. R., Lawrence, J. A., & Engle, R. A. (1991). From representa-
tion to decision: An analysis of problem-solving in international relations. In
Sternberg, R. J., & Frensch, P. A. (Eds.), Complex problem-solving. New Jersey:
Erlbaum.
Weddle, C. J. (1991). A study of leadership styles and personality of successful
women administrators in higher education: Implications for organizations
and training. Paper presented at conference on “The Impact of Leadership,”
Center for Creative Leadership, Colorado Springs.
Weick, K., & Bougon, M. G. (1986). Organization as cognitive maps. In Sims, H.
P., Gioia, D. A., et al. The Thinking Organization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Wilson, C., & Wilson, J. (1991). The impact of personality, gender and interna-
tional location on multi-level management ratings. Paper presented at con-
ference on ”The Impact of Leadership,” Center for Creative Leadership, Colo-
rado Springs.

ENDNOTE

1. This paper is a revision of a paper presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of

the Academy of Management in Miami. The research was funded in part by a
grant from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the U.S.
Department of Education to the National Center for Educational Leadership,
and in part by the Ministry of Education in the Republic of Singapore under
a grant from Shell Singapore. Our colleagues in NCEL, particularly Todd De-
Mitchell, Alma Hall, Man Parker, Joe Tham, and Nasir Jalil, made many
contributions to the design and execution of the research. Above all we are
grateful to the many managers and educational administrators whose collab-
oration and help made our work possible.

534 I Human Resource Management, Winter 1991