Book Revino

Morgan W. McCall, Jr.

Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, by Bemard M. Bass.

New York: The Free Press, 1985, 191 pp. $26.50.

There's a movement afoot in H•te soda] sdence to leadership.

After decades of conãngency models formulations, as Bass
them, based on coningent reinforcement) there is a frace of fresh
air. Earlier harbingers of this shift were James Macregor Bums whose
1978 bok, Lader±ip, provided a lengthy discourse on transfonna-tional
vs. transacüonal leadership. About the same time, Peter Vaill was
talking about "high performing systems" (1978), by which he meant
groups or organiztions that achieved inspimüonal excellence. Peters
and Waterman (1982) found
Bennis and Nanus (1%5) found
vision, Bob House (1977) found charisma.
'Ihe drift of this movement seems to be that something Special hap-
pens in excellent organizations, sometting almost mysücal or at least
outside of our convenüonal variables. The behavior of people an't be
explained by perfonnance—reward linkages—they
them-
selves, do more than is expected. The leaders don't just set goals, moni-
tor performance, and dispuse rewards: Ihey are inspired and inspir-
ing. It's about time we began to take these elusive and largely intanõble
qualities seriously.
Bernard Bass set out to
transformational leadership, and
has searched far and Wide for insi*t, Dmwing on Freud, plia "en-tists,
psychohistorians, as well as the more traditional moüvaüonal and
leadewhip litemtures, he attempts to build a model of H'te fransforma•
üonal leader—the hdnd who engenders from ofrters "performance be
yond
According to Bass, there are four nujor factors comprising transfor-
mational

1. leadem have insight into the need8, val-ues, and h0FS of their
fonowers. Ihey have the ability to build on these needs, values,
and hopes through dramatic and Frsuasive words and
actions."
2. Inspiraüonal leadzship—". . . A subfactor within charismatic
leadership
in which "nonintellectual, emoüonal quah-
ties" are used to arouse and heighten motivaüon among
followers. Most charigmatics are inspimtional, but one need not
be charis-matic to inspire.

Hunun Resmre Wncenznt, Fan 1986, Vol. 25, Number 3, Pp.

O John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC
 3. Individualized consideration—Paying "attention to each of their
subordinates, sharing their concerns and development needs,
and treating them as individuals."
4. Intellectual stimulation—". . . The arousal and change in
followers of problem awareness and problem solving, of thought
and imagi-nation, and of beliefs and values . . ."
Bass desaibes each of these factors in detail, reviewing the relevant
literature, describing the processes involved, examining their anteced-
ents, and providing guru-like examples (lacocca, Roosevelt, Kennedy).
These fransformational qualities are then contrasted with the character-
istics of transactional leadership (two factors: first, use of contingent
reward, and second, management-by-exception, negative feedback, and
contingent aversive reinforcement). Transactional leaders are .. more
concemed with efficient processes than with substantive ideas. They are
more interested in what Will work rather than in what is bue."
Bass argues that transformational qualities are not resãicted to a
few great heroes, but can be present to varying degrees in a Wide
variety of people and places. And, while transformational leaders can
be powerful forces for positive change, the same qualiües may be
used in sinister ways.
Emergence of transformational leadership depends, according to
Bass, on extemal environment (more likely in ümes of distress or
change), the internal organizational environment ("organid'
organiza-tions are more likely to see it), and the personality and
values of the leader.
"Ihe interplay of all these components is not as simple as this brief
review implies. There are 15 schematic diagrams in the book summariz-ing
the hypothesized relationships among elements—a total of about 175
boxes containing one or more variables. In spite of this complexity, there
is a dedded white hat/black hat tone to the book: Transformational leaders
are more proactive, moral, innovative, flexible, etc., than their mundane
transactional colleagues. While "the ordinary manager . . . is kept busy
with his inner id—superego struggles. .
fitting into the
mold, not making waves, defending his turf
, the transformational
leader is out there changing the organizational culture. It worries me
that the difference is so stark, especially since I don't think Bass intends
it to be. Perhaps that's the inevitable result of using historical giants as
examples: I? s hard for most of us to relate to George Patton or John
Kennedy. 'Ihe point perhaps is that the capacity for leadership of a
higher order is more widely distributed than we might believe. Part of
the problem is that we too easily accept manipulation of goals and re-
wards as the essence of leadership.
frae book itself is an interesting set of contradicüons. On the one
hand, its core is based on factor analytic studies of survey data. On the
other hand, it relies heavily on clinical analyses, including psychohistor-

482 / Hunan Rewurce Management, Fall 1986

ian interpretations of ete personality and motives of historial figures. At
times the book is extremely thorough, reading like an academic re-View
of the literature. At Other ümes i? s superficial, for example, divid-ing
managers into
categories like "profit maximizers,"
"trustee oriented managers„" and "quality of life management." At one
point, Bass slams the work of Peters and Waterman ('"lheir popular
Style and selecüve interviewring suggests that they appear to have
found what they went looking fo#), yet at various points in the book
folklore about companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, leaders like
lacocca and Jobs, and even the Peters and Waterman findings are used
to make his own case.
One of the strengths of this particular framework is its empirical base.
In the Style of a murder mystery, the reader is conünually frustrated by
allusions to an answer, but "who dunnit" is not revealed until the last
two chapters- Here we find the details of a series of studies based on
convenience samples of MBA students, social science students, under-
graduates, educational administrators, military students and officers,
managers and professionals in New aaland, and managers from a U.S.
corporation who filled out various questionnaires. The method is nei-
ther
nor bad, it is simply one of our time, but it symbolizes the
major weakness of this book- There is little "feel" for what i? s like to be
a manager—transforrnational or otherwise—in a real organization. In
this sense the concepts presented are abstractions in the aademic tradi-
tion that seem disconnected from the reality of the trenches. This result
is foreshadowed in the preface, where the author states one purpose of
the book as filling the gap in "theory and research betwen sodal and
organizaüonal psychology, on the one hand, and politia sdence and
psy&aohistory, on the offter." Ilie book may in fact contribute to this, but
I wonder if tlú is the gap we should be filling. A case could be made that
the most
gap is the one between the abstract, academic
View of leadership and the reality of trying to rnanage day-to-day in
complex organizations. My greatest fear is that the recent idolization of
the "transformational leader with super-hero qualities Will become yet
another stereotype (a more elegant version of "manager versus leader")
that consumes leadership researchers and human resource personnel,
not to mention the managers out there who have yet another "ideal" to
live up to (iYs probably easier to live with not being a 9—9 leader than to
be accused of lacking vision and inspiration). That Bass provides a
ques-tionnaire to measure transformational and transactional qualities is
in-deed a
blessing.
In the final part of the book, Bass quotes Kelvin as saying that "if you
can't measure it, you don't Imow what you are talking about." But as
some of Kelvin's own findings later showed, just because you can mea-
sure something doesn't mean that you undershnd it. The findings in this
book need to
taken seriously and integrated into our slowly
growing understanding of what leadership is all about. But we need to

McCall: Review of and Pórmnce / 483

remember our past—"great man theory," leadership Styles, human
re-lations, contingency theory, trait theory—even while we look
eagerly for more parsimonious explanations. The book begins with
the hope that it Will be a "major breakthrough in understanding what
it takes for leaders to have great
on their followers." My hope is that it Will
add some richness to the ways we think about leadership and open up
some new possibilities. But until theorists and researchers leam more
about leaders on line—the problems, the torments, the victories that
confront managers on a day-to-day basis—we run the risk of chasing
yet another rainbow.
On the Other hand, iYs üme we began to expect more from our
leaders and to inspire them to expect more from themselves. It is
encouraging to see research aimed at understanding the intangible and
someümes mys-tical qualities of inspired leadership. It is a modest
beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.

Morgan W. McCall, Jr., PhD is Senior Behavioral Scientist and Director of

Rsurch at the Center for Cmtive Ladership, Greensbro, North Carolina.

References

Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. Laders: The strategi% for taking charge. New York:
Harper & Row, 19&5.
Bums, J. M. I.Adership. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.
House, R. J. A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In Hunt, James G.. and
1218 L. , L.adership: The cutting uge, pp. 189—207, Tinois: Southem
Illinois University Press, 1977.
Peters, T. J., and Waterman, R. H. , Jr. In sardi ofexdlence.• I..zsonsfrom
Ameriu's New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
Vaill, P. Toward a behavioral description of high-performing systems. In
McCall, Morgan W. , Jr., & Lombardo, Michael M. , Z.adersltip: Where else un
ue go?, pp. 103—125, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 19n.

04 / Hunun Rsouru Adanagement, Fall 1986