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Visionary leadership, management, and high performing work units: An analysis of workers' perceptions
Abstract
This study represents one of the first attempts to quantify the relationships among traditional management, visionary leadership, and high (peak) performing work units. The study examined leadership from two theoretical constructs: traditional management, which describes relationship-oriented and task-oriented behaviors, and visionary leadership, which describes behaviors associated with the articulation of a vision in which members of the organization enroll. Using worker' perceptions, the study compared traditional managerial skills and visionary leadership with indicators typical of peak performing organizations. The study also examined the interaction of managerial and visionary leadership in relation to perceptions of peak performance of the work unit. Data were obtained from 395 employees of a large private-sector business who rated their immediate superiors using three leadership instruments: the Leader Behavior Analysis, the Leader Behavior Questionnaire, and the Leadership Practices Inventory. They also rated their work unit using the PAVE: Excellent Organizational Practices Index. The PAVE was subjected to psychometric analysis which indicates that it can be considered an accurate measure describing characteristics typical of peak performing organizations. The scales of the PAVE include: Productivity, Team Effectiveness, Alignment, Empowerment, Commitment, and Inspiration. The results show that both traditional managerial behavior and visionary leadership correlate highly with perceptions of the work unit's peak performance. However, when examining the interaction of traditional management and visionary leadership, effective visionary leadership correlated with a high level of perceived peak performance no matter whether traditional managerial skills were effective or ineffective. In other words, traditional managerial skills were most important when visionary leadership was weak. When examining the position within the organizational hierarchy, behaviors of senior level managers correlated more highly with perceptions of the work unit's performance level than did behaviors of middle level or first line managers. This study demonstrates that visionary leadership is an important concept that should be incorporated into leadership theory and training programs. Because this is a first investigation, further investigation is warranted.
Subject Area
Management|Educational administration
Recommended Citation
Stoner-Zemel, Madelyn Jessica, "Visionary leadership, management, and high performing work units: An analysis of workers' perceptions" (1988). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8823744.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8823744