He Vroom and Yetton’s participatory leadership model (1973) relates leadership behavior and participation in decision making. Based on the recognition that task structures present different demands in routine activities and in non-routine activities, the leader’s behavior must adapt to the type of task structure. Model that is normative and provides a sequential set of rules that aim to determine the form and amount of participation in decision-making, depending on the different types of situation. It represents a decision tree that incorporates 8 contingencies and 5 alternative leadership styles.
A. Assumptions.
- The leader’s behavior must be specified without ambiguity.
- No leadership method is applicable to all situations.
- The most appropriate unit for analyzing the situation is the particular problem to be solved and the context in which it occurs.
- The leadership method used in one situation should not constrain the method or style used in others. TO.
- There are a number of discrete social processes by which organizational problems can be solved, and these processes vary in terms of the potential amount of involvement of subordinates in problem solving. The choice can be made by the leader.
- Leadership methods vary with the number of subordinates who are affected by the situation.
The 5 leadership styles are established based on the degree of participation of subordinates and are applied depending on the situation. In some situations the leader must solve the problem or make the decision himself, using information available at the time.
In other situations, he must obtain the necessary information from his subordinates before deciding for himself the solution to the problem. It may also happen that the leader consults the problem individually with his subordinates and requests his ideas, but does not bring them together to study the problem. He then makes the decision, which may or may not reflect the suggestions of subordinates. In other cases, the leader consults the problem with his subordinates as a group, obtaining ideas and suggestions. Subsequently, he makes a decision that may or may not reflect the suggestions of those subordinates.
The highest degree of participation occurs when the leader consults the problem with his subordinates as a group and together they generate and evaluate alternatives, and try to reach an agreement (consensus) on the situation. In addition to these types of differentiable leadership Depending on the degree of participation of the subordinates, the model assumes various alternatives that allow the characterization of the problem-situation that is being solved. Depending on the specific contingencies of each situation, the leader can select the leadership behavior and the degree of participation in a decision tree. Variables when establishing alternatives:
- degree of information of the leader to make a high-quality decision for himself,
- degree of experience of the leader to make a high-quality decision for himself,
- degree of information that subordinates collectively have to generate a high-quality decision,
- problem structure,
- degree of acceptance of the decision by subordinates, the prior probability that the leader’s autocratic decision will receive acceptance from subordinates,
- degree of motivation of subordinates to achieve the organizational objectives explicit in the problem,
- probability that subordinates will enter into conflict over differences in their preferred solutions.
Leaders use participatory methods when: the quality of the decision is important, it is important that subordinates accept the decision, and this is unlikely to happen if they are not allowed participation in the decision, it is possible to assume that subordinates will pay more attention to the group’s objectives rather than to their own preferences. Research on leadership should focus on the situation rather than the person.
For Vroom and Yetton Leaders are not rigid, but rather adjust their style to different situations. Contingency theories suggest that effective leadership is a function of: the place that the leader occupies in the organization, the type of task to be performed, the personality attributes of the leader and subordinates, a certain number of factors related to the acceptance and dependence of subordinates on the leader. Contingency theories continue to be the main paradigm that dominates the landscape of leadership studies. Along with the critical positions, alternative theoretical positions have appeared. Several investigations point out the need to study the causes of leader behavior and not only its effects.
They are related to problem solving. Conceptual models in decision making They have been developed from two different perspectives: Regulatory modelsas decisions must be made and what conditions must be met in them. They have been developed by economists, analysts, mathematicians. They have started from a completely rational man who coincides with the description of him “economic man” of classical theory. Descriptive models, aim to simulate the behavior of decision makers in the types of problems to which the model is applied. Developed by psychologists.
They start from “the administrative man” who takes more into account empirical phenomena in decision making. “The economic man” Normative model that optimizes the choice of the decision. The decision maker does optimal selections in a very specified and clearly defined environment. It is assumed that the economic man: He is completely informed, He is infinitely sensitive to changes in the situation, He makes completely rational choices. His behavior would be described by: he knows all the alternatives relevant to the situation. The theory does not explain how the alternatives are obtained. Know the consequences that are linked to each alternative, this knowledge can be of three types: In situations of certaintycomplete and exact knowledge of the consequences of each alternative.
In situations of risk, knows the consequences of each alternative that are mutually exclusive, and the probability of occurrence of each of them. In situations of uncertainty, knows the consequences but not its probabilities. They have a utility function, that is, an ordering preference, or a ranking among all the possible consequences, ordered from the most to the least preferred. Select the alternative that leads to the preferred group of consequences, taking into account the characteristics of the situation: In the case of certainty, the alternative to be selected is evident from the premises.
In the case of risk, a rational selection indicates the alternative for which the expected compensation is greater, depending on the probability presented by each group of consequences. In case of uncertainty, completely rational choice is problematic, but rules such as “minimum risk” can be used, where it is selected that offers a “worst group of consequences” better than the others. This model is established on three assumptions that are difficult to meet: All relevant alternatives are given to the decision maker. All the consequences of each alternative are known. The rational man has a complete ordering of comparisons based on utility for all possible groups of consequences.
“The Administrative Man”
Descriptive model of decision making. Simon, is one of the critics of the economic model of man, believes that people are not so rational. The administrative man makes decisions based on limited rationality, facts and values intervene, satisfactory results are sought instead of optimal solutions, and in many cases they are adopted in collaboration with others. Facts and values in decision making, decisions imply, along with questions of fact, others of value. The answer to the former must be determined empirically and the answer to the latter depends on the individual’s value system. Some decisions focus primarily on questions of fact and others on questions of value. When decisions try to determine ultimate goals, the we will call “value judgments”when they imply the achievement of such purposes we will call it “judgments of fact”. The behavior is finalistic, it is guided by goals and general objectives and is rational when it chooses alternatives to choose its ends. Rationality is interested in the construction of means-end chains and is limited in making decisions based on elements of value.
Limited rationality, rationality is limited by the psychological characteristics of the subject. The information processing capacity is finite and this conditions decision making. In decisions, the subject, rather than knowing all the alternatives, has to discover them through search. This search is stimulated when the objectives are not achieved and continues until an alternative good enough to satisfy the objectives is found. The subject must be able to foresee or anticipate the consequences of that alternative and compare it with those of the others. There are limitations that prevent exhaustive knowledge of all the consequences. The central key to this issue is the subject’s attention capacity and since this is limited, theories of limited rationality are based on the location of attention, according to which the subject does not aim for optimal solutions, but instead You just keep searching until you find something that is satisfactory.
Satisfying decisions vs. optimal decisions, there are also limitations due to the lack of capacity to process and compute all the relevant data, to achieve all the optimal data. The administrative man continues in his search process only until he finds an alternative that satisfies the minimum in relation to the values he is trying to achieve; once found he will most likely stop the search. The optimization of utility is constant over time. If the search for an acceptable alternative has been unsuccessful for a considerable time, the decision maker reduces the established minimums by accepting previously rejected alternatives.
The concept of a satisfactory decision is related to the level of aspiration. The need for an administrative theory lies in the fact that there are limits to human rationality in practice and that these limits are not static but depend on the organizational environment in which decisions take place. A similar approach to Simon’s is the theory of incrementalism formulated by Braybrooke and Lindblom: decisions tend to be incremental, rather than based on a set of objectives clearly defined from the beginning.
The decision-maker sequentially adopts partial decisions that try to respond to external pressures. They insist on the progressive adjustment of acceptable levels based on the results of…