Management by Grid® Principles or Situationalism: Which?

Abstract

Leadership theory has been conceived in two different and incompatible ways. Hersey and Blanchard's analysis entails arithmetic combinations of the task and people variables, whereas Blake and Mouton's approach involves znteraction of the two. Examined in this way, Hersey and Blanchard's model eliminates a "9,9" or "one-best-way" orientation. When 9,9 options were added to this model, managers and mental health experts uniformly chose the 9,9 alternative and rejected situationally prescribed answers. This generalization held for all maturity levels. This fundamental difference in how leadership is conceived is then used to reinterpret major leadership research since World War II. Instruments based on adding magnitudes of variables, such as Fleishman, Reddin, and Hersey and Blanchard, among others, have shown no validity from an empirical standpoint, whereas instruments based on an interaction of variables—such as those by Likert, Argyris, and Blake and Mouton—have consistently demonstrated predictive validity. This paper provides a resolution for the controversy between situationalism and the one-best-style approach and indicates the validity of the latter and the lack of predictive value of the former.