What problems may emerge when firms try to implement participative management?

An extroverted, sensitive leader who openly shares decisions and authority with subordinates—this is the profile that emerged when 318 executives were asked their opinions on the characteristics of participative leadership. While there is much discussion—and controversy—among educators and theorists about the concept of participative leadership, managers themselves have not yet been heard. In this study, the author found a surprising consensus among managers regarding the operational characteristics and effectiveness of participative leadership. But he also found some specific and noteworthy differences of opinion between younger and older managers concerning which managerial actions get results. After discussing the findings, he draws their implications for companies, individual managers, and management educators.

During the past decade, vast numbers of executives have been schooled in the virtues of participative leadership. Perhaps no other management concept has received so much recent attention in management literature, in company training programs, and in the general press. Educators, in particular, have consistently admonished managers to open up their decision-making activities to their subordinates. Youthful critics of big business have also added fuel to the fire, contending that industrial organizations are too closed and undemocratic.

At the same time, however, there has been considerable confusion and diversity of viewpoint among management educators and social theorists over just what is meant by such a vague concept as participative leadership. To some, it means group decision making; to others, it is mutual goal setting; and to still others, it implies listening more and talking less.

These differing interpretations are further clouded by such abstract labels as 9, 9 management, Theory Y, and management by objectives. In addition, scholarly critics in the wings confuse the issue by arguing that managerial styles are idiosyncratic and are determined more by an executive’s personality and early background experiences than by “charm schools” in participative leadership.

But where have the managers themselves—the targets of these participative pleas, conflicts, and slogans—been all this time? While there has been considerable talk from educators and Sunday morning quarterbacks, very little is known about how the participative message has been absorbed at the managerial level. This is the age-old problem of hearing more from the teachers than from the learners. Consider these important questions in need of new answers:

• What concrete behavioral characteristics do managers actually associate with the vague abstraction called participative leadership?

• Do managers differ widely in their specific interpretations of participative leadership, or is there a relatively uniform understanding? (For example, do younger managers subscribe more to participative methods than do older executives?)

• Most critical, even if managers understand and agree on the practical aspects of participative leadership, do they believe that participation will lead to more effective results?

The purpose of this article is to shed light on these questions by reporting the responses of 318 executives to a questionnaire that was administered while they were attending management education programs at the Harvard Business School. (A profile of these executives appears in the sidebar.)

The reader will be able to compare his own understanding of participation with those reported by this sample of executives. Just as important, knowing more about managerial perceptions of leadership style can help educators assess the extent to which their participative message has found its mark.

Theories in Conflict

Before I report the study findings, let me briefly review two basic and often opposing schools of thought about leadership style. In doing so, I shall define leadership style quite simply as a pattern of interacting with subordinates.

Previous research has identified a variety of leadership patterns, such as participative, authoritarian, laissez-faire, task-oriented, and so forth. The most discussed and popular of these has been participative leadership.

Advocates of the participative style fall into what I call the “actor” school of thinking.1 Their key assumption is that managers are like sensitive players in a drama, relatively flexible and able to alter their behavioral styles, even in the later years of life. They see managers as able to exercise conscious, rational control over their own behavior and to adapt continuously to new cues and role demands placed on them by their organizations.

With this model of a highly receptive leader in mind, members of the actor school emphasize the use of management education to convert executives to a participative style. As a result of their influence, thousands of managers have been exposed to company and university programs stressing both the humane and the productive aspects of participative leadership. These programs, however, have varied in their particular brand of participative leadership—some have focused on team decision making; others have placed emphasis on joint goal setting; and still others have taught listening skills for two-way communication.

Opposed to the actor school is what might be called the “born-leader” school.2 Its members take the position that a leader’s style is deeply rooted in his or her personality, which in turn is a complex product of genetic inheritance and the maturation process. They see each manager’s style as representing a highly individualistic, often unconscious, pattern of acting out ingrained values, conflicts, and attitudes acquired over many years. And they express strong doubts that managers can easily adopt new forms of behavior as they become older.

Stated simply, the conflict between the two groups is this:

• The actor (participative) school holds that leadership behavior can be taught and is largely determined by external cues from the environment.

• The born-leader school holds that leadership behavior is individually developed and that it is largely determined by internal personality characteristics.

Both groups, of course, cite research evidence to support their own position and refute that of the other. The born-leader proponents, for example, point to the fact that people who choose professional careers tend, in greater numbers than could be expected by chance, to be first born children in their families.3 The participative enthusiasts, however, often refer to numerous studies of company training programs showing how managers have altered their behavior in a participative direction.4

Yet both groups would agree that knowing more about a manager’s assumptions concerning leadership style is vitally important. Every manager carries around in his head certain “rules of thumb” that guide his behavior in leadership situations. It is these mental guidelines that I shall attempt to uncover in this article.

Interestingly enough, the findings reported here lend credence to both the actor and born-leader schools. While managers have definitely been attracted to participative leadership, they also have made some unique and personalized translations of it to fit their particular career situations.

The Managerial Viewpoint

As mentioned earlier, two objectives of this study were (1) to discover what managers consider to be the concrete characteristics of participative leadership and (2) to determine whether they think such a style leads to effective results. Accordingly, the 318 managers in the study were given a questionnaire containing 39 leadership characteristics. Then they were divided into two groups:

The first group of 157 managers was told to rate each characteristic on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 equal to low participation and 7 equal to high participation. They were asked to base their ratings on their own past experiences as managers.

The second group of 161 managers was told to check (a) the 5 characteristics that they found to be most effective in handling managerial situations, and (b) the 5 characteristics that they found to be least effective. They also were asked to base their judgments on past experience.

Let us now turn to an in-depth look at the responses of these two groups. (Before proceeding, however, I should note that while the questionnaire was based on extensive past research and included a wide span of behavior, the findings of this study are necessarily limited to the 39 questionnaire items.)

What is participation?

Despite the fact that participative leadership is an abstract concept, the managers in the study reached a high level of agreement in rating specific characteristics on the 1-to-7 participation scale. Among the managers in the first group who rated the 39 items only for extent of participation, the average correlation of agreement is .74 out of a perfect 1.00. Even higher is their agreement in rating items at the extreme ends of the scale. No significant differences appear between younger and older managers, among types of educational background, or among current job positions.

This high level of agreement suggests that the study managers hold a reasonably clear and uniform understanding in their concrete interpretation of participative leadership. Such unanimity is quite remarkable considering the different interpretations that educators have given the concept of participation. Even the questionnaire items, because of their limited wording, are subject to divergent interpretation. Yet the managers in this study apparently were not misled.

A more complete picture of participative leadership emerges from the listing of the 10 highest-ranked characteristics of participative behavior in Exhibit I. The ultimate participative act, for example, is viewed as including one’s subordinates in the decision-making process. Here the respondents move significantly away from the classical notion of the manager acting as a sole decision maker.

Exhibit I. The 10 Highest Participation Characteristics

At the same time, however, a variety of other characteristics combine to define a prototype participative leader. It is doubtful that a manager can open up the decision-making process without including some of these other participative actions. According to the respondents, the participative leader also—

…maintains free-flowing and honest communication;

…remains easily accessible;

…stresses development for his subordinates;

…expresses consideration and support;

…is willing to change.

Here is a picture of a sensitive, extroverted, and emotive leader who actively stays in close contact with his subordinates and is attuned to their needs.

Moreover, these findings indicate that education and training in participative leadership have, indeed, had an effect. Managers in the study, lending support to advocates of the actor (participative) school, are in relative agreement about the specific actions they would rate as being highly participative. A prototype participative style emerges (from the 10 highest items) which encompasses much of what has been conveyed in the literature on this subject.

But is participative leadership also viewed by these managers as the most effective style? Or are certain low participation characteristics also deemed effective? These are important questions, because the actor-school advocates have long portrayed the participative leader as the man who not only is more humane but also gets the best results.

Let us now look at the leadership characteristics selected by the managers in the second group; this is the group that rated the 39 questionnaire items for effectiveness but not for participation.

What gets results?

The executives in the second group generally picked characteristics that were rated high on participation by those in the first group. Exhibit II presents the 10 items that received the most votes for being highly effective. These same items, when rated on the 7-point participation scale by the first group of executives, received an average rating of 5.03, which is decidedly toward the high-participation end of the scale. Put another way, 7 of the 10 top effective actions listed in Exhibit II also appear among the highest participation items in Exhibit I.

Exhibit II. The 10 Most Effective Leadership Characteristics

Of the entire list of leadership characteristics, the item with the highest effectiveness rating is concerned with training and developing subordinates (which challenges a common stereotype that managers are preoccupied only with daily decision making). These managers place considerably more value on the role of manager as teacher than as decision maker. One explanation for this pedagogical concern of the study managers is that they completed the questionnaire while they were involved in a management development and training program. More likely, however, is the pragmatic explanation that they realize it is in their self-interest to develop a job replacement for themselves, thus making their own promotion possible.

Once again it appears that the advocates of participative leadership can take comfort in the findings—i.e., participation is seen by the respondents as being related to more effective performance. Whether these same managers actually behave as participative leaders on the job, however, is a question for other studies to answer. Also, since the questionnaire was completed by separate groups, we cannot be sure if the managers do, in fact, make a conscious link between participation and effectiveness. Nevertheless, the link is indirectly evident in the findings, so whether the managers in the study know it or not, they place themselves in the participative camp.

Some Significant Exceptions

On closer examination, the study findings reveal some distinct and important exceptions to an “across the board” consensus on participative leadership. The study managers are clearly less in agreement about the meaning of effective behavior than they are about participative behavior. In Exhibit I, there was a very high correlation of agreement in rating each item for high and low participation. Yet, in Exhibit II, only the first-ranked effectiveness item—“Counsels, trains, and develops subordinates”—was checked by more than 50% of the respondents. Of the remaining top 10 items, 6 were checked by less than one third of the respondents.

This wider variance in choice of effective behavior suggests a rather loose link between perceptions of effectiveness and of participative leadership. A manager guided exclusively by effectiveness criteria will apparently favor actions that are not included in a strict interpretation of participative leadership.

Advocates of participation, of course, might claim that this divergent view of effectiveness is caused by some uninformed managers who have not yet realized the full merits of behaving solely within a participative style.

But a more positive and pragmatic explanation emerges when the 10 top participation items in Exhibit I are matched with the 10 top effectiveness items in Exhibit II. Significantly, the first 4 items on the effectiveness list are completely different from the first 4 items on the participation list. Moreover, the 4 highest-rated effectiveness characteristics in Exhibit II ranked only 5, 6, 20, and 26, respectively, in a complete ranking of the participation items by the first group of managers.

Special attention should be given to the effectiveness characteristics ranked 3 and 4 in Exhibit II. These two items, which are concerned with high performance expectations, ranked only 20 and 26 on extent of participation. Such a strong emphasis on performance reflects a noticeable exception to our earlier prototype of the participative leader who is warm, emotive, and open.

In short, keeping subordinates aware of high performance expectations seems quite important to the managers in the study, even if this means using directive action within an overall participative style. Perhaps they feel that subordinates can misread an orthodox participative leader as being more concerned for their psyches than for the fruits of their labor.

Career influences

Further analysis of the effectiveness ratings provides support for the born-leader advocates. While the main thrust toward a meshing of participation and effectiveness remains essentially unchanged, different age groups display important variances on a few of the effectiveness ratings.

Exhibit III highlights 7 of the 39 characteristics for which a statistical test revealed substantial differences according to age. These results suggest that a manager’s career stage may influence his specific leadership orientation, even when he operates within a broader participative framework. Consider the influence on these three managerial groups:

Exhibit III. Age Differences in Effectiveness Ratings

1. Younger managers in the study tend to take what Abraham Zaleznik calls a “proactive” stance; they stress (a) work priorities, (b) proving their technical competence, and (c) backing up subordinates.5 This more aggressive orientation is understandable if one views younger managers as full of energy and enthusiasm, yet possessing self-doubts about their own competence. In addition, these managers are usually in lower-level or specialist positions, where they must visibly demonstrate their talents while also coping with heavy workloads and intense pressure for results.

2. Managers between 30 and 40 years of age emphasize a more “mediative” approach. Most of these executives are in middle-management jobs where they must deal with eager subordinates as well as complex tasks that require numerous trade-offs. Hence, they are exceptionally favorable to (a) taking a more personalized approach to others, (b) relating to subordinates, and (c) making group decisions. Psychologically, this is a time when the middle manager is often exploring his ability to handle heavier responsibility while taking greater risks, so he understandably turns to others for consultation and support.

3. Managers in the over-40 group display a shift toward “homeostatic” or fatherly and maintenance concerns. These older executives, who are usually in top management, seem strongly preoccupied with counseling, developing, and training subordinates; partly, I surmise, because they wish to leave behind some of their own personal attributes and wisdom, as well as to keep the organization in good health. They are also concerned with the broad issue of communications; top managers frequently feel guilty and lonely in their insulated positions, where responsibility is high for maintaining a clear flow of communications throughout a complex organization.

All the foregoing exceptions suggest that one should be cautious in prescribing a uniform participative style for leaders at all levels of an organization. The born-leader theorists would agree, contending that legitimate behavioral variations occur naturally because managers seek to satisfy different personal needs as they mature in a hierarchy of upward job moves.

Moreover, a company without several older managers worrying about the development of future managers would be seriously handicapped. It is probably too much to expect this teaching responsibility to be filled primarily by middle managers who are consumed mainly by task demands, or by younger managers who are worried about their own development. Their respective uses of participative leadership will likely be slanted to fit different psychological and organizational concerns.

These results also lead me to further question the current fad toward early retirement for older managers in order to give younger managers more responsibility sooner. Companies should learn that all three age groups contribute differently to the organization, and that this variance in contribution should be more sensitively accounted for in manpower planning and performance-assessment decisions. One cannot measure all managers on a common set of standards.

In addition, individual managers should learn to be more aware of their own developmental needs as they make the transition from one job level to the next in organizations. Younger managers, for example, will probably have to master the skills of group decision making to perform effectively at middle levels. As they become ready for senior positions, they will have to develop talents in training subordinates. Company educational programs and personnel counseling services can also aid in solving these transitional problems.

Conclusion

The implied message from managers in this study is: “Let’s stop beating our chests over the abstract virtues of participative leadership and settle down to defining its more specific uses and limitations in actual practice.” For these managers, the choice of leadership style is not between participation and directiveness, nor is it between the actor and born-leader theories. Their reaction to the organizational and psychological reality that faces them in actual practice is to include aspects of all these pulls and tugs.6

If executives in this study are representative, one can state that the managerial population at large has already absorbed well the message of participative leadership. There is not only consensus on the specific characteristics that comprise a participative style, but also general agreement that certain participative leadership characteristics produce more effective results. This connection between participation and effectiveness is significant because managers are more likely to act in a participative manner if they believe their actions lead to better results.

Thus the managers in the study are decidedly ahead of those social critics who claim that business executives are a bunch of authoritarians concerned only with manipulating their “puppet” subordinates.7 They are also beyond those participative educators who assume that businessmen are still waiting to be convinced that participation is a good thing.

Yet these managers do not accept participation on the basis of blind ideology. Instead, they seem to be saying that participative advocates should doff their doctrinaire hats and apply themselves to the application of participative leadership in more pragmatic and more flexible terms. They are quite willing, for example, to use a few directive actions to keep high performance goals in front of subordinates. They are also willing to translate participation to fit their current career and job situations. Thus a young manager on the firing line is likely to employ participative actions differently from an older manager in a senior position.

Such personalized leadership adaptations seem to make good practical sense, for the benefit of both organization performance and a manager’s mental health. For the managers whose opinions are represented here, participative leadership appears to be a sound concept, but only if presented as a general model within which individual leaders can exhibit a variety of actions to satisfy different personal and career needs.

1. For articles appearing in past issues of HBR that represent this point of view, see Warren G. Bennis and Philip E. Slater, “Democracy Is Inevitable,” March–April 1964, p. 51; Herbert H. Meyer, Emanuel Kay, and John R.P. French, Jr., “Split Roles in Performance Appraisal,” January–February 1965, p. 123; and Alva F. Kindall and James Gatza, “Positive Program for Performance Appraisal,” November–December 1963, p. 153.

2. For articles appearing in past issues of HBR that reflect this point of view, see Harry Levinson, “On Being a Middle-Aged Manager,” July–August 1969, p. 51; Abraham Zaleznik, “Management of Disappointment,” November–December 1967, p. 59; and C. Wilson Randle, “How to Identify Promotable Executives,” May–June 1956, p. 122.

3. See, for example, William D. Altus, “Birth Order and Its Sequelae,” Science, January 1, 1966, p. 44.

4. For examples of this research, see Robert R. Blake, Jane S. Mouton, Louis B. Barnes, and Larry E. Greiner, “Breakthrough in Organization Development,” HBR November–December 1964, p. 133; and Rensis Likert, The Human Organization (New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967).

5. See “Managerial Behavior and Interpersonal Competence,” Behavioral Science, April 1964, p. 156.

6. For HBR articles that take this point of view, see Jay W. Lorsch, “Beyond Theory Y,” May–June 1970, p. 61; and Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt, “How to Choose a Leadership Pattern,” March–April 1958, p. 95.

7. See, for example, William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History: Speculations on the Transformation of Culture (New York, Harper & Row, 1971).

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