Book ReviewMorgan W McCall, Jr.

Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, by Bernard M. Bass.New York: The Free Press, 1985, 191 pp. $26.50.

There's a movement afoot in the social science approach to leadership.After decades of contingency models (cost-benefit formulations, as Basscalls them, based on contingent reinforcement) there is a trace of freshair. Earlier harbingers of this shift were James MacGregor Burns whose1978 book. Leadership, provided a lengthy discourse on transforma-tional vs. transactional leadership. About the same time, Peter Vaill wastalking about "high performing systems" (1978), by which he meantgroups or organizations that achieved inspirational excellence. Petersand Waterman (1982) found excellence, Bennis and Nanus (1985) foundvision. Bob House (1977) found charisma.

The drift of this movement seems to be that something special hap-pens in excellent organizations, something almost mystical or at leastoutside of our conventional variables. The behavior of people can't beexplained by performance-reward linkagesthey transcend them-selves, do more than is expected. The leaders don't just set goals, moni-tor performance, and dispense rewards: They are inspired and inspir-ing. It's about time we began to take these elusive and largely intangiblequalities seriously.

Bernard Bass set out to understand transformational leadership, andhas searched far and wide for insight. Drawing on Freud, political scien-tists, psychohistorians, as well as the more traditional motivational andleadership literatures, he attempts to build a model of the transforma-tional leaderthe kind who engenders from others "performance be-yond expectations."

According to Bass, there are four major factors comprising transfor-mational leadership:

1. Charisma"Charismatic leaders have insight into the needs, val-ues, and hopes of their followers. They have the ability to build onthese needs, values, and hopes through dramatic and persuasivewords and actions."

2. Inspirational leadership" A subfactor within charismaticleadership behavior" in which "nonintellectual, emotional quali-ties" are used to arouse and heighten motivation among followers.Most charismatics are inspirational, but one need not be charis-matic to inspire.

Human Resource Management, Fall 1986, Vol. 25, Number 3, Pp. 481-4MIj 1986 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0090-4848/86/030481-04$04.00

3. Individualized considerationPaying "attention to each of theirsubordinates, sharing their concerns and development needs, andtreating them as individuals."

4. Intellectual stimulation" The arousal and change in followersof problem awareness and problem solving, of thought and imagi-nation, and of beliefs and values "

Bass describes each of these factors in detail, reviewing the relevantliterature, describing the processes involved, examining their anteced-ents, and providing guru-like examples (Iacocca, Roosevelt, Kennedy).These transformational qualities are then contrasted with the character-istics of transactional leadership (two factors: first, use of contingentreward, and second, management-by-exception, negative feedback, andcontingent aversive reinforcement). Transactional leaders are " moreconcerned with efficient processes than with substantive ideas. They aremore interested in what will work rather than in what is true."

Bass argues that transformational qualities are not restricted to a fewgreat heroes, but can be present to varying degrees in a wide variety ofpeople and places. And, while transformational leaders can be powerfulforces for positive change, the same qualities may be used in sinisterways.

Emergence of transformational leadership depends, according toBass, on external environment (more likely in times of distress orchange), the internal organizational environment ("organic" organiza-tions are more likely to see it), and the personality and values of theleader.

The interplay of all these components is not as simple as this briefreview implies. There are 15 schematic diagrams in the book summariz-ing the hypothesized relationships among elementsa total of about175 boxes containing one or more variables. In spite of this complexity,there is a decided white hat/black hat tone to the book: Transformationalleaders are more proactive, moral, innovative, flexible, etc., than theirmundane transactional colleagues. While "the ordinary manager iskept busy with his inner id-superego struggles. ., fitting into themold, not making waves, defending his turf " the transformationalleader is out there changing the organizational culture. It worries methat the difference is so stark, especially since I don't think Bass intendsit to be. Perhaps that's the inevitable result of using historical giants asexamples: It's hard for most of us to relate to George Patton or JohnKennedy. The point perhaps is that the capacity for leadership of ahigher order is more widely distributed than we might believe. Part ofthe problem is that we too easily accept manipulation of goals and re-wards as the essence of leadership.

The book itself is an interesting set of contradictions. On the onehand, its core is based on factor analytic studies of survey data. On theother hand, it relies heavily on clinical analyses, including psychohistor-

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ian interpretations of the personality and motives of historical figures.At times the book is extremely thorough, reading like an academic re-view of the literature. At other times it's superficial, for example, divid-ing managers into stereotypical categories like "profit maximizers,""trustee oriented managers," and "quality of life management." At onepoint, Bass slams the work of Peters and Waterman ("Their popularstyle and selective interviewing suggests that they appear to have foundwhat they went looking for"), yet at various points in the book folkloreabout companies like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, leaders like Iacocca andJobs, and even the Peters and Waterman findings are used to make hisown case.

One of the strengths of this particular framework is its empirical base.In the style of a murder mystery, the reader is continually frustrated byallusions to an answer, but "who dunnit" is not revealed until the lasttwo chapters. Here we find the details of a series of studies based onconvenience samples of MBA students, social science students, under-graduates, educational administrators, military students and officers,managers and professionals in New Zealand, and managers from a U.S.corporation who filled out various questionnaires. The method is nei-ther good nor bad, it is simply one of our time, but it symbolizes themajor weakness of this book. There is little "feel" for what it's like to bea managertransformational or otherwisein a real organization. Inthis sense the concepts presented are abstractions in the academic tradi-tion that seem disconnected from the reality of the trenches. This resultis foreshadowed in the preface, where the author states one purpose ofthe book as filling the gap in "theory and research between social andorganizational psychology, on the one hand, and political science andpsychohistory, on the other." The book may in fact contribute to this,but I wonder if this is the gap we should be filling. A case could be madethat the most significant gap is the one between the abstract, academicview of leadership and the reality of trying to manage day-to-day incomplex organizations. My greatest fear is that the recent idolization ofthe "transformational leader" with super-hero qualities will become yetanother 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" tolive up to (it's probably easier to live with not being a 9-9 leader than tobe accused of lacking vision and inspiration). That Bass provides a ques-tionnaire to measure transformational and transactional qualities is in-deed a mixed blessing.

In the final part of the book, Bass quotes Kelvin as saying that "if youcan't measure it, you don't know what you are talking about." But assome of Kelvin s own findings later showed, just because you can mea-sure something doesn't mean that you understand it. The findings inthis book need to be taken seriously and integrated into our slowlygrowing understanding of what leadership is all about. But we need to

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remember our past"great man theory," leadership styles, human re-lations, contingency theory, trait theoryeven while we look eagerlyfor more parsimonious explanations. The book begins with the hopethat it will be a "major breakthrough in understanding what it takes forleaders to have great effects on their followers." My hope is that it willadd some richness to the ways we think about leadership and open upsome new possibilities. But until theorists and researchers learn moreabout leaders on linethe problems, the torments, the victories thatconfront managers on a day-to-day basiswe run the risk of chasing yetanother rainbow.

On the other hand, it's time we began to expect more from our leadersand to inspire them to expect more from themselves. It is encouraging tosee research aimed at understanding the intangible and sometimes mys-tical qualities of inspired leadership. It is a modest beginning, but abeginning nonetheless.

Morgan W. McCall, Jr., PhD is Senior Behavioral Scientist and Director ofResearch at the Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, North Carolina.

References

Bennis, W. and Nanus, B. Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York:Harper & Row, 1985.

Bums, J. M. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row, 1978.House, R. J. A 1976 theory of charismatic leadership. In Hunt, James G., and

Larson, Lars L., Leadership: The cutting edge, pp. 189-207, Illinois: SouthernIllinois University Press, 1977.

Peters, T. J., and Waterman, R. H., Jr. In search of excellence: Lessons from America'sbest-run companies. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

Vaill, P Toward a behavioral description of high-performing systems. InMcGall, Morgan W., Jr., & Lombardo, Michael M., Leadership: Where else can wego?, pp. 103-125, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978.

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