Differential Effects on Democratic and Authoritarian Leadership Styles on Group Problem Solving Processes

Abstract

Experiments measured group goal accomplishments under four different types of leadership: Style I (Authoritarian with high solution accuracy), Style II (Democratic with high solution accuracy), Style III (Authoritarian with an inaccurate solution), and Style IV (Democratic with an inaccurate solution). Groups with Style I leaders produced the most accurate estimates; Styles II and IV had intermediate and comparable accuracy; and Style III produced the lowest accuracy. These findings infer that authoritarian leadership is most effective under conditions of limited time, a structured task, good leader-member relations, and strong leader position power when the leader possesses high solution accuracy. Given the same condition, however, if the leader does not possess (or is unsure of) an accurate solution, then the democratic leadership style is more effective because it more efficiently uses all of the group's resources.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1972
Accession Number
AD0739895

Entities

People

  • Dirk C. Prather
  • Hal W. Hendrick
  • Harry D. Blout
  • Joseph A. Cammalleri
  • Wayne C. Pittman Jr.

Organizations

  • United States Air Force Academy

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Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems

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  • Air Force
  • Classification
  • Colorado
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  • Instructions
  • Leadership
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  • Military Training
  • New Jersey
  • New York
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Statistical Analysis
  • United States
  • United States Air Force Academy

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  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Organizational Psychology.

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  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Machine Learning Algorithms