The Path-Goal Theory

02/20/2017                 BUS 5022 Leadership & Organizational Behavior                Javier Alvarez

Chapter 6:  Path-Goal Theory

The Path-Goal Theory states that leaders should adapt their leadership style to the motivational attitudes of their followers. This theory suggests that a leader should strive to motivate his followers to meet their goals, remove obstacles, provide support and curve their expectations of followers so that they may be better suited to meet the needs of the organization.There are three major components of path-goal theory: leader behaviors, follower characteristics and task characteristics

1. There are four Leader Behaviors (House & Mitchell, 1974) described in the path-goal theory.

1. Directive Leadership – Characterized by leaders who establish a set of performance standards in terms of quality, amount of work and time required to do a task.
2. Supportive Leadership – Consists of being friendly and approachable these leaders tend to make work a pleasant environment for followers.
3. Participative Leadership – A leadership style that takes into consideration the experience, ideas and opinions of followers and uses them in the decision making process.
4. Achievement-Oriented Leadership – Characterized by leaders who set high standards and constantly challenge followers to always perform at their best.

1. Follower Characteristics determine the degree to which followers find the behavior of leaders as an immediate source of satisfaction or instrumental to a future satisfaction.

1. Need for Affiliation – followers with a strong need for affiliation prefer a friendly supportive leadership style.
2. Preference for Structure – followers who are dogmatic and authoritarian prefer a directive leadership style.
3. Desires for Control – followers either have an internal or external locus of control. Those with an internal locus of control have a perception that they control their own lives. External locus followers rely on fate, chance or outside forces to influence their lives.
4. Perception of Task Ability – as followers become more competent in their own abilities their need for directive leadership goes down. 

1. Task Characteristics also influence the way a leader’s behavior influences followers motivation.

1. Followers’ tasks - Tasks that are unclear or complex require directive leadership.
2. Formal authority system – If formal authority systems are weak, a leader should strive to establish a structure to maintain and designate responsibilities.
3. Primary work group –  if the group is non-supportive or weak, a supportive leadership style is needed to build cohesiveness and establish roles and responsibilities style is needed

The Path-Goal theory recognizes the importance of motivation within groups. It states that leaders must support followers by providing: direction, support, participation, and establish standards. The strength of this theory is that it is prescriptive in nature and allows us to pick a leadership style based on the tasks and followers’ motivation towards it. The weaknesses the theory has that it is complex and confusing; it is also partially complete an fails to explain the relationship between leadership behavior and follower motivation. Finally the theory treats leadership as a one way event: the leader affects the follower.