Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1. Effective Leadership Behaviors of Local government Leaders
2.1.1. Traits and performance effectiveness
國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
8
To correspond with the ideal leader characteristics for decentralized government expressed in the prior‟s study (Abraha 2010, Abdullah 1985, Manyak and Katono 2010, Prasojo 2011), the leader‟s personal integrity behaviors, the communication and administrative skills behaviors and the coalition and exchange tactics behaviors will be the focus. In order to link these attributes to local government performance, the conceptualization of the attributes is presented in the following discussion.
2.1.1. Traits and performance effectiveness
It appears that the traits of a successful leader indeed vary depending on time and context, across sectors and generational labels and the question of whether any leadership elements are truly timeless arises (Ahn, Ettner and Loupin 2012). For example, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness are found to be related to perceived leader‟s effectiveness (Nana and Jackson 2010) and transformational leadership (Zopiatis and Constanti 2012). Moreover, visionary was found to be the primary quality (trait) desired for the public library leader (Mullins and Linehan 2006) than other traits proposed. Further, Wood & Vilkinas (2005) found two dominant characteristics of the success of chief executive officers were achievement orientation and humanistic approach, while very little or no emphasis was placed on being inclusive, having integrity, having a balanced approach, learning and self-awareness or having an external focus. Finally, Kirkpatrick & Locke (1991) argued that honesty (and integrity) together with other traits (drive, desire to lead, self-confidence, cognitive ability and industry knowledge) will give a considerable advantage for those who displayed any of these traits. Based on the preceding discussion, we assume that in regard to public organization performance, leader‟s personality integrity does matter.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
9 Abraha (2010) assumed that positive attributes such as honesty, integrity, just, trustworthy and visionary could success the nation building of decentralized region.
Whether these traits are truly influencing the local government performance, it never been validated. Less, Blunt, et.al (2012) study illustrated the importance of integrity and honesty for a leader in order to achieve the effectiveness of local government performance in health and education sectors. By using a qualitative approach involving a combination of semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and written accounts of patronage and corruption in action relating to human resource management (HRM), Blunt, et.al found that political and bureaucratic patrons use control over recruitment, placement, transfer, and promotion as they mean to gain private benefit from public resources. For example, in one province the sum of Rp 100 million has been mentioned several times as the fee to ensure success in the civil service entrance exam. In some instances, family connections with the authority may suffice, or at least lower the price to pass/entrance examination of becoming state apparatus. Even some respondents mentioned that the Bupati (Regent) and walikota (Mayor) take the role to determine success and failure in the exam while another cited the local elected councilors as asking for a cut in the recruitment process, that is, a certain number of position reserved.
Regarding the placement of individuals in posts in particular organizations, they found that there is also a package deal whereby payment for passing the exam also incorporated the bonus of posting to a favorable job and an organization or, not to be placed in difficult areas. As consequences, the placement has led to staff were not technically competent to carry out their tasks. Even when recruits did have the basic competencies for effective job performance, their placement in favored locations led to distortions in the distribution of staff.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
10
Personal integrity is defined as a person‟s behavior that consistent with the espoused values (G. Yukl 2002). The behaviors are shown by the person honest, ethical and trustworthy. In addition, the integrity is a primary determinant of interpersonal trust. In the context of public organization, Wart (2005) defined personal integrity as the state of being whole and/or connected with oneself, one‟s profession and the society of which one is a member, as well as being incorruptible.
Moreover, integrity is categorized as ethical values of public-service values (Kernaghan 2003). Values are defined as enduring beliefs that influence the choices we make among available means or ends (Rokeach 1973). The values then by some countries are manifested in code of conduct which provides the principles of how public servants should perform their official duties. According to Cox, La Case and Levine (2003), integrity is doing the right thing if no one is looking, or even if others are not doing the right thing.
In our assumption, by being honest and impersonal, leaders will make decision based on rules (merit) not by favoritism or patron-client relation. Related to the employee recruitment, when there is integrity practiced in the recruitment process, the government will hire the civil officials‟ regarding to the needs. Accordingly, when the elements of the government organized correctly based on its purpose, the system will operate effectively. It also applied to personnel of government as part of the local government element that when they are placed based on their merit, the effectiveness of local government performance is plausible to achieve. Therefore, we believe that the leaders selected in this study do possess personal integrity. The personal integrity is manifested into their behaviors such as honesty, keep promise/ consistent and impersonal in order to achieve the effectiveness of poverty alleviation policy.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
11 2.1.2. Skills and performance effectiveness
Three broad categories of managerial skills –human, technical, conceptual- are related to everyday performance especially at the levels of organization. While often devalued because they are not glamorous or exciting, Northouse (2009) argued that administrative skills also play a primary role in effective leadership. Van Wart (2005) includes six skills that contribute to leader effectiveness: communication skills, social skills, influence skills, analytical skills, technical skills, continual skills and continual learning skills. Among the existing leadership skills, the communication skills have been studied more often than other skills, meanwhile the influence skills are mostly studied as the political management of the organization (Ammeter, et al. 2002).
Effective communication has been linked with satisfaction, employee performance and organizational productivity (Downs, Clampitt and Pfeiffer 1988, Shekary and Rajabian 2012). Technical skills are more important at the lower level of organization (Gugliemino & Carroll, 1979) and least important for the executives (Kotter 1982).
Less, executives in narrow functional areas such as accounting or safety compliance need significantly more technical competence than their generalist brethren such as city managers, agency directors, or executive corps members who are considered troubleshooters (Van Wart 2005, 145). Moreover, administrative skills are found to be one of the competencies which enable leaders to adapt to management turbulence and uncertain change (Ford 2010). Although it does not mention directly that the analytical skills are important for leadership effectiveness, predictive accuracy does important for the leader in the defense-related organization in order to be effective (Lucal, et al. 1992). Finally, interpersonal skills are likely considered by the member of the US Senior Executive Services as essential for successful collaboration rather than strategic thinking and strategic management (O'Leary, Choi and Gerard 2012).
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
12
According to the preceding discussion, since the administrative skills enable leaders to adapt to management turbulence and uncertain change, have administrative skills behaviors also enabled public leaders to adapt as Ford found? Moreover, the existing studies have mentioned that the effective communication have been linked with satisfaction, employee performance and organizational productivity.
Accordingly, could effective communication of the public organization leader has a link to the organizational productivity and public satisfaction as well?
There are four sets of factors of local government performance developed by Cheema and Rondinelli (1983). The factor sets include the ability to build and maintain relationship with the member of the internal and external organization, to manage the financial allocation and how to spend and able to deal with the environmental situation that might influence the policy making process. Accordingly, being able to build and maintain relationships, we assume that the leaders must have good communication skills to support. Moreover, being able to do planning, controlling, and managing –resource expenditure- we assume that the leader must have technical skill, analytical skill as well as administrative skills to support.
The administrative skills of a leader, play a primary role in the effective leadership process. It helps leader to accomplish the mundane, but critically important aspects of showing a leadership behavior practiced. Administrative skills can be defined as those competencies a leader needs to run an organization in order to carry out the organization‟s purposes and goals. These involve planning, organizing work, assigning the right tasks to the right people and coordinating work activities (P. G.
Northouse 2009). For example, in the context of local government, to achieve the effectiveness of healthcare services, leaders should have plans to improve the quality of the healthcare services. To implement the services appropriately, the leaders
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
13 organize works of the units or agencies and coordinate the activities. The most important thing for leaders in these administrative skills is that they are able to assign the right tasks to the right people. By doing these behaviors, leaders have shown their knowledge of administrative skills and once they are successful to perform this, indirectly the effectiveness of healthcare service provision performance could achieved too. Few studies can be found to illustrate the impact of how leader‟s administrative skills are practiced to achieve the effectiveness of local government performance on public organization affairs.
In the context of public organization, it is necessary for leaders to have communication competency. This competency is useful for leader in order to gain support. Coordinating, cooperating, and networking will not be effective if competency of leader to communicate the relationship is absent. Leaders who exchange information effectively through active and passive means are considered to possess the communication skills (Wart 2005). There are four aspects of communication skills: oral skills, writing skills, listening skills and non-verbal skills.
In oral skills, leaders should be able to talk with others to give and exchange information and ideas. Oral skills it takes different forms, such as speaking with individuals, small groups and large groups, and communicating via electronic media.
In addition, oral communication skills also include the ability to relay technical versus emotive messages orally. It is not the same between sending a message to do something and to inspire others. For example, leaders will be successful in organizing work and coordinate the health service units or agencies if they can maintain the clarity of messages delivered. Failure in delivering objective of messages might cause misunderstanding between the leaders and those who involved in the healthcare service achievement.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
14
Furthermore, writing skills are the ability to write using emails, memoranda (both information/discussion pieces and directives), reports and special-purpose documents such as performance appraisals, letters, public relation materials and written public statements. In the context of public leader, it is common for leaders, do their writings by assigning this to subordinate. For example, writing letters, documents or other materials. Hence, examining the preceding documents is not appropriate to identify the leader‟s writing skill. Nevertheless, some leaders were actively writing columns in the newspaper or magazine as their strategy to connect with the public. Nowadays, it is common for the governmental leaders to use the social networks.
A leader‟s response to people‟s comment, opinion, or grievances are part of the listening skills competency. To respond the exchanging message leader should be able to perform the non-verbal communication skill appropriately. The way leaders respond to comments will affect the perception of the people who see this. Hence, leaders should choose language or signs carefully in responding the people‟s comment. To what extent social network is effective for leaders in order to achieve the effectiveness of government performance, we found limited evidence. The point here is that when people enjoy reading or listening to leaders‟ “talk”, it may indicate that leaders have knowledge of writing, listening and non-verbal skills.
The four aspects of communication are connected to each other. However, a leader who capable to perform all communication aspects is rarely be found. In this current study, we believe that the leaders observed have good communication skills in order to carry on the poverty alleviation issue.
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
15 2.1.3. Influence behaviors and the performance effectiveness
Public organization is considered as a political arena where political skills are practiced in order to success the organization objectives (Mintzberg 1985).
Accordingly, there are tactics that have been commonly used to influence others and associated with the organization‟s effectiveness (Ammeter, et al. 2002, G. Yukl 2002, Zanzi and O'Neill 2001). The influence tactics such as rational persuasion, inspirational appeal and consultation are found to be the most effective tactic for manager related to target task commitments while the least tactics are pressure, coalition and legitimating (Yukl and Tracey, Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers and the boss 1992). Moreover, ingratiation and assertiveness have found to affect the assessment of profitability that only those capable of subtle manipulation should employ ingratiation, the soft tactic, when trying to manage the impression of competence (Thacker and Wayne 1995). Additionally, as a hard tactic, assertiveness is a risky tactic at best, and use of reasoning, relying as it does upon rational persuasion is likely to have significant and positive benefits upon the subordinates‟ chance for promotion. Ingratiation also found to affect worker satisfaction and motivation (Zellars and Kacmar 1999) when the effect of perceptions of favoritism is stronger when the ingratiating co-worker is present. Do public leaders use the preceding influence behaviors in order to be successful? We assume some leaders in Indonesian government have performed the influence behaviors in order to be successful.
When the agent offers an incentive, suggests an exchange of favors, or indicated willingness to reciprocate if the target will do the agent request, the actions indicate an exchange behavior. Meanwhile, when the agent seeks the aid of others to persuade the target to do something or uses the support of others as a reason for the
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
16
target to agree, the actions considered as coalition tactic. Some region‟s head in Indonesia used exchange tactics to accomplish the urban development policy. Most exchange tactics were effective when leaders were able to persuade the opposite side to follow their need by fulfilling the conditions requested. The successful of Herry Zudianto to relocate the street vendors to a new location without any turmoil became the evidence of exchange tactics exercise (Nurmandi 2011). The reason traders agreed to be relocated was the belief that what would be undertaken by the city mayor was a win-win solution where one of the agreements was traders would not be charged a large amount for buying a stall but only a nominal fee levy that was very small (2011:12). The case becomes one of successful example of government in managing conflict.
Coalition tactics involve getting help from other people to influence the target person. There are types of coalition tactics: 1) when assistance is provided by the superior of the target person, the tactic is usually called an upward appeal; 2) to use a prior endorsement by other people to help influence the target person to support the proposal in which the endorsement comes from people whom the person likes or respects; and 3) coalition tactics are usually used in combination with one or more of the other influence tactics. For example bring along a supporter when meeting with the target person, and both agents may use rational persuasion to influence the target person.
For the purpose of this study, we use the exchange and coalition tactics to identify the influence behaviors practiced. Although these tactics have similar purpose that is to influence others, the practice is different however. In coalition tactics, by inferring the definition given by Yukl, leaders involve another person to influence the target. For example, it is common for mayors or Bupati in Indonesia coalition with
‧
國立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
17 traditional leaders to settle land disputes. Whereas for exchange tactics, it is the leaders who influence the target directly. The relocation of street vendors is the example of the exchange tactic. Therefore, we argue that these two tactics are different in practice although they have similar objective. How these tactics performed by leaders in order to implement the poverty alleviation policy?
2.1.4. Theoretical background of leadership behaviors
Lack of evidences to provide an answer for question to what extent local government‟ leaders' behaviors are effective has confirmed Yukl (2012) argument that most leader behavior studies tend to emphasize how much the behavior is used rather than how well it is used. Similarly, Ferris et.al, (2002) argued that although considerable research has examined organizational politics, a serious omission has been the failure to evaluate the political skill of the influencer. Thus, not enough information why influence efforts are (or are not) successful in other words, it is not enough to study particular influence tactics of political behaviors that reflect the
“what” of influence. We also need to critically examine the political skill of the influencer to understand the “how” influence, which address the selection of the most situational appropriate influence tactics and their successful execution.
It is likely that specific behaviors interact in complex ways, and that the leadership effectiveness cannot be understood unless these interactions are studied.
There are four meta-categories were discussed by Yukl (2012) to describe the leadership‟s influence (Table 2.1). Each meta-category has a different primary objective. To accomplish work in an efficient and reliable way is the primary objective of task-oriented behavior. Moreover, to increase the quality of human resources and relations (human capital) is the primary object of the relation-oriented
‧
behavior. Meanwhile, to increase innovation, collective learning, and adaptation to the external environment is the primary objectives of the change-oriented behavior.
Finally, to acquire necessary information and resources, and to promote and defend the interest of the team or organization is the primary objective of the external leadership behavior.
Table 2-1 Hierarchical taxonomies of leadership behaviors Task-oriented Clarifying
Concerning the public organization performance, leaders may incline to one or more meta-category of behaviors in order to be effective. The goal of public organization is to make sure that all people have equal access to public services regardless their personal background. Therefore, it is difficult for leaders to fall into a particular meta - category of behaviors to do their activities. Adjusting to the local condition of each region, leader may incline to one or more meta-category of behaviors in order to be effective in achieving their objectives.
Some scholars wrote about the failure of decentralization and the need for the right leadership had proposed characteristics that suitable for leader of decentralized region. For example, Manyak & Katono (2010) discussed the importance of
‧
國立 政 治 大
立 政 治 大