480 



MORALE AND LEADERSHIP 



non-com?," 75% of commissioned officers 

 rated the "ability to think for himself" as 

 being first or second in importance, while 

 only 23% of privates did likewise; at the 

 same time 49% of privates rated "ability to 

 gain the personal liking of the men" in first 

 or second place, while only 7% of officers 

 agreed. In general, it would seem desirable 

 to elicit the judgments of subordinates and 

 equals as well as those of superiors. Sub- 

 ordinates' opinions of a leader are, of course, 

 often used as indices of morale. 



Judgments may be secured in various 

 forms: ratings of overall success or of success 

 on different parts of a leader's job; ratings of 

 relatively general traits assumed to be re- 

 lated to leadership effectiveness; check lists, 

 ratings or other descriptions of more specific 

 items of behavior believed to be necessary 

 for effective leadership; man-to-man ratings; 

 rankings or nominations of individuals pre- 

 ferred as leaders. The relative advantages 

 and disadvantages of these techniques have 

 been discussed by various students of per- 

 sonnel methods (e.g., 16). Several points 

 only need be noted here. Many such 

 schemes appear to be analytic, in evaluating 

 separate aspects of the job, behavior items, 

 etc. Even if these categories are relevant 

 to the leader's position, which is often doubt- 

 ful, the judgments of associates may reflect 

 only an overall evaluation. In general, 

 rankings or nominations are simpler to ad- 

 minister and give as good if not better results 

 than most of the others. The nominating 

 technique has been used extensively in recent 

 studies (e.g., 56, 82, 91). It might be added 

 that the forced-choice technique, embodied 

 in the Army Officer Evaluation Report, Form 

 OER and validated against a nominating 

 criterion, seems to offer considerable advan- 

 tages over conventional rating procedures 

 (85). 



Judgments hy Independent Observers 



Descriptions comparable in form to those 

 of associates may be obtained through inde- 



pendent observers. If observers are ade- 

 quately trained, and if circumstances permit 

 systematic observation of the behavior of 

 both leaders and followers, it is reasonable 

 to expect evaluations having both higher 

 validity and greater diagnostic value than 

 the reports of associates alone. 



Miscellaneous Criteria 



Many studies of leadership have employed 

 as criteria various facts relating to leadership 

 status, e.g., mere holding of a position of 

 leadership (as against not holding one), re- 

 sponsibility of position held, as measured in 

 terms of rank, income, or some other factor, 

 or number or frequency of past promotions. 

 Doubtless these bits of information are gen- 

 erally related in some degree to performance 

 on the job at hand, but they do not measure 

 it directly, and the extent of the relationship 

 obviously remains unknown. 



In the military situation performance in 

 Officer Candidate Schools has been a favorite 

 criterion. Standing has been measured in 

 various ways, such as by course grades, 

 judgments by instructors or fellow students, 

 etc. Here again, the value of such criteria 

 obviously depends upon their correlation 

 with performance on the job. Where it has 

 been possible to determine this correlation, 

 the results have not proved spectacular. 

 For example, Leavitt and Adler (62) found 

 correlations of Marine Corps OCS standing 

 with a series of ratings by superior officers 

 in combat ranging from —0.26 to 0.12 (while 

 correlations of the combat ratings with socio- 

 metric status prior to OCS ranged from 0.04 

 to 0.44). It seems probable that school per- 

 formance criteria can be improved in many 

 cases, however. 



As leadership theory develops and direct 

 studies of organizational functioning in- 

 crease, many new criteria should emerge. A 

 possible example is the RAD Index devel- 

 oped by Stogdill and Shartle (87), though 

 the full significance of this is not yet clear. 



