Toward a British Taxonomy of Perceived Managerial and Leadership Effectiveness

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21163
Published date01 September 2013
Date01 September 2013
Toward a British Taxonomy of
Perceived Managerial and
Leadership Effectiveness
Robert G. Hamlin, Alf Hatton
A long-standing problem in management research has been the lack of
agreement about the specifi c managerial behaviors that are most closely
associated with effective management practice and leadership practice. The
study reports the results of a qualitative multiple cross-case and cross-sector
exploration of what managers and nonmanagerial employees within British
public-, private-, and third-sector organizations perceive as effective and
least effective/ineffective managerial behavior. Based on empirical fi ndings
obtained from nine prior emic replication studies, our derived etic comparative
analysis has led to a deduced taxonomy of perceived managerial and
leadership effectiveness comprised of eight positive (effective) and six
negative (least effective/ineffective) generic behavioral criteria. Comparisons
against extant U.S.-derived taxonomies have revealed many similarities but
also signifi cant differences. The fi ndings go against the grain of predominant
discourse, and challenge long-held, taken-for-granted assumptions about the
“contingent” nature of management and leadership. Implications for HRD
research and practice are discussed.
Based on a comprehensive review of management literature, Hales (1986,
p. 88) concluded that a major weakness of past research “concerned with
‘effective’ management (or managerial effectiveness)” was that the accumulated
evidence had not given much of an answer to the question of whether the
managerial practice identifi ed was “good” or “bad.” His view echoed Martinko
and Gardner’s (1985) claim, based on a review of 20 structured observation
studies of managerial work and behavior, that most researchers had failed to
explore what differentiates highly effective from less effective managers, and
that there was little information identifying the behaviors most closely
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY, vol. 24, no. 3, Fall 2013 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq.21163 365
The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of Prof. Rona Beattie, Prof. Taran Patel, and Dr. Carl
Ruiz, who acted as our confi rmatory auditors.
366 Hamlin, Hatton
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq
associated with effective managerial performance. Borman and Brush (1993)
argued that despite the volumes of research on management, few studies had
empirically examined managerial behavior in the context of the critical
performance requirements of a manager’s job, namely, the behaviors that are
important in differentiating between doing a job effectively and doing it
ineffectively. Furthermore, they claimed that most studies had been directed
toward a particular managerial job within a single organization and had used
sample sizes of fewer than 100 people. Additionally, few of these studies
had examined managerial behavior across varying industries, organization
sizes, and geographic locations. Consequently, using an inductive method,
Borman and Brush derived “a taxonomy of managerial performance
requirements” by summarizing and integrating multiple sets of performance-
related dimensions of managerial behavior gathered from 26 past studies of
manager performance. In 18 of these studies, the researchers had used the
critical incident method for obtaining the empirical data on which their
identified dimensions were based. Only 7 of the 26 studies had been
published, and all of these were between 1951 and 1978.
Noting that a unifying aim of managerial behavior research had been to
identify general dimensions of managerial performance, Tett, Gutterman, Bleier,
and Murphy (2000) derived a “hyperdimensional” taxonomy of managerial
competence from 12 source taxonomies, including the one deduced by Borman
and Brush (1993). Nine of their source studies were published between 1951
and 1985, of which four had been used by Borman and Brush. We have found
no other taxonomies that focus specifi cally on managerial performance, com-
petence, or effectiveness. However, Yukl, Gordon, and Taber (2002, p. 17)
developed a “hierarchical taxonomy of leadership behavior” by integrating
“specifi c behavior components” selected from prior measures of managerial and
leadership behavior derived by previous researchers. Of the 10 measures for
which they provided a Harvard reference, 7 were published between 1962 and
1990, and 3 between 1991 and 1998. More recently, Yukl (2012) has offered a
hierarchical taxonomy of leadership behavior that is very similar to that offered
by Yukl, Gordon, and Taber. Of the 75 cited works that appear to have
informed the development of this taxonomy, 9 were published between 1948
and 1980, 46 between 1981 and 2000, and 20 between 2001 and 2011.
A common feature of the four taxonomies is that the vast majority of the
respective source studies were conducted in the United States. This raises
questions about generalizability because, as various writers have argued, the
relevance and transferability of fi ndings of U.S. management research to non-
U.S. cultures can be problematic due to the signifi cant cultural and organiza-
tional differences affecting the managerial and leadership environment of the
United States in relation to other countries (Alban-Metcalfe & Alimo-Metcalfe,
2007; Ayman, 1993; Flanagan & Spurgeon, 1996; Holt, 1998; M. F. Peterson &
Hunt, 1997; Triandis, 1993). Thus, the development of similar performance/
effectiveness-related taxonomies derived from more recent managerial behavior
Perceived Managerial and Leadership Effectiveness 367
HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY • DOI: 10.1002/hrdq
studies carried out in other countries, plus cross-nation comparative analyses
in search of similarities and differences across the studies are warranted.
Over the past 15 years or so, one of us (Author 1) has been engaged in
this type of managerial behavior research within the United Kingdom. Using
empirical data obtained from his fi rst three single-organization studies that were
carried out in the U.K. public sector, two of which had replicated his original
study in the state secondary schools of a local education authority, Author 1
developed through cross-case comparative analysis a public-sector-related
“generic model” of managerial and leadership effectiveness (see R. G. Hamlin,
2004). Our multiple-case comparative study seeks to extend this latter
research. It has three aims:
1. To compare the behavioral content of Hamlin’s generic model against equiv-
alent empirical source data obtained from subsequent single organization
replication studies carried out within various U.K. public-, private-, and
third-sector organizations, in order to identify commonalities and relative
generalizations across the cases.
2. To derive (if possible) a cross-sector British taxonomy by integrating the
behavioral criteria constituting Hamlin’s generic model with the multiple
sets of performance-related dimensions of effective and ineffective manage-
rial behavior obtained from the replication studies.
3. To compare the so deduced British taxonomy against the four afore-
mentioned U.S.-centric taxonomies.
Review of the Literature
To address the research purpose this review focuses on (a) current debates
about what is management and what is leadership, (b) various criticisms of
traditional managerial and leadership effectiveness research, and (c) alternative
approaches to studying effectiveness. In addition, it discusses the source
studies used by us to deduce our British taxonomy.
Management Versus Leadership
The relation between the roles and functions of managers and leaders is a
matter of considerable debate, and whether a clear distinction exists between
management and leadership generally remains unresolved (Bennis & Nanus,
1985; Kotterman, 2006; Toor & Ofori, 2008). Although most theorists argue
that there are distinct differences, the terms management and managing and
leadership and leading are so often used interchangeably in organizations that
the differences become blurred (Bolden, 2004; Raelin, 2004). Kotterman
(2006) suggested that one misconception dividing academics from
practitioners is that workplace leadership and management are mutually
exclusive, when in fact they are complementary. As various other writers have
argued, leading is an integral part of the everyday task of managing and is

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