Review: [Untitled] Reviewed Work(s): Leaders, Groups and Influence. by E. P. Hollander Donald P. Hayes Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Sep., 1966), pp. 303-305. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-8392%28196609%2911%3A2%3C303%3ALGAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 Administrative Science Quarterly is currently published by Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/cjohn.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.org Mon Jul 16 17:20:27 2007

BOOK REVIEWS

303

Lenders, Groups and Influence, by E. P. Hollander. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. 256 pp. $5.00.

Given the abbreviated format of contemporary journal articles, authors with continuing interests and research in a subject find they have little opportunity to do more than report the barest details of their work. A book is the only vehicle which provides an opportunity to present an integrated statement of one's work. In adopting this tactic, Hollander has taken seventeen of his own previously published manuscripts and added an opening and closing chapter and a brief chapter on formal leadership. This book is not a comprehensive treatment of leadership, groups, influence or the relationships between these three concepts. There is no extensive review of the literature or a "theory." What is here are a series of interesting questions and an account of Hollander's efforts to deal with them: Are those who are not "leaders" necessarily "followers"? Do "leaders" also make good "followers"? How can "leaders" simultaneously be highly conforming to group norms yet innovate so much? How early can "leaders" be identified? How well do the various procedures for identifying leaders (particularly the peer-nomination technique) correlate with some reasonable criterion? How authoritarian are leaders? These are among the many questions raised. The bulk of the reported research took place during the early and middle 1950's among Naval pre-flight and flight-training cadets and officer-training programs. T h e rest of the research was conducted with college students. The leadership studies had the advantage of using groups of men who had continuous and fairly intimate contact during their training; thus, the answers to the peer-nomination technique were based upon ample experience and knowledge. This research on leaders was further strengthened by the use of ratings of each cadet by his superior officers during an average of three years sea duty. The research using college students was of the short-term laboratory pattern. Three areas of Hollander's thinking and research should be mentioned: his work on emergent leadership (as distinct from appointive or organizationally specified leadership), the characteristics attributed to leaders and followers, and the utility of the peer-nomination technique for identifying leaders. While leaders have been noted to conform closely to their group's norms, there is also substantial evidence that they innovate a good

304

ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY

deal as well. If, as many have suggested, good standing in groups requires compliance to its norms, how can leaders maintain their favored position despite these innovations? A resolution of this paradox is suggested by Hollander through the use of his "idiosyncrasy credit" concept. A member's status in the group is enhanced or diminished by the group's perception of his qualities, task competence, and conformity to its expectations or norms. T h e tolerance of "idiosyncrasy" (innovations) is a function of the accumulated credits he holds with group members. T h e higher one's credits, the greater the latitude of unsanctioned behaviors. For certain circumstances, the group may have an expectance of innovations for its leaders which may not be fulfilled, resulting in a loss of credits. A continuing loss of credits ultimately results in exclusion from the group. Several inferences from these ideas were tested. As predicted, the experiments showed high task competence increased one's influence over other group members. Holding task competence constant, those who deviated from group norms before first establishing credits were much less influential than those who did not deviate until after first demonstrating- their conformity to the group norms. Evidence was also produced to show that competent newcomers were less influential than equally competent longer-term members. The hypothesis that status is inversely related to disapproval of deviance from group norms was also supported. Hollander's analysis and research in this area has certainly contributed to our understanding of the relationships between group norms, conformity, status and influence. A second analysis concerns followers and leaders. Questioned are the two assumptions that non-leaders and followers are the same people and followers are unlike leaders in their attributes. Naval trainees were asked to name the fellow cadets they considered "best qualified to lead," and where the subject was selected as the leader, were asked which fellow cadets he would choose as his subordinates on a special mission. T h e choices for leaders and followers correlated .92. Partialling out the effect of friendship left the correlation at -90. The observation that good leaders are also judged to be good followers makes some sense when we consider that nearly all organizational leaders must simultaneously be effective followers, a fact especially evident in military settings. As Hollander points out, followership might be considered one important component of good leadership. T h e dichotomy of leadership and followership may thus have to be revised to include three categories: leaders, followers, and those ful-

BOOK REVIEWS

305

filling neither set of functions. Just what functions these non-leaders, non-followers serve, if any, is not pursued. Having been identified for some time with the use of the peernomination procedure, Hollander takes this opportunity to report some research comparing its efficacy with alternative methods. His evidence shows peers were quite stable in their nominations from three weeks on and gave reliable responses (split-half reliabilities were consistently .90 or higher) with responses three weeks later. Fairly stable results were even obtained after only four or five days' contact. Especially noteworthy is the report on attempts to predict success as a future naval officer using the peer-nomination method. The fitness reports of each of 629 cadets' senior officers after an average of three years of sea duty served as the criterion against which several predictors would be compared. The judgments of the cadets' superiors during training correlated -11 with the fleet performance criterion while the peer-nominations, made after only three weeks of training had elapsed, correlated .40 with the criterion. The only measure to surpass the peer-nomination method .41 was the cadet's over-all academic average based on his entire training period. While one can appreciate the second chance to examine these provocative ideas and research, I cannot help feeling that here was an opportunity not fully exploited. There is little evidence of changes or additions to the previously published works. Surely, amidst the many facets of each of these studies are findings of interest we may never see. There must have been numerous qualifications, speculations, and commentaries which were unsuitable for articles but would have been appropriate in the less confining book format. As it stands, the book is little more than an interesting "reader" of a single author's work.

Assistant Professor of Sociology Cornell University