SEARCHING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK - TRYING TO IDENTIFY THE ILLUSIVE MODERATORS OF LEADERSHIP BEHAVIORS

Because the notion that various individual, task, or organizational-le vel variables moderate the relationships between leader behaviors and subordinate criterion variables is a fundamental assumption of most si tuational approaches to leadership, it is not surprising that a number of studies have been conducted in order to test these effects. Unfort unately, no systematic assessment of this research has been conducted to determine: (a) the nature of the tests for moderation that have bee n used, or (b) the degree to which the findings actually support the h ypothesis that the effects of leader behaviors are moderated by situat ional variables. For the purposes of this review, we identified studie s designed to test the moderators specified by two related theories of leadership: House's (1971) Path-Goal Approach, and Kerr and Jermier's (1978) Substitutes for Leadership Model. We then examined the methods used by researchers who tested for the moderating effects predicted b y these models, the percentage of moderating effects actually found, a nd the nature of the moderating effects identified. The results indica te that: (1) although the percentage of moderators identified is clear ly better than chance; (2) many of the tests conducted to identify mod erating effects in this leadership area are inappropriate; (3) most of the results reported in this domain have not been replicated; and (4) the information reported by many of the authors is incomplete. The im plications of the results of the review for both researchers and pract icing managers are then discussed.