GENERALIZED VS SPECIFIC-LOCUS OF CONTROL EXPECTANCIES OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICERS

Hodgkinson (1992) recently advocated in this journal that measures of generalized control expectancies, such as the well known Rotter I-E sc ale (Rotter, 1966), are not suited to study the relationship between t he locus of control beliefs of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) on the one hand and strategic, structural and performance variables on the ot her hand. According to Hodgkinson (1992) a more specific scale, measur ing strategic control expectancies, should be used in future research. We argue and empirically illustrate that such a methodology will not lead to interesting research results in the 'strategic leadership' dom ain. More specifically, measures of firm-specific control expectancies are likely to be influenced by the CEO's perception of the situationa l context of the firm and are therefore not indicative of fundamental personality differences between CEOs. Consequently, such measures cann ot give an answer to the basic research question whether and why the p ersonality of CEOs plays an important role in explaining organizationa l behavior and performance.