Decision-Making as a Social Process: Normative and Descriptive Models of Leader Behavior.

Abstract : The normative model of leadership, proposed in earlier Technical Reports, is extended to include 'individual' problems (i.e., decision situations affecting only one subordinate) in addition to previously studied 'group' problems (i.e., decision situations affecting more than one subordinate). Descriptive models of leadership behavior are developed using subject responses to a problem set containing 24 group and 24 individual decision-making scenarios (case descriptions systematically varied on the eight attributes used in the normative model). Each of 98 leaders, including high ranking military officers from each branch of the service, was asked to specify the leadership process he would employ if confronted with each of the 48 cases. The results suggest that some findings supported by previous work can be generalized to individual situations. Comparison of the descriptive models, however, points to certain critical differences in the behavior of leaders faced with group versus individual problems. Evidence is presented to show the nature and implications of these differences. (Author)