Change-centered leadership: An extension of the two-dimensional model

In three samples drawn from people taking courses at staff training centres in Sweden, Finland and the U.S.A., a factor analysis of a leadership behaviour questionnaire revealed the same pattern of leadership styles. All the participants described their own manager in a 36-item questionnaire; the managers were also rated for managerial competence and the respondent's personal attitude to the manager was given. Three strong factors emerged in each sample: the two well-known factors, employee-centeredness (consideration) and production-centeredness (structure), and a third factor which has to do with promoting change. A factor analysis was then run on the total sample of 711 managers. The third factor may have developed in today's companies as a consequence of the accelerating rate of change in many areas, which affects both products and processes.