Research on Leadership and Group Decision in Japanese Organisations

Cet article resume plus de 20 ans de recherches de laboratoire et de terrain sur le leadership au Japon, recherches basees sur la theorie du commandement Performance-Maintenance. Comme resultats globaux, on trouve qu'un leader haut situe dans les fonctions P et M (leader PM) par ses subordonnes directs s'est revele plus efficace que ceux qui l'etaient pour seulement l'une des deux fonctions (leaders P ou M), ou bas sur les deux (leader de type pm). Cette derniere categorie etait la moins efficace. Les travaux de laboratoire ont montre que l'efficacite du leadership PM ne resultait pas de la simple sommation des effets des comportements P et M, mais du produit de leur conjonction interactive. Trois etudes de decision de groupe menees dans differentes usines japonaises sont exposees dans la seconde partie de l'article. Tout en utilisant les procedures de decision de groupe lewiniennes, l'auteur mesura le leadership et organisa une formation au commandement et a la retroaction. On constata que dans ces usines le nombre d'accidents du travail et de la circulation baissa significativement. This paper summarises more than 20 years of field and laboratory research on leadership in Japan, based on the Performance-Maintenance (PM) Leadership Theory. As a general result, a leader who was evaluated high in both P and M functions (PM-type leader) by his/her immediate followers, was found to be more effective than those who were high in only one of the two functions (P-type and M-type leaders), or low on both of them (pm-type leaders). The latter type of leader was found the least effective. Laboratory studies suggested that the effectiveness of PM-type leadership was not just the sum of the effect of P and M behaviours, but the result of their interactive combination. Three studies of group decision conducted in different Japanese plants are described in the second half of the paper. While introducing Lewinean group decision procedures, the author conducted leadership measurement, feedback and leadership training. As a result, the number of traffic and work accidents, which characterised these plants, decreased significantly.