Likert Management System
A famous psychologist Rensis Likert and his associates in 1960 conducted an extensive survey of management in more than 200 organizations.
So basically this is like it was in psychologists and in 1960 he started her extensive research on identifying the various management leadership systems and he conducted this research study in three decades in more than 200 organizations. The main objective was to describe the relationship rules and involvement of the manager and the subordinate in the organizational setting.
The whole objective of his research was to establish the relationship, the roles and the involvement of managers and subordinates in an organizational setting. He was interested in identifying the relationship between the manager and the subordinate. The employer and the employee, and he wanted to study that relationship in the organization. So within the organization, he wanted to explore the relationship between the top management and the people who are working under them. So what are the major findings? So after three decades of research, they identified four types of leadership styles.
Likert’s Leadership Styles
- The first one Was the exploitative, authoritative
- The second one was benevolent, authoritative.
- The third was consultative and
- The fourth was participative leadership.
So these were his four different systems of leadership. So we’ll try to explain each one of them in detail now.
1. Authoritative Leadership
So let us begin with the first one, and that’s called exploitative. Authoritative systems are extremely hierarchical. With power and responsibility lying in the higher levels within the organization.
So in this system Linkert clearly explained and said that the systems are highly hierarchical. That means the structure is completely hierarchy and there is top management and then there is middle management. There is lower-level management and the maximum power and the responsibility lies with the top-level management.
The people who are sitting on the top of the hierarchy, they have all the powers, all the responsibilities and so they are the one who is responsible for each and every action within the organization.
Managers don’t trust their employees at all and due to this they don’t have any say in the decision-making process.
So Likert clearly explained that These top-level managers don’t trust their subordinates. They don’t trust the people who are working in the organization and they believe that they are not reliable and that’s why they don’t. They should not have any say in the decision-making process, so whatever decisions are taken are completely taken by the top management. There will be no participation from the lower level Management or even from the middle-level management.
The top-down communication and the roles were dictated so the communication was always from the top down. That means top management will explain what to do, when to do it, how to do and rules were dictated. You just need to follow so you cannot resist any of the rules which have been given to you. So you have to follow whatever the rules that have been given or assigned by the top management, higher management considered themselves responsible for achieving organizational objectives, but will hold employees responsible for the mistakes that are made at the lower levels.
One of the important parameters of exploitative, authoritative was that top management will take all the credits. for the growth of the organization, they will take responsibility for all the decisions, but if there is any error, any flaw, any mistake made by the lower-level management, they will be held responsible even for their own failure. They used to blame their lower-level management people.
The culture of fear among the employees. So in this method in this system. There was a huge fear among employees because they were not allowed to speak. They will not have any say in the decision-making. They cannot even think about their own rules and that is the reason why they always had a fear of losing their job.
2. Benevolent Leadership
The second style was benevolent authoritative. So what is benevolent, authoritative? Let’s talk about that. In this system, the responsibility still lies in the upper level of the management of the organization, so there is no doubt about it that just like the exploitative authoritative in the benevolent, authoritative, also the power and the responsibility lies in the top-level management. So let’s see what is the difference.
So management, rather than punishing employees are rewarded them for theirs. Good performance, so one of the key features of benevolent authoritative was in exploitative what they used to do. They use to make them fear. They used to punish employees for their mistakes, but in this benevolent, authoritative system they used to reward their employees for their good performance. So rather than creating a fearful Culture, they wanted to convert that fear culture into a reward called superior had more trust in their employees as compared to exploitative authoritative system. So they had more trust in employees. That means superiors believe that their employees are more reliable, they are more trustworthy and they can have a certain kind of say in the decision making.
There is two-way communication. However, upward communication is still limited only to positive information. The important point here is that there was two-way communication. Two-way communication means the information is coming from top to bottom and the information is going from bottom to up. But the upward communication.
This one like the lower management can only give you positive Information if any negative things will happen. Definitely, there will be some kind of fear among the employees, so you are trusted, but you are not trusted blindly. Employees cannot suggest any new idea or recommendation which can make them more productive or satisfied and therefore employees don’t take interest in communicating.
One of the things which we need to understand that whenever we work in an organization, we believe that my ideas or my suggestions will be taken by the top-level management and they will try to use them at a certain level. But if you feel that the top management is not at all interested in taking your ideas and more importantly, even if they ask you to speak.But when you speak, they don’t use those suggestions.
Then you will always be very reluctant or you will always resist to give ideas. So that is the reason why we need to. We need to understand one thing that employees were suggesting things to the top-level management. But top level management was not very interested in taking those ideas and suggestions. From the employees.
3. Consultative Leadership Style
About consultative method in the consultative system manager have yet greater trust on their subordinates and demonstrate as such by implementing ideas or believes this share with their team members. So now the game has changed and in this system, the manager will have a lot of trusts. A greater trust among their employees and they can implement their ideas also, and they are free to share their ideas.
They’re free to share their suggestions with the top-level management and most probably the top level management will also value those ideas and suggestion and incorporate in the decision making while taking any decision open level communication throughout the hierarchy of. Organization to complete hierarchy of the organization right for the top level management to middle to lower. There will be open communication. Top level management can speak to middle level management.
The middle level can speak to lower valuable management and the same can go vice versa as well. Team members are often consulted during the decision-making process, so whenever the company is taking any kind of decision, either at the smaller level scale or even at the larger level scale they let their employees to participate in the process however the ultimate power of the decision will In the decision making process, but the ultimate call will be taken by the top level management. It is the top level management who will be deciding finally what they need to do and what they don’t need to do.
Employee motivation is fueled by incentives including both rewards, responsibility for specific tasks. So in this method, unlike the benevolent. Authoritative method where you used to provide reward here you also like to provide responsibility for specific task, so obviously, you will be getting incentives and reward for your work. But at the same time you will also get responsibility for a certain task which where you will be accountable for doing all the things in this style. Employees are given greater freedom.And involvement in the meaningful task is used to boost motivation, so main motivation in consultative method is that people get’s responsibility. They’re accountable for their job.
They have more freedom. They can take decisions at their level and they even if they can speak their suggestion and idea in front of the top management level because they believe and the top-level management. Do value those suggestions.
4. Participative Leadership
The fourth method is called the participant method, which is the most less fair method. So this system is considered to be the most satisfying to the lower level employees. Obviously this is the most satisfying and why it is satisfying. Let’s talk about that. Upper level management has full trust on their subordinates and actively works with them to part as a part of decision making. Crosses, so in this method the lower level management is considered as very very valuable upper level management completely.
Trust on these lower level management people because they believe they are competent and they have all the necessary skills which are required in an organization and that is the reason why they they can take part in decision making process also. Employees are free to discuss any issue or ideas with the superiors if we are facing any kind of problems or if the lower level management is facing any kind of issue, they can directly talk to the superiors, breaking all the hierarchy, which is a very very good feature of participative style rewards within a participative system or common, and teams are happily cooperative with no direct competition among employees.
So one of the things which is very, very impressive in participative system is obviously there is reward. Obviously there is coordination and there is open level communication. One thing is very very important is there is no conflict and there is no direct comparison or competition among employees. So that really gives a team spirit among the people of working at the lower level.
Management and they can work for the betterment of the organizational level of communication is high, but both horizontally and vertically and teamwork is regular, so there is an open level communication in this system which is works both original as well as vertical. So you can talk in the hierarchy also and you can talk to your peer group members also.So these are the four methods of liquored management-style system. This is also called as liquored.
