ASTUDY OF THE CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR AND SUBORDINATE MORALE

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between leadership behavior and subordinate morale.A leadership survey (PM leadership survey questionnaire-Misumi et al., 1970) was administered to employees of a bank five times at 15 month intervals. All bank employees described their own morale and the Performance-oriented and Maintenance-oriented leadership behavior of their immediate supervisor. There were 287 groups for which the supervisor changed between successive surveys and 159 groups for which the supervisor did not change. The average size of each work group, including the supervisor, was 7 people.The main results were as follows:For altered groups, there is no significant correlation between former supervisor, s and successor, s Poriented or M-oriented scores (P. 07; M. 11) while for non-altered groups the correlation between successive surveys is high (P. 64; M. 57). A similar pattem is found between morale scores on successive surveys (altered groups . 23; non-altered groups . 43). Within the altered groups there is a positive correlation between the degree of change in perceived leadership scores and subordinate morale (P. 50; M. 67). These results suggest that supervisor leadership behavior affects subordinate morale to a greater extent than subordinate morale affects supervisor leadership behavior.A Log-LiRear Model was applied to results from the altered groups to further analyze the relationship between the new supervisor's P-M leadership type and subordinate morale scores across successive surveys. Tests for first-degree interactions show a strong relationship between the new supervisor's leadership behavior type and the following year, s subordinate morale. A weaker relatiohship exists between the new supervisor's leadership behavior and the previous year's subordinate morale.The results indicate that although subordinate morale tends to affect leadership behavior, the force of leadership behavior on subordinate morale is much stronger. This supports the assumption of PM leadership theory.