리더의 딜레마: 구조주도행동의 부정적 효과 검증

This study suggests a leader’s dilemma that a leader shows structuring behavior toward subordinates with low ability, but a leader’s structuring behavior has a negative rather than a positive effect on subordinate performance. And this study investigates the leader’s dilemma through predicting and analyzing the relationships between subordinate competency and subordinate performance, subordinate competency and a leader’s structuring behavior and among subordinate competency, a leader’s structuring behavior and subordinate performance. The hypotheses of this study are as follows: first, subordinates with high competency will show high performance. Second, a leader will show structuring behavior toward subordinates with low competency. That is, subordinate competency will negatively relate to a leader’s structuring behavior. Third, a leader’s structuring behavior toward subordinates with low competency will show a negative effect rather than a positive effect. In order to test the hypotheses of this study questionnaires are distributed and data are collected from employees in different organizations such as public administration, educational institutions and private firms. Data from 665 employees in public administration, educational institutions and private firms support that the leader’s dilemma exists. That is, a leader shows structuring behavior toward subordinates with low competency, but a leader’s structuring behavior toward subordinates with low competency has a negative effect on subordinate performance. However, this result does not indicate that path-goal theory of leadership, one of competitive theories of leader’s dilemma in which a leader is able to increase performance of a subordinate with low ability through structuring behavior, is not valid. So this study investigates the interaction effect of subordinate competency and leader’s structuring behavior on subordinate performance through a hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that the path-goal theory is not supported. These overall results indicate that a leader’s dilemma does exist. These results imply that a leader should not show structuring behavior toward a subordinate with low competency. In other words, a leader’s structuring behavior is not effective to subordinates with low competency. So a leader should not use structuring behavior but has to think of why his or her subordinate has low competency: a leader should identify whether a subordinate’s low competency is caused from job difficulty or a lack of educational training system in the organization. After that a leader should find a way to increase a subordinate’s low competency. There is one way to increase a subordinate’s low competency through using persuasion rather than using structuring behavior. In addition, as self-fulfilling prophecy does predict, a leader should believe that subordinates with low competency can improve their low competency in the future and so should continuously show trust toward them. In conclusion section, limitations of this study and directions for future study are suggested.