A descriptive study of power : exploring directors' styles, staff climates and organizational efficiency in human services

This study provides: (1) a literature review and synthesis of power, and (2) an exploration of patterns of relationships among directors' styles, staff climates, and organizational efficiency in human service organizations.

Eleven self selected agencies from across the nation provided the following data: (1) identification of director style, assessed with the thematic apperception method (TAM); (2) staff climate, measured by the Litwin and Stringer Organization Climate Questionnaire; and (3) organizational efficiency, evaluated in a tabulation of the number of clients evaluated, individuals trained and publications produced by agency staff.

The TAM stories were analyzed for the needs for power (N-Pow) and affiliation (N-Aff), and activity inhibition (AI). All director organizational data were analyzed through the use of decision rules and the Spearman rank order correlation.

The specific question researched was: "Is a director with the imperial motivational pattern (IMP) in an agency where the staff climate reflects a particular type of climate more likely to be associated with an efficient organization than other directors with different motive patterns in agencies with different climates?" While none of the rank order correlations reached significance N-Pow was positively related to efficiency and N-Aff was generally negatively related to efficiency. The use of the decision rules and graphic analysis suggested the following results.

McClelland's hypothesis, which associated organizational efficiency with the IMP director style and a particular type of staff climate, was not able to be fully tested because McClelland's ideal climate was not discovered. However, three IMP styled directors were found and one of these three led one of the most efficient organizations. Further, the N-Pow and N-Aff scores of the directors leading the three most efficient agencies were graphically similar. No climate trends were noted among IMP led or most efficient agencies.

The three least efficient organizations were led by directors who ranked lowest in N-Pow; two of these directors also demonstrated dominant N-Aff styles. Further, the two N-Aff dominated directors were associated with normal climates. Thus, directors dominated by N-Aff, and low in N-Pow whose agencies had normal staff climates were all associated with organizational inefficiency.