BOOK REVIEWS 115

reference but also as a benchmark against which ®ndings from more limited data can
be measured. Researchers in particular will ®nd useful the concluding Chapter and
Appendix which contain the authors' suggestions about additional uses of the NOS
data, how to obtain it, and improved methods for future data collection.

DOROTHY P. MOORE
Professor of Management
The Citadel
Charleston, SC, U.S.A.

Leadership: Theory and Practice. Peter G. Northouse, Sage Publications, Thousand

Oaks, CA, 1997.

Leadership is a topic of perennial interest to researchers and managers alike. Although

there are a number of new books on leadership, most of them are too abstract and
theoretical, and of limited interest to managers who are much more interested in how a
particular theory can be translated into practice. Leadership: Theory and Practice by
Northouse attempts to strike a balance between theory and practice.
The book uses a consistent format throughout. Each Chapter starts with a compre-
hensive summary of a particular leadership theory/approach, followed by a discussion of
its strengths and weaknesses. The Chapter then turns to the practical applications of the
theory, using short cases and leadership instruments to illustrate the theory or approach.
In the ®rst eight Chapters, Northouse leads the reader on a journey through the
fascinating and complex terrain of leadership study from the early `Great Man' and trait
theories to current popular approaches to leadership. The book is evenly divided
between traditional leadership research (e.g., traits, style, and contingency theories) and
the frontiers of leadership research (e.g., leader±member exchangeÐLMX, trans-
formational leadership, teams, gender di€erences in styles of leadership, etc.). The last
four Chapters of the book are contributed by his associates, and they focus on issues
such as team leadership (Susan E. Kogler Hill), the psychodynamic approach (Ernest L.
Stech), women and leadership (Dayle M. Smith) and popular approaches to leadership
(Mary Ann Bowman).
Chapter 1 provides a good introduction to some key issues in leadership, starting with
the distinctions among management, leadership and power. It serves as a warm up to the
rest of the book and gets people thinking about the topic. Chapter 2 presents the trait
approach in a succinct manner, reviewing past research and bringing the reader up to
date with the recent work on leadership traits which argues for focus on a select set of
traits that are indicative of leadership potential or the motivation to lead. The
questionnaire at the end of the Chapter is a useful tool for assessing one's leadership
traits and comparing them to the perceptions of one's peers and subordinates.
Chapter 4, which presents Situational Leadership Theory (SLT), relies on a model
that could not be located in either the Hersey and Blanchard (1993) book on Situational
Leadership Theory (Management of Organizational Behavior) or any major leadership or
organizational behavior book. The author could have better served his readers by
presenting the most popular version of the model and perhaps discussing the various
modi®cations to the model over time. (Incidentally, Ken Blanchard has yet another
version of the model that is suitable for teams in his new book, Gung Ho!, Blanchard
and Bowles, 1997). In analyzing the cases in Chapter 4, readers are likely to arrive at
di€erent conclusions about the appropriate leadership style to use in a given situation
due to some ambiguities in the situations described. The cases would bene®t from some
clari®cation and ®ne-tuning.
Chapter 6 summarizes the main tenets of Path±Goal Theory and shows how
managers can apply them to their work situations. The discussion about the role of the

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 21, 113±121 (2000)
116 BOOK REVIEWS

leader in removing obstacles from the subordinates' path is very well presented. In fact,
this clear presentation makes it one of the more intuitively appealing and useful
Chapters.
Chapters 7 through 12 shine the spotlight on more recent approaches to leadership.
Chapter 7, which covers LMX theory, does a reasonable job of presenting the main
ideas of the theory. But the section on application of the theory is rather weak because it
is somewhat inconsistent with the author's earlier contention, that LMX theory is
moving towards recommending that leaders develop high quality relationship with all
their subordinates. The application section seems to suggest that leaders ought to
di€erentiate among subordinates and rely on only a select few to get things done in
organizations. Thus the examples in this section continue to foster one of the major
criticisms of the theory which is that it is basically unfair.
Chapter 8 does a good job of presenting Bass and Avolio's model of transformational
leadership but the author does an injustice to charismatic leadership which he dismisses
in a couple of pages. There is a tremendous amount of research on this model and it is
one of the most important components of transformational leadership. However, the
author has included the Tichy and Devanna model of transformational leadership
because it provides students with a framework to study organizational change at the
macro level. The Chapters on team leadership (Chapter 9) and women and leadership
(Chapter 11) are well written. These Chapters address some important emerging issues
in leadership involving the increased use of teams in organizations and the growing
representation of women in the managerial ranks of organizations. The section on
characteristics of team excellence is very relevant and useful for diagnosing team
e€ectiveness. The Chapter as a whole could be improved by incorporating some of the
recent practitioner ideas and experiences on teams (e.g., The Wisdom of Teams by
Katzenbach and Smith (1993) and Company of Heroes by Sims and Manz(1995)). The
Chapter on women and leadership paints a very depressing picture of the current
situation; however, it ends on a more positive note and discusses how women's
leadership styles may be suitable for the challenges of the new millennium. The inclusion
of a Chapter on cross-national and multicultural issues in leadership would have
rounded out this section nicely.
What do all these di€erent leadership approaches mean for the practising manager/
leader? There is a bewildering array of leadership theories to choose from and no overall
road map. On the other hand, the author has done well to include the last Chapter,
which deals with popular approaches to leadership (e.g., Covey, Senge, Du Pree, Kouzes
and Posner).
In summary, Leadership: Theory and practice is very readable, well organized, and
written with an eye to making the theory understandable. While the short case studies
set in di€erent contexts are useful, the inclusion of more in-depth case studies depicting
real life situations and leadership in well-known companies would further enhance the
usefulness of this book.
RAJNANDINI PILLAI
College of Business Administration,
California State University, San Marcos,
San Marcos, CA 92096, U.S.A.

References

Blanchard, K. H. and Bowles, S. (1997). Gung Ho!: Turn on the People in Any Organization. William
Morrow & Company.
Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. H. (1993). Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human
Resources, Prentice-Hall: New Jersey.

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 21, 113±121 (2000)
 BOOK REVIEWS 117

Katzenbach, J. R. and Smith, D. K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance
Organization, HarperBusiness: New York.
Sims, H. P. and Manz, C. C. (1995). Company of Heroes: Unleashing the Power of Self-Leadership, John
Wiley & Sons.

Face, Harmony, and Social Structure: An Analysis of Organizational Behavior Across

Cultures. P. Christopher Earley, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997, 244 pages.

P. Christopher Earley's Face, Harmony, and Social Structure presents a model of how
people form and maintain their social identities and how di€erences in societal cultures
a€ect the character of the identities developed and the mechanisms used to maintain
them. The key concept is `face', which Earley notes, `lies at the very heart of how people
de®ne themselves and determines who they are within a given social system' ( p. 8). The
model combines the micro and macro levels of analysis and spans several literatures,
ranging from psychology to international management.
Face is de®ned as `the evaluation of self based on internal and external (to the
individual) judgments concerning a person's adherence to moral rules of conduct and
position within a given social structure' ( p. 43). Earley notes that face is often mistaken as
a concept applicable only to Asian cultures and argues `that although the way face
manifests itself in various cultures may di€er, everyone has a concept of face and this
concept in¯uences basic behavior and actions' ( p. 14). Chapters 3, 4 and 5 explore the
concept of face in detail, reviewing both the Eastern and Western literatures. Two types or
aspects of face are discussed: lian, which `involves moral character, social obligations, and
ethicality,' and mianzi, which `involves prestige, status, and social recognition' ( p. 80).
The relative salience of mianzi and lian to individuals within a society is in¯uenced by
that society's culture. Earley treats culture as a collage of several dimensions that have
been presented in the literature, namely, individualism±collectivism, power distance,
tight versus loose, relationship to nature, masculinity/femininity, and shame versus guilt.
The relationships between mianzi and lian with the dimensions of power distance and
individualism provides some insight into the model. Earley expects that mianzi will be
more salient in individualistic cultures and lian more salient in collectivistic cultures.
Moreover, mianzi will be more salient than lian in high power distance cultures. The
resulting two-by-two table ( p. 133) shows four di€erent patterns of face, where the
di€erent aspects of face (mianzi and lian) are relatively more or less important. Earley
also describes predicted e€ects for the other cultural dimensions.
These di€erent patterns are important in understanding harmony, which Earley
de®nes as `the processes operating as people in a social system regulate face to develop
and maintain their sense of position and identity in the system' ( p. 120). Earley also
notes that 'such regulation is the product of the types of exchanges that occur in a given
society based on shared principle' ( p. 125). He links together the concepts of face,
culture, and harmony by drawing on Fiske's (1991) classi®cation of four principles of
social exchange: communal sharing (resources allocated by need), authority ranking
(resources allocated by rank), equality matching (resources allocated equally), and
market pricing (resources allocated equitably). While Earley indicates that all four
principles are likely to operate in every society, he identi®es the ones that are likely most
prevalent in di€erent types of cultures. For instance, the social exchange mechanism
identi®ed for collective, low power distance cultures is communal sharing; in individual-
ist, high power distance cultures, the most prevalent type is market pricing. The
implication is that di€erent aspects of face will be emphasized in di€erent types of
societal contexts and the regulation mechanisms individuals use to maintain face will
vary as well.
Earley argues that these di€erences in the relative importance of mianzi and lian across
societies and in the way that face is regulated create cross-cultural di€erences in

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 21, 113±121 (2000)