Leadership style, subordinate personality, and task type as predictors of performance and satisfaction with supervision.

Investigated interactions between leadership style, subordinate personality, and task type, and the effects of different combinations of these variables on group performance and satisfaction with supervision. Three different types of leaders (N = 48) were selected from 500 male undergraduates using Troldahl and Powell's short-form Dogmatism Scale: (a) high in human relations and high in task orientation, (b) low in human relations and high in task orientation, and (c) high in human relations and low in task orientation. Each leader worked with 8 high- and 8 low-dogmatism Ss on 4 tasks that differed in ambiguity and difficulty. As predicted, there were significant interaction effects for Leader * Subordinate * Task combinations. These effects on group performance were strongest for difficult-ambiguous tasks. Subordinates, regardless of their personality, were significantly more satisfied with leadership behavior that was high in human relations orientation. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)