 Developed by Robert R.

Blake and
Jake Mounton
 In the year 1964
 Blake and Mouton of university of
Texas proposed a two dimensional
leadership theory called The
leadership Grid that builds on the
work of the Ohio state and
Michigan studies.
 This model is based on the basic assumption that
“The Managerial Grid is the key orientations for
achieving production through the people”.
 Blake and Mouton elaborate a model, which tries
to understand the different attitudes of managers
toward the human resources and the other
resources involved in the organization.
 This is very important because a manager has to
have the best skills and to be able to keep all the
resources co-ordinated toward achieving the
project’s goal.
 The Blake and Mouton leadership grid as
shown in
 Figure 1 uses two axes:
 Concern for production which is plotted on the
X axis:
 Concern for production is the amount of
emphasis, which the manager places, on
accomplishing the task in hand, achieving a
high level of production and getting results or
profits.
This is represented along the vertical
axis of the Grid.
Concern for people is the amount of
emphasis, which the manager gives to
subordinates and colleagues as
individuals and to their needs and
expectations.
 9,9: Team Management or Teamwork
 9,1: Authority-Compliance management
 5,5: Middle-of-the-Road Management
 1,9: Country Club Management
 1,1: Impoverished Management
 This style of leadership is considered to be ideal.
Managers with 9,9 rating style have great concern
for both people and production. They work to
motivate employees to reach their highest levels of
accomplishment.
 They believe in creating a situation whereby
people can satisfy their own needs by commitment
to the objectives of the organization.
 Managers will discuss problems with the staff,
seek their ideas and give them freedom of action.
 Difficulties in working relationships will be
handled by confronting staff directly and
attempting to work out solutions with them.
 They are also known as Autocratic Managers. Managers in
this position have great concern for production and
little concern for people.
 They desire tight control in order that tasks are done
effectively.
 They consider creativity and human relations to be
unnecessary.
 They tend to rely on centralized system and the use of
authority. Staff is regarded as a means of production
and motivation is based on competition between
people in order to get work done. If staff challenge an
instruction or standard procedure they are likely to be
viewed as uncooperative.
 Middle of the Road Management (or Organization Man
Management) with the approach of “live and let live”
and the tendency to avoid the real issue. This style of
management is the “dampened pendulum, with
managers swinging between concern for production
and concern for people managers to balance their
concern for both people and production, but are not
committed to either.
 Under pressure, this style of management tends to
become task management (9, 1). But where this strains
relations and causes resentment from staff, pressure is
eased and managers adopt a compromise approach. If
there is a swing too much the other way (towards 1,9)
managers are likely to take a tighter and more
hardened approach.
 These managers believe that a contended staff will
undertake what is required of them and achieve a
reasonable level of output.
 Production is secondary to the avoidance of
conflict and maintenance of harmony among the
staff.
 Managers will seek to find compromises between
staff and solutions acceptable to everyone.
 Although innovation may be encouraged, they
tend to reject good ideas if likely to cause
difficulties among the staff.
 Low concern for production and low concern
for people.
 It is often referred to as laissez-faire leadership.
Leaders in this position have little
 concern for people or productivity, avoiding
taking sides, and stay out of conflicts. They do
just enough to get by. Managers with a 1,1
rating tend to be remote from their
subordinates and believe in the minimum
movement from their present position.
 A Review of the Managerial Grid Model of
Leadership and its Role as a Model of Leadership
Culture
By Peter L. Molloy
Aquarius Consulting
March 30, 1998
Study Type Individual level Team culture level outcomes

Blake and Longitudinal Boss's work effort Productivity

Mouton (1964) Problem liveliness Cost savings
Decision quality Profitability
Profit
consciousness
Win-win conflict
solving
Intra-group and
intergroup
relations
Beer and Longitudinal Leader behavior Integration Productivity
Kleisath (1971) Peer Satisfaction
supportiveness Commitment
Group norms
Communication
Inter-group relations
Hart (1974) Longitudinal Work "culture" Performance
Attitudes
Bernadin and Cross sectional SAMS1
Alvares (1976) Conflict resolving
method
Leader
effectiveness
Keller (1978) Longitudinal Leadership style Organizational Satisfaction
climate
Power relationships
 team management approach is the best style because it
improves performances, lowers employee turnover and
absenteeism and grants employee satisfaction.
 Moreover the Managerial Grid encourages managers to
devote more time on managing human resources, because
they usually spend more time managing easier resources.
 In fact, human resources are quite complex to measure and
to allocate; that’s why managers should devote time to these
more challenging resources.
 The theory of the Managerial Grid has been used for 35
years in training managers about working with people.
 It is also important because it can help project managers
look at managing projects and resources more effectively.
 Bernardin and Alvares (1976) have highly
criticized the previous longitudinal attempts to test
the Grid model and adopted a cross-sectional
approach.
 They conducted what they described as a "rare
empirical test" of the model. However, their test
was focused on individual level variables and did
not address the broader cause-effect relationships .
They sought to predict leadership effectiveness
(based on subordinate or peer ratings) and conflict
resolution style (confrontation, compromise or
forcing) based on classifications of individuals as
intrinsically Task (9,1), Middle (5,5) or Team (9,9)
oriented in their leadership style.
 No significant relationships were found. They
found that individual Grid leadership style, as
measured, was not a significant predictor of
conflict resolution method, i.e., in effect a 9,9
individual leadership style was not
significantly associated with a 9,9 individual
conflict resolution style. Further, 9,9 leadership
style was not associated with significantly
higher leader effectiveness scores than the
other two classifications.
 Leadership in Higher Education
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science
Vol. 2 No. 13; July 2012
 The important organizational outcomes such as job
satisfaction, commitment and trust were not included
as dependent variables in the previous studies so
future studies can be done by considering these
variable.
 It is proposed that initial research focus on only the
question that impact of Teamwork leadership on
culture and organizational outcomes so other
management styles should also be take into
consideration .
 As according to some studies Teamwork leadership
culture is not associated with positive outcomes in the
organization so further work is needed to predict the
Teamwork leadership culture to be a superior predictor
of positive outcomes in the organizational settings.