Influence behaviors have generally been affected by personality. In organizational research, Machiavellianism has commonly been defined as the need to develop and defend one¡¦s power and success. Thus, Machiavellianism more likely that personality may predict use of these influence tactics. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships of Machiavellianism and upward influence tactics, and examine the moderating effect of demographic variables. This study selected 2828 business employee to answer the questionnaire, and there are 2761 copies valid return. A factor analysis, there are five dimensions of upward influence tactics: upward device, rational persuasion, impression management, ingratiation and pressure. The result showed that (1) there are hypotheses supported for strongly positive relationship between Machiavellianism and upward influence tactics, (2) the moderating effect of demographic variables were partly supported in this study.

Leadership is a social influence process that is necessary for the attainment of societal and organizational goals. Leadership is both conspicuous in its absence and mysterious in its presence — familiar and yet hard to define. Leadership happens within the power and authority structures of organizations. The body of research on the influence processes of leadership has focused on organizations with clear hierarchical lines of power and authority between boss, subordinate and peer.This dissertation was designed to study the influence processes of leadership within a religious denomination, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA). As a Christian community, ECUSA is guided by the biblical model of servant leadership as it was made known in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. To compare the behavioral influence tactics used by lay and ordained leaders in ECUSA, 152 participants completed the Episcopal Leadership Questionnaire and the agent version of the Influence Behavior Questionnaire (Yukl, 2000). In addition to demographic and contextual variables, participants identified the frequency of use of 11 behavioral influence tactics with a designated target (boss, subordinate, peer, or other/hard to define). Almost one-fifth of the respondents could not classify their influence target according to hierarchical categories. The responses of 75 ordained and 77 lay leaders in ECUSA revealed few statistically significant differences between groups on the use of Yukl's 11 categories of behavioral influence tactics. Both groups used collaboration, consultation and rational persuasion most often. Inspirational appeals, ingratiation and legitimating tactics were used somewhat often. Apprising, coalition tactics, personal appeals, exchange were used infrequently by both groups. Pressure was almost never used as an influence tactic by either group. ANOVA and discriminant function analysis indicated a slight tendency for lay leaders to use collaboration, coalition tactics and exchange more often than ordained leaders. Men used legitimating tactics somewhat more often than women. Women used exchange tactics slightly more often than men. No statistically significant differences were observed in the use of influence tactics when age, type of ministry, education or technical/adaptive work perceptions were used as the categorical variable.This study supported previous research on the directional use of influence tactics, while suggesting possibilities for future research in non-hierarchical organizations. Results also suggested a relationship between leaders' perceptions of their sources of power in the organization and their use of influence tactics. The paucity of statistically significant findings based upon ordination status and the clear presence of a non-hierarchical category of influence target suggest that the explanatory construct of servant leadership plays a role in the power, authority and influence processes of ECUSA. / Ph. D.

The use of influence tactics by sales representatives appears to be related to a number of latent constructs and factors such as, manifest needs, role conflict and role ambiguity, and perception of sales managers' power bases. However, such relationships have not been examined by researchers. These relationships were examined in this study in an effort to improve the current level of understanding of causes and results of the use of influence tactics in a sales environment. The contention of this study was that individuals in work settings engage in a variety of influence tactics, and that the type of influence tactics used are influenced by factors such as personal characteristics of the salespersons, the nature of goals to be achieved, the salespersons' perceptions of their superiors' power bases, and the nature and complexity of the dyadic relationship that exists between supervisor and subordinates.

Self-Directed Work Teams (SDWT) are strategic organization designs based on the belief that the time required to make good decisions decreases when employees are empowered to tap their tacit job knowledge. Because this strategy requires employees to think differently about the way they perform their jobs, the supervisor plays a critical role in SDWT implementations. If leaders fail to adequately manage the challenges associated with the transition to the SDWT structure, employee commitment towards the team and organization at large may suffer, putting the realization of SDWT benefits at risk. To better understand this complicated process, this research describes a field study observation designed to explore the relationship between the constructs of Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness) with employee affective commitment towards a SDWT transition. Additionally, this research evaluates the mediating role leadership influence tactics has on the relationship between Self-Determination Theory and employee affective commitment towards a SDWT transition.

Influence is the "ability to get others to do something they might not otherwise do" (Mowday, 1978, p. 146), and a literature has developed over the past three decades around proactive interpersonal influence tactics. Given (1) the importance of influence to all in society, (2) the significant gaps that exist in the literature on proactive influence tactics, (3) the empirical and theoretical acknowledgement of the pivotal role that contextual forces (i.e., precedent and history) can exert on organizational phenomena, and (4) the prevailing workforce and workplace trends that have highlighted the need to study this topic, the purpose of this dissertation is to examine how precedent impacts leaders, subordinates, and the proactive influence tactics that are employed across performance episodes and leadership successions in teams. In the leadership literature, complexity leadership theory (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007) has identified the importance of contextual forces (i.e., history) on leadership processes. Similarly, in the teams literature, Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt (2005) have outlined the IMOI framework of teams, which accounts for the non-linearity by which teams' inputs, processes/mediators, and outcomes can influence other future team stages across performance episodes. However, although both the leadership and teams literatures have recognized the importance of contextual forces, the difficulty in studying such factors has left these nascent theoretical perspectives under-explored, particularly in the literature on proactive influence tactics. Thus, this study represents an important undertaking because studying influence in teams without accounting for contextual forces limits our understanding of within-team phenomena. In particular, it is important to consider past precedent within an entity when trying to predict future individual-level behavior, influence processes, and outcomes within that entity. In proposing to demonstrate the impact of contextual forces on individuals and teams, I explore how a leader's use of influence tactics during an initial performance episode within a team impacts a subsequent leader's use of influence tactics during a subsequent performance episode within the team. Further, I explore boundary conditions for that relationship (e.g., prior team performance and team member individual differences). In addition, I study how the relationship between a leader's influence tactic use and subordinates' commitment to do what is asked of them is moderated by factors that stem from previous performance episodes within the respective team (e.g., prior role composition and subordinate perceptions of the current leader's effectiveness relative to the effectiveness of his or her predecessor). In order to study the dynamics of proactive influence in light of team precedent, I study project teams characterized by leadership successions that take place over time during a series of performance episodes. The series of hypotheses I have generated is tested in a multi-level moderated mediation research model using Mplus.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. However in order to be successful in influencing others, a manager must be able to know what their subordinates think. With the knowledge of subordinate¡¦s perceptions, managers can perfect their use of influence tactics and then be able to easily perform influence on others. One of the most important aspects that can influence perspectives is culture. In Hofstede¡¦s (1980) study it was found that Chinese societies are high in power distance and can be classified as collective societies. This is the result of Confucianism, which spreads values of social order and harmony. In this society, relationships are extremely important. Another characteristic of the Chinese is that they are elitists, and have a deep-rooted belief that education can raise a person to higher levels in society, thus we can see the importance of having expertise. Because of the high power distance which implies inequality and love of power, and collectivity which implies the difference in treatment between in-group and out-group members, it can be inferred that the Chinese tend to have Machiavellian personality. Thus we can see that the three main factors that influence the acceptableness of different influence tactics are expertise, relationships and Machiavellianism. The purpose of this study is to examine influence tactics from the subordinate¡¦s perspective, and to explore the relationship between expertise, personal relationships, Machiavellianism and influence strategies. The results show that (1) the closeness of the relationship is the most important factor to consider when choosing influence tactics, the closer the relationship, the more tactics one can use, both hard and soft tactics would be acceptable, (2) If the manager is known as having expertise, it would be best to use soft tactics, however subordinates will also accept hard tactics from managers who have a higher education level, (3) there was no significant relationship between influence tactics and Machiavellianism.

Manager¡¦s managerial effectiveness is measured by how successfully he/she influences others. Leaders exert influence tactics to achieve task objective and organizational long-term objectives in a complex environment in order to maximize their job performance. By means of influence tactics, managers exert political behavior over others to achieve their organizational power settings. Thus, the purpose of the study is to understand the relationship between downward influence tactics and job performance. Results showed as following: 1. Male managers use more rationality influence tactic than that of females; female manager¡¦s contextual performance is better than that of males. 2. Managers with age between 30-39 use rationality influence tactic more than those of age 50 and above; managers with age below 30 use network and counteract influence tactics more than those of other age groups; task performance and contextual performance of managers with age over 50 are better than other age groups 3. Single managers use counteract influence tactic more than married managers; task performance and contextual performance of single managers are better than those of married managers 4. Managers with Master/Doctoral degrees use rationality, network, exchange, pressure, and counteract influence tactics more than those of other educational backgrounds. 5. Managers with 1 ~ 3 years working experiences use rationality and counteract influence tactics more than those of other years of working experiences; managers with working experiences over 10 years use network and pressure more than those of other years of working experiences. 6. High-level managers use rationality and pressure influence tactics more than those of other lower level managers; project-based managers use network and counteract influence tactics more than those of other levels of managers. 7. Middle-level managers have higher task performance than that of other levels of managers; high-level managers have higher contextual performance than that of other levels of managers. 8. After using gender, age, martial status, educational background, working experience and job level as control variables, and compare the relationship between downward influence tactics and job performance, we found: 8.1 Managers who are male, age over 35, single, college and below educational background, middle/high level, 5 years and above working experiences, the more rationality influence tactic they use, the better their job performance are. 8.2 Managers who are university and above, have 5 years and above working experiences, the more exchange influence tactic they use, the better their job performance are. 8.3 Managers who have less than 5 years of working experiences, the more pressure influence tactic they use, the better their task performance are. 8.4 Managers who are male, 35 years and above, single, university and below, and middle/high level, the more exchange influence tactic they use, the better their contextual performance they are.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe leadership styles and influence behavior tactics used by college deans with their faculty members. Each of the 104 faculty member respondents completed the Influence Behavior Questionnaire Target-2000 a questionnaire. The IBQ Target-2000 measured the use of influence behavior tactics by deans as interpreted by faculty members. The findings of the study concluded that deans lead and faculty members follow by way of differing influence behavior tactics. The findings suggest that, more times than not, the deans influence attempts resulted in complete commitment by the faculty members. It was also found that deans prefer to utilize certain influence behavior tactics more than others. Generally, deans used Rational persuasion, Consultation, and Inspiration tactics approximately twice as often as Exchange tactics, Personal appeals, and Pressure tactics. It was found that the dean's choice and use of influence behavior tactics are dependent, to some degree, on the faculty member's gender or academic status. Furthermore, it was concluded that deans from non-unionized colleges, small colleges and private colleges utilize differing types of influence behavior tactics than their counterparts at unionized, large, public colleges. Finally, it was concluded that deans utilize influence behavior tactics differently with tenured faculty than non-tenured faculty. The study raised some interesting questions that merit further inquiry and study. In summation, there is a perception among faculty members that deans do not use influence behavior tactics uniformly. Other relationships, theories, hypotheses or conclusions remain unsettled at this point in time.

This paper lays the historical background for why women and leadership is an important topic today in order to discuss gender differences in communication styles, influence tactics, and leadership styles. This paper also outlines barriers women face when trying to attain and succeed in leadership positions. The analysis should provide a greater understanding of how men and women differ, especially in leadership and management positions, and what companies can do to help women overcome gender bias and discrimination in the workplace.

No description available.