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285 different ports in the most efficient manner (i.e., covering the least number of miles). The final task
required the leaders to teach their men, without speaking, how to disassemble and reassemble an automatic
pistol. All of these tasks were developed with the assistance of Belgian navy officers in charge of the camp,
290 and the men participating in this study considered the tasks fair and appropriate.
26.The performance of each team was carefully measured and the performance scores for the four tasks
were then intercorrelated to determine whether the leaders who performed well on one task would also
295 perform well on the others. The results showed that the median correlation was only 0.14, i.e., few
individuals performed consistently well or poorly.
27. Similar results were obtained in other studies (Fiedler and Chemers, 1968). In fact, one major
300 investigation of bomber crew performance during the Korean War, by Knoell and Forgays (1952), showed
that there were no consistently effective commanders on such apparently similar tasks as visual bombing
and radar bombing, and no relationships between bomber crews in the effectiveness of performing such
tasks as navigating accurately, bombing, or maintaining the plane.
305 28.The implications of these studies are quite clear. They cannot be shrugged off as being inadequate, or
based on too small a sample of groups, or consisting of meaningless tasks. The findings must be interpreted
as indicating that leadership performance on one type of task is essentially unrelated to leadership
310 performance on another type of task. Therefore, leadership traits, or any personality traits, are not likely to
have a large influence on the performance of different leadership tasks. This would mean that we cannot
315 really speak of effective or ineffective leaders. Rather, a leader may be effective on one task and ineffective
on another.
From: Fred Fiedler and Martin Chemers, Leadership and Effective
Management, 1974.
THE ROLE OF ELITES
by Edward Shils
1.Under colonial conditions, the underdeveloped countries lacked the effective demand which permits a
modern intellectual class, in its full variety, to come into existence. Persons who acquired intellectual
5
qualifications had only a few markets for their skills. The higher civil service was by all odds the most
bountiful of these, but opportunities were restricted because it was small in size and the posts were mainly
pre-empted by foreigners. (In India in the last decade of the British Raj, there were only about 1200 such
10
posts in the Indian Civil Service. and of these, a little less than half were filled by Indians. In other
countries, the number of posts was smaller and the proportion held by persons of indigenous origin was also
much smaller.)
15 2. Joumalism, as a result of generally widespread illiteracy, was a stunted growth and provided only a
few opportunities, which were not at all remunerative. Journalism under colonial conditions was much
more of an unprofitable political mission than a commercially attractive investment, and most of it was on
the minuscule scale.
20 3.The medical profession was kept small by the costliness of the course of study, the absence of an
effective demand for medical services, and the pre-emption of much of the senior level of the medical
service by the government and its consequent reservation for foreigners.
25 4.Teaching at its lower levels was unattractive to intellectuals because it involved living in villages away
from the lights and interests of the larger towns, and because it was extremely unremunerative. Nor
30
were there many opportunities in it. On the secondary and higher levels, opportunities were also meager. Of
all the underdeveloped countries, only India had an extensive modem college and university system before
1920; after that date the additions to the Indian system of higher education came very slowly until the eve
35
of the Second World War and the chaos which accompanied it. Outside of India there were at most only a
few thousand posts available in institutions of higher learning in all of colonial Asia and Africa, and some
of these were reserved for Europeans (and Americans, in the two American colleges of the Middle East).
40
Thus opportunities for teaching on the upper levels of an extremely lean educational system were few.
Where the authorities sought to maintain a high standard, they were very particular about whom they chose
to employ. (It should be added that political considerations, at this time of nationalistic, anti-colonialist
45
effervescence, likewise restricted the chances of entry, since many able young men disqualified themselves
by the high jinks of adolescent politics during their student days).
5.The Legal Profession. For these reasons many of the intellectually gifted and interested who also had