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Leadership and Decision-Making

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work is based. In the latter case, Victor Harold Vroom largely failed in making The New Leadership: Managing Participation in Organizations relevant to today's managers and leaders. Hence the original 1976 book is still the more valuable work. Leadership and Decision-Making is a must read for those following the Department of Justice antitrust cases and other maters related to modern business leadership.

It is also a recommended book for anyone who aspires to a leadership position because it is thought provoking and avoids, as much as possible, the mathematics which overwhelm his 1988 work. Many students of leadership will find the concepts presented familiar.

The main message conveyed is that leadership behavior should be dependent on certain characteristics of the general situation in which a decision is to be made. By understanding the situations, readers are able to influence leaders they may work with or judge the appropriateness of decisions made by others.

In 1988 Vroom and Jago attempted to expand this classic work with a mathematical computerized approach that could be used by decision makers in daily practice. This mathematical "expert system" was to correct the discrete nature of the 1976 work's decision trees.

Expert systems, however, are not based in mathematics, but on something that has nothing to do with mathematics called certainty theory. This partially explains deficiencies in the latter work. Leadership and Decision-Making remains the best presentation and in paperback it is an exceptional value.