Cognitive Resource Theory and the Utilization of the Leader's and Group Members' Technical Competence.

The belief that training leads to improved job performance is often unquestioned. For various reasons, however, research has failed to demonstrate a consistent relationship. Two related experiments investigated the conditions under which technical training for leaders and group members contribute to group performance. The first study compared the effectiveness of decisions in groups in which the leader was a instructed to be either directive or nondirective, and b given a brief training period to provide task-relevant knowledge for making the required group decisions. A second study compared the performance of trained group members under directive and nondirective leaders. As hypothesized, the leaders technical knowledge or expertise contributed to group performance only if the leader was both trained and directive group members task-relevant knowledge contributed to group performance only if the leader was nondirective. The results are discussed in the context of Cognitive Resource Theory.