마크 트웨인의 『 아더 왕궁의 코네티컷 양키 』: 행크 모건의 리더십 분석

Abstract

The readers of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court have long been debating on the correct interpretation of the fiction. As Twain’s contemporary readers did, some critics in the twentieth century, read it as a story that emphasizes America’s superiority to England, while others insist that it is an acute criticism of America, not England. This paper provides a new perspective on the controversial fiction by applying Robert J. House’s Path-Goal Theory of Leadership, an established leadership of the discipline of Organizational Behavior, a branch of Management. It focuses on Hank’s leadership style that he uses in his relationship with the subordinates, particularly Sandy, Clarence, and the knights. For that, it analyzes some important contingency factors which critically affects the effectiveness of leadership styles—task ambiguity, locus of control, and authority. The three groups of people turn out to have differences in contingency factors. Sandy has low task ambiguity, external locus of control, and high respect of formal authority while Clarence has high task ambiguity, internal locus of control, and high respect of formal authority. The Knights have low task ambiguity, external locus of control, and low respect of formal authority. This paper shows that contrary to some critics who complain that Hank is inconsistent throughout the fiction, he is consistent in using leadership styles to each group of people. He adopts a proper leadership to Clarence, his executive officer. His leadership in relation to the knights is unsuitable, which causes trouble and finally leads to the total destruction of the civilization that he established. From this, this paper argues that the fiction may be Twain’s experiment of what will happen when a typical businessman in the nineteenth century America is situated in new environment. Twain seems to be quite pessimistic.