Date of Award

2009-11-01

Degree Name

PhD Leadership Studies

Dissertation Committee

Fred J. Galloway, EdD, Chair; Johanna S. Hunsaker, PhD, Member; George E. Reed, PhD, Member

Keywords

leader development training program, Leadership studies, management, organizations, simulation, transactional leadership, transformational leadership

Abstract

Organizations devote considerable resources developing employees' capacity for leadership because they believe that "leaders" are essential in the operations of their organizations. Unfortunately, organizations do not have the time or resources to send their employees off for lengthy leader development training programs. This has contributed to the growing popularity of short-term training programs which are relatively inexpensive to conduct. However, researchers are increasingly requesting more empirical studies that examine the impact of these programs, yet these requests have remained largely disregarded. Additionally, there is a lack for developing methodologies to determine whether or not involvement in a short-term program facilitates change in an individual's transformational and transactional leadership behaviors. To address this lack of inquiry, this study examined the impact of a well-recognized leader development simulation on transformational and transactional leadership behaviors among participating mid and upper level managers. A quasi-experimental pre-test, post-test research design was used to measure the impact both from the managers' perspective and their direct reports' perspective. Based on an analysis of the assessments completed by 50 managers and 81 direct reports, the findings suggest that managers perceived significant and positive changes in all of their transformational leadership behaviors and reductions in their transactional behaviors. However, their direct reports perceived significant changes in only one dimension of their manager's transformational leadership behavior: individualized consideration. Direct reports felt that their managers spent more time teaching and coaching them, helped them to develop their strengths, and considered their individual needs more as a result of participating in the training program. Direct reports also saw improvements in leadership effectiveness and were more satisfied with their managers after the training program. In addition, managers who under-estimated their transformational leadership behavior were rated the highest in transformational leadership by their direct reports. Furthermore, managers who dominated more on the Myers-Briggs perceiving scale than the judging scale were identified as being more transformational than other personality types. The findings of this study contribute empirical support for the impact of a leader development program and demonstrate that individuals can change some of their transformational leadership behaviors from participation in a short-term training program.

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Leadership Studies

Download

Share

COinS