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This study aims to provide a response to the commentary by Yuan on the paper “Marketing or Methodology” in this issue of EJM.

Conceptual argument and statistical discussion.

The authors find that some of Yuan’s arguments are incorrect, or unclear. Further, rather than contradicting the authors’ conclusions, the material provided by Yuan in his commentary actually provides additional reasons to avoid partial least squares (PLS) in marketing research. As such, Yuan’s commentary is best understood as additional evidence speaking against the use of PLS in real-world research.

This rejoinder, coupled with Yuan’s comment, continues to support the strong implication that researchers should avoid using PLS in marketing and related research.

Marketing researchers should avoid using PLS in their work.

This rejoinder supports the earlier conclusions of “Marketing or Methodology,” with additional argumentation and evidence.

Over the past 20 years, partial least squares (PLS) has become a popular method in marketing research. At the same time, several methodological studies have demonstrated problems with the technique but have had little impact on its use in marketing research practice. This study aims to present some of these criticisms in a reader-friendly way for non-methodologists.

Key critiques of PLS are summarized and demonstrated using existing data sets in easily replicated ways. Recommendations are made for assessing whether PLS is a useful method for a given research problem.

PLS is fundamentally just a way of constructing scale scores for regression. PLS provides no clear benefits for marketing researchers and has disadvantages that are features of the original design and cannot be solved within the PLS framework itself. Unweighted sums of item scores provide a more robust way of creating scale scores.

The findings strongly suggest that researchers abandon the use of PLS in typical marketing studies.

This paper provides concrete examples and techniques to practicing marketing and social science researchers regarding how to incorporate composites into their work, and how to make decisions regarding such.

This work presents a novel perspective on PLS critiques by showing how researchers can use their own data to assess whether PLS (or another composite method) can provide any advantage over simple sum scores. A composite equivalence index is introduced for this purpose.

This article provides a commentary on the article “Emotional intelligence, leadership effectiveness, and team outcomes” by Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, and Buckley (2003). The role of emotional intelligence (EI) as a construct in organizational behavior is addressed by discussing (a) the boundary conditions of theories in organizational behavior; (b) the relative importance of EI, g and personality in leadership effectiveness; (c) whether EI is needed for leadership effectiveness; (d) the degree EI is a unique construct versus a part of normal psychological functioning; (e) the relationship between EI and levels of analyses in organizations; and (f) whether EI is important for charismatic leadership. This discussion concludes with a cautionary note about premature excitement over the use of EI in the workplace.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been embraced by many practitioners and academicians without clear empirical support for the construct. In this rejoinder and extension of an earlier comment, I highlight the importance of using methodologically defensible scientific criteria for conducting or evaluating research. I review literature demonstrating that EI models are beset with problems concerning their validity and show that support for the EI construct may be based more on tangential speculation than on empirical findings. Although I find some common positions with EI researchers such as Prati et al., I underline contradictions and inconsistencies which may cast doubt on the necessity of EI for understanding and predicting leadership effectiveness.

Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, and Buckley (2003) have proposed that emotional intelligence is a critical component in effective team leadership and team outcomes. John Antonakis (2003) questioned whether the first claim in this article, that emotional intelligence is critical for effective team leadership, is justified. He presents six questions that illuminate his reservations. In response, the present authors attempt to answer his reservations by clarifying and explicating the reasoning behind this claim.

In this chapter, we briefly trace the history of the neo-charismatic movement and review Bass and Avolio’s full-range leadership theory (FRLT). We present the FRLT as the flame bearer of the movement, and argue that it should be used as a platform to integrate similar leadership theories. We identify conditions that may moderate the factor structure of the FRLT, and review the validity of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire – the instrument underlying the FRLT. Furthermore, we identify theoretical deficiencies in the FRLT and propose the addition of a broad class of behaviors labeled instrumental leadership, which, we argue, is distinct from transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. Finally, we discuss the utility of dispositional variables in predicting the emergence of leadership.

John Antonakis: To SFA, AFA, AFA, BFA, MFA, RFA and the unnamed bunnies.

A key distinction, mentioned by Dubin (1979, p. 227), is “leadership at a distance.” When Dubin was writing, there was little research on this topic. More recently, however, there has been an upsurge in leadership-at-a-distance work. We see a major review by Antonakis and Atwater (2002), following an earlier one by Napier and Ferris (1993), along with work by authors such as Shamir (1995) and Waldman and Yammarino (1999).

We explore how leaders get real commitment for their visions. We propose that leaders need to pay significant attention to and get broad involvement in three stages of the vision creation and dissemination process. First, they need involvement in the creation of the vision and buy-in from the senior levels. Second, when cascading the vision further down the organization, they need to allow for real discussion and input. Third, leaders need to seriously track and assess the impact of the vision implementation.