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1 – 10 of over 44000Andrew Carnes, Jeffery D. Houghton and Christopher N. Ellison
The purpose of this paper is to determine the primary basis upon which raters make decisions in the context of selection for formal leadership positions. Specifically, this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine the primary basis upon which raters make decisions in the context of selection for formal leadership positions. Specifically, this paper examines the applicant’s personality, the rater’s personality, and the congruence between the applicant’s personality and the rater’s implicit leadership theories (ILTs) as predictors of interview scores.
Design/methodology/approach
The hypotheses were tested via random coefficient modeling analyses using HLM software with the control variables included in Step 1 and the main effects entered in Step 2, and interaction effects in Step 3 as appropriate.
Findings
Analyses suggest that both applicant and rater personality impact interview scores, but raters do not appear to select leaders on the basis of their conceptualization of an ideal leader.
Research limitations/implications
The results suggest that raters may not consider their own ILTs when attempting to identify future leaders. Given this lack of a natural tendency toward selecting individuals that match one’s perceptions of an ideal leader, future research should focus on adapting current selection methods to leader selection and the development of new selection methods that are more valid.
Practical implications
These findings suggest that current staffing practices may not encompass the most effective tools for selecting future leaders of the organization. These results highlight the importance of clarifying the outcome goals of the selection process in advance by giving raters a clear representation of the qualities and ideals that should be present in potential leaders.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to examine the relationships between personality and ILTs in the context of a formal leadership selection process and makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing insight into the influence of both rater and applicant personality differences along with rater conceptualizations of ideal leadership in the context of formal leadership selection.
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Solomon Arulraj David and Abdulai Abukari
The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers’ perspectives on school leaders’ selection and development strategies in order to propose/recommend strategies that are relevant…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers’ perspectives on school leaders’ selection and development strategies in order to propose/recommend strategies that are relevant to the context of the United Arab Emirates.
Design/methodology/approach
The study gathered data through group discussion of school teachers who attended the module “leadership for school improvement” taught by the researchers. The teachers who participated in this study include local and expat teachers who are currently working in both public and private schools in the UAE. The reports of the group discussion were used as transcripts and thematic analysis was used to analyse the results.
Findings
The results indicate that there is a strong aspiration for setting better standards for the selection of the school leaders. There is great interest in engaging experts and instrumenting accredited continued professional development training on developing school leaders. The respondents emphasised on the required qualifications, experiences and knowledge, and the need for mentorship approach.
Research limitations/implications
The key limitation of the study is the smaller sample size.
Practical implications
The outcome of the study offers necessary insight to the decision makers on the selection and development of school leaders in the UAE.
Social implications
The study insists that the social and cultural values of the UAE to be considered in the selection and development of school leaders in the UAE.
Originality/value
The study offers potential gap and scope for further research on school leadership in the UAE that could be further explored with many samples and cases for broader understanding.
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Mona Taghavi, Hamed Taghavi and Milad Taghavi
Due to the increased research funding which academic institutions receive to perform advanced R&D, there is an indispensable need to have a systematic approach for selecting…
Abstract
Purpose
Due to the increased research funding which academic institutions receive to perform advanced R&D, there is an indispensable need to have a systematic approach for selecting competent academicians capable of leading such projects. This paper aims to propose an approach to develop a system for Research Project Leadership Stipulation in finding such academicians.
Design/methodology/approach
The system was developed using a decision tree model for leader selection and a neural network model for leader performance prediction, and validated through quantitative and empirical analysis by exercising it on a Research University's Human Resource dataset.
Findings
In contrast with common perception, the results showed that the level of an academic leadership expertise does not alone determine R&D project success. Managerial and intellectual competencies complemented by soft skills are more influencing factors on the success of a research project.
Originality/value
This paper provides a comparative analysis of selection criteria and influencing factors on research project leader's performance in terms of their hard and soft skills. The developed system by this research, selects and intelligently predicts the performance of an academician who possesses optimum ability to lead projects with a high confidence level of successful delivery.
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Research has demonstrated that varying degrees and combinations of individual traits, behaviors and characteristics influence the emergence of leaders in teams. While existing…
Abstract
Purpose
Research has demonstrated that varying degrees and combinations of individual traits, behaviors and characteristics influence the emergence of leaders in teams. While existing models have shown that such variables affect leader choice independently and interactively, the overall findings suggest that there is still a lack of research on a potentially significant factor, the impact of personal reputation on leader selection in autonomous work teams (AWTs), an increasingly ubiquitous team practice in organizations. This preliminary review thus aims to offer a general overview of personal reputation and its effects on leader emergence in the context of AWTs.
Design/methodology/approach
By surveying extant literature on team leader emergence, this review has identified that the potential impact of personal reputation on leader selection in teams is significant yet largely ignored.
Findings
Models of leader emergence in teams should incorporate the realistic assumption that teams formed in organizations are often comprised of individuals who have information on others either directly or indirectly. Personal reputation based on an individual’s history thus moderates how one’s behaviors or traits exhibited become contextualized in the overall assessment of leader desirability and selection in teams.
Research limitations/implications
Based on a review of existing research on leadership emergence and personal reputation, this work contends that the external validity and predictive value of leader emergence models would greatly benefit from the inclusion of employee reputations as a moderating variable in the future assessment of the leader emergence process in AWTs.
Practical implications
By designing models that explain the potential effects of personal reputations on leader emergence in self-managed teams, team members and managers can be better elucidated and ultimately improve their understanding of the process of the evaluation and selection of team leaders.
Originality/value
Despite the prolific research on leader emergence, there is still a paucity of studies examining personal reputational effects on leader selection, especially in the context of AWTs. This work is the first review piece calling for the inclusion of personal reputation, a substantive factor overlooked and excluded in previous models, to enhance the current understanding of leader emergence in AWTs.
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Brent Ruben, Gwendolyn Mahon and Karen Shapiro
Superior leadership in higher education makes the difference between institutions that merely survive and those that can truly thrive in today's complex environment. At this time…
Abstract
Superior leadership in higher education makes the difference between institutions that merely survive and those that can truly thrive in today's complex environment. At this time of significant transformation in higher education, academic leaders face intensifying institutional, environmental, and societal challenges, yet colleges and universities often devote limited attention to integrating their approaches to the selection, development, evaluation, and recognition of leaders. Moreover, traditional approaches and criteria used in the selection of academic leaders are often inadequate for predicting their success. Through the process of organizational and leader profiling, as described in this chapter, institutions can better understand the landscape in which the leader will be functioning, providing a more contextualized and useful approach to leader selection, development, evaluation, and recognition.
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Mohammed Ali Al-Awlaqi, Ammar Mohamed Aamer, Maged Mohammed Barahma and Mohamed Battour
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tendency of leaders to select their followers depending on their human capital factors such as age, education level, previous…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tendency of leaders to select their followers depending on their human capital factors such as age, education level, previous working experience and training.
Design/methodology/approach
The participants were 1,388 employees working in a randomly selected sample of 289 small-sized businesses operating in Yemen. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect the data. The correspondence analysis method was used to explore the tendency of leaders to select their followers depending on their human capital factors.
Findings
We found significant corresponding relationships between leadership styles and the selection of the followers' human capital factors. The passive avoidant style was found to select middle-age, long-experience and fully-trained followers. Transactional style on the other hand was found to select young, middle-level experience and non-trained followers. The transformational leadership style was found to have no selection preferences towards any of the human capital factors except for working experience.
Originality/value
Although, some previous studies tried to understand the leaders–followers relationships, no one investigated the tendency of leaders to select their followers according to their preferences. This study contributes significantly to the leaders–followers theory by studying the selection process of the leadership style of their followers' human capital factors. Understanding this phenomenon could help explain why some leadership styles are more effective than others, especially in very limited resources contexts such as micro-sized businesses.
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Stephanie Gilbert, Patrick Horsman and E. Kevin Kelloway
The purpose of this paper is to address the question of what motivates leaders to engage in effective leadership behaviours by integrating transformational leadership theory and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the question of what motivates leaders to engage in effective leadership behaviours by integrating transformational leadership theory and self-determination theory. The authors propose that the type of enacted leadership behaviour is related to level of self-determined motivation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents validity evidence for an 18-item scale of motivation for transformational leadership based on Gagné and Deci’s (2005) six levels of internalization. A total of 310 employees (mean age=39, 64.5 per cent female, 46 per cent formal leaders) completed the scale, other measures of leadership, and job satisfaction.
Findings
Results supported the theorized six-factor structure of the scale and provided evidence for incremental validity in the prediction of job satisfaction and transformational leadership above and beyond another measure of motivation to lead.
Research limitations/implications
The lack of amotivation and the presence of autonomously controlled extrinsic motivation are predictive of effective leadership behaviour, a key finding with implications for leadership selection. The study was limited by the use of self-report data. Future studies should examine additional predictors and outcomes of the construct (e.g. subordinate attitudes or performance and leader personality), and whether it is stable over time.
Originality/value
Leaders’ motivation for role effectiveness is an unexplored area of research. This study suggests that type of motivation can be important for effective leadership and provides a validated scale for use in future leadership research and selection.
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Aneika L. Simmons and Elizabeth E. Umphress
Individuals who are high in social dominance orientation (SDO) tend to endorse the belief that members of traditionally considered high-status groups should dominate members of…
Abstract
Purpose
Individuals who are high in social dominance orientation (SDO) tend to endorse the belief that members of traditionally considered high-status groups should dominate members of traditionally considered low-status groups within society. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how SDO influences the selection of an individual who is a member of a traditionally considered low-status group for a leadership position as opposed to a non-leadership position.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology included undergraduate business students who were investigated in a laboratory setting.
Findings
Results indicate that individuals who are high in SDO are more likely to discriminate against the most qualified candidate who is a traditionally considered low-status group member when compared to those low in SDO, and job position moderated this outcome. This effect was stronger when selecting the traditionally considered low-status group member candidate for a leadership role as opposed to a non-leadership position.
Originality/value
To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first investigation to examine both leadership and selection using social dominance theory as a theoretical framework. Further, this is the first empirical analysis to determine that the influence of SDO is stronger when an individual high in SDO is selecting a traditionally considered low-status group member for a leadership position as opposed to a non-leadership position.
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Gary N. Burns, Levi R. G. Nieminen, Lindsey Kotrba and Daniel Denison
On a global scale, leadership takes place within a complex environment that is molded both by national culture and organizational culture influences. This chapter explores leader…
Abstract
On a global scale, leadership takes place within a complex environment that is molded both by national culture and organizational culture influences. This chapter explores leader-culture (L-C) fit in this global context. Drawing together distinct perspectives on national culture and organizational culture, we identify potential contingencies of L-C fit across these levels. In addition to identifying key gaps and areas for future exploration, we also discuss the practical uses of fit when selecting and developing leaders. Overall, we argue that researchers and practitioners could benefit from an expanded perspective on cultural fit to simultaneously address aspects of national and organizational culture.
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