Saturday, November 21, 2015

A511.5.3.RB_MalvoisinLeon

The Point of the Research
              The point of the research was to conduct two studies of remote transformational leadership to find out if people can actually tell the difference between various leadership styles.  Often time organizations are asked to lead employees that work in remote locations (Kelloway, Barling, Kelley, Comtois, and Gatien, 2002).  Therefore, leaders more and more rely on technologically based communication with their employees including the use of electronic mail (e-mail) and video/teleconferencing. This research help identifies if their employees or people can tell what type of leader is their remote leader base on e-mail or remote communication media. In the first study (study 1) they use vignette methodology to assess if recipient could identify leadership message when presented in e-mail.
               In the second study (study 2), its purpose was to build on the results by examining the effects of remote leadership on motivation and performance using a laboratory base investigation (Kelloway et al., 2002).

Hypotheses
              There were two studies, study 1 and study 2. The hypothesis for study 1 was whether recipients could identify leadership messages when presented in e-mails. 
             The hypotheses for study 2 was that individuals exposed to e-mail messages containing a charismatic or intellectually stimulating message would express higher levels of performance on a laboratory task than individuals who received e-mail instructions that did not contain these aspects of transformational leadership. Furthermore, they hypothesize main effects for both intellectual stimulation and charisma but no additive effect between the two dimensions of transformational leadership (Kelloway et al., 2002).

The Research Method Used
           There were two research methods used. First one (study 1), used a vignette methodology to assess, in the first instance, whether recipients could identify leadership messages when presented in e-mail. Hence, 175 students read a vignette depicting either a laissez-faire, management by exception, contingent reward, or transformational leadership style communicated by electric mail (e-mail) (Kelloway et al., 2002).
           The second one (study 2), data were collected from 105 undergraduate psychology students at a Canadian university. The experiment involved the use of a group of problem solving exercise. The task required participants to read a short scenario describing a survival situation in which they have become stranded on a mountain with limited supplies during a winter storm.  The task is rank order a list of supplies in terms of importance for survival (1 – most important, 12 – least important). Participants complete the rankings individually and then work in groups to derive a consensus ranking. By subtracting individual and group scores from the rankings assigned by survival experts, individual and group performance scores are derived. The performance scores are discrepancy measures with high scores representing worse performance (Kelloway et al., 2002).

Research Goals Results
             The results for the first study (study 1) showed that students could distinguish between the various leadership styles, and both interpersonal justice and supervision satisfaction were perceived to be higher when a transformational style was presented.  Hence, interpersonal justice and supervisor satisfaction were significantly and substantially correlated (Kelloway et al., 2002).
            Kirkpatrick and Locke explain that the results for the second study (study 2) revealed that participants appropriately identified the intended characteristics of the remote leader.  That is, individuals who read an intellectually stimulating e-mail rated the leader as being more intellectually stimulating than did individuals who read a non-intellectually stimulating e-mail.  Similarly, participants who read a charismatic message rated the leader as being more charismatic than those who read a non-charismatic message.  However, their result did not support an effect of a charismatic leadership message on individual motivation.  Future research in this area will need to be considering whether this null finding is plausibly attributable to the specific message we used, or whether charisma is not easily transmitted through electronic media (as cited in Kelloway et al., 2002, p.102).
             
Research Value
            The present findings propose that remote transformational leadership can still have the same positive effects on the performance and attitudes that occurs within face-to-face interaction. Furthermore, our findings suggest that electronically mediated communication channels may be used to convey the same leadership message as in face to face interaction, which questions the suggestion that leader-followers’ perceptions of their leader (Kelloway et al., 2002).

Course Context
              As far as the course context for this week and these researches, they have really proven that transformational leadership is the ideal leadership for a group. As identified by Yukl (2013), transformational leadership is more of a leadership style that stimulates followers by appealing to their self-interest and exchange benefits; for corporate leaders, transactional leadership indicate providing pay and other benefits in return for work effort.  Certainly this sounds like a tradeoff leadership style where the followers have to accomplish a task for their leaders in other for them to be satisfied.  Furthermore, this type of leadership may intrigue the followers to contribute as they know they’ll get something back in return, and the more they contribute is the more recognition they’ll receive.  This type of leadership also looks forward to promote their workers, given them more opportunities to grow.  Furthermore, as stated by Riggio in the YouTube video, Harvard Business Review (2013),  “transformational leaders are leaders that are able to move groups and organization to change ,to transform, but also to very high levels of productivities and performance.” 

Reference

Harvard Business Review. (2013). Ronald Riggio:Transformational Leadership. YouTube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvezV2Zhihg

Yukl, G. (2013). Charismatic and Transformational Leadership. In Leadership in organizations. (8th ed). (pp.321). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

            Kelloway, E. Barling, J. Kelley E. Comtois, J. Gatien, B. (2002).Remote transformational leadership. Leadership &Organization Development Journal. 24(3), 163-171.  Retrieved from
https://erau.instructure.com/courses/23355/assignments/258750?module_item_id=880896

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