Annotation
This research paper by Fitzgerald and Schutte (2009) investigates an emerging concept in management studies that involves the subject of leadership styles; in this case the authors have focused on one such type of leadership style which is the transformational leadership. Basically, what the researchers in this study intends to investigate is whether transformational leadership is correlated with specific behavioral characteristics which in this case are emotional intelligence and self efficacy.
The objective is to identify whether these personal attributes enhances transformational leadership or not by analyzing the nature of correlation that exists between these variables (whether positive or negative) and the resulting change in transformational leadership behavior. More specifically this study investigates the hypotheses that
- emotional intelligence is critical/enhances transformational leadership in subjects,
- expressive writing that is grounded on self-efficacy model can also enhance both transformational leadership and transformational leadership self-efficacy (Fitzgerald and Schutte, 2009).
To do this, this research study applies the concept of “expressive writing” as the intervention strategy for the study; self-efficacy expressive writing for the case group and expressive writing that is not based on self-efficacy for the control group (Fitzgerald and Schutte, 2009). Participants were pretested and post-tested based on this variable and also based on the variable of emotional intelligence.
The study utilized a sample of 118 cases that appears to have been purposively sampled from one line of retail industry in Australia and the study design used was experimental which utilized case-control techniques in investigating the phenomena. For both cases and controls, the subjects were pretested before the respective interventions were done and then post-tested after the interventions have been finalized.
The findings of this study by Fitzgerald and Schutte (2009) is consistent with the study hypotheses mentioned earlier and generally indicates that both higher emotional intelligence and self-efficacy expressive writing exercise bolsters and enhances transformational leadership abilities. This is because on a range of scores that were designed to measure the outcome of transformational leadership, the case group performed way better than the control group during the research study beyond any statistical significance.
The implications for these findings are several not to mention they are also groundbreaking; foremost, the study contributes to the numerous literature on the subject of transformational leadership and offers new insight into how transformational leadership can be influenced. Secondly, the study provides evidence of how transformational leadership can be enhanced through one cost-effective approach of self-efficacy expressive writing. Thirdly, the study guides future research studies on the subject by highlighting areas that needs more research needed to obtain more evidence on the same.
Finally, this research study provides an insight into attributes of effective leaders especially as far as transformational leadership is concerned since it identifies emotional intelligence attribute as critical to this type of leadership style.
Personal Reflection
Based on my opinion this is a well researched research topic which is articulately summarized in this paper; consequently it findings can be relied upon because its research design is well thought out but only to an extent since it also has various limitations and shortcomings. First, I will discuss its major strengths; foremost, in investigating this topic the paper utilizes experimental research design where control and case subjects are randomly assigned between two groups. By doing this the research controls against bias which is the single most encountered challenge that must be addressed in studies that must claim validity.
Secondly, the overall research design is best suited in investigating whether correlation exists between transformational leadership in general and other factors such as emotional intelligence, self-efficacy and expressive writing for instance. This is because the study design has components of post-test, pre-rest techniques; finally, the study relies on data from a large sample size of 118 subjects who are enough to generate reliable data that can identify correlations between variables if it does exist.
But in the same way this research study has several inherent weaknesses some of which have been highlighted by the authors themselves. First, because it pools participants from a particular line of industry the implications of this is that the study findings cannot be generalized or relied upon elsewhere under different environments which means the study findings might also be hard to replicate.
Secondly, the study has failed to control against the problem of participants filling in inaccurate information; the implication is that the information filled in by the participants might be misleading since there are no strategies put in place to prevent the same. Ideally, what should happen is that follow-up questions and other verification means are put in place to control against subjects providing feedback that are incorrect, and thereby limit such inaccuracies in final data collected from subjects.
Thirdly, although this research ensures that the cases and controls were randomly assigned between the two groups of interest, the selection of sample cases originally was actually done through purposive sampling. Whenever purposive sampling approach is used to select cases then there is always a risk of bias which must be appropriately controlled against but which in this case has not been selected. Finally, this study utilizes data from the variable of “emotional intelligence” which is ideally very hard to measure and is fraught with various challenges. Because of this problem data generated from this variable and associated correlation observation should be analyzed and viewed with caution.
In conclusion I agree with the author’s general perspective on transformational leaders and more specifically on the findings arrived by this study which indicates that self-efficacy and emotional intelligence are critical to enhancing transformational leadership among employees. Indeed, numerous literature review are of the same view and various other research studies have identified a clear correlation between transformational leadership and factors such as emotional intelligence and self-efficacy.
Reference
Fitzgerald, S. & Schutte, N. (2009). Increasing transformational leadership through enhancing self-efficacy. Journal of management development, 29 (5): 495-505.