John Garger

Assessing leader behaviors in project managers

Purpose – The purpose of this research was to explore the leadership style of graduate project management students vs other MBA students.Design/methodology/approach – Graduate project management and MBA students attending a regional comprehensive university in USA returned surveys that assess their leadership style emphasis of concern for task or concern for people.Findings – Project management students rate themselves significantly higher on the concern for people leadership style and were found to have a balance between the concern for task and concern for people leadership style vs MBA students.Practical implications – Individuals exhibiting a concern for people leadership style and those with a balance between concern for task and concern for people leadership styles are good candidates for project management positions as well as training/education in project management.Originality/value – The paper shows that the selection and training of project managers based on bahavioral tendencies can relate to ...

Developing authentic leadership in organizations: some insights and observations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the emerging concept of authentic leadership and provide some insights into its domain and development in organizations.Design/methodology/approach – The paper sees that authentic leadership has become a recent buzzword finding its way into scientific journals, popular press, and newspaper columns.Findings – The paper finds that the study of authentic leadership is relatively new; a working definition, a method of measurement, and criterion‐based studies do not yet exist. As such, attempting to develop authentic leaders may only result in leaders who are trained to superficially exhibit authentic leadership behaviors.Originality/value – The paper shows that when authentic leadership has been defined and is measurable, development of this type of leadership can begin. Until then, attempting to develop authentic leadership may result in negative outcomes.

Authentic Leadership on the Frontline and Its Effects on Korean Restaurant Employees

Few studies examine whether Western leadership theories apply to Asian companies. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of authentic leadership on perceptions of Korean restaurant workers. Results suggest authentic leadership components correlate with followers’ extra effort and perceptions of leader effectiveness. These variables, in turn, correlate with intrinsic job motivation and job satisfaction. Findings of this study are discussed in light of future research directions.

The effects of student personality on perceptions of two-source transformational leadership

Abstract This paper examines the role of student personality traits on student perceptions of an instructor’s and community partner’s leader behaviours in a service-learning context. Extant literature does not examine the role of an educator’s leadership in service-learning projects in conjunction with that of a community partner and does not consider the importance of student perceptions of these two sources of leadership. The present study demonstrates that the emergence of transformational leadership is not only an outcome of leaders’ personality and behaviours, as most of the transformational leadership literature suggests, but also to a degree a function of followers’ attributes. Thus, the development of effective transformational leaders must factor in followers’ personality traits. Specifically, the effects on perceptions of leadership of three personality traits were examined. Findings suggest that both agreeableness and conscientiousness correlate with service-learning participants’ perceptions of an instructor’s transformational leadership behaviours, but extraversion did not. Results also suggest that service-learning participants’ perceptions of an instructor’s transformational leadership behaviours correlate with their perceptions of a community partner’s similar behaviours.