Phyllis Duncan

The relationship between attitudes toward diversity management in the Southwest USA and the GLOBE study cultural preferences

This study investigates the importance of diversity management as it relates to the GLOBE study cultural preferences. A survey of 225 students in undergraduate and graduate programs at a private Texas University concluded that collectivism was a strong predictor of how positively participants rated their organizations support for diversity, diversity recruitment efforts, diversity training for mentors, and employees with disabilities. The participants were nontraditional students who were also employed in a wide array of organizations. Collectivism and assertiveness were both strong predictors with regard to participants ratings of chief executive officer (CEO) support of diversity and the organizations overall diversity training. With regard to leadership dimensions, humane-oriented leadership was a positive predictor of preference for a collective culture, which predicts diversity management ratings. Team-oriented leadership also predicted ratings of diversity management. The results of the study indicate that promoting a more collectivist rather than individualistic culture is associated with the increased rating of organizational diversity practices. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that with the increase in globalization, organizations must be prepared to re-evaluate their policies and know when to adapt to changes in organizational culture.

Authentic Leadership--Is It More than Emotional Intelligence?.

One of the newest theories to gain widespread interest is authentic leadership. Part of the rationale for developing a model and subsequent instrument to measure authentic leadership was a concern that the more popular theory, the full range model of leadership and its instrument, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass & Avolio, 1985), did not sufficiently emphasize aspects of leader emotional intelligence (EI), such as self-awareness (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). In its current configuration, the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) (Walumba, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing & Peterson, 2008) measures four dimensions of leadership: relational transparency, internal moral perspective, balanced processing, and self-awareness. In a recent meta-analysis of authentic leadership, Banks, McCauley, Davis, Gardner, and Guler (2016) found that, overall, authentic leadership is highly correlated with transformational leadership (k = 23, N = 5,414, rho = .72). The Banks et al. study, however, reported no meta-analytic analyses between emotional intelligence and authentic leadership. In a meta-analysis performed in 2010 by Harms and Crede, self-ratings of emotional intelligence and transformational leadership were highly correlated (k = 47, N = 4,994, rho = .56). Given that a) EI is strongly related to transformational leadership, b) authentic leadership is very strongly related to transformational leadership, and c) part of the original rationale for creating a model and instrument to measure authentic leadership included a need to include more self-awareness in a leadership model, exploring the degree to which emotional intelligence is related to authentic leadership is important. In this study, 1,028 working adults completed the Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT) (Schutte, 2009) and the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (Walumba et al., 2008). The sample was 61% female, 30% held a college degree or higher, and the mean age was 29.6 years. An exploratory factor analysis using the principal components method with varimax rotation resulted in a 2-factor solution. While exploratory in nature, this study indicates that the components of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire seem to be measuring something different than emotional intelligence measured by the Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test.