Date of Award

12-7-2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Executive Doctorate in Business (EDB)

Department

Business

First Advisor

Dr. Conrad S. Ciccotello

Second Advisor

Dr. Karen Loch

Third Advisor

Dr. Lars Mathiassen

Abstract

Given the continuous advances with globalization and overall competition, small U.S. machining and fabrication companies (manufacturing) are required to constantly maintain a competitive advantage to stay relevant (Avolio, 2004; Cascio 1995). To help maintain that competitive advantage, leadership has been extensively researched for many years within multiple segments of the U.S. economy; however, specific focus has been neglected when it comes to transactional and transformational leadership styles within small U.S. industrial machining and fabricating companies.

The focus of this research centers on three small industrial machining and fabricating businesses in the manufacturing sector. Distributing the multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ) this research investigates the leadership style of each businesses leader. The MLQ specifically focuses on the leadership styles that the leaders self-assess between transactional and transformational leadership and then leverage that information when the employees provide a 360-loop feedback, which rates the leader. The MLQ is the gold-star standard to evaluate transactional and transformational leadership (Bass & Avolio, 2000; Avolio & Bass, 2004). The MLQ additionally provides a rating on the outcomes of extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction from both the subordinates and leader, which this dissertation will focus on as well. Previous studies provide a solid foundation on transactional and transformational leadership within alternative environments other than small U.S. industrial machining and fabricating companies, which is the focus of this dissertation.

This dissertation presents the findings that employees in an industrial environment would exhibit higher levels of extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction, provided the leader espouses more transformational leadership. Results revealed transformational leadership was significantly related to extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction. To the contrary, results revealed that transactional leadership was not significantly related to extra effort, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Additional results substantiated the findings listed above by conducting a Person correlation that showed transformational leadership scores were positively related to transactional leadership scores. To substantiate the study further results were compiled by conducting three fixed effect regressions analyzing the independent variables of transactional and transformational leadership scores from the employee self-reports, as well as one-sample t-tests that compared this studies MLQ results to the U.S. normative samples.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/9458453

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