A511.5.4.RB...Remote Leadership article

Or this assignment, I am going to discuss the article, entitled “Remote Transformational Leadership”, written by the numerous researchers, but led by E. Kevin Kelloway.  The overall purpose of this research was to look at transformational leadership from two study perspectives as it relates to remote leadership.  The article failed to provide a support definition.  Because to that, for my response I will define transformational leadership as a style of leadership in which the leader identifies the needed change, creates a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executes the change with the commitment of the members of the group.  Study one focused on electronically-mediated leadership in its infancy.  The focus was on the perceived effects of transformational leadership, management-by-exception, and laissez-faire from two aspects of employee morale as it relates to transformational leadership. The second study’s purpose was to build on these results by examining the effects of remote leadership on motivation and performance using a laboratory-based investigation.

           
There were two different hypotheses for this study.  Study one was primarily interested in two questions: can recipients perceive and accurately identify leadership a style communicated by e-mail and is receiving an e-mail with a positive leadership message as opposed to a negative message perceived to be associated with positive outcomes?  Study two hypothesized that individuals exposed to e-mail messages containing a charismatic or intellectually stimulating message would express higher levels of task motivation, and demonstrate higher levels of performance on a laboratory task than individuals who received e-mail instructions that did not contain these aspects of transformational leadership.

Two different research methods were used for this study.  First research method was students reading vignettes that focused on electronic email that communicated laissez-faire, management by exception, contingent rewards and the second research method was students reading an intellectually stimulating message electronic message concerning transformational leadership and a problem solving task.  Two different population samples were used for both research methods in these studies. Study one was 175 undergraduate students and study two 105 undergraduate students. However, I do not feel the study results were supportive of the research goals.  As stated in the article, neither the covariate nor the interaction attained statistical significance.

 

I am not sure if the research contains any tangible value.  The findings suggested that remote transformational leadership can still have the same positive effects on performance and attitudes that occurs with face-to-face interaction.  This fact has many unanswered questions, due to the fact that information can be received differently when delivered through an electronic medium (the finding are not definitive).  Findings also suggested 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-follower distance has a negative effect on performance and followers perceptions of their leader.  Again, the significance of the results was not well supported in this research.  I feel the study was too general and the population was too small.  While these findings await replication in field settings, they suggest considerable promise for the effectiveness of remote transformational leadership.