Comparison
Introduction
The title of article one is “Assessing the trait theory of leadership using self and observer ratings of personality: The mediating role of contributions to group success.” This article is authored by Colbert Amy, Timothy Judge, Daejeong Choi and Gang Wang. However, the title of article 2 is “The leadership skills strataplex: Leadership skill requirements across organizational levels” and is written by Troy Mumford, Michael Campion and Frederick Morgeson.
In article one, the purpose of the study is based on the fact that the authors believe that studies that make use of self ratings of personality traits of personality traits that influence the effectiveness and emergence of leaders may eventually underestimate the relationship (Amy et al., 2012). Conversely, the purpose of the study in article 2 is to focus on leadership skills that can be developed to make better leaders. The authors’ statement of why the study is important in article 1 is not strong or clear while the authors in article two make strong and elaborate statement on why the study is important.
Research Questions
In article one, the authors wish to use self and observer ratings to show neuroticism is negative, extraversion is positive, conscientious is positive in relation to perceptions of leadership and that this plays a major role to the success of a group (Amy et al., 2012). Moreover, the study also aims to show that openness to experience is also positive. On the contrary, in the second article, strategic, business, interpersonal, and cognitive skills will be divided empirically (Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007). The study also aims to show that leadership skill requirements will differ according to skill category with cognitive being the largest followed correspondingly by interpersonal, business, and strategic all of which will be correlated to the job’s level. In addition, the research questions in the second article also want to demonstrate the stratification of the leadership skills.
Sample Populations
In the first article the participants in the study were 80MBA and 98 undergraduate students adding up to a total of 178 participants who were all attending a leadership course (Amy et al., 2012). Conversely, the sample in the second article was 1023 employees of an international US government agency. Unlike the participants in article one, all the participants in the second article were professional of five different careers and had come from 156 different countries. Moreover, these professionals belonged to three levels of the organizations; junior, mid, and senior (Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007). Again this was different from article one where all the participants were undergraduate students who did not have any leadership positions. Therefore, the participants in article two can be said to be more experienced than the participants in article one. This experienced can be related to the fact that all the participants in article two were employed while the participants in article one were just students who were still pursuing their masters and undergraduate degrees. Furthermore, there is a diversity of careers in the participants in article two while the participants in article one are all pursuing a leadership course.
Results
The results of article one show that the use of multitrait and multimethod approach to assess personality increases the variance explained in leadership. Moreover, exploratory analysis also proved that when personality was assessed by observer ratings alone, personality portrayed more variance in leadership that when personality was assessed by using both observer and self ratings. The results in article one also illustrated that the five-factor model assessed using both self and observer ratings was a functional framework for leadership prediction (Amy et al., 2012). In article two, the results showed that the leadership model of strataplex differentiated the four leadership skills and that it was possible to empirically group them into a four part complex. In addition to the public sector context, the results in article two showed that the organization studied had a highly formalized leadership promotion system. As a result, such as system has a likelihood of creating more homogeneity in the skills that employees have than in organizations that have less formalized leadership promotional systems. Moreover, the results in article two proved that cognitive skills were the most important followed closely by interpersonal skills. In this case, business skills were needed more when one was promoted up through an organization (Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007). The entire hypotheses in both studies were also proven.
Conclusion
In article one, the main limitations of the study include lack of data collection on the observers, the other members had perceptions of leadership assessment, and that the three behaviors used as mediators represented general contributions to group success. However, one of the limitations of the second study was that it was conducted in the public sector where it was not clear whether the skills requirements are same in business roles (Amy et al., 2012). The organization in the second study was also highly formal, making it unclear whether skills differ in less formal environment. Another limitation in the second study was that the correlation among the four studied factors was moderate or high and hence required further research to explore the strength of the strata structure. The conclusion in article one is that modest relationship of personality with outcomes is probably caused by the application of self report measures to assess personality other than due to the lack of predictive validity of personality traits. However, the study in article two concludes by proposing a theoretically rich leadership skills hierarchy (Mumford, Campion, & Morgeson, 2007). The study also concludes that even though previous discussions of leadership skills have been held in the past, there is little empirical research on this subject.
Article one suggests that a future research is needed to compare the validity of observer ratings collected from raters whose observations were made within the same context as the outcome variable (Amy et al., 2012). The authors explain that this would be helpful in understanding what causes the differences in validity across self and observer ratings. In the second study, the authors suggest a future research that applies longitudinal designs since the study used cross-sectional design.
References
Amy, C., Timothy, J., Daejeong, C., & Gang, W. (2012). Assessing the trait theory of leadership using self and observer ratings of personality: The mediating role of contributions to group success. The Leadership Quarterly, 23 (4), pp.670-688.
Mumford, T., Campion, M. & Morgeson, F. (2007). The Leadership skills strataplex: Leadership skill requirements across organizational levels. The Leadership Quarterly, 18 (2), pp. 154-166.
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