How Public and Private Managers Differ in Leadership Behavior essay
- Describe the purpose of the research. Was it conducted to: explain, predict or understand the phenomena of interest? Explain your choice.
It is possible to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative objectives of the research. For qualitative studies, commonly used type of logic is inductive, and the areas of interest or variables are determined by the research in the process of studying the chosen phenomenon. Thus, qualitative studies are generally aimed to understand and explain the behaviour of the phenomenon, and rarely focus on predicting or controlling it. Quantitative studies are commonly based on inductive logic, and contain initial hypothesis followed by a cause-effect research, Quantitative research is most often aimed at prediction, understanding and/or explaining the chosen phenomenon. The sequence of analyzing a particular phenomenon is the following: understanding, explaining, predicting, controlling.
The purpose of the research “Public versus Private Managers: How Public and Private Managers Differ in Leadership Behavior” conducted by Andersen, J.A. is to determine whether the existence of differences in behaviour of public and private managers and also to research the behaviour differences for different groups of public managers. This research is intended to understand the research problem and to partly explain it. The issue of behavioral differences between public and private managers was not essentially studied before. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the phenomenon. The purpose of the study does not cover explaining the differences, since it is only aimed at determining the existence of statistically significant difference (although certain explanations of the differences were presented in the paper), and certainly this evidence cannot be straightforwardly used for predicting the behaviour of managers. Thus, the research was conducted in order to understand the area of interest.
- Is this article an example of deductive or inductive research? Explain your answer (e.g., if deductive, what theory was being tested? And if inductive, was a theory proposed at the end to explain what was found?).
The article is a clear example of deductive research, and it contains the statement of hypotheses as well as collection and analysis of data to check these hypotheses. The hypotheses deal with significant difference of leadership behaviour between public and private managers, and between different groups of public managers.
Theory tested by the research suggests that public and private managers have significantly different leadership behaviour, and is the natural continuation of the ideas of Rainey that public and private managers have significant differences in attitude to rewards, and the results of Buchanan, who found significant differences between public and private managers regarding job involvement (in the area of attitudes).
Analysis of research data has shown that differences in leadership behaviour of public and private managers do exist; however, no statistically significant differences in the behaviour of public managers were identified. Andersen also suggested several explanations for the results of the research.
- Describe the population. What was the unit of analysis?
The focus of the research is the behaviour of middle managers, i.e. the managers who have at least one supervisory position behind and ahead of them. Total number of respondents is 439; this data is a combination of four core samples. Public sector was represented by samples 1 and 2. The first sample consists of leadership surveys for 61 senior officials in charge of regional offices of social insurance (Andersen, 2010). The second sample includes leadership analysis (surveys) of 176 principals/deputy principals of primary and secondary schools. Sample 3 contains survey of leadership style of 148 middle managers rated by their subordinates, and sample 4 has motivation profiles and survey results for 222 managers from 8 service and manufacturing companies (Andersen, 2010).
The study includes two types of analysis and two units of analysis. For the first type of analysis, significant differences in the leadership distribution between leaders are studied using tests, and for the second type of analysis, pairwise t-tests were used to compare the behavioral variables across existing categories. In the first type of study, unit of study is an individual manager, and for the second type, the unit of study is a group of managers (e.g. public, private, public managers of a certain sector etc.).
- Identify the hypothesis (or hypotheses) and describe the independent, dependent and control variables in your research study. What type of relationship was hypothesized between the variables (e.g., positive, negative, or zero)?
There are two hypotheses in the research:
- Leadership behaviour of public and private managers is significantly different (leadership behaviour includes such elements as style of decision making, leadership style and motivation profile)
- There are groups of public managers which have significant differences in leadership behaviour
For this study, independent variable is the group of respondents. For hypothesis 1, independent variable can be “public managers” or “private managers”, and for hypothesis 2, independent variable is “school managers” and “social insurance managers”. The author has identified 10 dependent sub-variables (the same for both hypotheses) grouped into three variables: leadership style (includes relationship style, task style and change style), decision-making function (sensing, intuition, thinking, feeling) and motivation profile (consisting of achievement motivation, affiliation motivation and power motivation). Control variables were the type of managers selected for public and private sectors (senior and middle, correspondingly), and the surveys (tests) suggested to the respondents. Hypotheses suggested a non-zero (e.g. any statistically significant) relationship between independent variable and at least one of dependent variables.
