Leadership, workforce, and technology and bus transit performance: A synthesis of select systems in North Carolina

The purpose of the quantitative, correlational, explanatory study was to determine whether workforce collaboration, management skills, and application of new technology would enhance the patronage of bus transit systems. Transit systems throughout the United States are under tremendous pressure to improve productivity to justify the substantial public investment in the sector. Traditionally, investigations into mass transit productivity have involved single methods of measurement. In this study, regression techniques aided in analyzing the responses of three transit systems' employees and managers to three survey instruments: Employee Leadership Assessment Survey, Employee Job Satisfaction and Commitment Survey, and Employee Assessment of Technology Deployment Survey. Triangulation of the results with data on the transit systems' ridership and other surrogate variables occurred for a 5-year period. Key findings include a positive correlation between deployed technology and increased patronage.