| Does leadership drive results? Research has suggested that ineffective leadership has often been a primary obstacle to group effectiveness. Deficiencies in supervision or work team management have caused work groups to fail to properly thrive, develop, and yield improvements in performance. As such, an effective leader has been essential for successful group performance. Studies on groups and teams have increasingly emphasized how organizational effectiveness has been enhanced, or inhibited by groups and teams. This study has examined the relationship of leadership, group effectiveness, and group performance from a systems approach, as an input > process > output model. The study engaged the responses of 750 call center representatives from a global financial services firm, and the actual performance of their respective teams. Study instrumentation consisted of Bass and Avolio's Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), Larson and LaFasto's Team Excellence Survey (TES) , and actual team Performance Scorecards. The study used structural equation modeling to assess the causal relationships among leadership, group effectiveness, and group performance variables. The assessment tested factor loadings and inter-correlations among these variables. The study affirmed the hypothesized relationship between the theoretical systems model and the observed structural equation. |
