| Interagency coordination across federal, state, and local governments can be complicated and when mishandled, impedes effective emergency response. Often, this failure is attributed to a lack of leadership at all levels of government. The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess whether emergency managers in a southern state who have experienced natural disasters since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks possess the leadership skills required for effective emergency management. The theoretical framework of this study is largely based on Northouse's conceptualization of transformational leadership. Specifically, this study investigated the leadership characteristics of emergency managers, whether they engaged in transformational leadership, and how emergency managers self-report these characteristics compared with the observer ratings of fire chiefs who work with emergency managers. Data were collected by mail through the use of the NEO Five Factor Inventory-3 and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, 3rd edition. Data were analyzed through analysis of variance. Findings indicate that overall, emergency managers have a dominant transformational leadership style. Furthermore, key elements of transformational leadership are positively related to an emergency manager's effectiveness, though emergency managers' rating scores on self-performance were higher compared with observer ratings. The implications for positive social change stemming from this study include frequent practice of these key elements of transformational leadership which will continue to improve the leadership of emergency managers and the emergency management system, thus saving lives of first responders and disaster victims. |
