| Electronic mail (Email) is the most commonly used form of communication in organizations today with the number of users expected to rise from 3.3 billion in 2012 to over 4.9 billion by 2017. Email is an important part of daily life in an organization and is an area that should be considered vital to an organization's success. Email has become an integral part of how organizations operate and how leaders lead these organizations. The problem addressed in this study was that leaders are unaware of how their leadership style affects their ability to communicate via email with employees. Several studies have confirmed that leaders do not understand the impact of leadership style on communication in an organization, but none have dealt specifically with the impact of leadership style on email communications. A quantitative correlational approach was used to study the impact leadership style had on email usage. The study utilized the Bass and Avolio (2004) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5X) for data collection. In addition to completing the MLQ-5X, participants were asked about their email usage. The participants were 85 senior Naval leaders either assigned to United States Fleet Forces Command (USFFC) at the headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia or its satellite commands. This study investigated the relationship between leadership style and four daily email usage measurements: emails processed, time spent on email, emails sent to subordinates, and emails sent to senior officers. The results for all four relationships investigated were found to be insignificant with p values of .749, .391, .670, and .832 respectively. Therefore, all four null hypotheses related to the question of whether leadership style impacted email usage were accepted. Pearson correlations revealed moderate correlation (p = .079) between transformational leadership style and quantity of email's sent to senior officers, but these results cannot be inferred to the general population due to the low number of respondents in this category. Given this moderate correlation, performing a similar test with a larger group is recommended. Additionally, future research would benefit from investigating other areas such as training on email or standard email procedures, which may impact how email is used. |
