Leadership Behavior and Employee Performance Research Paper

Phase I: Theory/Hypotheses

It is to be completed in phases. Please refer to the Course Shedule at the bottom of the Syllabus and to the weekly modules for information

Phase I: Theory/Hypotheses: In this first phase, a theory is built about leadership behavior or leader ethical behavior and how those behaviors impact employee performance. Each student or group (as the case may be) will interview at least two people; the people interviewed must be employed full-time, not attending Troy University, and as different from one another as possible. The specific interview questions will be left up to you, but you should explore the interview subjects’ beliefs about which leadership or ethical behaviors are important, and how these behaviors affect employee performance. Let the interviewee tell you what is important! Do not provide a set of concepts for him or her! For example, one interview question might be: “When you think about times that you had good leadership, what specific leader behaviors contributed to how you performed?” or “When you think about good ethical leaders, what behaviors stand out as being particularly effective in changing employee behavior/performance?” Your project can focus on the concepts in this course but should go beyond those concepts as well.

Phase II: Interview Method Description: This section of your research paper should describe your interview participants (no names or other identifying information), the questions asked in the interviews, the participants’ responses to the interview questions, and the themes/concepts that emerged from the interviews. Phase III: Incorporate Interview Data into Theory and Hypotheses: Once your interviews are completed, you will distill the most interesting themes from them and come up with specific predictions that can be tested with data. Hypotheses can focus on the concepts in this course but should go beyond these concepts as well. Feel free to focus on the concepts that interest you or your team. Incorporate your interview data into your Leadership Theory. Explicitly show the changes you made to your original Leadership Theory based on the interviews. Phase IV: Recommendations for practicing managers: Use this section of your paper to make recommendations to practicing managers based on your theory and the interview data that you collected.