The generalizability of leadership across activity domains and time periods

Abstract

We investigated the degree to which leadership behavior of individuals is generalizable across different leadership activity domains and time periods. Using analytic methods based on generalizability theory, we estimated the extent to which individual differences, leadership activity domains, and time periods contribute to variability in leadership role activities and developed a generalizability coefficient indicating the degree to which such leadership activity is generalizable. Using a bootstrapping method with 381 observations from a sample of 572 females, we estimated the generalizability coefficient to be 0.20, which indicated that approximately 20% of the variance in leadership is due to individuals and not totally contextually determined. We interpreted this finding as indicating that knowledge of prior leadership behavior of individuals is indeed predictive of leadership behavior of individuals in later life. (c) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.