Department of Psychology

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Browsing Department of Psychology by browse.metadata.advisor "Cilliers-Hartslief, M."

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    An exploratory study of managerial leadership in mechanistic, organic and virtual organisations
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001-12) Muetudhana, Julia; Engelbrecht, A. S.; Cilliers-Hartslief, M.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Psychology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Current time pressures, complexity, rapid change, global competition, and the merging of computer and communication technology are facilitating a trend toward the virtual workplace. As the growth in the virtual workplace accelerates, organisations face new challenges to cope with new organisational structures and managerial leadership roles. Of particular relevance to this study is that the new organisational forms necessitate new management structures, which might be different from mechanistic structures. It also implies that the prevalence of managerial leadership in different organisational structures might be different. Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) of Bass & Avolio (1994) and Organisational Structure Questionnaire of Miller & Droge (1986), this research attempted to investigate the prevalence of leadership in mechanistic, organic and virtual structures. Hypotheses were tested to determine the relationship between leadership and structure; leadership and environment; and environment and structure. The data was collected through a field experiment. The study was aimed at middle, senior and top level management. Of the 165 questionnaires sent out, 80 middle level managers, 20 senior level managers and two top level managers completed questionnaires. The results reflect that both transformational and transactional leadership occur in organic organisations. The results also reflect that both transformational and transactional leadership occur in virtual organisations. The results of the survey also show that only some of the organic-mechanistic dimensions predicted the prevalence of leadership in these structures. A positive relationship was found between organic and virtual structures. Environment served as a poor predictor for the prevalence of transformational and transactional leadership in a dynamic or stable environment. The results also confirmed that virtual organisations do occur in dynamic environments. However, no relationship was found between environment uncertainty and either mechanistic or organic structure. Conclusions are drawn from the results obtained and recommendations are made for future research.