LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS OF ... - Drake University

It is also important to note that only leadership of the individual
CEOs was evaluated for this study, and that the executive groups or
teams were not evaluated. Therefore, while the findings in this study
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address transformational leadership strength at the level of hospital CEOs,
further investigation was not conducted to determine the degree to which
transformational leadership extended within the organization. The
hospitals' entire executive teams were neither evaluated to measure their
transformational behaviors, nor was it determined if the CEOs had
extended their leadership to create transformational cultures. Further
research in this area would be necessary to assess the transformational
depth within the organization and its impact on outcomes. These results
could be confirmed by observations or interviews to better determine the
discriminating factors among the leadership profile areas.
An additional limitation of this study is that it was purely quantitative
and served as a snapshot in time. Neither feed back, nor the perspectives
of the CEOs or other participants was elicited to further determine some of
their responses to the findings or the research. A rich body of information
exists within the hospital CEO population that might contribute greatly to
these findings. Additionally, because of the single-point-in-time view of
o the leadership in Iowa hospitals, the researcher was unable to discover
the long-term source of some of the relationships that existed. A
longitudinal study could better evaluate the impact of changing