BUS603: Managing People

Three questionnaires were identified through the literature review as being reliable, valid and applicable to this study. A general discussion of each questionnaire's properties in terms of content, structure and psychometric features, as presented in the literature, follows.

Servant leadership: The Servant Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ) developed by Barbuto and Wheeler consists of 23 items. The questionnaire was originally developed to operationalise the servant leadership construct and the servant leadership characteristics were reviewed by these authors. Items for these characteristics were validated and created. Factor analysis reduced the data to five unique subscales which were used to test reliability, convergent, divergent and predictive validity. The rater version of the subscales demonstrated reliabilities (alpha values) ranging from 0.82 to 0.92 and an alpha value of less than 0.80 in a South African context. Subscale intercorrelations (r) ranged from 0.47 (for persuasive mapping and emotional healing) to 0.71 (for altruistic calling and emotional healing) for rater versions of the SLQ. The SLQ consists of a leader self-report version and an 'other' rater version. However, both versions of the SLQ consist of the same questions, with only the frame of reference differing. The former is answered from the leader's perception of their own levels of exhibiting servant leadership and the latter from the employee's perception of their leader demonstrating certain servant leadership behaviours.

For the purpose of this study the rater version was utilised, as respondents were asked to evaluate their supervisor's servant leadership levels. The structure of this instrument includes five factors, namely altruistic calling, emotional healing, wisdom, persuasive mapping and organisational stewardship. Examples of items measuring servant leadership include (1) My manager puts my best interest ahead of his or her own and (2) My manager believes that the organisation needs to play a moral role in society. The SLQ utilised a seven-point frequency Likert scale. This scale had the following anchors: (1) never, (2) seldom, (3) sometimes, (4) unsure, (5) often, (6) mostly and (7) always. The responses on the items were then calculated in order to obtain the respective subscale scores and the total servant leadership score.

Emotional intelligence: Leader emotional intelligence was measured by a 30-item Emotional Intelligence Index (EQI), developed by Rahim. For the purpose of this study the rater version of this instrument was utilised, which means that employees were asked to rate their immediate supervisor's emotional skills. The five dimensions of the structure of the scale were self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Rahim and Minors reported reliability for the subdimensions ranging from 0.85 to 0.93. Rahim also reported Cronbach's alpha reliabilities for the subscales ranging from 0.58 to 0.90 in a study that was completed in six countries (n = 1395), including South Africa. Examples of items measuring emotional intelligence include: (1) My manager keeps his or her distressing emotions in check and (2) My manager expresses feelings in a way that inspires peak performance. The EQI utilised a seven-point intensity Likert scale with the following anchors: (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) slightly disagree, (4) undecided, (5) slightly agree, (6) agree and (7) strongly agree. Responses were summed to achieve the respective subscale scores and the total emotional intelligence score.

Trust in the immediate supervisor: Trust was measured by the Workplace Trust Survey (WTS), developed by Ferres (2001). The original 36-item questionnaire was developed using focus group narratives and content analysis, which transcribed obtained 'trust themes' into items measuring trust at organisational, managerial and co-worker levels. Reliability for these three themes ranged from 0.93 to 0.95. The questionnaire underwent further validation in South Africa (n = 417) and Australia (n = 496). Cronbach's alpha coefficients for the validation studies ranged between 0.90 and 0.97. For the purpose of this study, only the trust in the immediate supervisor subscale was utilised. This subscale comprises 12 items. Examples of these items include: (1) I feel that my manager is available when needed and (2) I act knowing that my manager will keep his or her word. Items were scored and summed on the same seven-point Likert scale as the EQI, namely (1) strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) slightly disagree, (4) undecided, (5) slightly agree, (6) agree and (7) strongly agree.