Title: Group cohesion, personality and leadership effect on networked marketing staff performance

Authors: Kenneth David Strang

Addresses: APPC Research & UTS, Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia; State University of New York, Plattsburgh, NY 12901, USA

Abstract: An Australian-based marketing design team was studied (n = 127) to measure how leadership, personality and other factors impact their project performance. The teams were multicultural (91% were not Australian born) and they communicated almost exclusively using virtual communications software. Proven instruments were selected from the literature to measure transformational and transactional leadership perceptions, along with personality traits. Substitutes for leadership were recast as controls, namely cohesion, gender, and professional orientation. Descriptive statistics, correlation, and hierarchical linear modelling regression were used to test the hypotheses. Three factors had significant predictive effect: high cohesion, high transactional leadership and an agreeable personality trait.

Keywords: virtual project teams; marketing design; online team performance; networked team performance; transformational leadership; transactional leadership; group cohesion; agreeable personality traits; virtual project management; Australia; marketing staff performance; virtual teams; teamwork; gender; professional orientation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2012.045734

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2012 Vol.10 No.2, pp.187 - 209

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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