Date of Conferral

2017

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Management

Advisor

Steven Tippins

Abstract

Managers struggle with how to motivate the Millennial generation employee. Research that explores which leadership styles are effective with Millennial generation employees is limited. The purpose of this study was to explore what leadership styles are effective with Millennial employees, which led to a key research question: Which leadership styles facilitate employee motivation for the Millennial generation? The theoretical framework was based on the social learning, transformational leadership, and servant leadership theories, which were used to identify effective leadership styles. In the theoretical framework, different motivation theories were presented to establish the context in which motivation was discussed. This quantitative study used a survey administered online to collect data using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, Ethical Leadership at Work Questionnaire, and SL-7 instruments. The participant pool consisted of randomly selected Millennial generation employees (N = 158) who worked in an office setting. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to test for stochasticity. The Kendall's coefficients of concordance and Spearman's correlation were conducted to perform the analysis. The results of this study indicated that all 3 leadership styles effectively motivate Millennial employees, and that the servant leadership style is most effective. This study may contribute to a positive change in leadership practices. Employee job satisfaction may increase as these leadership behaviors are adopted. This in turn may have a positive social impact on the individuals, as well as in the surrounding communities of the individuals who work for leaders who practice any 3 of these leadership styles.

Download

Share

 
COinS