Not to be Taken Out of Context: The Development and Validation of a Contextualized Measure of Leader Personality
Date
2021-03-02
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Abstract
Contextualization refers to the process of incorporating a relevant context into a personality questionnaire (Holtrop, Born, De Vries, & De Vries, 2014). In recent years, research has demonstrated that the contextualization of a personality measure improves its criterion validity for context-congruent criteria (Shaffer & Postlethwaite, 2012). The continued interest in the application of personality to leadership research and practice (Day & Antonakis, 2012; Hogan & Kaiser, 2005; Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009), underscores the potential utility of a personality measure contextualized to organizational leadership. Over the span of two studies and multiple samples, this dissertation sought to develop and validate a completely contextualized measure of organizational leader personality, coined the HEXACO-Lead. In brief, this research provides initial evidence for the reliability and construct validity of the newly developed HEXACO-Lead personality inventory. More specifically, findings across two independent studies support acceptable reliability, factorial validity and expected convergent/divergent correlations with generic HEXACO factor scales. The HEXACO-Lead also yields noticeably better reactions among leader respondents, compared to a generic alternative. Moreover, an examination of the measure’s ability to predict self-rated leadership criteria revealed a consistent pattern of higher predictive validity, compared to the HEXACO-60. This difference was only statistically significant for one of the four measured leadership criteria (i.e., supportive leadership), suggesting that the effects of contextualization may vary depending on the criterion of interest. Results concerning the HEXACO-Lead’s predictive validity for subordinate rated leadership criteria were somewhat inconclusive due to the small sample size available for these analyses. Overall, the results of this research are promising for the extension of personality measure contextualization to the context of organizational leadership.
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Keywords
leadership, personality, HEXACO
Citation
Julian, A. (2021). Not to be Taken Out of Context: The Development and Validation of a Contextualized Measure of Leader Personality (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.