Date

11-13-2025

Department

Graduate School of Business

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Organization and Management (PhD)

Chair

Jeremy Pickwell

Keywords

leadership, leadership development, organizational citizenship behavior, leader-member exchange

Disciplines

Business | Leadership Studies

Abstract

This research study addressed the problem of lacking leadership development in the higher education industry and the reduction of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Increasing demands on higher education resulted in a need for improved leadership acumen across the industry, but inefficient and lacking development persists. This study evaluated a regional higher education institution of higher education in the Southwest to better understand how specific leadership development opportunities relate to organizational behavior. The research utilized the 24-item OCB survey and the LMX-7 survey to capture participant responses in combination with different leadership development participation responses. The findings indicated that while leadership development improved mean scores across four out of five OCB domains, the results failed to meet statistical significance, indicating development alone is insufficient in improving OCB. The LMX-7 instrument added the factor of leader-member relationships as a moderating factor, resulting in a statistically significant finding indicating those with less effective leader- member relationships did see an improvement in OCB. These findings are important in highlighting that while leadership development is important, it is not effective in isolation and depends on other factors within the organization to bring out its value.

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