Critical Evaluation of an Article

Running Head: ARTICLE EVALUATION
Critical evaluation of an article
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ARTICLE EVALUATION 2
Critical evaluation of an article
Introduction
The works of Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman and Humphrey (2011) focuses on the
integration of the trait and behavioural theories together with their validity in leadership
effectiveness. The authors were inspired by the inadequacies in leadership literature that
addresses theoretical integration. The authors develop an integrative trait-behavioural model
of effective leadership to address the inadequacy of literature integration. This study
critically evaluates the works of Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman and Humphrey (2011). The
study evaluates the various theories examined by the article under review to determine
whether they are related to the topic and whether they are consistent in the article. The study
also critically reviews the limitation of the theory. A critical evaluation of the methods
applied to measure the variables is also covered in this study. Also, a review of the findings
in the article is covered.
Theories
The authors have used huge supporting articles to build their argument. A widespread
database of literature was used to compare the integrative nature of the theories. The database
of PsycINFO (1887-2008) and web of science ISI (1970-2008). The authors use the database
literature to build a narrative view of the leadership traits and the leadership behaviour theory
before developing an integrative model of leader traits and behaviours. In building a narrative
view of the leadership traits, the authors concentrate on selected traits including gender,
intelligence and personality while they concentrated on a few leadership behaviours including
transformational-transactional behaviours and initiating structure-consideration behaviours.
The scope of studying the leader trait paradigm has been limited to cover the various traits
that distinguish leaders from other people together with the magnitude of the said differences.

ARTICLE EVALUATION 3
While developing the narrative view of the leader trait paradigm, the authors failed to have a
detailed discussion of the various biological and socio-cultural models which would have
contributed to a better understanding of the gender aspect as a leader trait. This would have
an effect of the attributed variance in the results after measuring the variables. Looking at the
leader trait paradigm, the authors failed to recognize some critical demographic factors like
physical characteristics, experience and education. The various leadership traits which are
studied in the article under review include demographics (gender), task-competence and
interpersonal attributes The article has not concentrated on important interpersonal attributes
like communication skills which would have affected the results variances upon measuring
the variables put under test. While evaluating the relative validity of the leadership traits, the
authors proposed three hypotheses. These were to be put into test through measuring the
concerned variable and the results correlated accordingly. The first hypothesis compares
leader traits of task performance and task competence in relation leadership effectiveness as
compared to interpersonal attributes and demographics. The second hypothesis compares the
relational and affective attributes of leadership effectiveness compared to interpersonal
attributes together with demographics and task-competence traits. The third hypothesis
figures the comparison between the interpersonal & task-competence leader effectiveness and
the demographics leader effectiveness.
Despite the many classifications of leader behaviours under the leader behaviour
paradigm, the authors of the articles focused on four categories including task-oriented,
passive leadership, change-oriented and relational-oriented behaviours. The research
trivialized all the other classifications. The scope of the study to leader behaviour paradigm
has been squeezed to cover only two theories including the initiating structure-consideration
theory and the transformational-transaction theory. Additionally, in studying the two theories,
the study scope was limited to the arrangement of the theories along behavioural dimensions