Foundational Skills for Academic Research

Running Head: FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS FOR ACADEMIC RESEARCH
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Foundational skills for academic research
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Introduction
The article by Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman, and Humphrey published was published in the
year 2011. The article is about the traits and behavioral principles in leadership. It is focused on
the integration and Meta-analysis test of the relative validation of the authors. The main theme of
the article is lack of integrity in developing the traits behavioral frameworks in leadership
effectiveness theory. In addition this, the article examines the relative validity of the leaders’
trait. Some of the traits examined in the article include; intelligence level of the leaders, gender,
and leaders personalities. Moreover, the article examines the behavioral traits of leaders such as
transformation-transactional behavioral traits (Karam, 2010). The authors in this article suggest
that the combination of the leaders’ traits and their behaviors contribute to about 31% in
development of leadership effectiveness theory.
Discussion
The article suggests that the behaviors of the leaders determine how effective the
leadership effectiveness theory will be. The leaders’ traits have no significant contribution in
determination of the theory effectiveness. Leadership is one of the major topics discussed
especially in the field of social sciences (Langford 2013). The research on leadership began in
the early 90s. It started with the search for factors that differentiate leaders. Nowadays, research
on leadership effectiveness is based on the traits paradigm. The studies have shown that the
characteristics of the individual leaders determine their leadership effectiveness (Stilwell, 2013).
Some of these characteristics of the individual leaders include; their abilities, skills,
demographics, and personalities. The article evaluates the critics in the leadership traits
paradigm. One of the critics states that the researchers focus on issues related to the

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characteristics of the leaders (Mann, 2019). Instead, they should focus on behaviors of the
leaders in prediction of their effectiveness. The authors in this article argue that the
determination of the leaders’ behaviors is the best way to know whether they are effective or not.
Some leaders may show good traits but their behaviors and actions are different from their traits.
Therefore, it is good to focus on the behaviors of a particular leader to know how effective
he/she is in the leadership program.
Derue (2011) suggests that evaluation of the leadership behaviors initiates a paradigm
research-based program on leadership effectiveness. In this program, the behaviors of the leaders
are keenly monitored and evaluated. In addition, he suggested that leadership behaviors bring
about an influence in paradigm affecting the leadership theories. Some of the theories affected by
the influence of the behaviors on paradigm are contingency theories. According to Nahrgang and
Wellman (2011), both the leaders’ behaviors and traits can be investigated in the research studies
differently. The theoretical framework in leadership theories helps in determination of the
leaders’ integrity. The authors in this article show some critics on various researchers on
researchers on leadership topics. In these critics, the researchers are blamed to have been
focusing on new theories without even attempting to understand the existing leadership
effectiveness theories. The authors blame today’s researchers because they are busy coming up
with new theories without comparing and contrasting the existing ones (Macaulay, 2013). The
lack of leadership integrity in research is evidenced in both behaviors and traits paradigm. In this
case, each of the mentioned paradigms focuses on a single behavior and trait of the individual
leaders. For instance, in the paradigm, the authors have provided the meta-analysis for the
estimation of leadership effectiveness. They have also analyzed the intelligence and personality
of different leaders (Mischel, 2015). The contrast in this Meta-analysis is that none of the authors