Relationship between leadership characteris- tics and managerial goal setting competency: A case study on a telecommunication company

Especially in high-tech industries like telecommunication, the nature of increased competition forces companies to improve their organizational effectiveness through establishing performance management systems, improving managerial competencies and utilizing leadership development. However, effectiveness and sustainability of performance management are dependent on the quality of goal setting in all levels of management. Therefore, relationships of goal setting as a critical management competency with leadership characteristics can provide insights on how to improve goal setting performance in an organization through leadership development. Within this conceptual framework, based on the theoretical background and using the findings of a case study in telecommunication industry, this study aims to explore the relationship between the leadership styles and goal setting performances of manag- ers. At first, goal setting performance of middle level managers in the studied com- pany is evaluated by executives and human resources experts. They considered the appropriateness and achivement level of the goals and objectives that the evaluated manager had identified and assigned to his/her subordinates within the 360 degree Performance Appraisal System before. Then, in order to find out the leadership char- acteristics of the studied middle level managers, the managerial competency set in the 360 degree performance appraisal system of the studied company is associated with the Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) of Bass and Avolio (1995). By this way, the common statements in both questionnaires are defined. Based on the scores that the middle level managers received from the competencies that are common in 360 degree performance appraisal system and MLQ, the leadership characteristics of the studied managers are found out. By conducting a correlation test, we explored the relationships between the goal setting performances of middle level managers and their leadership characteristics. The findings from data analysis revealed that leadership characteristics like informing roles and responsibilities to the employees, giving feedback for the development of his/her employees and keeping his/her employees motivated in the team are positively correlated to goal setting performance of the middle level managers.

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