Strategic leadership actions and success of leaders in Malaysian and American Universities

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive non-experimental study was to determine if significant relationships exist between the leaders’ use of strategic leadership actions and their success as perceived by their followers, and mediated by environmental contexts, and demographics. The participants in this study were university professors from Malaysia and United States of America. The participants were chosen via a random stratified sampling. They were asked to response to 77 questions on the Strategic Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ). The data collected was analyzed through multiple regression and correlation techniques to ascertain the hypothesized relationships. The study found that successful leaders use a wider array of leadership strategies than less successful leaders. There was also a significant difference between the array of action sets used by successful Dean’s in Malaysian and American Universities and the array of action sets used by less successful Dean’s in Malaysian and American Universities. Therefore, these findings are supportive of Pisapia (2009) proposition that leaders often fail because they are trained in and rely upon a linearity of thinking mindset, which does not work in situations characterized by ambiguity and complexity that requires them to be flexible and change oriented.