Investigating the Relationships Among Athlete Leadership Behaviors, Athlete Leader Fairness, Cohesion, and Athlete Satisfaction

The purpose of the study was to examine athlete leader fairness in relation to athlete leadership behaviors, cohesion, and athlete satisfaction. Participants were 203 intercollegiate team sport athletes. Participants completed the Leadership Scale for Sports (Chelladurai & Saleh, 1980), Differentiated Transformational Leadership Inventory (Callow, Smith, Hardy, Arthur, & Hardy, 2009), Group Environment Questionnaire (Carron, Widmeyer, & Brawley, 1985), Athlete Satisfaction Questionnaire (Riemer & Chelladurai, 1998), and a leader fairness inventory (Colquitt, 2001). Task-oriented, transformational, and transactional athlete leadership behaviors were positively associated with perceptions of athlete leader procedural and distributive fairness. In turn, these perceptions of fairness were positively associated with task cohesion and satisfaction with performance and the team. Findings from the present study provide support for athlete leaders as a source of leader fairness perceptions in team sport. Additionally, perceptions of athlete leader fairness are identified as an antecedent of cohesion and athlete satisfaction