A Cross-Sectional Analysis of IWU MBA Graduates and Current Students: Is there a change in the frequency in which transformational leadership behaviors are regularly demonstrated?

In Universities across the country the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) programs are frequently held up as the flagship efforts for preparing business leaders of the future. Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU) offers an MBA program that according to University literature was designed to meet the world-wide need for principle-centered leaders (Indiana Wesleyan University [IWU], 2006a, 2008a). Covey (1991) introduced the term principle-centered leadership and equated it to transformational leadership. Since the initial development of the IWU MBA program there has been no quantitative study related to changes in behaviors associated with transformational leadership upon completion of the degree. This study utilized a cross-sectional representative sample of new MBA students and recent MBA alumni to identify any differences in the self-reported frequency in which the study participants engaged in behaviors commonly associated with transformational leadership. Each sample group completed the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and mean scores from each group were compared using an independent samples t-test. The study results show that mean scores on the questions related to transformational leadership and leader effectiveness were higher for the MBA recent alumni than for new MBA students. However, the difference in the mean scores was not at a statistically significant level (p >.05). The study results indicate that both new students and recent alumni engage in behaviors associated with transformational leadership fairly often as described by Avolio and Bass (2004)