The relationship among coach's leadership style, team culture, and performance in university soccer teams in Korea

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship among coach’s leadership style, team culture, and performance in university soccer teams in Korea. First, this study focused on leadership behaviors of a coach. Preferred and actual leadership behaviors were investigated. Second, this study focused on the team culture. Cultural functions of the teams in U-league were investigated. Third, leadership behaviors and team culture were investigated in relation to team performance. The population of this study was all the soccer players of university teams which were registered to KFA (Korean Football Association) and participated in U-league. The instruments used were Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ, Bass & Avolio, 1995) and Organizational Culture Assessment Questionnaire (OCAQ, Sashkin, 2001). Using cluster random sampling, 316 players from 4 high performing teams and 4 low performing teams participated in the study. The results of the study showed four major findings. First, as players gained more experience, they tended to prefer transformative leadership behaviors more than transactional leadership behaviors. Second, leadership behaviors of a coach in high performing teams were more transformational and transactional than low performing teams, therefore both transformational and transactional leadership behaviors should be complimentary with each other. Third, both transactional and transformational leadership behaviors were strong in building cultural functions in university soccer teams, so leaders should try to enhance their transformative leadership behaviors along with transactional leadership behaviors to establish effective cultural functions of their teams. Fourth, apparent differences existed in cultural functions between high performing and low performing teams, therefore when a team goes through any problem, a leader has to be sensitive not only to performance itself but also to cultural functions.Physical Education, Sports, and Exercise ScienceDoctoralUniversity of New Mexico. Division of Physical Performance and DevelopmentScott, DavidSeidler, ToddBarnes, JohnSong, Seok-h