Date of Award

6-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Reader/Committee Chair

Rodriguez, Jose

Abstract

Leadership is a well-known complex phenomenon that focuses on important organizational, social and personal processes, where leadership is dependent on a process of social influence, which occurs between the leader and follower (Bolden, 2004). Therefore, leaders need to operate with a certain understanding of leadership and the environment in order to address the increasing pressures and demands that come with being a leader. However, leadership concepts too often focus on leader behaviors apart from their effects on followers; in contrast, Inclusive Leadership (IL) highlights the importance of leadership as a social construction process between the leader and follower. The present study first examines the association of IL and employee engagement (EE), and second, the moderating effect of Psychological Diversity Climate (PDC) on the association between IL and EE. Specifically, context that related to leader characteristics and employee behavior was furthered explored to help shape an understanding on how contextual factors affect the relationship. First, a bivariate correlation revealed that IL was shown to be significantly and positively related to EE. Second, a regression analysis using Andrew Hayes’ PROCESS tool on SPSS was used to examine the moderation, which found that PDC did not significantly moderate the relationship between IL and EE. Additional analyses were further explored to address the insignificant findings for the purpose of explaining if one of IL’s sub-dimensions significantly affected the moderation analysis. Similar, to hypothesis testing, no significant results were found. The results suggest that immediate supervisors play a critical role in enhancing EE; however, no additive effect occurs when a PDC is incorporated. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed. Data consisted of 221 adult men and women working a minimum of 12 months and 20 or more hours a week to support our model.

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