Annotation of a Qualitative Research Article

Annotation of a Qualitative Research Article

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Annotation of a Qualitative Research Article

Huettermann, H., Doering, S., & Boerner, S. (2014). Leadership and team identification: Exploring the followers’ perspective. Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), 413-432. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.10.010

This paper investigates the role of leaders in team member identification. Team identification is said to play an essential role in determining team cooperation and enhancing successful operation of a team. It can therefore be employed to enhance job satisfaction and improve team performance in any team operation setting. The paper is based on a qualitative research study conducted at seven UN diverse peace-building teams created in region of crisis particularly Liberia and Haiti. The teams are highly diverse in terms of members’ gender, education background, age, and culture. The research focuses on the perspective of followers for stemming leadership behaviors inductively which pertain to team identification development. Intense semi-structured interview is employed to collect data from all team members in the seven team which is tape recorded. The data establishes four collective leadership dimensions conducive to identification of team members. The four include administering teamwork, role modeling, encouraging involvement, and providing guidance.

The paper is highly founded on diverse literature materials which critically evaluate the role of leadership in team identification. However, the literature focuses more on transformational and charismatic leadership. This makes the reader believe that the qualitative research conducted will focus on identifying the role of the two forms of leadership in the team identification and which between them is more effective in the team development. On the contrary, the research does not focus on any particular form of leadership and the relevance of majoring on the literatures focusing on charismatic and transformational leadership is lost. The literature could have been more effective if it majored on general leadership styles that enhance effective team identification. The research did not also focus on establishing the best approaches over the poor approach of team identification. The research evaluates on the followers’ perspective on the leaders behavior that results to the development of a sense of belonging or being distance from a team. However, the conclusion made only identify the behaviors a leader should possess to enhance team identification and no discussion of aspects that members distaste that can lead to the destruction of the attachment the members should feel when in a team. The research conclusion is also exclusively based on an environment where leaders are formally designated to their role and thus, the outcome can hardly be employed in any other environment where leaders are not formally designated. The research conclusion is exclusively based on followers views which can generally be bias based on the individual relation with the present leader or individual anticipation of a good leadership.

Huettermann et al. (2014) work makes a considerable contribution in the leadership aspects that would be required to enhance effective team identification. Although there have been previous researches examining leadership behaviors in team identification, there has never been a past research based on diverse teams as employed in this research. Most studies have been based on western companies’ teams which are dominated by men with higher or similar education background and thus, their results contain a considerable level of biasness. Thus, this research adds the examination of leadership behaviors appropriate for identification of a team that have not been examined by previous researches. The outcome creates a base for future researches on different leadership behaviors complementary effects for fostering identification of followers in their work group.