Differences in Productivity Levels Across Leadership Types - Assignment Example

Sales volume defines cumulative sales that a retail consultant realizes in two weeks. Every product has a sales price and the prices of all products that a consultant sells will be aggregated to determine each consultant’s sales volume.

Leadership Potential

Leadership potential defines the perceived ability to influence others towards desired objectives. In the study, the ability will be concerning supervisors’ influence on the consultants and the consultants’ influence on buyers.  

Leadership Style

Leadership style defines a person’s dominant leadership behavior. Even though an individual may have traits that define more than one leadership style, there will always be a dominant style at a time. Three leadership styles that the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire measures will be considered and these are transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and passive-avoidant leadership styles (Anderson, Nilson, and Rhodes, 2009).

Age

Age is the number of years since a person’s date of birth.

Level of Education

Level of education defines the highest academic qualification that a participant shall have attained at the time of the study.

Measurement of the Variables

Sales Volume

Sales volume will be measured from the observed value of products that a consultant sells based on the sales price. The variable will be measured on a ratio scale that is suitable for both descriptive and inferential statistics.

Leadership Potential

Leadership potential will be measured through a pre-developed questionnaire, Leadership Practices Inventory, and using a ratio scale (Kouzes, Posner, and Biech, 2010). The quantitative scope of the data means the possible use of descriptive and inferential statistics for analysis.

Leadership Style

The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire will be used to measure leadership style on an ordinal scale. This is because of an assumption of the relative effectiveness of the leadership styles on the consultants’ effectiveness. Analysis of variance for differences in levels of effectiveness is therefore the suitable inferential statistic.  

Age

Age will be measured through a separate questionnaire and on a ratio scale. This allows for multiple inferential statistics but age is limited to participants’ description.

Level of Education

Age and level of education will be measured through a questionnaire to which participants will respond. It will be measured on an ordinal scale and though the scale allows for analysis of variance, the variable’s use in the study is limited to participants’ description.

Type of Descriptive Statistics for the Variables

Mean will be the appropriate descriptive statistics for sales volume, leadership potential, and age and the variables’ measurement scale explain this. The statistic summarizes data in a single value that is simple and fast to interpret. Median will however be appropriate for leadership style and level of education whose measures are on an ordinal scale. Mean is a better statistic because it incorporates all data in a set but it is not suitable for ordinal data because the data type lacks magnitude property (Christensen, Johnson, and Tuner, 2011; Black, 1999; Vogt, 2007).