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CEO Leadership Styles and the Implementation of Organizational Diversity Practices: Moderating Effects of Social Values and Age

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Abstract

Drawing on strategic choice theory, we investigate the influence of CEO leadership styles and personal attributes on the implementation of organizational diversity management practices. Specifically, we examined CEO transformational and transactional leadership in relation to organizational diversity practices and whether CEO social values and age may moderate these relationships. Our results suggest that transformational leadership is most strongly associated with the implementation of diversity practices. Transactional leadership is also related to the implementation of diversity management practices when either CEO social values or age are relatively high. These findings extend previous work examining predictors of diversity management in organizations and highlight the central role that organizational leaders may play in the successful implementation of these practices.

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Notes

  1. In this sense, while we are not proposing that transformational leadership is synonymous with social values, we suggest that social values will significantly heighten the awareness of transactional leaders more than transformational leaders regarding the importance of diversity management.

  2. This data analytic approach (i.e., separate moderated regression analyses) was used to minimize possible bias from predictor multicollinearity on parameter estimates (e.g., see Rank et al. 2009 for similar data analytic procedure).

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  1. School of Business Administration, Dalhousie University, 6100 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, B3H 3J5, Canada

    Eddy S. Ng

  2. Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Greg J. Sears

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  1. Eddy S. Ng
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Correspondence to Eddy S. Ng.

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Ng, E.S., Sears, G.J. CEO Leadership Styles and the Implementation of Organizational Diversity Practices: Moderating Effects of Social Values and Age. J Bus Ethics 105, 41–52 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0933-7

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