Effects of Participative and Directive Leadership in Electronic Groups

A laboratory experiment was conducted to assess the effects of participative and directive leadership on participation, performance, and satisfaction of 24 undergraduate student work groups that interacted electronically via a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) to perform a creativity task. Participative and directive leadership were manipulated through confederate leaders who entered scripted comments into the GDSS. Performance was measured in terms of quality and uniqueness of solutions. Results of partial least squares analysis indicated that perceptions of both leader participativeness and directiveness were positively related to levels of participation. Participation in turn was positively related to performance but negatively related to satisfaction. Problem structure moderated all these relationships except for the relationship between participation and performance. Practical and research implications, study contributions, and limitations are discussed.