A Qualitative Inquiry of the Behavioural Attributes of Effective Leaders in IT and ITES Sectors

Page: 512-518
Sharmin Palsetia and Jaya Rajagopalan (Department of Psychology, St. Mira’s College for Girls, Pune, Maharashtra)

Leadership is critical for organizational success. In order to facilitate successful performance, it is important to understand and accurately measure the behavioural attributes of a leader (Robins, Judge, & Sanghi, 2009). An effective leader should be able to handle strategy, manage resources, foresee change and still be humane. Although there are numerous studies depicting the traits of effective leaders, there aren’t enough studies emphasizing their behavioural attributes. There has been very little research on leadership using the qualitative approach in the Indian context. The current study aims to explore the behavioural attributes of effective leaders. Participants of the study were 60 leaders of various organizations of IT and ITES sectors. Unstructured interview and focus group discussion method was used to elicit the dominant behavioural attributes. Thematic analysis was done using Grounded Theory. The common themes highlighted the factors of Strategic, Change, Operational, Performance and Entrepreneur (SCOPE) leadership. The research highlights cultural and gender differences in conceptualization of the themes of leadership in Indian and western context. The results obtained will be useful to recruit and promote candidates to leadership positions by using this framework of the SCOPE model. The present study will contribute to designing a psychometric tool for gauging effective leadership behaviours.