Studying Leadership Behavior: A Novel Approach to Design Experimental Paradigms Using an Exploratory Mixed-Method Approach
Type
working paper
Date Issued
2025-06-21
Author(s)
Abstract
Despite extensive interest in leadership behavior, rigorous methodologies and guidelines for developing experimental paradigms and stimuli sets remain limited. To address calls for more robust methodological approaches in leadership research (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023), I apply an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design (Creswell & Creswell, 2023) and integrate principles from verbal survey item construction (Pargent et al., 2019), and cognitive psychological measurement practices (Brysbaert, 2024). This integration enables me to introduce a novel framework for experimental paradigm and stimuli design.
To ensure methodological rigor in experimental paradigm design and stimuli generation, I propose defining the theoretical foundation and justification for the experimental paradigm, along with a six-phase process for stimuli generation. This process ensures content validity, targeted stimuli variance, and incorporates procedures to minimize confounding influences within the resulting stimuli set. I demonstrated the applicability of the approach by developing an experimental paradigm to investigate the impact of technology on antecedents of responsible leadership in workplaces. This article contributes methodologically to leadership and mixed-methods design literature while advancing responsible leadership research by providing an operationalization to measure responsible leadership behavior in technology-permeated workplaces.
To ensure methodological rigor in experimental paradigm design and stimuli generation, I propose defining the theoretical foundation and justification for the experimental paradigm, along with a six-phase process for stimuli generation. This process ensures content validity, targeted stimuli variance, and incorporates procedures to minimize confounding influences within the resulting stimuli set. I demonstrated the applicability of the approach by developing an experimental paradigm to investigate the impact of technology on antecedents of responsible leadership in workplaces. This article contributes methodologically to leadership and mixed-methods design literature while advancing responsible leadership research by providing an operationalization to measure responsible leadership behavior in technology-permeated workplaces.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Event Title
Doctoral Colloquium EURAM
Event Location
Florence, Italy
Event Date
21.06.2025