Leader development scholarship and practice has been studied in the Western cultural background for many years; however, there has been limited research on such topic based on Chinese culture. This thesis is aimed at finding out the leader development practice model in Greater China. 114 articles have been reviewed in this study, which focus on leader development theories in different topic areas to describe the current situation of leader development in Greater China. The main finding is that there is a large gap in this field, and there is research to describe different leadership theories applied in different organizations in China. But little is known about studies to learn or develop a training process.

Employee Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) can have a significant impact on organizational performance. The frequency of employee OCB is positively related to transformational leadership. This study utilized this established positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee OCB, and rigor tested if this relationship was impacted by the size of the organization. Size as a moderating factor hasn’t really been studied between this relationship of transformational leadership and OCB in the US. I proposed size as a moderating variable because access to an employee’s leader can have an impact on the frequency and quality of employee OCB. Participants (N=131) were invited to respond to an online survey about the frequency of their own OCB as well as their interactions with their transformational leader. Participants were provided definitions for both OCB and transformational leadership to receive accurate results. Results showed that the effects of transformational leadership on employee OCB matter substantially in larger organizations when compared to small organizations. Findings revealed that employees in larger organizations tend to perform acts of OCB less often when they didn’t perceive that their transformational leader was accessible. This study sets the ground for further research into this phenomenon of whether size impacts employee OCB when they have a transformational leader in the United States. Further research is recommended to investigate whether this impact is exclusive to transformational leadership or are other types of leadership also impacted. Keywords: transformational leadership, Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), leadership behavior, organizational size.

This study aims to examine the relationship between empowering leadership and employee voice behaviors. Based on self-determination theory, I argue that empowering leadership and employee voice behavior relationship is mediated by employee personal sense of power. In addition, coworker support and psychological contract violations moderate the indirect relationships leading to promotive voice and prohibitive voice. These hypotheses were partially supported by a sample of 168 employees across various industries and occupations. Results show that the mediating effect of sense of power between empowering leadership and promotive voice behavior relationship. In addition, bootstrapping results support the moderating role played by coworker support in the indirect relationship between empowering leadership and promotive voice behavior through sense of power. Theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed in light of these findings. Keywords: employee voice behavior, empowering leadership, sense of power, coworker support, psychological contract violations

Over 7 million students in the US choosing virtual education as they pursue their degree (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). With almost 10,000 business degrees offered online (GetEducated, 2021) digital classes now have to deliver meaningful learning experiences to prepare leaders for inherently relational challenges. This study examines how well online undergraduate students learned and connected in a 7.5-week leadership development course that used a peer coaching model. In this course design, two peer coaches met each week to process and provide feedback on the coursework. Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) suggests that learning is an individual transformation that occurs as learners move through four dialectically opposed learning modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Kolb & Kolb, 2017). Learners make meaning of their experience (like conversations or coursework) by thinking about them and developing a mental model that influences their actions which changes the way they view new experiences. In this study, I illustrate how peer coaching supports this transformative process and can help learners expand their thinking not just academically, but personally and professionally too. Moreover, peer coaches emphasize diversity by acknowledging and leveraging markedly different mental models to enhance students’ depth of learning and relating. I used a convergent mixed-methods design in which qualitative and quantitative data were collected in parallel, analyzed separately and then merged. The reason for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data is to develop a better understanding of the effects of learning preference and affect because each type of data will provide different pieces of evidence regarding those effects. The quantitative data was collected using Qualtrics from self-report surveys using primarily Likert scales to measure learning outcomes, learning preferences, and affect as a part of class exercises. The qualitative data was collected from students’ open-ended reflection assignments about the benefits of differences in their peer coaches. The multiple regressions did not show that learning preference contrasts significantly predicted learning outcomes nor relationships. In contrast, positive affect did predict learning outcomes. The thematic analysis offered clues as to how positive affect improves both learning outcomes and the quality of the peer coaching relationship.

Employee retention is a major problem for organizations, especially for small and medium-sized organizations, which make up 99.7 percent of U.S. Organizations. Research reveals how leadership style affects employee retention, showing that supervisors who are transformational help to reduce employee turnover. However, little research has assessed the interdependent dynamics of transformational leadership, employability, and employee retention. Furthermore, employability is a sparsely discussed concept in the literature, making it a novel inquiry to consider in the dynamics of employee retention. This research employs agent-based modeling (ABM) to examine the dynamics of employee retention while considering the interdependent nature of modern organizations and workforce. The goal is to look at the relationships between the degree of transformational leadership of leader, the employability factors of individual employees, and employee turnover. The model will input data from previous empirical research to define parameters for these variables in NetLogo. This simulation model shows how workers and leaders interact and how these interactions affect the employability and retention of each employee over time, as well as how employability affects the individual’s turnover behavior once they become dissatisfied with their leader. Results demonstrate that there is a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employability, and transformational leadership and employee retention, in some organizations from the model. This study contributes to organizational research on retention by looking at the dynamic impacts of both transformational leadership and employability in an employee’s decision to leave their organization. Additionally, changes in this study can look at other factors affecting employee retention. The resulting research will impact practice by clarifying the interdependence of leadership and employability on employee retention, leading to new innovations to decrease the turnover in organizations. This model will be replicable and adjustable to look at other factors impacting employee retention that are worth studying.