Leadership styles of Vietnamese higher education leaders: Transformational, transac-tional, or laissez-faire

Pham Dinh Xuan Thu * , Hitendra Pillay and Amanda Mergler

* Corresponding author (pdxthu@gmail.com)

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Received: 03 Feb 2017
Revised: 24 Mar 2017
Accepted: 31 Oct 2017
Published: 29 Nov 2017
DOI: 10.22144/ctu.jen.2017.058
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Pham, D. X. T., Hitendra, P., & Amanda, M. (2017). Leadership styles of Vietnamese higher education leaders: Transformational, transac-tional, or laissez-faire. CTU Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development , (07), 126-137. https://doi.org/10.22144/ctu.jen.2017.058
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No. 07 (2017)

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Abstract

Significant reforms are currently underway in Vietnamese higher education since it is in the phase of transformation to improve the higher education system. In implementing higher education reforms, leaders play a key role. The paper reports on phase two of a multi-method research: a quantitative approach using the multifactor leadership questionnaire to investigate the Vietnamese high education leaders’ leadership styles (i.e., transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership) to support the quality improvement in Vietnamese higher education. The multifactor leadership questionnaire was administered to 190 senior managers in State institutions in Mekong Delta region in Vietnam (nine of colleges and universities). The psychometrics of the multifactor leadership questionnaire for the Vietnamese sample confirmed the reliability and validity of the instrument with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.779. A principal component analysis was conducted, and all factor structures were stable and consistent. The findings from the multivariate analysis of variance showed that the leadership styles of Vietnamese higher education leaders were not largely different based on their gender, but the educational background. The descriptive statistics analysis on the demographic items indicated a trend that transformational and transactional leadership were more preferable than laissez-faire leadership in higher education leaders’ performance. 
Keywords: College, laissez-faire, leadership, transformational, transactional, university

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