Leadership Attributes and Practices of Students of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University of Technology (UTECH)

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the significant differences in tertiary education orientation impacted on self-reports of leadership practices and personality traits.

METHODOLOGY
Two hundred and thirteen students volunteered to participate, with 108 from UWI (71 females) and 105 from UTECH (68 females). Eighty of the students were in their first year of study and the remainder in their final years. These universities were chosen based on their large business student population and their status as two of Jamaica’s most prominent universities. In addition to completing the Student LPI-Self (2nd edition), students completed the Extroversion and Conscientious scales of the International personality item pool five factor personality inventory and provided demographic data. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were .72 for Challenging, .68 for Enabling, .78 for Encouraging, and .61 for Modeling (with one item dropped) and .71 for Inspiring (with one item dropped).

KEY FINDINGS
There was a significant correlation between the extroversion and all five leadership practices, and a significant correlation between conscientiousness and four leadership practices (except for Enabling). Extroversion and conscientiousness were not correlated. Institution and year of study did not impact any of these variables, nor did respondent gender.