Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Leadership (MAL)

Department

Leadership

First Advisor

Velma Lashbrook

Second Advisor

David Lapakko

Third Advisor

Tom Morgan

Abstract

Creative Kidstuff, a privately owned company with five retail locations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and a sixth location in West Des Moines, Iowa, experienced rapid growth in its first 15 years of business, Sales started to decline due to vendor mergers, consolidations, and bankruptcies along with increased competition from other toy retailers and the advent of on-line shopping. Transformational leadership has been shown to be effective in organizations undergoing change. My hypothesis was that there are significant leadership differences between stores which are highly profitable and those that are not. The Creative Kidstuff Employee Survey was designed with questions correlating to Bass' four dimensions of transformational leadership. A factor analysis of the data identified five dimensions - I, Team, Creative Kidstuff (CKS), Motive, and Manager. More profitable stores scored higher on three dimensions (Manager, CKS, and Team). The results support the value of transformational leadership in times of change.

Identifier

SC 11.MAL.2013.Koziol.B

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