Millennial Leadership: The Oppositional Relationship between Leadership Type and the Quality of Database System's Development in Virtual Environments

The development of information systems is a difficult process that often ends in failing to meet the project’s initial goals. Typical outcomes for information systems development projects include delivering promised products & services on time and within budget. These pressures are now compounded by the use of virtual teams that present a new set of challenges related to the cohesion, organization, and functioning of the team process. Specifically, virtual teams must contend with problems in team formation, the organizational environment in which the team operates, and the technology used for collaboration and communication. As more organizations use virtual teams, these problems present real and pressing obstacles to the successful completion of database systems development. The goal of the study was to determine whether leadership type, transformational, transactional, or management-by-exception was significantly related to leadership effectiveness in a virtual team tasked with developing a database management system. This study targeted millennial students at the Maine Business School who were assigned to virtual teams tasked with developing a database management system. Specifically, this study sought to answer three hypotheses: 1) what is the effect of leadership type, as self-reported through the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire on the quality of completed team projects?; 2) What is the impact of type of leadership on virtual team effectiveness as measured by the Virtual Teams Survey?; and, 3) Are there interactions between leadership style and virtual team effectiveness on the quality and uniqueness of the completed team project? Findings suggest leadership style and virtual team effectiveness did predict project quality, Transformational and Management-by-exception leadership styles had a negative relationship with virtual team effectiveness. Findings further suggest that Transactional leadership style influenced project quality directly, while transformational and managementby-exception styles influenced project quality indirectly through their direct influence on virtual team effectiveness. These findings suggest that traditionally effective leadership types do not work well for Millennial Generation teams in virtual environments Millennial Leadership: The Oppositional Relationship between Leadership Type and the Quality of Database System’s Development in Virtual Environments