Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Dr. Edward B. Fort

Abstract

Employers are constantly evaluating individuals to fill leadership roles within their organizations to extract the highest return from their resources and investments. Millennials, born between 1982 and 2000 (Howe and Strauss, 2000), represent the youngest and newest generation entering the workforce. A sub-population of this generation consists of military veterans returning to the United States after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This quantitative study examines the leadership traits of the military Millennials that have transitioned to civilian life and compares this population segment with Millennials without a military background. To compare the two groups of the generational cohort, a survey comprised of 14 leadership traits derived from the Leadership Trait Questionnaire (LTQ) (Northouse, 2010) and 9 demographic and characteristic questions was utilized in this study. The researcher distributed the survey online to 150 potential participants. A total of 53 surveys were completed online, resulting in a response rate of 35.3 %. Among the participating respondents, 43% were military Millennials and 57% were non-Military Millennials with 28.6 years as the average age. There were 52.8% males, and 47.2% females among respondents. The results from the nonparametric Mann-Whitney (M-W) U test indicated a statistical significance for the leadership trait of self-assurance for the military Millennials. The leadership traits of trustworthy and dependable ranked highest for the military Millennials and non-military Millennials, with each of the two traits slightly higher for the military Millennials. The analysis revealed no statistical significance among demographic and characteristic data. The findings indicated the need for additional research on military Millennials and leadership and future research on intra-generational analysis of Millennials and leadership traits.

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