Situational leadership in air traffic control

Summary, in English

In high-risk environments such as air traffic control, leadership on different levels plays a certain role in establishing, promoting, and maintaining a good safety culture. The current study aimed to investigate how leadership styles, leadership style adaptability, and over and under task leadership behavior differed across situations, operative conditions, leadership structures, and working tasks in an air traffic control setting. Study locations were two air traffic control centers in Sweden with different operational conditions and leadership structures, and an administrative air traffic management unit. Leadership was measured with a questionnaire based on Leader Effectiveness and Adaptability Description (LEAD; Blanchard, Zigarmi & Zigarmi, 2003; Hersey & Blanchard, 1988). The results showed that the situation had strong impact on the leadership in which the leadership behavior was more relationship oriented in Success and Group situations than in Hardship and Individual situations. The leadership adaptability was further superior in Success and Individual situations compared with Hardship and Group situations. Operational conditions, leadership structures and working tasks were, on the other hand, not associated with leadership behavior.

• Author: Marcus Arvidsson; Curt R Johansson; Åsa Ek; Roland Akselsson
• Department/s: Department of Psychology; Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology
• Publishing year: 2007
• Language: English
• Pages: 67-86
• Publication/Series: Journal of Air Transportation
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Document type: Journal article
• Topic: Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics; Psychology
• Keywords: air traffic control; situational leadership; LEAD; leadership style adaptability
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1544-6980