Carrot and Stick: Exploring leadership styles among supervisors of PhD students and its impact on motivation

Abstract

Supervisors of PhD students may have leadership style of different character. In management literature, leadership styles can be categorized as authoritarian, democratic or laissez-faire. The purpose of this study aims to explore different leadership styles among supervisors of PhD students and its impact on motivation. The method encompasses multiple case study of twelve PhD students in order to analyze this phenomenon. The data collection was carried out by interviews with the twelve selected PhD students with questions on how the supervisors could stimulate motivation through their leadership characteristics. The findings were that the laissez-faire style is the most common among the supervisors. It can be concluded that a balance of structure and freedom motivates students best.