Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

D.B.A.

Degree Granting Department

Business

Major Professor

Paul Spector, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Joann Farrell Quinn, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Douglas Hughes, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Quintin McGrath, DBA

Committee Member

Matthew . Mullarkey, Ph.D.

Keywords

AKTiVe, Authenticity, Culture, Individual Differences, Kindness, Transparency

Abstract

AKTiVe leadership is a foundational cultural model that has been adopted at Florida Health Science Center (Tampa General Hospital). The premise of the model is that treating each other with Authenticity, Kindness, Transparency, and Vulnerability (AKTiVe Model) will lead to cultural change that enhances trust, engagement, and psychological safety, which will in turn drive performance improvement for the organization. It takes years to change the culture of an organization, which highlights the need to focus on sustainability and resilience in the culture. This research aims to understand the personality traits that predict leading with vulnerability.

I focused on vulnerability because in my personal experiences and observations, it seems to be the component of the AKTiVe Model that has the most variability, and although vulnerability has been researched in academia, the research specifically related to vulnerability in leadership is lacking. Based on my review of the literature, I also hypothesized that emotional stability and social confidence would predict leading with vulnerability, while also exploring the moderating impacts of psychological safety, trust in the leader, and trust within the teams. I developed two survey instruments to be able to evaluate vulnerability in leadership from two perspectives. One was a self-rated survey for leaders, and the other was a follower-rated survey to evaluate their perception of their leader’s vulnerability. The data from five hundred and ninety-eight leaders and four thousand six hundred and fifty-seven followers were analyzed in two groups: self-rated and follower-rated.

There was statistical significance indicating that emotional stability and social confidence do predict leading with vulnerability to differing degrees, based on the self-rated or the follower-rated. The strong correlations in the follower rating data indicate that the approach used in this dissertation has application to predict leadership alignment with vulnerability for aspiring leaders and internal promotions based on the perception of the followers. The moderators had no statistical significance on the relationships between emotional stability and social confidence, and leading with vulnerability based on the analysis of the self-rated data. There was statistical significance of the moderators in the analysis of the follower rating data, but the effect of the moderation did not support the hypotheses.

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