Abstract

The objectives of this study were to investigate the followers's perception of the behavioral characteristics of middle managers' leadership styles and the relationship between middle managers' behavioral characteristics by leadership style and followers' trust in middle managers. The data were collected from the officials of the Rural Development Administration(RDA) of Korea in September, 2001. A total of 215 questionnaires out of 232 distributed were collected and 211 valid ones analyzed. The results from the study were as follows: First, on the leadership styles of the middle managers of RDA, the perception points of the staffs of offices/divisions were 3.56 points in servant leadership style, 3.48 points in transformational leadership style and 3.51 in transactional leadership style from the possible 5.0 points scale. Second, the mean point of the trust level of the staff to the middle managers was 3.64 points indicating that the directors in general tried to treat the staff of offices/divisions with equitably and to communicate with them openly. Third, the correlation between the trust of followers and several variables showed that the subordinate behavioral characteristics of servant leadership, transformational leadership and transactional leadership had positive effects on the trust. Especially 'individualized consideration' and 'contingent rewards' were highly correlated.

Keywords

• Middle Manager;
• Leadership Style