The impact of CIP leadership styles on the performance of college students within work team settings
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ORCID
0009-0003-9159-8203
Date of Graduation
5-15-2026
Semester of Graduation
Spring
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
School of Strategic Leadership Studies
First Advisor
Benjamin Selznick
Second Advisor
Margaret Sloan
Third Advisor
Minjong Jun
Abstract
As experiential and team-based learning approaches become increasingly central to higher education pedagogy (Jackling & De Lange, 2009), understanding the leadership dynamics that influence student performance has gained importance. Despite extensive research on teamwork in academic settings, leadership within student work teams remains underexamined, particularly through advanced leadership frameworks designed for complex and uncertain environments. This study investigates the relationships among team leadership style, team cohesion, and individual student performance within higher education work teams. It is grounded in the Charismatic, Ideological, and Pragmatic (CIP) leadership theory, a sensemaking-based framework that differentiates leadership styles according to temporal orientation, emotional engagement, and problem-solving logic (Mumford, 2006). While the CIP model has been primarily applied to crisis and organizational leadership contexts, its relevance to emerging leaders in higher education has received limited empirical attention (Mumford et al., 2020). This study addresses this gap by applying the CIP framework to undergraduate student teams engaged in experiential learning. Using quantitative research design, data was collected from undergraduate students participating in a semester-long, team-based entrepreneurial project. Leadership styles were measured through student perceptions of team leaders using the CIP leadership scale, while team cohesion was assessed using a validated cohesion instrument. Individual student performance was operationalized through graded project outcomes. Data was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression, and analysis of variance.
The findings indicate that pragmatic leadership is positively and significantly associated with individual student performance and represents the strongest predictor across all models. Charismatic leadership is negatively associated with individual performance when controlling for other leadership styles. Ideological leadership is not significantly related to performance. Team cohesion does not independently predict performance once leadership styles are accounted for, although a significant interaction between charismatic leadership and team cohesion was observed in a direction opposite to that hypothesized. Team cohesion exhibited stronger positive association with student performance at lower levels of perceived team leader’s charismatic leadership. These findings extend CIP leadership theory into higher education and offer implications for the design of team-based learning and student leadership development.
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