Lost in Translation? An explorative and comparative analysis of the psychometric qualities of the Norwegian Leadership Versatility Index

Abstract

Lost in translation? An explorative and comparative analysis of the psychometric qualities of the Norwegian Leadership Versatility Index By Sofie Bang Jensen & Ida Kopperstad Supervisors: Henning Bang & Dag-Erik Eilertsen Flexible or versatile leadership has been found to be essential to performance in organizations. Versatile leadership is defined as adapting leadership behavior to changes in contextual demands, conceptualized as the mastery of opposing but complementary behaviors. The Leadership Versatility Index (LVI) is a multi-rater feedback tool, where a leader’s performance is rated by several coworkers. The tool is designed to help managers understand their leadership behavior along two domains, categorized as how one leads people in the organization and what organizational issues the leader focuses on. This is measured through the leader’s versatility within four dimensions of leadership behaviors: forceful, enabling, operational and strategic leadership. The English version of the LVI has been extensively researched and validated over the past three decades, and was translated to Norwegian in 2017. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the psychometric qualities of the Norwegian version of the LVI and how it compares to the American version. The thesis utilizes a quantitative design, analyzing ratings of 44 Norwegian leaders recruited for the present project. Measures previously used to assess the reliability and validity of the American LVI are utilized, to allow for comparison. Overall, the results indicate a satisfactory level of reliability and validity for the forceful and enabling dimensions. The strategic-operational dimension pair displayed considerable weaknesses in reliability and internal structure. The underlying theoretical model was not confirmed by factor analysis, but the results could be a product of methodological limitations. In the sample, versatility explained half of the variation in what separates the most effective from the least effective managers. Furthermore, the Norwegian sample differed from the global sample in which behavior dimensions that were most over- and underdone. Except for these differences, the results were to a large part similar to those of the American LVI.