The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of charisma and servant leadership of professional baseball coaches on team cohesion. Specifically, this study attempted to verify how team atmosphere and players' level of morale affected team cohes...
The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of charisma and servant leadership of professional baseball coaches on team cohesion. Specifically, this study attempted to verify how team atmosphere and players' level of morale affected team cohesion and were affected by coach leadership. For achieving this purpose, some relevant questionnaires were distributed to 166 players in four professional baseball teams. These survey data were analyzed by using statistical analysis techniques: ANOVA, t-test, Multiple Regression, and Path Analysis on SPSS 15.0 and AMOS 7.0. With this analytic process, this study drew the following conclusions.
First, coach leadership for baseball teams had a positive effect on team atmosphere. This result suggests that components of charisma and servant leadership that players perceived are likely to improve friendly atmosphere and overall circumstances of teams.
Second, coach leadership produced a significant effect on the level of players' morale. With this result, it is possible to suggest that coaching behaviors based on charisma and servant leadership can positively influence emotion or attitude of players for achieving their common purpose.
Third, coach leadership had a positive effect on team cohesion. This result shows that coaching behaviors to create vision or trust and to seek a solution could achieve unity among players by consolidating their feeling about self-respect and approval.
Fourth, team atmosphere and the level of players' morale produced a positive effect on team cohesion. It is plausible to explain that positive team atmosphere heighten team cohesion by making team members recognize their own roles, establish a relationship among players, and clarify the final purpose of their teams.
Fifth, leadership of professional baseball coaches had causal relationships directly or indirectly between team atmosphere, players' morale, and team cohesion. Especially, this study found that coach leadership had an indirect effect on team cohesion, mediated with team atmosphere and players' morale, as well as having a direct influence on team cohesion.