A Research in TRC1 region on the effect of locus of control and emotional intelligence to motivation to lead: The example of university students

Leadership efficiency in the 21st century is seen as one of the most important factors determining the success of organizations coping with change and the challenges in a fast competitive environment that globalization trends and information technologies have brought along by the time. In addition to this, there have been many theoretical and empirical studies on the understanding of the leadership process, yet the willingness of individuals to become leaders has not been fully explained. In recent years, it has been seen that efforts to understand the relationship between individual differences and various leadership behaviors in leadership effectiveness have been the main targets for completing this lack of leadership. The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of the locus of control and emotional intelligence on the motivation to lead and also to set the relationship among motivation to lead, locus of control, emotional intelligence and sociodemographic characteristics. In the study, a questionnaire composed of sociodemographic questions was used along with Chan and Drasgow's Motivation to Lead Scale (2001), Spector's Locus of Control Scale (1988) and Wong and Law's Emotional Intelligence Scale (2002) to collect the data from 1394 students in the second, third and fourth grades of the Business and Economics Departments of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of three state universities and a foundation university in the TRC1 region. Questions on research hypotheses and sociodemographic characteristics were tested by data from the questionnaire using factor analysis, correlation and regression analysis, independent sample T-test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). As a result of the research, it was found that the locus of control and emotional intelligence had an effect on motivation to lead. Subsequent analyzes revealed significant differences in the sociodemographic characteristics of the university students between the locus of control, emotional intelligence and their motivation to lead scores. Furthermore, the results of the research were evaluated and compared with the results of other studies in the literature.