Textual Rhetorical Analysis Paper

John Lauer

ENGL 250

Textual Rhetorical Analysis Paper

2/24/14

Textual Rhetorical Analysis of Effects of Leadership on Engineers: A Structural Equation Model

               As a future engineer, what better way to learn about my field and build on my leadership skills than to read and analyze, but the writings of three experienced engineers and businessmen that have researched the  specific topic of engineers and the effects they have as leaders. Each author of this scholarly article has great educations as PhD holder, an engineer of different sectors, and extended management experience that contributes to the in-depth analyzing of the topics discussed. These authors are Jose-Luis Mascaray Laglera, Javier Conde Collado, and Juan-Antonio Marco de Oca. As stated in the beginning of the paper, the main goal of this article is to, “propose a structural equation model to comprehensively explain the relationship between leadership and the variables linked to it.” The article also hits on specific topics that contribute to the success of a leadership role which include transformational leadership, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, trust in leadership, job performance, and relationship constructs. This clear goal is what the author hopes to fully explain, and a textual analysis, which will be carried out in this paper, is used to evaluate how well this was accomplished through the authors writing. 

               Starting with an overall look at the article, one component that must be analyzed is the style. The audience for this article is all engineers that are, or could be in a leadership role. So the piece must insure that it is written in a way that engineers will understand and agree with. As the article is written by engineers, the style is clearly correct in the straight forward, direct writing that is done. Engineers prefer to read and write as little as possible with getting all information across the writing. There are also some acronyms that were used, in which the authors took into account and labeled not only in the paragraphs, but in a separate list on page ten, so as to make future tables less cluttered when showing the data from the research. As all scholarly articles are, the writing is very formal, and as engineers, the transitions are sometimes a little rough, but as the audience is clear, the information stated is the important thing to absorb, and not the literary grace of more interpretive pieces.

               Another style that engineers prefer is tables and graphs. The authors show tables providing quick, straight forward information on exhibits 2, 3, 4, and 6, along with a diagram on page twelve labeled exhibit 5. Each exhibit supported the hypotheses given in the article, and has its own set of structure that helps interpret the data in number values. This is complicated, and not needed to be explained to evaluate the article itself. These visuals add to the understanding of the data, and the author knows these are beneficial to the engineers that will be reading the article, so the implementation of them helps with validity and quality of the writing. Another small, but important aspect is the spacing done with each new section of the article. The bolding and spacing done between points is well done, and holds to standards in proper writing.

               Organization is one of the most important parts to writing and is integral to the success of understanding and communicating the message and findings without confusing and frustrating the reader. The authors do a great job of organizing the introduction of the paper where it talks about crucial aspects of a company’s survival, in which one of the most important is leadership within the management staff. It then explains factors that affect outcomes in the work place between employees and their job performance related to how management acts.  And then a smooth transition takes the topic to transformational leadership. In the Previous Research section on page 8, there are multiple sections that talk about the aspects of leadership, but the order of “Job Satisfaction” and “Job Performance” is a little off in my opinion. I suggest that they follow each other in that order because they are very closely related, as depending on how satisfied you are with your job, changes how you perform day to day.  The rest of the order of the overall article makes sense. There are hypotheses present before the research and data, and the discussion and conclusion of the data then come, and the article ends with some analysis of the limitations of the research and some future research suggestions.

               After looking at the context of the article, the details show that the authors have extended knowledge in the field and vast experience in management over the years. This article is also supported by the many references in the back of the article that were used to help with the research and findings. All of the supporting evidence is shown with internal citations in the paper, which shows the reader that the information is legitimate and can be trusted.

               In conclusion, the article was well written in all aspects of analysis. To some people, the context and information provided might be analyzed, but the topics covered are really up to the authors and what they want to include in the article. Other than that, the topics and goal were accomplished well through the writing, and gave the reader a good overview and in-depth look at  the effects of leadership on engineers and the evidence behind the reasoning.