A model of political leadership characteristics leading to country development

At present, overall dimensions of leadership quality in Thailand tend to decrease dramatically. When considering political context in Thailand, it was found that Thailand is facing crisis in political leadership. This study aimed to investigate political leadership characteristics leading to country development and to develop a structural equation model. The researchers collected qualitative data by interviewing experts in the field and collecting quantitative data by interviewing 500 political leaders at the local and national levels. The data analysis yielded the political leadership model consisted of 5 aspects; namely, Interpersonal Building related to thinking and implementing projects beneficial to society at large; Individualized Consideration in relation to utilizing personnel according to their ability; Intelligence concerning having ability to analyze problems and having courage to make right decisions in every situation; Integrity involving loving and being faithful to the nation, religion, the king and the organization; Interpersonal Attribution including persistence, devotion and sacrifice. After testing the hypotheses, it was found that political leaders at the national and local levels differently emphasized overall leadership characteristics for country development. The analysis of the structural equation model developed by the researcher revealed that the model passed the assessment criteria and accorded with the empirical data with Chi-square value of 0.722, relative Chi-square value of 0.948, IOC value of 0.961, and RMSEA of 0.000. The hypotheses testing of the model showed that Intelligence had direct effect on Interpersonal Building, while Integrity had direct effect on Intelligence and Interpersonal Building. However, Interpersonal Building had direct effect on Individualized Consideration and Interpersonal Attribution also had direct effect on Integrity. The statistical significance level of this study was set at 0.05. Corresponding author: Sathit Pitutecha Email addresses for the corresponding author: sunee.w@fba.kmutnb.ac.th First submission received: 3rd April 2018 Revised submission received: 5th June 2018 Accepted: 17th August 2018