Crisis management in Korean Generation Z’s leadership expectations: a robustness analysis

Abstract

Generational expectations of leaders are typically inferred from competency importance ratings, but such ratings are difficult to interpret when they are subject to strong ceiling effects. We examine this methodological challenge in South Korean Generation Z, using crisis management as a focal test case. Drawing on a June 2024 nationwide quota sample of 1,000 South Koreans aged 14-28, we measured the importance respondents assigned to eighteen twenty-first-century leadership competencies and analyzed the ratings with paired comparisons, bootstrap resampling, and within-person centering. Crisis management received the highest mean rating, and its first place was highly stable under resampling, yet strong ceiling compression left it statistically indistinguishable from communication skills; its top position therefore indicates high salience within broadly shared expectations, not a singular priority. Women reported higher raw ratings for crisis management, but the difference was no longer significant after within-person centering, and an equivalence test rejected effects as large as the conventional small-effect benchmark, a pattern consistent with a difference in scale use rather than in priorities. Women's stronger emphasis on social skills remained robust after the same correction, in line with social role theory. The cross-sectional design supports neither causal nor generational claims. What the study does establish is twofold: top-ranked means and raw demographic gaps in compressed ratings cannot be interpreted without corrections for ceiling effects and scale use, and crisis management is robustly salient in a cohort where prior research had placed it at the periphery.

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