Status Incongruence and Supervisor Gender as Moderators of the Transformational Leadership to Subordinate Affective Organizational Commitment Relationship

Grounded in role congruity theory, we examine how status incongruence (when the subordinate is older, has more education, work experience, and/or organizational tenure than the supervisor) in subordinate–supervisor dyads affects transformational leaders’ ability to foster affective organizational commitment among their subordinates. Across two field studies, our findings show that the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate affective organizational commitment is less positive when status incongruence is high. Furthermore, in both field studies we found a 3‐way interaction among transformational leadership, status incongruence, and supervisor gender predicting subordinate affective organizational commitment. Specifically, in Study 1 (pink‐collar employees in Turkey), low status incongruence strengthened the positive relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate affective organizational commitment for male leaders. In Study 2 (pink‐collar employees in the United States), low status incongruence strengthened the positive relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate affective organizational commitment for female leaders. Furthermore, Study 2 also revealed that collective identity was a mediator of both the significant 2‐ and 3‐way interaction effects on subordinate affective organizational commitment.     

Organizational commitment and job performance: Examining the moderating roles of occupational commitment and transformational leadership

To address why the relationship between affective organizational commitment and job performance varies, we draw on the theorization of Meyer, Becker, and Vandenberghe to propose moderation of affective occupational commitment and transformational leadership, separately and interactively. Data collected from 398 employees and their supervisors supported our hypotheses. Specifically, affective organizational commitment was more strongly associated with job performance for employees with high occupational commitment, or when a supervisor's transformational leadership was high. Importantly, in a moderated mediation relationship, we found the effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between affective organizational commitment and job performance for employees with high occupational commitment was contrary to its effect on employees with low occupational commitment. Given the significant roles of both commitments as discussed in the present study, we offer suggestions on how to consider these factors during the assessment and selection of personnel and role assignment.     

Bases of social power,leadership styles,and organizational commitment

Affective organizational commitment reflects the extent to which organizational members are loyal and willing to work toward organizational objectives (Meyer & Allen, 1997). In particular, affective organizational commitment holds very important implications at all organizational levels (e.g., turnover rates, performance, and citizenship behavior). Whereas previous research has evinced the positive influence of transformational and charismatic leadership styles on affective commitment toward the organization (Bass & Avolio, 1994), little is known with regard to the nature of this relationship. In line with the interpersonal power/interaction model, the present investigation aimed to investigate the mechanism at play between transformational leadership style and affective organizational commitment. Specifically, we hypothesized that transformational leadership style would increase affective organizational commitment through its effect on willingness to comply with soft bases of power. In two studies, we subjected the foregoing hypotheses to empirical scrutiny. In Study 1, the proposed mediation model was empirically supported with Italian employees in the public sector. Attesting to the robustness of our findings, Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 with Italian employees from the public and private sectors. In addition, Study 2 replicated Study 1 using a different measure of transformational leadership. Both Study 1 and Study 2 provided results consistent with our hypotheses. Specifically, the present paper reports empirical evidence that (1) the more participants report having a transformational leader, the more willing they become to comply with soft (but not harsh) power bases, (2) in turn, greater willingness to comply with soft (but not harsh) power bases increases one's affective organizational commitment. These findings provide additional support for the interpersonal power/interaction model and pave the way for new research directions.     

Passive leadership,role stressors,and affective organizational commitment: A time-lagged study among health care employees

IntroductionThis study examines the relationships of passive leadership and role stressors to affective organizational commitment among hospital employees.ObjectiveThis study's objective was to understand the mediating effect of role stressors (conflict, overload, and ambiguity) in the relation between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment.MethodWe used a structural equation modeling approach on a sample of 185 hospital employees and a time-lagged design in which predictor and mediators were assessed at Time 1 and affective organizational commitment was obtained 3 years later.ResultsFindings revealed that passive leadership was positively related to all three role stressors and that role ambiguity fully mediated a negative relationship between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, the relationship between passive leadership and role conflict was stronger when role overload was high.ConclusionThis study suggests organizations should strive to limit the emergence of passive leadership behaviors among supervisors due to their detrimental effects on the long-term development of affective commitment via role ambiguity.     

中国组织情境下的领导有效性：对变革型领导、领导-部属交换和破坏型领导的元分析

以91项实证研究(92个独立样本, 33517名员工)为对象, 综合使用元分析、相对权重分析和结构方程技术, 考察了中国组织情境下领导方式的有效性问题。研究者从导向(行为-关系)和性质(积极-消极)两个方面, 选择了变革型、领导-部属交换和破坏型3种领导方式; 从产出类型(态度-行为)方面, 选择了下属工作满意度、情感承诺、留职意愿、任务绩效和组织公民行为5种有效性指标。结果表明：(1)变革型领导和领导-部属交换与员工积极性态度和行为正相关, 破坏型领导与员工积极性态度和行为负相关。(2)三种领导方式的有效性有所不同：在对下属态度的影响上, 领导-部属交换作用最强, 变革型领导次之, 破坏型领导最弱; 在对下属行为的影响上, 破坏型领导作用最强, 领导-部属交换次之, 变革型领导最弱。(3)关系导向领导方式在行为导向领导方式与下属反应关系中起部分中介作用, 即除了直接影响, 变革型和破坏型领导还通过提高和降低领导-部属交换质量影响下属态度和行为。     

A focus on commitment: the roles of transformational and transactional leadership and self-regulatory focus in fostering organizational and safety commitment

The concept of employees’ commitment is one of the most challenging concepts in the management, organizational behaviour and human resource management literatures and research. The current study focuses on the construct of commitment as an emotional attitude, and expands the concept of general organizational commitment to a new more specific form of commitment, commitment to safety. Furthermore, commitment theorists commonly identify leadership as an important contributing factor to the development of organizational commitment. We aim to explain an underlying motivational mechanism, self-regulatory foci, through which leadership styles foster followers’ commitment. Results of three studies that used different methods (field and experimental), within different samples, demonstrated that transformational leadership was positively associated with followers’ promotion focus, which in turn was positively associated with both followers’ general and affective commitment to safety. Prevention focus mediated the positive relationship between a transactional active leadership style and both followers’ general and continuance commitment to safety. The implications of the findings for theory and practice are further discussed.     

变革型领导对下属进谏行为的影响：组织心理所有权与传统性的作用

以373对上级-下属配对数据为样本, 分析了上级的变革型领导对下属进谏行为的影响以及组织心理所有权的中介效应和传统性的调节效应。结果发现：变革型领导对下属进谏上司和进谏同事均有积极影响; 变革型领导通过组织心理所有权的中介效应影响下属进谏上司、进谏同事; 传统性对组织心理所有权与进谏上司、进谏同事之间的关系具有调节效应, 员工的传统性越高, 组织心理所有权对进谏上司、进谏同事的影响越小。     

LEADERSHIP AND EMPLOYEES’ REACTIONS TO CHANGE: THE ROLE OF LEADERS’ PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP STYLE

We examined the role of leaders’ personal attributes and transformational leadership behaviors in explaining employees’ intentions to resist a large‐scale organizational change. Through a multilevel analysis of data from 75 school principals and 586 teachers, we found that teachers’ intentions to resist the organizational change were negatively related to their principals’ openness to change values and transformational leadership behaviors, and positively related to their principals’ dispositional resistance to change. Furthermore, principals’ transformational leadership behaviors moderated the relationship between teachers’ dispositional resistance and intentions to resist the change.     

Studies of transformational leadership in consumer service: leadership trust and the mediating-moderating role of cooperative conflict management

This is the third in a series of studies evaluating how transformational leadership is associated with related variables such as job satisfaction, change commitment, leadership trust, cooperative conflict management, and market orientation. The present paper evaluates the effects of transformational leadership and cooperative conflict management along with their mediating and moderating of leadership trust in the life insurance industry for two sample groups, sales managers and sales employees. The main effect of leadership trust was mediated and moderated by cooperative conflict management. Cooperative conflict management made a more important contribution than transformational leadership or the moderating effect (interaction), but these three together were the most important variables predicting highest leadership trust. Transformational leadership has an indirect influence on leadership trust. This work summarizes the specific contribution and importance of building successful leadership trust associations with employees in relation to leadership and satisfaction with change commitment.     

变革型领导与员工工作态度：心理授权的中介作用

研究的主要目的是考察变革型领导与员工满意度、组织承诺之间的关系,以及变革型领导的作用机制,即变革型领导是否会通过心理授权影响员工工作态度。利用14家企业744份调查问卷的结果,采用结构方程模型技术对变革型领导、心理授权、员工满意度、组织承诺之间的关系进行了交叉验证分析。结果表明,愿景激励与德行垂范对组织承诺与员工满意度有显著的影响,而领导魅力与个性化关怀只对员工满意度有显著的影响;心理授权对变革型领导与员工工作态度的关系具有一定的中介作用,愿景激励与德行垂范通过工作意义影响员工满意度与组织承诺;愿景激励通过自我效能影响组织承诺     

Maintaining an open mind to closed individuals: The effect of resource availability and leadership style on the association between openness to experience and organizational commitment

This paper examines whether workplace characteristics, particularly resource availability and transformational leadership, moderate the association between openness to experience and organizational commitment. In Study 1, 205 employees completed a questionnaire that assessed their openness, organizational commitment, and perceived availability of resources at their organization. Openness reduced the extent to which individuals felt obliged to remain loyal to the organization, although this association diminished as resources became more accessible. In Study 2, 312 employees completed a similar questionnaire that also gauged the perceived leadership style of their supervisors. Transformational leadership amplified the positive relationship between openness and organizational commitment. These findings align with the proposition that individuals are more committed in work environments that facilitate the expression of their traits.     

Employable,committed, and thus well-performing: a matter of interdependent forward-looking social exchange

This study probes the relationship between perceived external employability (i.e., the individual’s perception of available jobs on the external labour market) and affective commitment and performance within the framework of social exchange. An innovative feature is that we advance perceived external employability as a commodity of interdependent forward-looking exchange: employees who perceive themselves as externally employable anticipate successful exchange, which drives further responses, both relational (i.e., affective organizational commitment) and behavioural (i.e., performance). Strong features of this study are that we include (a) both the organization and the workgroup as foci of affective commitment, and (b) task, helping, and counterproductive behaviour as indicators of performance. Results from cross-lagged, structural equation modelling (SEM) analyses on two-wave survey data (N = 458 Belgian employees) largely align with our idea: perceived external employability has a positive cross-lagged effect on affective organizational and workgroup commitment. The two foci of commitment in turn have a cross-lagged effect on performance, positive in the case of helping behaviour and negative in the case of counterproductive behaviour. No significant cross-lagged effects were found in relation to task behaviour. We discuss these results in the light of Social Exchange Theory and potential routes for future research.     

Interpersonal Conflict and Organizational Commitment: Examining Two Levels of Supervisory Support as Multilevel Moderators1

Using a stressor‐strain framework, this research examined the role of supervisory support at 2 organizational levels in the relationship between the work stressor of interpersonal conflict and organizational commitment in a military sample. In all analyses, supervisory support at both levels was conceptualized and modeled as a shared group attribute. Results indicated that perceptions of interpersonal conflict within the organization were related negatively to both affective and continuance commitment. Support from both first‐line supervisors and midlevel managers was related to employees’ affective commitment. First‐line supervisor support was related also to employees’ continuance commitment. Furthermore, midlevel management support attenuated the relationship between interpersonal conflict and continuance commitment. Implications for the assessment of different levels of supervisory support, different variants of organizational commitment, and interpersonal conflict are discussed.     

The advice and influence networks of transformational leaders

Existing transformational leadership research has focused primarily on the behaviors of leaders and their effects on followers. The authors extended this research by examining the social networks of managers who exhibit transformational leadership behaviors. Their focus was on the network of relationships that managers develop and whether they hold key positions in the organization's informal social networks. In a field study using data from 39 managers and 130 nonmanagement employees of 6 organizations, the authors found that managers who score higher on transformational leadership tend to hold more central positions in organizational advice and influence networks. Furthermore, the direct reports of these leaders were also more central in informal organizational networks. These results illuminate one of the ways that managers who exhibit transformational leadership behaviors may exert influence in organizations.     

The role of collective efficacy in the relations between transformational leadership and work outcomes

Using a sample of 402 employees from the banking and finance sectors in China and India, we found that transformational leadership is positively related to organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and negatively related to job and work withdrawal. We also found that collective efficacy mediated the contribution of transformational leadership to job and work withdrawal and partially mediated the contribution of transformational leadership to organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Leadership and satisfaction in change commitment

Managerial transformational leadership skills may directly influence banking counter staff toward change commitment and improve job satisfaction and service quality, or the influence instead may be mediated by change commitment. For a sample comprised of 246 managers from four large Taiwanese banks, the following path relationships were tested: (1) the association of transformational leadership with change commitment, (2) the association of change commitment with job satisfaction, and (3) the direct or indirect (through the mediation of change commitment) effect of transformational leadership on job satisfaction. Regression was utilized to gain insight into the effects of transformational leadership and change commitment on job satisfaction. Transformational leadership may foster change by providing psychological support to the banking counter staff, enabling them to use their skills to meet the needs of individual customers in response to complex environments.     

Leadership laissez-faire,menace identitaire et engagement organisationnel

Research on the impact of supervisors’ laissez-faire leadership, a frequent form of passive leadership, is still in its infancy. In the present study, we explore the possibility that laissez-faire leadership by supervisors engenders a feeling of threat among employees regarding their organizational identity. In other words, the lack of attention given to employees by supervisors would create the feeling among employees that their identity as members of the organization is devalued. This perceived identity threat would result in reduced affective, normative, and continuance commitment. We examined these hypotheses in a study using three measurement times, with a time interval of three months. Based on a final sample of 300 participants and latent variable structural equation modeling analyses, the results indicate that supervisors’ laissez-faire leadership engenders a perceived identity threat among employees, which then contributes to reduce affective, normative, and continuance commitment. Finally, laissez-faire leadership was also directly and negatively related to continuance commitment. We discuss how these findings contribute to enhance our understanding of the effects of laissez-faire practices by supervisors.     

Mitigating the Harmful Effect of Perceived Organizational Compliance on Trust in Top Management: Buffering Roles of Employees’ Personal Resources

This study considers how employees’ POC—defined as their beliefs that the organizational climate stifles change and values compliance with the status quo—reduce their trust in top management, as well as how this negative relationship might be buffered by access to two personal resources that support organizational change: openness to experience and affective commitment to change. Data from a sample of Pakistan-based organizations reveal that POC reduce trust in top management, but this effect is weaker at higher levels of openness to experience and affective commitment to change. These findings are significant in that they indicate that employees who operate in organizational climates marked by “yea-saying” can counter the difficulty of improving their job situation by drawing from adequate personal resources.     

The role of leadership perception as a mediator between managers’ self-monitoring and subordinate attitudes

Although the role of social cognition in leadership perception has been emphasized frequently in recent years, research using this approach in an organizational context is rare. This study investigated subordinates’ perceptions of their managers as leaders (that is, to what extent they perceive their manager as a leader) as a potential mediating factor explaining the relationship between managers’ self-monitoring and their subordinates’ attitudes toward their organizations. The study was carried out with middle-level managers (N = 64) and their subordinates (N = 210) from various business organizations in Turkey. Results indicate that subordinates’ leadership perceptions of their managers mediate the relationship between managers’ self-monitoring and their subordinates’ affective and normative organizational commitment. These results provide insight into some of the antecedents and outcomes of leadership perception.     

Transformational and Transactional Leadership and Followers’ Achievement Goals

Purpose

Achievement goals, or the standards of competence employees pursue in their work, have far-reaching consequences for employee and organizational functioning. In the current research, we investigated whether employees’ achievement goals can be predicted from their supervisor’s leadership style.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A multilevel study was conducted in which followers of 120 organizational leaders completed measures of their leader’s transformational leadership (focusing on individual needs and abilities, on intellectual development, and on a common team mission), transactional leadership (focusing on monitoring and achievement-related rewards), and their own mastery goals (aimed at learning, developing, and mastering job-relevant skills), and performance goals (aimed at doing better than others).

Findings

Group-level transformational leadership predicted followers’ mastery goals, whereas group-level transactional leadership predicted followers’ performance goals. Within-group differences in transformational leadership also predicted mastery goals.

Implications

These findings suggest that leadership style plays an important role in the achievement goals followers adopt. Organizations may promote transactional leadership in contexts requiring that employees outperform others. In contrast, in contexts requiring learning and development, organizations may promote transformational leadership.

Originality/Value

This research is the first to examine the relationships between leadership styles and specific follower goals, and the first to highlight the role of leadership as a social variable involved in employees’ adoption of achievement goals.