Work Engagement: Investigating the Role of Transformational Leadership,Job Resources,and Recovery

While the relationship between job resources and engagement has been well established, a greater understanding of the upstream factors that shape job resources is required to develop strategies to promote work engagement. The current study addresses this need by exploring transformational leadership as an upstream job resource, and the moderating role of recovery experiences. It was hypothesized that job resources would mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and engagement. Recovery experiences were expected to moderate the relationship between resources and engagement. A sample of 277 employees from a variety of organizations and industries was obtained. Analysis showed direct relationships between: transformational leadership and engagement, and transformational leadership and job resources. Mediation analysis using bootstrapping found a significant indirect path between transformational leadership and engagement via job resources. Recovery experiences did not significantly moderate the relationship between job resources and engagement. To date, the majority of published literature on recovery has focused on job demands; hence the nonsignificant result offers insight of a potentially more complex relationship for recovery with resources and engagement. Overall, the current study extends the JD-R model and provides evidence for broadening the model to include upstream organizational variables such as transformational leadership.     

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.     

Rethinking leadership education: narrative inquiry and leadership stories

This narrative essay shares observations and insights about how instructors can use creativity, student voice, and personalized learning to create more responsive educational leadership pedagogy. Three stories, as told by a professor and two former students, explore how students’ narratives can naturally inform educational leadership preparation across international borders. We aim to demonstrate how students’ narrative experiences in education can contribute to exisiting discourse and research on effective and innovative pedagogical practice in educational leadership preparation.     

A Pilot Study of Transformational Leadership and College Counseling Outcomes

This pilot study explores the relationship between perceived transformational leadership skills of college counselors and outcomes in counseling. College students receiving counseling (n = 46) were given a revised version of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), the Working Alliance Inventory, Short Form (WAI-S), and the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS-34). Results yielded significant relationships between improvement in areas of client functioning and subscales measuring aspects of transformational leadership in counselors as perceived by clients. In addition to significant correlations between alliance and subscales of the MLQ, there were strong negative relationships between social anxiety and management by exception (active); academic distress and idealized influence (behavior); and alcohol use and management by exception (passive).     

The spiritual dimension and curriculum change

The impetus for curriculum change should ultimately be to improve student learning. Implementing change can be very stressful and diminish a teachers’ sense of well‐being and thereby minimise the chances of successful or effective change. Drawing on a recent study that investigated how faculty leaders managed curriculum change in religious education this paper reports on one key finding which suggested that attention to the spiritual dimension can help teachers to overcome feelings of anxiety and stress and lead to effective change management. In particular this paper identifies some characteristics of connectedness as expressions of the spiritual dimension within an educational context. This paper will situate the findings and provide a brief background to the study and the role of faculty leaders in managing curriculum change. It will then proceed to give an account of the spiritual dimension and how it may be fostered through experiences of connectedness within the educational setting. An overview of some characteristics of connectedness used by the faculty leaders are then outlined and conclusions drawn.     

Sanctioned social violence: A psychoanalytic view - Part I

This paper is the first of a series of two that present an effort to systematize the application of psychoanalytic theory of group processes to the outbreak of massive violence. It explores the origins and social amplification of primitive aggression by means of group psychology and mass psychology, and the combined influences of the regressive pull of ideologies, the personality features of social and political leadership, and the triggering impact of historical trauma and social crises. The paper describes a spectrum of narcissistic-paranoid mechanisms that provide a common matrix for the analysis of those aspects of social psychology that co-determine socially sanctioned violence.     

Linking Birth Order to Political Leadership: The Impact of Parents or Sibling Interaction?

Despite mounting evidence that first-born children are overrepresented among incumbents in political office, there is no consensus about the cause of this overrepresentation. Some stress the impact of differential parenting, arguing that the first-born receive a larger share of parental resources and have a greater need to live up to parental expectations. Others emphasize the interaction among siblings, arguing that first-born children are better prepared for power struggles, having experience both as followers and as leaders within the family. This study, using birth-order data for nearly 1,200 incumbents in various offices in local and national politics in the Netherlands, found more support for the parental impact perspective. Singletons were also overrepresented among incumbents, whereas middle-born children were underrepresented. The data suggest that this birth-order effect is weaker among younger generations and is more pronounced among women.     

The Relationship Between Gender Role Stereotypes and Requisite Military Leadership Characteristics

The continuing emphasis on the need to utilize fully women's leadership skills in traditionally or predominantly male environments highlights the need for understanding gender stereotypes and leadership characteristics perceived to be associated with various jobs. This study essentially replicates Schein's research (1973, 1975) to determine the extent of gender stereotypes held by military students for military leadership positions. The results indicate (1) continued disparity in men's perceptions of the similarities between women and leaders, (2) support of previous findings that women recognize similarities between women and leaders, (3) senior military students possess stronger masculine gender role stereotypes of successful officers than do students with less than 1 year of service in the military academy, (4) greater experience with being led by female leaders did not affect men's masculine gender role stereotypes of successful leaders, and (5) successful female cadet leaders perceive successful officers as having characteristics commonly ascribed to both women and men. These results are interpreted in light of previous research on gender roles and leadership, and the practical implications for meeting organizational, and individual objectives for successful utilization of women in military leadership positions are discussed.