Different angles on transformational leadership: its antecedents, relatives, and consequences in self and other perception
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Date
2013-01-14
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Abstract
In the last decades, leadership research has favored transformational leadership to describe effective leadership behavior in organizations. In order to fill some troublesome research gaps around this demonstrably effective leadership process three empirical studies were conducted that shed light on transformational leadership from different angles. On the one hand, transformational leadership is investigated within a comprehensive process model of leadership that incorporates personality traits of the leader as antecedents, transactional leadership as a related leadership style, and different outcome criteria as consequences of transformationale leadership. On the other hand, this dissertation focuses on the methods of measurement that are typically applied. Drawing on methodological assumptions about the interplay of trait and method components in the measurement of constructs, confirmatory factor analyses of multitrait-multimethod data are applied to control for the method effects of supervisors’ self-ratings and followers’ other ratings.
By this means, the discriminant validity of transformational and transactional leadership could be empirically confirmed for the first time in Study 1. Likewise, the subscales of transformational and transactional leadership were found to be distinguishable when method effects of rating perspectives were partialled out. In Study 2, three personality traits (achievement, extraversion, and emotional stability) showed substantial true-score correlations with transformational leadership, affirming its dispositional basis in contrast to previous research relying on cross-method zero-order correlations. Again, very strong method effects could be revealed that accounted for almost one half of the indicators’ variance. In Study 3, the latent factor scores for the personality traits and for transformational leadership were entered in a mediator model. Achievement and extraversion, as distal predictors, directly predicted transformational leadership and indirectly predicted followers’ job satisfaction and, particularly achievement, the objective criterion of a unit’s achieved sales profit. Transformational leadership, as a proximal predictor, fully mediated these relations between personality traits and leadership effectiveness. Implications for leadership research and HR practice are discussed.
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Discriminant validity, Multitrait multimethod analysis, Personality traits, Process model of leadership, Transformational leadership