Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity.

This study provided a comprehensive examination of the full range of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. Results (based on 626 correlations from 87 sources) revealed an overall validity of .44 for transformational leadership, and this validity generalized over longitudinal and multisource designs. Contingent reward (.39) and laissez-faire (-.37) leadership had the next highest overall relations; management by exception (active and passive) was inconsistently related to the criteria. Surprisingly, there were several criteria for which contingent reward leadership had stronger relations than did transformational leadership. Furthermore, transformational leadership was strongly correlated with contingent reward (.80) and laissez-faire (-.65) leadership. Transformational and contingent reward leadership generally predicted criteria controlling for the other leadership dimensions, although transformational leadership failed to predict leader job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: A meta-analysis comparing women and men.

A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female readers were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leadership style, hierarchical influence, and the satisfaction of subordinate role expectations: A test of Likert's influence proposition.

Examined the moderating effect of upward hierarchial influence on the relationship between supportive leader behavior and satisfaction of subordinate expectations and with the effect of 4 dimensions of leadership style. Contrary to previous theory and research, findings with 243 employees reveal little interaction between hierarchical influence and consideration. Leader consideration was found to have strong positive relationship to satisfaction in 11 out of 16 measures of subordinate role satisfaction, while initiating structure was positively related to 10. Leader technical competence was found to be significantly related to only 2 out of 16 role satisfaction measures, and leader decisiveness was found to have a rather pervasive effect on role satisfaction, bearing a significant positive relationship to 13 out of 16 satisfaction measures. The theoretical implications of the findings as related to likert's linking-pin theory and previous studies on leader behavior are briefly discussed. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformational leadership, initiating structure, and substitutes for leadership: A longitudinal study of research and development project team performance.

Transformational leadership, initiating structure, and selected substitutes for leadership were studied as longitudinal predictors of performance in 118 research and development (R&D) project teams from 5 firms. As hypothesized, transformational leadership predicted 1-year-later technical quality, schedule performance, and cost performance and 5-year-later profitability and speed to market. Initiating structure predicted all the performance measures. The substitutes of subordinate ability and an intrinsically satisfying task each predicted technical quality and profitability, and ability predicted speed to market. Moderator effects for type of R&D work were hypothesized and found whereby transformational leadership was a stronger predictor of technical quality in research projects, whereas initiating structure was a stronger predictor of technical quality in development projects. Implications for leadership theory and research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Forgotten Ones? The Validity of Consideration and Initiating Structure in Leadership Research.

This study provided a meta-analysis of the relationship of the Ohio State leadership behaviors--Consideration and Initiating Structure--with leadership. Overall, 163 independent correlations for Consideration and 159 correlations for Initiating Structure were analyzed. Results revealed that both Consideration (.48) and Initiating Structure (.29) have moderately strong, nonzero relations with leadership outcomes. Consideration was more strongly related to follower satisfaction (leader satisfaction, job satisfaction), motivation, and leader effectiveness, and Initiating Structure was slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group-organization performance. Validities did vary by leadership measure, but in most cases validities generalized regardless of the measure used. Overall, the results provide important support for the validity of Initiating Structure and Consideration in leadership research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformational Leadership: Relations to the Five-Factor Model and Team Performance in Typical and Maximum Contexts.

This study examined the 5-factor model of personality, transformational leadership, and team performance under conditions similar to typical and maximum performance contexts. Data were collected from 39 combat teams from an Asian military sample (N = 276). Results found that neuroticism and agreeableness were negatively related to transformational leadership ratings. Team performance ratings correlated at only .18 across the typical and maximum contexts. Furthermore, transformational leadership related more strongly to team performance in the maximum rather than the typical context. Finally, transformational leadership fully mediated the relationship between leader personality and team performance in the maximum context but only partially mediated the relationship between leader personality and team performance in the typical context. The Discussion section focuses on how these findings, although interesting, need to be replicated with different designs, contexts, and measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The destructiveness of laissez-faire leadership behavior.

The aim of the study is to test the assumption that laissez-faire leadership behavior is not a type of zero-leadership, but a type of destructive leadership behavior that shows systematic relationships with workplace stressors, bullying at work, and psychological distress. A survey of 2,273 Norwegian employees was conducted and analyzed. Laissez-faire leadership was positively correlated with role conflict, role ambiguity, and conflicts with coworkers. Path modeling showed that these stressors mediated the effects of laissez-faire leadership on bullying at work and that the effects of laissez-faire leadership on distress were mediated through the workplace stressors, especially through exposure to bullying. The results support the assumption that laissez-faire leadership behavior is a destructive leadership behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality correlates of leadership development in Canadian Forces officer candidates.

This study investigated the relationship between personality and leadership development in a sample of Canadian Forces officer candidates. At Time 1, personality assessments were obtained from candidates, interviewers, and references at various Canadian Forces Recruiting Centres. Six to nine months later at Time 2, 174 military officer candidates were evaluated by instructors and peers on various aspects of the Basic Officer Training Course (BOTC). Results revealed that BOTC final grade and instructors' ratings of leadership were predicted by self-ratings of the Locus of control factor and its subordinate trait, internal control. Also, the references' ratings of the Surgency factor and its subordinate trait, dominance, predicted the BOTC final grade and ratings of leadership. Four years later at Time 3, we examined the extent to which self-ratings of personality obtained at Time 1 predicted leadership performance and perceptions of leadership styles. Dominance, energy level, and internal control predicted some leadership criteria, with dominance predicting the most. Overall, these results indicate that measures of personality are associated with leadership development in the military. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trait-based perspectives of leadership.

The trait-based perspective of leadership has a long but checkered history. Trait approaches dominated the initial decades of scientific leadership research. Later, they were disdained for their inability to offer clear distinctions between leaders and nonleaders and for their failure to account for situational variance in leadership behavior. Recently, driven by greater conceptual, methodological, and statistical sophistication, such approaches have again risen to prominence. However, their contributions are likely to remain limited unless leadership researchers who adopt this perspective address several fundamental issues. The author argues that combinations of traits and attributes, integrated in conceptually meaningful ways, are more likely to predict leadership than additive or independent contributions of several single traits. Furthermore, a defining core of these dominant leader trait patterns reflects a stable tendency to lead in different ways across disparate organizational domains. Finally, the author summarizes a multistage model that specifies some leader traits as having more distal influences on leadership processes and performance, whereas others have more proximal effects that are integrated with, and influenced by, situational parameters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognition-based and affect-based trust as mediators of leader behavior influences on team performance.

We develop a model in which cognitive and affective trust in the leader mediate the relationship between leader behavior and team psychological states that, in turn, drive team performance. The model is tested on a sample of 191 financial services teams in Hong Kong and the U.S. Servant leadership influenced team performance through affect-based trust and team psychological safety. Transformational leadership influenced team performance indirectly through cognition-based trust. Cognition-based trust directly influenced team potency and indirectly (through affect-based trust) influenced team psychological safety. The effects of leader behavior on team performance were fully mediated through the trust in leader variables and the team psychological states. Servant leadership explained an additional 10% of the variance in team performance beyond the effect of transformational leadership. We discuss implications of these results for research on the relationship between leader behavior and team performance, and for efforts to enhance leader development by combining knowledge from different leadership theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Establishing the next generation at work: Leader generativity as a moderator of the relationships between leader age, leader-member exchange, and leadership success.

In this study, the authors investigated leader generativity as a moderator of the relationships between leader age, leader-member exchange, and three criteria of leadership success (follower perceptions of leader effectiveness, follower satisfaction with leader, and follower extra effort). Data came from 128 university professors paired with one research assistant each. Results showed positive relationships between leader age and leader generativity, and negative relationships between leader age and follower perceptions of leader effectiveness and follower extra effort. Consistent with expectations based on leadership categorization theory, leader generativity moderated the relationships between leader age and all three criteria of leadership success, such that leaders high in generativity were better able to maintain high levels of leadership success at higher ages than leaders low in generativity. Finally, results of mediated moderation analyses showed that leader-member exchange quality mediated these moderating effects. The findings suggest that, in combination, leader age and the age-related construct of generativity importantly influence leadership processes and outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quantitative review.

This article provides a qualitative review of the trait perspective in leadership research, followed by a meta-analysis. The authors used the 5-factor model as an organizing framework and meta-analyzed 222 correlations from 73 samples. Overall, the correlations with leadership were Neuroticism=-.24, Extraversion=.31, Openness to Experience=.24, Agreeableness=.08, and Conscientiousness=.28. Results indicated that the relations of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness with leadership generalized in that more than 90% of the individual correlations were greater than 0. Extraversion was the most consistent correlate of leadership across study settings and leadership criteria (leader emergence and leadership effectiveness). Overall, the 5-factor model had a multiple correlation of .48 with leadership, indicating strong support for the leader trait perspective when traits are organized according to the 5-factor model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of reinforcement omission on rats with lesions in the amygdala.

Trained 12 male Wistar rats with bilateral lesions in the amygdala to barpress on an FI schedule of reinforcement. During test trials, when reinforcement was occasionally omitted, response rates of 12 controls increased in the subsequent interval, whereas lesioned Ss showed no significant change. In Exp II Ss received fixed-ratio reinforcement on 1 lever, which was followed by a time-out period and fixed-ratio reinforcement on a 2nd lever. Results indicate that after reinforcement was withheld Ss with damage in the amygdala did not increase responding in the subsequent time-out period, whereas controls showed significantly higher rates. Differential latencies to initiation of response after nonreinforcement were also found. The deficits following brain damage are attributed to a reduction in nonreinforcement-induced frustration. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-confidence and leadership.

The object of this study was to examine the relationship between lack of confidence in one's leadership ability and reliance upon passive leadership techniques to cope with supervisory problems. 77 Navy petty officers were given a questionnaire containing 20 supervisory problems and were asked to evaluate the desirability of each of 5 ways of solving each problem. Ss also evaluated how satisfied they were with their leadership abilities. Principal findings were: (a) Ss were highly consistent in the extent to which they endorsed each of 5 approaches to correcting performance, (b) there was a correlation of .52 between endorsing the use of administrative procedures to solve the problem and informally asking a superior to solve the problem, and (c) Ss who lacked confidence in their leadership abilities were significantly less willing to hold face-to-face discussions with subordinates and significantly more often endorsed both referring the subordinate to a superior and relying upon the use of administrative rules to solve the supervisory problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How to (and how not to) assess the integrity of managers.

This article concerns how to evaluate the integrity of managers, with an emphasis on identifying those with low integrity. After defining our terms, we review leadership research showing that subordinate perceptions of their manager's integrity determine how much they trust their manager which, in turn, influences their attitudes and performance. Next we evaluate a common method for assessing the integrity of managers. This method defines integrity as a leadership competency and measures it using coworker ratings of observed ethical behavior. We found that these behavioral ratings suggested only a negligible proportion of managers may have integrity issues and did not distinguish high- from low-performing managers. We then propose an alternative method based on subordinate expectations about the likelihood that their boss would behave unethically. This method suggested that a much larger proportion of managers may have integrity issues and did distinguish high- from low-performing managers. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations for assessing integrity in practice and urge the leadership field to seriously consider the prevalence and impact of managerial misconduct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leadership in multiteam systems.

This study examined 2 leader functions likely to be instrumental in synchronizing large systems of teams (i.e., multiteam systems [MTSs]). Leader strategizing and coordinating were manipulated through training, and effects on functional leadership, interteam coordination, and MTS performance were examined. Three hundred eighty-four undergraduate students participated in a laboratory simulation modeling a 3-team MTS performing an F-22 battle simulation task (N = 64 MTSs). Results indicate that both leader training manipulations improved functional leadership and interteam coordination and that functional leader behavior was positively related to MTS-level performance. Functional leadership mediated the effects of both types of training on interteam coordination, and interteam coordination fully mediated the effect of MTS leadership on MTS performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The White standard: Racial bias in leader categorization.

In 4 experiments, the authors investigated whether race is perceived to be part of the business leader prototype and, if so, whether it could explain differences in evaluations of White and non-White leaders. The first 2 studies revealed that "being White" is perceived to be an attribute of the business leader prototype, where participants assumed that business leaders more than nonleaders were White, and this inference occurred regardless of base rates about the organization's racial composition (Study 1), the racial composition of organizational roles, the business industry, and the types of racial minority groups in the organization (Study 2). The final 2 studies revealed that a leader categorization explanation could best account for differences in White and non-White leader evaluations, where White targets were evaluated as more effective leaders (Study 3) and as having more leadership potential (Study 4), but only when the leader had recently been given credit for organizational success, consistent with the prediction that leader prototypes are more likely to be used when they confirm and reinforce individualized information about a leader's performance. The results demonstrate a connection between leader race and leadership categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observing leader behavior: Toward reciprocal determinism in leadership theory.

Developed and explored observational measures of leader behavior, relying on a "reciprocal determinism" viewpoint of causality (leader behavior is seen as both a cause of subordinate behavior and caused by it). In Exp I, 28 male undergraduates assumed the role of subordinate in groups of 2 Ss and took part in 1 of 5 experimental interchanges with a "supervisor" (1 of the experimenters). Results show that observational methods of leader verbal behavior were feasible. In Exp II, 10 graduate students performed the role of leader and were subjected to laboratory manipulations of subordinate performance. Results show that 80% of verbal behavior of Ss concentrated on a methods approach as opposed to about 20% effort oriented toward a motivational-verbal approach. Motivational behavior was the most responsive to the performance manipulations. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Delayed partial reinforcement as an analogue of partial reinforcement.

Combined 2 levels of sucrose (8 and 64%) with 2 delay conditions (12-sec delay and immediate reinforcement) and 2 reinforcement schedules (100 and 50%). Ss were 64 naive female albino sprague-dawley rats given magazine and barpress training and extinction. Acquisition results showed that the highest level of performance was produced by high incentive level, immediate reinforcement, and 100% schedule of reinforcement. In extinction the same relationships were obtained, except that 50% rather than 100% schedules produced superior performance. It is concluded that under conditions where the number of reinforcements were equated, greater persistence of nonreinforced responding was produced by contrasting immediate reinforcement with nonreinforcement as compared to contrasting delayed reinforcement with nonreinforcement. (french summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)