Reducing stress : via transformational leadership or changing employees’ coping with stress? : the influence of transformational leadership upon employee stress and commitment, moderated by leader mindset about stress

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Reducing stress: via transformational leadership or changing

employees’ coping with stress?

The influence of transformational leadership upon employee stress and

commitment, moderated by leader mindset about stress

Name: Y. (Yara) van Bruggen

Student number: 11420405

Date of submission: 25-1-2018 – Final draft

MSc. in Business Administration - Leadership & Management Track

Universiteit van Amsterdam

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Statement of originality

This document is written by student Yara van Bruggen who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

“I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those presented in the text and its references have been used in creating it.”

The faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

This study investigates the relation between transformational leadership, employee stress and

employee commitment. Central to this research is stress. Subsequently, transformational leadership is proposed to have a negative relationship with stress. Moreover, a relatively new concept in literature, stress mindset, is introduced as a possible moderator influencing the negative relationship between employee stress and commitment. There are two types of mindsets, namely a stress-is-debilitating mindset or a stress-is-enhancing mindset. Within this thesis the focus will be on how the leader thinks about stress, so mindset about stress will be applied on the leader. The mindset about stress of a leader is proposed to strengthen or weaken the negative relationship between employee stress and employee commitment, dependent on the type of mindset of the leader. Furthermore, I expect that

transformational leadership has a negative effect upon stress, which means that stress will decrease under high levels of transformational leadership. As a consequence, low stress will lead to higher values of commitment. Thus, stress is proposed to mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and employee commitment.

Data was collected with the use of surveys, which were distributed within our own network. Both leaders and employees had to fill in a different survey, which could be connected to each other via a code. In total, 113 matches could be made. The surveys were analysed using IBM SPSS. The results indicated that there was a positive relationship between transformational leadership and commitment. Moreover, the relationship between stress and commitment was verging on being significant. The remaining hypotheses showed null-findings. Finally, limitations, both practical and theoretical implications and future research directions are being discussed.

Key words: Transformational leadership, employee stress, employee commitment and leader mindset

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1. Introduction

The last few years, stress and burnout (symptoms) among employees are becoming more common in organisations. Therefore, stress is a popular topic, both in organisations and in academic research. According to Schouten en Nelissen (2016), 40% of Dutch employees experience work related stress. Moreover, the Dutch government found out that 36% of work-related absenteeism is due to stress at work (Rijksoverheid, 2014). A lot of times, stress leads to a burnout. In the

Netherlands, about one million employees suffer from burnout symptoms (TNO, 2015).

Work stress is very costly for the employers; workplace absenteeism cost roughly about 1,8 billion euros, excluding costs for replacement, guidance and underproduction. Moreover, work stress also has an influence upon motivation, involvement and retention of the employees (Maslach, 2003). Since 2014, the Dutch government is trying to bring stress and burnout among employers and employees up for discussion. Moreover, the governmental inspection is paying more attention to work-pressure and aggression in an organisation (Rijksoverheid, 2014).

1.1 Research question & motivation

According to Cooke and Rousseau, stress is an emotional state of tension, strain and nervousness (1984). Stress has been researched for many years already. Also, in previous research, leadership and stress have been linked to each other (Seltzer et al., 1989; Smith & Cooper, 1994; Harms et al., 2016). Research has shown that these two concepts influence each other. Stress can impact leadership, in a way that leaders can behave differently when facing stressful times. Some argue that during times of great stress, the true character of a leader may shine true (Hannah et al., 2009, as cited in Harms et al., 2016). Leadership can also impact employee stress. Leaders can be a source of stress or a source of relief from stress (Day et al., 2004, as cited in Harms et al., 2016). Leadership can be a source of stress since for example leaders can give no clarity to employees, show controlling styles or exert great pressure, which can raise the feeling of stress among employees (Offermann & Hellmann, 1996). It can be a source of relief from stress since a great leader can handle and overcome stressful events (Van Vugt et al, 2008, as cited in Harms et al, 2016). An example of a leadership style that can be a source of a relief from stress is transformational leadership.

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Transformational leadership style is seen as a style in which leaders can achieve high performance and satisfaction among their employees via charisma and envisioning their goals (Bass, 1985). Seltzer et al. (1989) questioned themselves in their article whether transformational leadership can also lead to negative outcomes such as stress and burnout. They argued that employees under the supervision of transformational leaders could possible spent more hours and energy on their work, which can result in stress. But the result of their research was the opposite, namely that

transformational leadership may help reduce stress and burnout. Moreover, Harms et al. (2016) concluded after a meta-analysis of existing literature that transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress and even employee burnout.

Various styles of leadership can influence the level of stress as experienced by employees in another way. Within this thesis, the focus will be on transformational leadership, since one of the goals of this thesis is to find out ways to decrease employee stress. Moreover, rather than focussing on influencing stress via leadership, this thesis will look further and will also research how leaders can influence the stress response of employees. What if the coping of a leader with stress influences the stress response and thereby stress experience of an employee?

A relatively new concept within research is mindset about stress. Stress mindset includes the mindset that stress-is-enhancing, or that stress-is-debilitating (Crum et al, 2013). The first mindset, stress-is-enhancing, means that stress has enhancing outcomes for stress-related impact such ass commitment, performance and employee health and wellbeing. On the contrary, someone with a stress-is-debilitating mindset will avoid or manage the stress to prevent debilitating outcomes. Having addressed these two types of mindset, means that a person that is experiencing stress can look at this experience differently, which influences the outcomes of facing stress. Looking at stress as an enhancing happening is new in literature. In previous research, stress has often been seen as something to better avoid.

It would be interesting to use this concept as a moderator between stress and commitment, since the concept of mindset deserves more attention. The mindset of leaders about stress could possibly influence the stress experience of their employees. When it does become apparent that

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leaders could influence this, it could be possible to train leaders in their way of thinking about stress in order to weaken the relation between high stress and low commitment.

Therefore, this research will explore the role of leader mindset about stress as a moderator. The following research question will be answered within this research: What is the influence of transformational leadership upon commitment, mediated by employee stress and considering the effect of leader mindset about stress on the relation between stress and commitment?

This research can contribute to existing literature, since literature has not been clear about the influence of stress upon commitment. This research will include commitment as the dependent variable. Commitment is the involvement in, and identification with an organisation (Mowday et al., 1979). Higher levels of commitment among employees have lots of good consequences for

organisations. For example, lower turnover and higher performance (Leiter & Maslach, 1988). Little research has been done in the field of leader mindset as a variable influencing stress as experienced by employees. Moreover, the results of this research can contribute to existing literature by giving an explanation for why some employees experience less stress then others. Is the mindset of the leader of influence upon this? Since transformational leaders show vision and followers identify with them, it is probable that followers take over the mindset of the leader about stress. If so,

organisations can use this knowledge in trying to reduce stress among their employees by hiring/using managers with a certain type of mindset, or training their managers in having a certain mindset. This could be of influence upon the commitment of employees with their organisation.

1.2 Thesis outline

This master thesis is structured as following. First, the theoretical background will be discussed. The gap in the research will be presented and based upon that, multiple hypotheses will be formed. Then, the methodology for this research will be presented. In this part, the research design will be discussed, and decisions made about the sample will be explained. The next chapter includes the results based upon analysing the surveys. At last, this master thesis will finish in the last chapter with the

conclusion and discussion. In this chapter, limitations of this research and proposals for future research will be made.

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2. Theoretical background

In this chapter, all relevant theories and concepts considering the variables used in this study will be discussed. This thesis will focus upon stress as experienced by employees. At the end, this thesis will research whether transformational leadership influences the level of stress as experienced by

employees, which could influence their level of commitment to the organisation, and whether this relationship is moderated by the mindset of a leader about stress.

This literature review will begin with broadly explaining what stress entails. Also, the

definition of leadership will be discussed broadly. Then, more specifically, literature will be reviewed about the other variables used in this research, namely transformational leadership, mindset about stress and employee commitment. Hypotheses will be formulated and the conceptual model will be introduced and explained.

2.1 Employee stress

What is stress? Cooke and Rousseau (1984) have written that stress is an emotional state of tension, strain and nervousness. Motowidlo et al. (1986: 619) broadened this definition by saying that stress is “an unpleasant emotional experience associated with elements of fear, dread, anxiety, irritation, annoyance, anger, sadness, grief and depression”.

This feeling of stress, what occurs via stressors, result in a stress response (Cohen, 1980). Stressors are for example increased task demand, bureaucratic stress or noise. Most stressors are stressful since it gives the employee a feeling that something is uncontrollable and/or unpredictable (Cohen, 1980). As for Maslach (2003), the three key dimensions of a stress response are an

overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and a detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. The feeling of cynicism is not found in traditional stress literature, but occurs mostly when someone is suffering from burnout symptoms. Maslach (2003) explains this with the fact that employees who show symptoms of burnout, distance themselves from the job. Cynicism is a way to cope with the stress.

Managing stress in organisations is becoming more and more important. Since about a third of all work-related absenteeism is due to stress at work, stress among employees is very expensive for

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employers (Rijksoverheid, 2014). Back in 1987, researchers already found out that stress related illness costs large organisations up to 60 million dollars annually (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987, as quoted in Leong et al., 1996). More recent research shows that 5 million British employees have work-related health problems, because they feel stressed due to high job demands (Jones et al., 2003). Furthermore, stress among employees is an antecedent for increased withdrawal and turnover

numbers. Job burnout is for example a response to stressors in the workplace (Maslach, 2003). Job burnout is often used to describe a state of mental weariness (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2003).

As previously mentioned, Cohen (1980) calls the antecedents of stress ‘stressors’. Stressors can be categorised into role characteristics, personal characteristics, structural organisational characteristics and procedural organisational characteristics (Summers et al, 1995; Ivancevich & Matteson, 1980). Here, structural characteristics mean centralisation or formalisation. Procedural organisational characteristics mean nature of decision-making, equity of reward system or for example hours worked per week. In more recent literature, work pressure has been named a lot as an antecedent of stress (MacDonald, 2011). Work pressure means that there is a lack of fit between task demands and someone’s ability to cope with this. Moreover, TNO (2015) found out that little freedom and high demands at work are the main antecedents for stress in the Netherlands.

According to Fiedler (1992), stress can take two forms. The first form is job stress, which comes from the nature of the task itself and the condition under which the employee is operating. For example time pressure or task complexity. The second form is interpersonal stress, which is a result of the feeling that you have to meet the exceptionally high demands or expectations of others, or a result of being in conflict with colleagues. Within this research, the second form will be more relevant, since interpersonal stress entails that stress occurs as a result of interpersonal conflict or high demands by important others. Important others can be classified as leaders, supervisors and managers, so someone with a formal leadership role. And within this research, the influence of transformational leadership on stress will be researched.

High job stress can result in decreased performance and disorganisation. But interpersonal stress is emotionally very disturbing for the subordinate (Fiedler, 1992). Moreover, Offermann & Hellmann (1996) researched the effect of leadership behaviour upon subordinate stress. They thought

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that research until then focussed too much upon changing an individual’s coping at the expense of the organizational factors that could potentially decrease stress. They already acknowledged the important position of leaders. Leadership is undoubtedly one of the most potential stressors at work, according to Kelloway et al. (2005). This is why in this thesis the focus will be on the influence of leadership upon employee stress.

Skakon et al. (2000), have written an overview in which they discuss previous research about leader’s wellbeing, behaviours and styles with employee wellbeing. Leaders play an important role in creating an environment in which employees can experience wellbeing (Nielsen et al., 2008, as cited in Skakon et al., 2000). Leadership can be classified in various styles. Most often used is the

qualification of transformational leadership, transactional leadership and laissez-faire.

Transformational leadership means that the leaders show vision, or inspires employees to do their job (Bass, 1985). Transactional leadership entails that the leader gets things done based upon a transaction or exchange. At last, laissez-faire means that there is not really leadership. The leader does not

intervene with the employees and does not put effort to build a relationship (Deluga, 1992). In their overview, Skakon et al. (2000) concluded that the results of the influence of various leadership styles upon employee wellbeing are mixed. Some say there is a relationship between transactional

leadership or laissez-faire leadership and employee stress, and others not.

Other styles that are important within the literature about leadership are abusive supervision, leader-member exchange or ethical leadership. Abusive leadership occurs when leaders in a formal role show aggressive or punitive behaviours toward their subordinates (Kelloway et al., 2005). This includes yelling, name-calling and terrorising subordinates. Poor leadership, like abusive leadership, can also be a source of stress (Harms et al., 2016). From the meta-analysis is apparent that abusive leadership has a positive effect upon employee stress. On contrary, ethical leaders are described as honest, fair, caring and trustworthy (Brown et al., 2005). They are transparent and engage in open communication. Ethical leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress and turnover intentions. At last, leader-member exchange (LMX) is found to also be one of the most common sources of employee stress in organisations (Tepper, 2000, as cited in Skakon et al., 2000). Both having a high quality or low quality relationship affects the employee. Employees who have a high quality

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relationship with their leader enjoy advantages like rewards, favours or increased communication (Wayne et al., 1997, as cited in Harris & Kacmar, 2006). But in return for these advantages, leaders expect things like high performance. And employees who have a low quality relationship do not experience the same privileges like their colleagues with high quality relationships (Harris & Kacmar, 2006).

So, stress of an employee can decrease or increase under the influence of a leader, since the leader is most often a prominent person in the work environment. Hence, leaders are likely to influence the behaviour of their employees (Kozlowski & Doherty, 1989). In this research, the focus is on transformational leadership. Specifically, I will concentrate upon follower stress as a

consequence of transformational leadership behaviour. The focus will be on transformational leadership since it is known from previous research that transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress (Harms et al., 2016). And the goal of this research is to see what variables could potentially decrease employee stress and thereby possibly increase commitment.

2.2 Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership is researched many times in various settings. The concept of transformational leadership was first introduced by Burns (1978). Transformational leadership emphasizes leaders’ ability to influence positive follower outcomes through identifying and addressing followers’ needs and transforming them by for example communicating vision or motivating followers to perform at higher levels (Burns, 1978). Certain leadership behaviours can bring the thinking of followers to a higher level. In the following years, various other researchers further developed it. Bass (1985, as cited in Den Hartog et al., 2001) says that transformational leaders are capable of motivating and inspiring followers to perform beyond expectations. They realise this by setting more challenging goals for their employees (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Also, their goals are long-term. Transformational leaders focus on motivating their employees to do more than they originally thought they could, or were intended to do (Bass, 1985). Furthermore,

transformational leaders listen to the needs of their employees and empower them (Bass & Riggio, 2006).

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Four dimensions summarize the core of transformational leadership. These dimensions are: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Bass & Riggio, 2006). The function of these four dimensions is that they both conceptualise and measure transformational leadership. The first dimension is idealized influence or charisma. This means that leaders act in an admirable way, that employees identify with their leader and feel pride to be associated with their leader (Avolio & Bass, 1988; Bass & Riggio, 2006; Judge & Piccolo, 2004).

Then, second is inspirational motivation. This implies that a leader shares visions that are appealing to the followers (Bass & Riggio, 2006; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). Transformational leaders communicate optimism about future goal attainment and challenge followers with high standards (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). Third is intellectual stimulation, which implies that employees are encouraged by their leader to come up with new ideas and approaches (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio, 1990). It is the degree to which leaders challenge assumptions and take risk (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). An important side note is that a leader does not criticize these ideas when they differ from their own ideas (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Otherwise, there is no safe environment for an employee to bring up these ideas and approaches. Final, the fourth dimension of transformational leadership is

individualized consideration. Meeting this dimension for a leader means that the leader focuses on the development and mentoring of their employees (Bass & Avolio, 1990; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). In order to do so, the leader creates a supportive climate, and delegate’s tasks (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Moreover, the leader listens to and acts upon their individual needs and concerns by acting as a mentor or coach (Judge & Piccolo, 2004).

But, leadership does not only influence stress, stress also influences leadership. Leadership can change during stressful times in organisations (Harms et al., 2016). So for example, it is

confirmed in literature that transformational leadership can decrease employee stress via supporting, motivating and inspiring behaviours of the leader (Skakon et al., 2000). A leader could decide to change his leadership style towards transformational in order to decrease employee stress. Also, transformational leadership is linked to positive outcomes for organisations (Judge & Piccolo, 2004), since employees are more committed to the organisations goals (Den Hartog et al., 1995). Moreover, employees are more motivated and more satisfied with their job and leader. As to the meta-analysis of

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Judge & Piccolo (2004), transformational leadership has shown strong correlations with task performance and organisational citizenship behaviour, which entails that an employee would go ‘an extra mile’ (Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006).

As discussed in the previous section, the level of stress can increase or decrease under

leadership. Leadership has the potential to be an antecedent of stress (Kelloway et al., 2005). Harms et al. (2016) have confirmed a negative relationship between transformational leadership and stress. Based upon the known literature, hypothesis 1 can be formulated:

Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress.

Hence, transformational leaders empower their followers and listen to their needs (Bass & Riggio, 2006). According to Nielsen et al. (2008, as cited in Skakon et al, 2000: 113) “they influence the well being through the creation of a working environment that is characterized by offering opportunities for development, a meaningful work and role clarity”. They realize this via providing a clear vision and encouraging, coaching and mentoring their employees. This leads to decreased stress for the employees, which could potentially have positive consequences for an organisation, like higher employee commitment and lower turnover.

2.3 Employee commitment

In order to measure the effect of transformational leadership upon stress for an organisation, it was important to add a dependent variable that could show this. Therefore, organisational commitment is added to the conceptual model. Organisational commitment of an employee means “the relative strength of an individual’s identification with, and involvement in a particular organisation”

(Mowday, Porter & Steers, 1982: 27). Commitment has three components, namely a strong belief of the employee in the organisation’s goals, a desire to be and maintain a member of the organisation and a willingness to put in effort on behalf of the organisation (Vakola & Nikolaou, 2005). Meyer and Herscovitch (2001: 301) define commitment as “a force that binds an individual to a course of action that is of relevance to a particular target”.

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Since for a long time there was no consensus about the definition of organisational commitment, Meyer & Allen (1991) introduced a framework to conceptualize commitment. The framework consists of three concepts; these are normative commitment, affective commitment and continuance commitment. Affective commitment is defined as the employee’s positive emotional attachment to, and sense of identification with the organisation. The employee desires to remain part of the organisation (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Shen & Zhu, 2011). Second, continuance commitment means that an employee’s commitment is based upon the economic and social costs of leaving the organisation. So an employee with this type of commitment chooses to stay due to a lack of a better alternative (Shen & Zhu, 2011). At last, normative commitment is defined as a sense of moral obligation to the organisation. Here, the employee stays with the organisation to reciprocate the benefits that he or she receives (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Shen & Zhu, 2011).

These three concepts can be best viewed as components rather than types. Employees can feel each of these components to a different degree (Allen & Meyer, 1990). Within this research, affective commitment is particularly interesting, since leadership and stress, both variables used within this research, can influence this dimension of commitment the most. But, the level of stress as experienced by employees can also influence normative commitment and continuance commitment; so all three will be researched. For example, it can be discussed that even though when an employee has a high level of stress at work, when an employee has a good salary or additional benefits that other

employers cannot reciprocate or when an employee feels obligated to stay, an employee does not feel motivated to leave the organisation because of a lack of affective commitment. So it is important to research all three components to find out whether stress can influence commitment.

When organisational commitment of employees is low, it could have disastrous consequences for an organisation. For example, organisational commitment is often seen as an antecedent of

employee turnover in literature (Siong et al., 2006; Firth et al., 2004). Moreover, also Elangovan (2001) writes that low commitment is an antecedent of both withdrawal and turnover numbers. Leadership behaviours directly affect commitment and job satisfaction of employees, and this in turn affects the turnover behaviours (Firth et al., 2004). So leadership is considered a key determinant of organisational commitment (Mowday, Porter & Steers, 1982). Organisations put money and effort in

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their employees, and therefore turnover is best to be avoided. This is a reason why it is important to research leadership in combination with commitment. For example, transformational leadership is suggested to be positively related to organisational commitment (Bono & Judge, 2003; Avolio et al., 2004). When leaders score high on transformational leadership, employees will show high levels of organisational commitment. This is the direct relationship within this research. With the above-mentioned in mind, hypothesis 2a is formulated.

As previously discussed, stress can lead to several undesired outcomes for organisations. For example, stress can lead to a lower sense of belonging (Mueller et al., 1992, as cited in Michael et al., 2009). Another example, described by Montgomery et al. (1996, as cited in Chen et al., 2006) is that job stress can lead to decreased commitment. Jamal (1990) found out that job stress and

organisational commitment are negatively related. Based upon this, it could be expected that the relationship between stress and commitment is negative. However, Michael et al. (2006) also

researched the relationship between stress and the three types of commitment. They only found partial support for this relationship. Since there is no recent literature confirming the relationship between stress and commitment, hypothesis 2b is developed.

Transformational leadership has already been linked to organizational commitment, since leaders can create a vision and pride and respect to belong to an organisation (Bass, 1985, as cited in Den Hartog et al., 2001). And also, since transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress, hypothesis 3 suggests that employee commitment with the organisation will increase when stress decreases. This is the indirect relationship within this research. Stress mediates the relation between transformational leadership and organisational commitment.

Hypothesis 2a: Transformational leadership has a positive effect upon employee

commitment.

Hypothesis 2b: Employee stress has a negative effect upon commitment.

Hypothesis 3: The positive relationship between transformational leadership and

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Transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress (Harms et al., 2016). This does not mean that employees do not have stress when their leader shows transformational leadership. What if their leader has very negative or very positive thoughts about stress? An employee could be influenced by the way the leader thinks about stress. So when an employee is already facing stress, their coping with stress can change via their leaders’ mindset about stress. This means that the

relationship between stress and commitment could possibly change. Therefore, leader mindset will be researched as a moderator influencing the relation between stress and commitment.

2.4 Leader mindset about stress

Finally, the concept of leader mindset about stress is being used in this research. In a lot of literature, stress is written about as a negative phenomenon. Stress is something to better avoid or solve, since it has negative effects for employees and therefore will be negative for the organisation (Schuler, 1980; Johnson et al., 2005). Therefore, a lot of existing literature is about preventing stress (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1987; Quick et al., 1997; Kompier et al., 2000). However, there is more recent literature that discusses the positive character of stress too. For example, the experience of stress can be enhancing for the development of deeper relationships, a greater appreciation for life, an increased sense of meaningfulness and new perspectives (Park & Helgeson, 2006, as cited in Crum et al., 2013; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004, as cited in Crum et al., 2013). Stress at work can lead to initiative taking, and employees develop the necessary skills to meet pressing demands (Fay & Sonnentag, 2002). These meanings of stress are contradictory to the previously mentioned negative effects of stress. There is a stress paradox (Crum et al., 2013).

Previously, this paradox was solved with the idea that the amount of the external stressor determined whether stress was debilitating or enhancing (Holmes & Rahe, 1967, as cited in Crum et al., 2013). But Crum et al. (2013) thought that thinking negatively about stress might contribute to its negative effect. So they introduced an additional variable, namely mindset about stress. There is growing evidence within research that mindset about stress can influence stress response. Stress mindset is not a coping strategy on itself, but it could give context to choosing a coping strategy (Crum et al., 2013).

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Stress mindset means the way someone thinks about stress. Mindsets are being used as “simplifying systems through which they can organize and make sense of the world” (Gollwitzer, 1999, as cited by Crum et al., 2013: 717). In this thesis, the focus will be on the way a leader thinks about stress. This can be of influence upon the way this leader is responding to stress and thereby also the manner in which the subordinates of the leader are responding to stress. As before mentioned, a transformational leader is known to be very motivating and inspiring towards their employees (Bass, 1985, as cited in Den Hartog et al., 2001). In this case, this could also mean that the leader’s stress mindset could influence the stress experience and response of the subordinates. This has not been researched yet, but could be important in reducing the problem of stress among employees. So therefore, I am going to research whether the relationship between stress and commitment can be moderated by leader mindset about stress.

Crum et al. (2013) write that there are two types of mindsets. These are the stress-is-enhancing mindset and the stress-is-debilitating mindset. In their research, data is presented that supported the reliability and validity of an 8-item instrument, which is designed to find out whether an individual believes that the effects of stress are either enhancing or debilitating. The

stress-is-debilitating mindset means that someone holds the mindset that stress feelings among employees can have negative consequences for stress-related outcomes such as wellbeing, health, learning, growth or productivity (Crum et al., 2013). The stress-is-enhancing mindset means the opposite, so that stress has enhancing consequences for stress-related outcomes.

Moreover, when someone has a stress-is-debilitating mindset, their primary motivation is to avoid or manage the stress in order to prevent debilitating outcomes. So, he or she will be more likely to respond in a way that serves to avoid or manage the stress (Crum et al., 2013). On the other hand, when someone has a stress-is-enhancing mindset, their motivation is to accept and utilize stress toward achieving enhancing outcomes. So he or she will be more likely to respond in a way that will help meeting the demand, value or goal underlying the stressful situation.

I expect that whether a leader has a stress-is-debilitating or a stress-is-enhancing mindset will influence the relationship between employee stress and organisational commitment. So the negative relationship between stress and commitment to the organisation could possibly strengthen or weaken

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dependent on the leader’s mindset about stress. Since their leader could respond in a way that serves to avoid stress, an employee could feel more stressed about the feeling that there is stress. And stress affects organisational commitment (Jamal, 1990), as described in the previous paragraph. The other way around, when an employee feels a lot of stress, and his leader has a stress-is-enhancing mindset, employees could feel like their leader does not support them. So the negative relation between stress and commitment becomes stronger. However, when an employee feels little stress, and their manager has a stress-is-enhancing mindset, the negative relation between stress and commitment becomes stronger too.

Within their research, Crum et al. (2013) found out that an individual’s mindset about stress was a meaningful variable in determining the stress response of an employee. So stress mindset is not a coping strategy, but it is a mental and motivational context in which coping strategies are chosen and carried out. Changing one’s mindset about stress could potentially change the way someone experiences stress. Based upon this information, the following hypotheses have been developed:

Hypothesis 4a: The negative relation between employee stress and organisational

commitment becomes stronger for high values of leader mindset.

Hypothesis 4b: The negative relation between employee stress and organisational

commitment becomes weaker for low values of leader mindset.

2.5 Conceptual model

Based upon previous research, I expect transformational leadership to lead to lower feelings of stress among employees, which will lead to higher organisational commitment. So I predict that

transformational leadership has a negative effect upon employee stress, which has a negative effect upon organisational commitment. Leader mindset about stress can possibly influence this by moderating the relationship between stress and commitment. Whether the leader has a stress-is-enhancing mindset about stress or a stress-is-debilitating mindset will change the relationship between employee stress and their commitment towards the organisation.

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Moreover, when a leader scores high on transformational leadership, I predict the effect for both mindsets will be even bigger. I base this upon the fact that transformational leaders show vision and employees show high feelings of satisfaction (Bass, 1985).

Hypothesis 5: Transformational leadership has a positive indirect relation with employee

commitment, and employee stress mediates this relationship. Moreover, the relationship between employee stress and commitment is in turn moderated by leader mindset, so that this relation is stronger for high values of leader mindset about stress.

Based upon the previous discussed variables and hypotheses, the conceptual model can now be presented.

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3. Methodological background

In this chapter, the choices made about the methodology will be justified. It will be described how the variables are going to be processed and what the research design is. Moreover, the sample of

respondents will be illustrated and it will be shown how the respondents were collected. Final, the instruments used to operationalize the various constructs are provided.

3.1 Procedure

The research has been conducted via quantitative, deductive research. More precisely, I have made use of a cross-sectional research design (Bryman, 2012). This means that more than one case will be researched. Moreover, cross-sectional design means that data will be collected more or less

simultaneously. Finally, it also entails that data is quantitative and relationships between variables will be examined. With the use of questionnaires, information about the variables and their effect is researched. Dyads have been collected via two different types of surveys, namely one for the leaders/supervisors/managers and one for their employees. By letting both the manager and the employee filling in a certain code, the right leader survey could be connected to the employee survey. In this way, it was possible to look into the dyadic interaction between leaders and their subordinates. One leader could have multiple subordinates. The employee questionnaire measured stress,

commitment and transformational leadership style. The leader questionnaire measured leader mindset about stress.

The survey was formulated together with another student who was also researching stress among employees. Furthermore, the data collection was done in collaboration with this student too. Since we only had a few variables in common, the respondents needed to answer questions and statements that were not used for this research. We have composed the survey in Dutch, to make sure Dutch respondents understood the questions correctly.

In order to collect respondents, we have made use of convenience sampling, which means that the units of analyses are those simply available to us as researchers (Bryman, 2012). This is a form of non-probability sampling, which means that not all units in the population have the same chance of being selected. Furthermore, snowball sampling is also used. Some see snowball sampling as a form

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of convenience sampling, but according to Bryman (2012), it is important to distinguish since its popularity has risen over the last couple of years. Snowball sampling is a manner in which we have made use of our contacts to get employees and their leaders to fill in our survey. We asked our

contacts to spread our survey within their network or organisation. Furthermore, we gained access in a day-care organisation. The survey was brought under attention to the employees and leaders via their internal online paper. Moreover, it was marked as a must read. Also, the CEO placed a post on intranet with the link to the survey, and several managers were emailed to inform them about the survey and stimulated to fill it in. The surveys were distributed online, via Qualtrics Survey Software. Altogether, the data collection period lasted four weeks, starting the end of October and ending half November.

In total, 146 respondents filled in our employee survey and 47 respondents have filled in the leader survey. Unfortunately, not all leaders have gathered their employees to fill in the survey. Moreover, not all employees have a leader who participated in the survey. This means that some leaders and some employees could not be matched. 213 potential respondents opened our employee survey, which means that 67 employees did not finish filling in their survey. For the leader survey, there were no dropouts. In total, 113 surveys could be matched, which resulted in 113 dyads. In the next paragraph, the sample characteristics will be discussed.

3.2 Sample

The final employee sample consists of 76 women (67,3%), 30 men (26,5%) and 7 respondents who did not answer this question. The age ranges from 21 to 65, and the mean is 41.93 (SD=12.43). On average, our respondents are working 13.24 years at their current employer (SD=12.37); the range is from two months till 42 years. Furthermore, the number of working hours per week ranges from 9 till 50 hours and the average is 30.16 hours per week (SD=8.81). Most respondents have already been working with their leader for a couple of years, namely on average 2.38 years (SD=3.17). However, this ranges from less than a month to 18 years. Finally, the amount of contact days per week ranges from less than one time a week to every day. On average, leaders and employees have almost three days contact with each other (SD=1.55).

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For the leader questionnaires, of the 46 respondents, the sample consists of 19 men and 26 women (1 missing). The average age is 46.13 (SD=10.20). The tenure of the leaders ranges from 1 to 46 years, and the average is 14.14 (SD=12.06). 55.6% of the leaders works full-time (40 hours) or more than this. The average is 37.26 and the standard deviation 8.12.

3.3 Measures

Since I collected data together with another student who has a different conceptual model, the

distributed surveys included more variables than relevant for this research. However, I will only focus upon the variables illustrated in the literature section in this research. In order to answer the main question and hypotheses, the concepts used within this thesis had to be measured. All of the variables from the model have been processed in the survey. The independent variable is transformational leadership and the dependent variable is commitment. As a mediator variable, the intervention of employee stress will be researched. Since employee stress is the subject of this research, the focus will be upon this variable. Therefore, the indirect effect is more important than the direct effect. Finally, the effect of leader mindset about stress will be researched as a moderator between stress and commitment.

The survey is a multiple item measurement (Bryman, 2012). It uses the 5-point Likert scale, which is used to measure the intensity of feelings. Important was that statements, known as items, were used instead of questions.

3.3.1 Transformational leadership

First, transformational leadership is measured with eleven items adopted from De Hoogh, Den Hartog and Koopman’s CLIO (2004). Sample items include: “My leader encourages employees to think independently” and “My leader is capable of making others enthusiastic about his/her plans”. The scales have been tested for their reliability, and the Cronbach’s Alpha for this scale is .92. The scale was already available in Dutch.

3.3.2 Leader mindset about stress

Leader mindset about stress is measured with Crum, Salovey and Achor’s Stress Mindset Measure-General (2013). This scale includes 8 items. Sample items include: “The effects of stress are negative

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and should be avoided” and “Experiencing stress inhibits my learning and growth” and the Cronbach’s Alpha is .83. The items were translated into Dutch with the use of Google Translate.

3.3.3 Employee stress

Employee stress is measured with a four items scale developed by Motowidlo, Packard & Manning (1986). Examples of items are: “No stressful things happen at my job” and “I feel really stressed because of my job”. The Cronbach’s Alpha is .85. Also these items had to be translated from English into Dutch.

3.3.4 Employee commitment

The dependent variable employee commitment is measured with nine of the fifteen items adopted from Mowday, Steers and Porter (1979) and is developed to measure organisational commitment. The original scale includes both positive and negative items. In the nine-items version, the negative items are omitted. Based upon analysing both the fifteen and nine item scale, Tetrick and Farkas (1988) conclude that it would not be a loss in validity to only use the nine item scale to research commitment. Therefore, we chose to use the shortened scale, since we rather had a shorter survey to keep

respondents interested.

Sample items include: “I talk up this organization to my friends as a great organization to work for” and “This organization really inspires the very best in me in the way of job performance”. The Cronbach’s Alpha is .87. For one item, the corrected item-total if deleted was below .30. Still, I have decided not to delete this item since the Cronbach’s Alpha only showed an increase of .016. Finally, these items too had to be translated into Dutch.

3.3.5 Control variables

In this research, for both surveys respondents had to answer questions about demographics. These are the control variables, which differ per survey. The control variables for the employee survey were: gender, age, tenure, work hours per week, tenure with leader and contact with leader. For the leader survey, the control variables were: gender, age, tenure and work hours per week.

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4. Results

In the results section, the main results of this research will be presented. First, the descriptives will be discussed and a correlation analysis will be conducted, in order to research the strength and the direction of the relations of the variables. After this, the multiple regression analyses will be reported.

The obtained data was analysed with the use of IBM SPSS version 25. Under the 113 dyads, there was little missing data. The missing data only included demographical questions, since it was not obligated to fill these questions in. Furthermore, the items of the variables included a few counter indicative questions. These questions had to be recoded, so that all the items had the same direction. Final, the scale means had to be computed for the variables transformational leadership, stress, commitment and leader mindset, in order to conduct the regression analyses.

4.1 Correlation analysis

As mentioned above, in order to research the strength and the direction of the variables, a correlation analysis has been conducted. Table 1 shows an overview of the means, standard deviations,

correlations and reliability scores for all the variables used within this research. Table 1. Results of the correlation analysis

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. Gender employee 1.75 .49 - 2. Tenure employee 13.24 12.37 -.15 - 3. Contact leader 2.63 1.55 -.26** .09 - 4. Work hour employee 30.16 8.81 -.48** .15 .57** 5. Transformational leadership 3.51 .67 -.04 -.05 .04 -.02 (.92) 6. Stress 3.22 .78 .05 -.01 -.17 .10 -.13 (.85) 7. Commitment 3.36 .54 .11 -.15 .04 .02 .38** -.13 (.87) 8. Leader mindset 2.99 .52 .17 -.04 -.22* -.19* -.01 .12 -.15 (.83) *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Cronbach’s Alpha is reported on the diagonal.

Most correlations are between -.20 and .20, which implies a small effect (Cohen, 1992). Few constructs are significantly correlating with each other. So there is scarcely any relation between the variables. Some of the variables are correlating with a medium to large effect (R>.30). However, these are mostly the control variables.

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The main variables that correlate the highest are transformational leadership and commitment (R =.38 , p <.00). More specifically, these variables are the only variables of the main model

correlating with each other. Moreover, the main variables that correlate the lowest are

transformational leadership and leader mindset (R =-.01, p =.90). However, this was not expected, so there is no hypothesis based upon this relation. Another observation that can be made based upon table 1 is that gender has a strong negative correlation with hours per week (R =-.48, p <.00). This means that men significantly work more hours per week than women. Moreover, men significantly have more contact with their leader than women (R =-.26, p =.01).

4.2 Regression analysis

In order to analyse the relationship between transformational leadership and employee stress, employee stress and commitment, and transformational leadership and commitment, a linear regression analysis had to been conducted. Linear regression analyses are being used to analyse the direct relationship between two variables. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses have been used to analyse both the mediating and moderating hypotheses with Hayes’ process models (4 and 1). Finally, the moderated mediation has been analysed with the use of Hayes’ process model 14.

4.2.1 Direct effects

Hypothesis 1 predicts that transformational leadership has a negative relationship with employee stress. To test this, a hierarchical linear regression analysis has been done with transformational leadership as a predictor. Tenure of the employee, gender of the employee, work hours per week of the employee and contact have been added as control variables in the first step of the linear regression analysis. This is model 1. This model is statistically significant, and F (4, 98) =2.89. Transformational leadership has been added in step two. Results show that there is a significant effect of model 2 upon stress (F (5, 97) =2.54 and p <.05). This could mean that stress of employees can be explained by the measure of transformational leadership style of their leaders. But, the information in the ANOVA table proves that transformational leadership is not the variable that makes the model significant (b =-.10, p =.28), but these are the control variables. Contact with leader (b =-.34, p <.00) and work hours per week (b =.37, p <.00) show a significant relation with stress. Therefore, hypothesis 1 can be rejected. R square of model 1 is .11 and of model 2 is .12, which means that the total variance in

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employee stress can be explained by transformational leadership for an additional 1,1%, after controlling for gender, tenure, contact and work hours per week. Table 2 shows the results of the regression analysis.

Though this is not the most important part of this research, the correlation analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between transformational leadership and employee commitment. Therefore, this relationship has also been analysed via a linear regression. Hypothesis 2a predicted that transformational leadership has a positive effect upon employee commitment. Again, a hierarchical linear regression analysis has been conducted with transformational leadership as a predictor. Model 1, which includes the control variables gender, tenure of the employee, contact and hours per week of the employee, is not significant (F (4, 98) =1.10 and p =.36). However, when adding transformational leadership, the model does become significant (F (5, 97) =4.98 and p <.01). The total variance of the model as a whole is 20.4%. Table 3 shows the outcomes of this analysis. Moreover, the variable transformational leadership is responsible for 16.3% of this variance. In the total model, only transformational leadership is proven to be statistically significant. So, hypothesis 2a is accepted, which means that transformational leadership has a positive effect upon commitment (b =.40 and p <.00). In other words, when transformational leadership increases for one, commitment will increase with .40.

Hypothesis 2b suggest that employee stress has a negative effect upon employee commitment. To analyse this, a linear regression analysis has been done too, with employee stress as a predictor. The hierarchical regression analysis showed that this relationship is nearly significant (F (5, 97) =1.67, p =.055, b =-.20). A p-value of .055 is verging on significance. Hence, stress does influence employee commitment, and so hypothesis 2b is partly accepted. So when stress increases for one, commitment will decrease with -.20. Table 4 presents the results of the analysis.

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Table 2. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis of direct effect H1. R R² R² change B SE ß t Step 1 _.33 _.11 Gender .20 .17 .13 1.17 Tenure _-.00 _.01 _-.03 _-.30 Contact -.17 .06 -.34** -2.94 Work hour _.03 _.01 _.37** _2.92 Step 2 _.34 _.12 _.01 Gender .19 .17 .12 1.09 Tenure _-.00 _.01 _-.04 _-.36 Contact -.17 .06 -.33** -2.88 Work hour _.03 _.01 _.36** _2.82 Transformational leadership -.12 .11 -.10 -1.08

*. Is significant at the 0.05 level. **. Is significant at the 0.01 level.

Table 3. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis of direct effect H2a. R R² R² change B SE ß t Step 1 .21 .04 Gender .15 .12 .14 1.21 Tenure -.01 .00 -.16 -1.57 Contact .01 .04 .03 .28 Work hour .00 .01 .07 .60 Step 2 .45 .20** .16** Gender .19 .11 .17 1.64 Tenure -.01 .00 -.14 -1.46 Contact .00 .04 .01 .06 Work hour .01 .01 .12 .95 Transformational leadership .33 .07 .40** 4.43

*. Is significant at the 0.05 level. **. Is significant at the 0.01 level.

Table 4. Results of the hierarchical regression analysis of direct effect H2b. R R² R² change B SE ß t Step 1 .21 .04 Gender .15 .12 .14 1.21 Tenure -.01 .00 -.16 -1.57 Contact .01 .04 .03 .28 Work hour .00 .01 .07 .60 Step 2 .28 .08 .04 Gender .18 .12 .16 1.45 Tenure -.01 .00 -.16 -1.65 Contact -.01 .04 -.04 -.28 Work hour .01 .01 .14 1.07 Employee stress -.14 .07 -.20* -1.95

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4.2.2 Mediation

To test hypothesis 3, employee stress is included as a possible mediation effect upon the relation between transformational leadership and stress. This has been tested via Hayes’ process model 4. This includes the direct effect between X and Y and the indirect effect, so with employee stress. As control variables, gender, tenure, work hours per week and contact have been added. Not all 113 dyads have been used by process, since the program does not include missing values. Therefore, 10 dyads have been deleted, because not all dyads included demographic information. So the analysis has been conducted with 103 dyads.

There are various insights on how to interpret the mediating effect. For example, according to Baron and Kenny (1986), there are four criteria to establish mediation. This includes that the

individual paths in the mediation model should be statistically significant. This is not the case in this research, as presented in tables 2-4. But these criteria for mediation have been noted not to be as important as initially thought (Hayes, 2016; Zhoa, Lynch & Chen, 2010). According to Hayes (2016, “Question: in my mediation analysis”), “the pattern of significance or nonsignificance for individual paths in a mediation model is not pertinent to whether the indirect effect is significant”. Therefore, the outcome of the mediation analysis remains important; even though not all separated paths are

statistically significant.

First, the process analysis reports the direct effect. R² is the proportion of the total variance of employee commitment explained by the overall model. This solution explains the 22.57% of the variance of employee commitment. It is statistically significant (p <.00). Moreover, the total effect indicates that two employees who differ by one unit in transformational leadership are estimated to differ by .33 units in their commitment. So high transformational leadership reports higher

commitment.

However, the indirect effect is statistically not significant from zero, which indicates that mediation has not occurred. The Bootstrap confidence interval shows that there is a zero between the lower level confidence interval and the upper level 95% confidence interval (effect =.01, LLCI =-.01 and ULCI =.07). Table 5 reports the three effects. Furthermore, the ratio of indirect to total effect of transformational leadership on commitment is 4%, which means that stress could only account for 4%

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for the total effect. All this in mind, it can be concluded that mediation has not taken place and hypothesis 3 can be rejected.

Table 5. Results regression analysis of mediation H3.

M (Stress) Y (Commitment)

Antecedent Coeff SE p Coeff SE p

X (TFL) a -.12 .11 .28 c’ .31 .07 <.00

M (Stress) - - - b -.11 .07 .11

Constant i1 2.79 .67 <.00 i2 2.04 .48 <.00

R² =.12 R² =.23

F (5, 97) = 2.54 (p <.05) F (6, 96) = 4.66 (p <.00)

Effect SE p LLCI ULCI Direct effect c1’ .31 .07 <.00 .17 .46

Total effect c1 .33 .07 <.00 .18 .47

Boot SE Boot LLCI Boot ULCI

Indirect effect a1b1 .01 .02 -.01 .07 4.2.3 Moderation

The conditional effect was tested via Hayes’ model 1. Hypotheses 4a and 4b proposed that the relation between employee stress and employee commitment is moderated by leader mindset about stress. Again, only 103 dyads were used by SPSS because of the missing values. No statistically significant relationship occurred for this model (F (1, 95) =.20, p =.66, b =.07). This means that leader mindset about stress does not make the relationship between stress and commitment significantly weaker or stronger. Therefore, both hypotheses 4a and 4b can be rejected. The results are presented in table 6.

Table 6. Results regression analysis of moderation H4a/4b.

Variable Coeff SE t p Constant i1 2.89 .42 6.86 .00 Gender b1 .19 .13 1.45 .15 Tenure b2 -.01 .00 -1.79 .08 Work hour b3 .01 .01 .97 .34 Contact b4 -.02 .05 -.42 .68 Stress (X) b5 -.12 .08 -1.51 .14 Leader mindset (M) b6 -.17 .11 -1.61 .11 Interaction effect (X x M) b7 .07 .16 .44 .66 R² =.11 F (1, 95) =.20 p =.66

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4.2.4 Moderated mediation

The model developed in this research contains a conditional indirect effect. This is the model as a whole, including X, Y, the moderator and the mediator. Since both the mediating and moderating effect are not statistically significant, it is very rare that the moderated mediation effect will be significant. From running Hayes’ process model 14 in SPSS becomes apparent that indeed no moderated mediation effect happens. The interaction term shows b =.02 and p =.87. Moreover, there is a zero in the Bootstrap confidence interval between the lower level bootstrap and the upper level bootstrap. Hence, hypothesis 5 can be rejected.

4.3 Exploratory research

Two additional analyses were run, in order to explore whether leader mindset as a moderator could possible influence the relation between transformational leadership and commitment or between transformational leadership and stress. Testing the direct effect between transformational leadership and commitment with a regression analysis showed that transformational leadership was accountable for 16.4% of the variance of commitment. This means that there are other factors of influence as well. Therefore, the influence of leader mindset about stress as a moderator will be tested here.

The conditional effect has been tested with the use of Hayes’ process model 1. The model as a whole turned out to be statistically significant (F(7, 95) =2.85, p =.01). However, the interaction coefficient reports that the influence of leader mindset upon this relation is not significant (b =.12, p =.58). Moreover, R² shows that leader mindset explains for 0.39% variance in the relation between transformational leadership and commitment. A moderation effect is not taking place. The results are shown in table 7.

Table 7. Results of additional regression analysis 1.

Variable Coeff SE t p Constant i1 2.87 .37 7.84 .00 Gender b1 .21 .12 1.72 .09 Tenure b2 -.01 .01 -1.66 .10 Workhour b3 .01 .01 .84 .41 Contact b4 -.00 .04 -.06 .95 Transf. leadership (X) b5 .33 .09 3.57 .00 Leader mindset (M) b6 -.22 .11 -2.04 .05 Interaction effect (X x M) b7 .12 .21 .56 .58 R² =.0039, F (1, 95) =.32, p =.58

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The second additional analysis that has been conducted is a moderation analysis on the first path of the model. The results show that transformational leadership did not have a statistically significant effect upon employee stress. Therefore, I am going to research whether leader mindset has a significant effect upon this relation with the use of Hayes’ process model 1. The prediction is that when leader mindset is low, so when someone has a stress-is-debilitating mindset, this influences the relation in a way that the negative effect becomes weaker. And when a leader has a

stress-is-enhancing mindset, I predict that the negative relationship between transformational leadership and stress becomes more negative. This means that the negative relation between transformational leadership and employee stress will be strengthened.

The results of the regression analysis show that the model as a whole is statistically

significant from zero (F (7, 95) =2.10, p =.05). However, leader mindset does not moderate the path between transformational leadership and employee stress on a statistically significant level (T =1.31, b =.41, p =.19). Consequently, I did not find any evidence that leader mindset about stress influences the strength of the relation between transformational leadership and stress. An overview of the results is shown in table 8.

Table 8. Results of additional regression analysis 2.

Variable Coeff SE t p Constant i1 2.27 .48 4.76 .00 Gender b1 .18 .16 1.14 .26 Tenure b2 -.01 .01 -.42 .68 Workhour b3 .03 .01 2.75 .01 Contact b4 -.15 .07 -2.17 .03 Transf. leadership (X) b5 -.13 .16 -.86 .39 Leader mindset (M) b6 .15 .16 .96 .34 Interaction effect (X x M) b7 .41 .32 1.31 .19 R² =.02 F (1, 95) =1.72 p =.19

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5. Discussion

In this chapter, a short recap of the study will be described. Moreover, theoretical implications will be discussed and limitations and practical implications of the study will be presented. Finally, this chapter will end with a conclusion.

5.1 Summary of study

The objective of this study was to find out if transformational leadership could potentially decrease employee stress, and thereby increase commitment. Moreover, leader mindset about stress was being researched as a possible moderator on the relation between stress and commitment. If leader mindset about stress had an influence upon the relation between employee stress and commitment, this could mean that the way leaders cope with stress influences how employees cope with stress. However, most findings do not support the hypotheses drafted in this thesis.

Hypothesis 1 stated that transformational leadership had a negative effect upon employee stress. This relation is not statistically significant. Second, the next hypothesis suggested a positive relation between transformational leadership and employee commitment, which turned out to be statistically significant. This means that leaders who engage in transformational leadership styles will have a positive effect upon employee commitment. Hypothesis 2b suggested that employee stress had a negative effect upon commitment. This finding is verging on being significant. This means that there is partial support for this hypothesis. Third, no supportive evidence was found for the mediating role of employee stress in the relation between transformational leadership and employee

commitment. Fourth, the moderating effect of leader mindset about stress upon the relation between employee stress and commitment turned out to be not significant. Therefore, hypothesis 4a and 4b could be rejected. Finally, the complete conceptual model was being tested in hypothesis 5. Based upon hypothesis 3 and 4 could already be predicted that this hypothesis would be rejected, since there was no evidence found for the mediation and moderating effect. As anticipated, there was no evidence found for this hypothesis too.

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5.2 Theoretical implications

As before mentioned in the results section, only the direct relation between the independent and the dependent variable in the conceptual model could be confirmed (H2a). Transformational leadership was found to have a positive effect upon employee commitment. Moreover, these two variables were also the only variables correlating with each other. The relation between transformational leadership and commitment has already been confirmed in previous literature too, so the outcome was in line with the expectations. Mowday et al. (1982) for example wrote that a personal or organisational factor such as leadership is a key determinant of organisational commitment. In particular, transformational leadership is positively linked with organisational commitment (Bono & Judge, 2003). As an

illustration, followers tend to be more motivated and satisfied with transformational leaders and their job as a whole (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Confirming this relation in this thesis contributes to existing literature since a lot of literature about transformational leadership and commitment is more than 10 years old. Present-day, via this research we know that transformational leadership still influences employee commitment positively. Moreover, a lot of the existing literature focused on particular branch. Instead of that, this thesis has respondents from all sorts of branches.

However, the relation between transformational leadership and employee commitment was not the main relation of the conceptual model. Employee commitment was added to the conceptual model in order to measure the effects of stress for an organisation. In that way, it is possible to see what the consequences could be for low and high values of stress for an organisation. Commitment is namely very important for organisations, since it has an effect upon motivation and performance, and could be an antecedent for turnover behaviours (Meyer & Allen, 1991; Firth et al., 2004).

Stress was expected to mediate the relation between transformational leadership and commitment (H3). However, the analysis showed a null finding. It could be expected, since stress showed no significant relation with both variables, that it also didn’t mediate the relationship. As discussed, within this thesis there was partial support found for the relation between employee stress and employee commitment (H2b). Though, the correlation analysis implies that there is no relation between these variables. As mentioned in the theoretical chapter, not every existing research has found evidence to confirm the relation between stress and commitment. Therefore, the results of this

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research are not very surprising. Namely, the regression analysis showed a very weak significant relation. A possible explanation for the partial support could be the organisational climate. Previous literature about the relationship between stress and commitment does not include a moderator. Organisational climate can take many forms. For instance, a caring climate can have a different influence upon employees than a rules climate. I propose that a caring climate can make the negative relationship between stress and commitment weaker. On the other hand, a rules climate could make the negative relationship more negative.

Another possible explanation is that it could be possible that stress is not of influence upon commitment as a whole, but only on a separate component. As described in the literature section, commitment can be conceptualised into three components, namely affective, normative and

continuance commitment. Affective commitment is the employee’s positive emotional attachment to, and sense of identification with the organisation. Stress could have a rather bigger influence upon this component instead of the other two, since a stress response could be detachment from the job

(Maslach, 2003). Therefore, future research should focus upon the relationship between stress and affective commitment, or on moderating variables.

Furthermore, leader mindset about stress turned out to have no significant effect upon the relationship between stress and commitment. So the coping of the leader with stress does not

influence the relation between stress and commitment for an employee. This might be different when taking into account long-term stressors. In this thesis, no distinction has been made, but by

distinguishing short- and long-term stressors, possibly mind set about stress could be of influence upon the relationship between stress and commitment. In a longer time period of stress, subordinates could value their leaders more and copy their coping with stress.

Another possible explanation that the effect of leader mindset about stress upon the relationship between stress and commitment failed to appear is that stress and commitment are far apart on the causal chain. Other variables could possibly explain why the relationship between stress and commitment exists. This implies that a mediator could explain why stress and commitment are related.

Reducing stress : via transformational leadership or changing employees’ coping with stress? : the influence of transformational leadership upon employee stress and commitment, moderated by leader mindset about stress