The role of leaders is not
to get other people to follow them in innovative ideas
but to empower others to be innovative
W.D. (Wendy) van Voskuilen (10475826)
University of Amsterdam/Amsterdam Business School Faculty of Economics and Business
Section: HRM and Organizational Behaviour
Master thesis Msc Executive Programme in Management Studies Top track: Leadership and Management
Supervisor: dr. M. (Merlijn) Venus
The role of leaders is not
to get other people to follow them in innovative ideas
but to empower others to be innovative*
The relationship between Leader Empowering Behaviour
and follower’s Innovative Work Behaviour
and individual and contextual determinants
of Leader Empowering Behaviour.
Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Wendy van Voskuilen, 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 mentioned 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.
Signature ________________________________________
©2015 W.D. van Voskuilen. Quoting numbers or text in papers, essays and books is pe rmitted only when the source is clearly mentioned. No part of this publication may be copied and/or published in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Preface
Following the Msc Executive Programme in Management Studies brought me so much: from applying new business models to developing my own solutions for actual business issues at an academic level. It was so enriching to do this all from a HR perspective with input from different fields like strategy and marketing. Besides, it was very inspiring to take this journey with a small group of motivated fellow students with working experience in different fields of expertise in a diverse range of companies. But the profits were not only in the content of the programme itself and the best practices we shared, it was valuable as well in terms of bringing my English to a higher level and learning to carry out a research project myself. Overall, I truly believe that this journey made me a better HR business partner. I recommend everybody with a couple of years of work experience to follow an executive programme to gain deeper insight by continuously translating theory into practice and the other way around.
A smile appeared on my face when I thought back to my first meeting with my supervisor. Did I really illustrate my broad interest and difficulty with making choices by using the metaphor that it was so hard to buy a blender due to the endless different functionalities, quality and colours offered?! Well, after all, I am pretty sure that now he understands what I was trying to say at that time! Big thanks for keeping me on track Merlijn. I am impressed by your devotion to help students like me to deliver a kick-ass thesis and I have appreciated it very much.
Furthermore, many thanks to my line manager, who acted as my sponsor. I am humbled by getting the opportunity to develop and perform a research tailored to the needs of the company. And hereby a big bow to all my colleagues for the 78% response rate. Without your help this research would have been meaningless.
Also, my deep gratitude goes to the love of my life. Without complaining that there was less quality time with each other, he showed his endless support by making me tea with the total amount of a modest lake, and serving this with dozens of cookies and chocolate. Even when I sometimes ended conversations abruptly with the one liner that ‘science was calling me’, he did not flinched at all. Moreover, I greatly appreciated his assistance in reviewing my thesis on the quality of my English language. Biggest tip of my hubby for those with a studious wife or girlfriend: start following a study yourself at the same time she does! I am really looking forward to relaxing together soon and enjoying a two-month trip to explore South-America. This will be another life-event which will give me inspiration, satisfaction and energy, just like my study did.
To my closest family and friends, forgive me for the limited time that I have spent with you. I will make it up to you. Thank you for showing your interest in my incongruent stories of the tough job on the one hand and the enthusiastic stories about the obtained knowledge and insights on the other hand.
I forgot how it is to live without an alarm clock in the weekend and just hanging around, busy with doing nothing. It seems lovely to me to get this back. Although, besides spending a tremendous time with family and friends, there already popped up so many ideas in my head for expanding my running and photography activities, starting with the search for a new house, styling that new home etcetera. In terms of this research, openness to experience is one of my characteristics, that is for sure!
Happy reading!
Table of contents
1. Abstract ...1
2. Introduction...2
3. Literature review...5
Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB) ...5
Leader Empowering Behaviour (LEB) ...7
Determinants of Leader Empowering Behaviour...8
Leaders’ Trust ...9
Leaders’ personality characteristics...9
Leaders’ Growth Need Strength (GNS) ... 14
Organizational Support for Innovation (OSI) ... 15
Moderator: Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) ... 17
4. Methods... 19 Organization ... 19 Participants... 19 Procedure... 20 Measurements ... 21 Statistical analysis ... 24 5. Results ... 27 Correlation analysis ... 27 Direct effects... 28 Moderating effect ... 30 6. Discussion ... 31 Theoretical implications... 32
Limitations and future implications ... 34
Conclusion... 38
7. References... 39
Appendices ... 45
Appendix A: Announcement letter ... 45
Appendix B: Leader survey, part I... 46
Appendix C: Leader survey, part II... 49
Appendix D: Follower survey... 51
Appendix E: Tables of hierarchical regression analyses with dimensions of constructs as independent variables ... 56
1. Abstract
This thesis contains the research on the independent and joint contributions of leader empowering behaviour (LEB) and organizational support for innovation (OSI) as predictors of employees’ innovative work behaviour (IWB) and the effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the relationship between LEB and employees’ IWB. The influence of some leader characteristics -leader trust, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and -leaders’ growth need strength - and the contextual factor of organizational support for innovation to LEB have also been examined.
A deductive approach and quantitative design was used in this empirical research. A total of 128 employees from the Dutch office of an international pharmaceutical company participated by answering questions through an extensive online survey.
The analysis of the survey results shows two significant findings regarding the determinants of LEB. The first finding is that the more a leader trusts a follower, the more likely that leader is willing to show LEB. The second finding is that a leaders’ conscientiousness has a negative influence on LEB: the higher the conscientiousness of a leader, the less likely that leader is willing to show LEB. In determining whether LEB and employee rated OSI are predictors of employees’ IWB, partial support was found in this research that OSI stimulates employees’ IWB. The results of the research are presented in more detail in this thesis with respect to the dimensions of the constructs of IWB, LEB, OSI, and leader trust. The theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings are also discussed in this thesis.
Keywords: Innovative Work Behaviour, Leader Empowering Behaviour, Leader-Member Exchange, Leader Trust, Personality, Growth Need Strength, Organizational Support for Innovation.
2. Introduction
These are turbulent times for companies given the fast and disruptive changes in the environment by rapid technological developments, emerging competitors with unconventional business models, and challenging demands from customers and stakeholders (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010; Mumford, Schott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002; Wolfe, 1994). To stay viable, it is essential for organizations to encourage their employees to (re)act on the changing business landscape by showing Innovative Work Behaviour (e.g. Ancona & Caldwell, 1987; Drucker, 1988; Shalley & Gilson, 2004).
Farr & Ford (1990) define Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB) as “an individual’s behaviour that aims to achieve the initiation and intentional introduction (within a work role, group or organization) of new and useful ideas, processes, products or procedures” (De Jong & Den Hartog, p. 24). Scholars have performed a lot of research on the determinants of employees’ IWB on different levels. On an organizational level, a lot of research has been performed with respect to strategy, organizational structure, HR practices (e.g. job design, recruitment, performance management, reward system), and culture. On a group level, scholars have examined the influence of leadership, external work contacts (clients or suppliers) and work group features, like support for innovation by peers. The most detailed level of IWB research is at the level of individuals, regarding personality and cognitive ability of employees and job features.
However, not much research has been performed on the determinants of IWB on a group level. Anderson et al. (2004, p. 149) consider this a “regrettable shortfall in the coverage of innovation research especially given the increasingly widespread use of teamwork in organizations”. For this reason, together with the needs of the organization where this research takes place, the first contribution of this research is to gain more understanding on one specific determinant of IWB on a group level: leadership. Basadur (2004, p. 103) advocated the relevance of leadership lively by writing that in future business the most effective leaders “will help individuals (…) to coordinate and integrate their differing styles through a process of applied creativity that includes continuously discovering and defining new problems, solving those problems and implementing the new solutions”. The intriguing question is raised how line managers could encourage IWB by leadership behavior. Which kind of leadership style will encourage this behaviour the most?
De Jong & Den Hartog (2010) found a positive relation between Participative Leadership and IWB. Participative leadership involves the use of decision-making procedures that allow subordinates
to influence important decisions, and grant them autonomy to design and guide their own tasks. It can take different forms, including consultation, joint decision-making and delegation (Yukl, 2006). At the same time, Zhang & Bartol (2010) did some research on the relationship between Leader Empowering Behaviour (LEB) and creativity. Empowering leadership is “the process of implementing conditions that enable sharing power with an employee by delineating the significance of the employee’s job, providing greater decision-making autonomy, expressing confidence in the employee’s capabilities, and removing hindrances to performance” (Ahearne, Mathieu, & Rapp, 2005; Arnold, Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000; Kirkman & Rosen, 1997, 1999). Zhang & Bartol (2010) found support for a positive relationship between empowering leadership and creativity by means of several intervening variables: psychological empowerment, creative process engagement, and intrinsic motivation. Creativity, defined as the production of novel and useful ideas by an individual or by a group of individuals working together (Amabi le, 1988; Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002; Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000; Zhou & Shalley, 2003), is a crucial component of IWB (West (2002).
Given the overlap between the constructs of innovative work behaviour and creativity and the overlap between the constructs of participative leadership and empowering leadership, it is assumed that there should be a positive relationship between LEB and employees’ IWB. However, in literature no attention has yet been paid to this specific relationship. Therefore, the first purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between LEB and employees’ IWB. The following factor (a factor which often was used in previous research regarding IWB and creativity) has been chosen to take the influence of a moderator into account on the relationship between LEB and IWB: the relationship between leaders and followers, Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) (e.g. Graen, Novak, & Summerkamp, 1982; Scot & Bruce, 1994; Yuan & Woodman, 2010). This research is the first one in which LMX was used as a moderator for the relationship between LEB and employees’ IWB.
Surprisingly, little is known so far about which individual and contextual variables motivate leaders to show empowering behaviour. As IWB enables a company to gain competitive advantage (Kanter, 1983; West & Farr, 1990), it is necessary to manage employees in such a way that they are encouraged to demonstrate IWB. That is why it is of great importance for companies to know what factors motivate leaders to empower their followers. Therefore, the second purpose of this research is to answer the question of which determinants stimulate LEB.
Hakimi, Van Knippenberg, & Giessner (2010) demonstrated that leaders’ trust in followers is positively related to LEB: the more a leader trusts a follower, the more that leader is willing to show LEB. This research tries to generalize these findings from the laboratory to the field. Looking for more
individual factors to investigate, it was a logical choice to examine the influence of the so called Big Five personality characteristics. A lot of research has been performed on these personality characteristics and leadership behaviour, as Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt (2002) showed in their meta-analysis. The Big Five personality characteristics are: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism (Church & Burke, 1994; McCrae, 1989). Three -
which pursuant to literature are the most likely related to LEB - of these five personality characteristics, , have been used in this research: Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness (De Hoogh, Den Hartog, & Koopman, 2005; Judge & Bono, 2000). This research is the first one in which leaders’ personality characteristics as determinants for LEB are examined. A fourth individual factor is Leaders’ Growth Need Strength (GNS). This construct came up in the literature review on creativity and IWB. Shalley et al. (2000) demonstrated the relationship between a follower’s need for learning new things and developing himself and creative performance. By adding GNS as determinant in this research, it is analyzed for the first time whether this significant positive relationship also applies to the relationship between leaders’ GNS and LEB.
Finally, in this research a contextual factor was sought which could reveal something about the overarching system of an organization regarding stimulating an innovative culture. For this, the construct of Organization Support for Innovation (OSI) was found in the reviewed literature (e.g. Zhou & George, 2001; Yuan & Woodman, 2010). This construct enabled to analyze the question to what extent OSI influences both dependent variables, LEB and employees’ IWB.
The theory of the constructs, the assumptions about the connections between the constructs, the formulated hypotheses and the conceptual model are explained in the next chapter (Chapter 3, Literature review). Chapter 4 (Methods) sets out the research setting and design. The findings of the statistical analysis are described in Chapter 5 (Results). Chapter 6 (Discussion) contains the scientific and managerial implications of the findings, together with the limitations of this research and recommendations for future research.
3. Literature review
This chapter describes the definitions of followers’ Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB), Leader Empowering Behaviour (LEB) and their proposed predictors, as mentioned in the introduction chapter. Next to the theoretical foundation of the key concepts, specific attention is paid to relevant research questions and their findings per variable, followed by the formulation of a hypothesis for this research. After the description of the hypotheses that aim to test for direct relationships, this research proposes that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) influences the relationship between LEB and IWB. This chapter ends with an illustration of the conceptual model of this research.
Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB)
To survive in a dynamic environment with rapidly and disruptive changes, many companies have a growing awareness that they have to encourage individuals to show continuously innovative work behaviour. A study performed by the John M. Olin School of Business at Washington University (CNBR, 2014) confronted the business world with a shocking percentage of reputable companies that are not able to adapt to change and the consequence of this: “40 percent of today's Fortune 500 companies on the S&P 500 will no longer exist in 10 years”.1 Thus, companies are convinced that employees have to come up with new ideas for marketing tactics, increasing quality, searching out for new technologies or processes, and suggesting new products or services in order to gain sustained competitive advantage (e.g. Amabile, 1988; Kanter, 1983; Shalley, 1995; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004; West & Farr, 1990). This way of thinking and acting with courage and decisiveness when coming up with new ideas and implementing them refers to IWB.
Scholars already recognized the value of this “everyday innovation” for decades. Moreover, Schumpeter (1934) was the first to appoint the need for innovation for the economic development of a company. In his view, innovation is about developing ‘new combinations’ of products, services, work processes or markets. Several decades later, Megginson (1963, p. 4) articulated this believe aptly: “According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself”.
1 CNBC (2014). A decade to mass extinction event in S&P 500. Retrieved June 3, 2015, from
The amount of research on IWB has grown fast in the last ten years. Over the years, many scholars came up with their own definition of innovation. There is one notable element that all definitions have in common: innovation is all about creating new and useful ideas. According to Janssen (2000) innovative work behaviour refers to an “everyday innovation”, dependent on the employees’ intentional efforts to provide beneficially novel outcomes at work.
From a process perspective, innovation can be seen as the process from initiation to implementation of new ideas. The different types of activities and different individual behaviour regarding innovation can be linked to the phases of the innovation process. This research follows De Jong (2007) who operationalized IWB by proposing four dimensions of behaviours, based on earlier work by Janssen (2000), Kanter (1988), and Scott & Bruce (1994): opportunity exploration, idea generation, idea promotion, and idea implementation. Opportunity exploration starts with a trigger to question the status quo and initiating a discussion for the necessity to change and how conditions of the current products, services, or processes can be improved. Idea generating includes the exploitation and elaboration of ideas to improve existing products, services, or processes and/or to develop new products, services and processes. Idea promoting is about the active championing of the benefits of an idea by showing enthusiasm and confidence about that idea, in order to gain informal support and formal approval to realize the idea. Idea implementation is needed for realizing the idea. Good implementation needs dedication, time, money, testing, and modifying (e.g., Kanter, 1998).
As mentioned earlier, an overlap exists between IWB and employee creativity. However, creativity is limited to generating novel and useful ideas (Amabile, 1988), whereas IWB is a more complete set of behaviours, including idea promoting and idea implementation. Moreover, De Jong & Den Hartog (2010) underpin that IWB is related to the explicit benefit of innovative output. However, to get the result of innovative output, the process must start with opportunity exploration and generating ideas. This is why creativity can be seen as a crucial component of IWB (West, 2002).
Other research focused on how to foster IWB by looking at determinants like work climate, leadership, personality of employees, and values (Anderson, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2004; Hammond, Neff, Farr, Schwall, & Zhao, 2011). As explained in the introduction chapter, specific interest is given to the relation between IWB and leadership in this thesis research.
Several scholars hypothesized a relationship between transformational leadership and IWB and the related construct of creativity (e.g. Basu & Green, 1997; Keller, 2006; Krause, 2004; Waldman & Atwater). They believed that a transformational leader enhances IWB or creativity by, for example, challenging employees to rethink their assumptions about work (intellectual stimulation),
encouraging them to see changing environments as situations full of opportunities (inspirational communication) and supporting them in their search for better products, services, or processes. However, these scholars found mixed outcomes.
Another type of leadership investigated by scholars in relation to IWB is participative leadership (e.g. De Jong & Den Hartog, 2010; Richards & Moger, 2006; Yukl, 2002). These scholars found that if participative leaders allow their employees to set their own goals, consult them about important plans, and ask them for their opinion and suggestions, the employees’ intrinsic motivation and feelings of responsibility increase and they show significantly more IWB.
Leader empowering behaviour (LEB) strongly intertwines with transformational and participative leadership, due to the similarity in granting more autonomy, active participation in decision-making, unleashing employees’ potential, and stimulating generation and realization of new and useful ideas (Spreitzer, 1995; Yukl, 1999; Forrester, 2000; Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002; Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003; De Hoogh et al., 2005). Zhang & Bartol (2010) indicated that LEB is positively associated with employee creativity as part of the IWB construct. However, it seems that the relationship between LEB and IWB as a total construct has not yet been examined in empirical research.
Leader Empowering Behaviour (LEB)
First research about empowerment can be traced back to more than 60 years ago, where e.g. Lewin (1947) performed research on employee involvement and participation. This research was quite innovative given the industrial era, with many people working in factories, having small job descriptions and doing a lot of routine work. Today, this type of leadership can count on a great interest of the scientific world as well as the business world, because of the many advantages of delegating authority and responsibilities to followers instead of managing in a more traditional way (Conger & Kanungo, 1988). As Hakimi et al. (2010, p. 702) pointed out: “This has proven to be very efficient when adequately used (Carson & King, 2005; Conger, 1989; Forrester, 2000), as it is seen to unleash employees potential, enhance their motivation, allow them to be more adaptive and receptive to their environment, and minimize bureaucratic hurdles that slow responsiveness (Forrester, 2000; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996)”. The consequence of LEB for followers is a psychological state based on follower’s perceptions of meaningfulness, competence, self-determination, and impact (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Spreitzer, 1995, 1996; Thomas and Velthouse, 1990).
According to Konczak, Stelly, & Trusty’s (2000), leader empowering behaviour ( LEB) involves six dimensions of behaviour: delegation of authority, accountability, self-directed decision making, information sharing, skill development, and coaching for innovative performance. The conceptualization of LEB developed by Konczak et al. (2000) has been used in this research because of the direct link with innovation. Innovation is a main interest in this research.
Zhang & Bartol (2010) contributed to the literature of empowering leadership with their finding that “empowering leadership positively affected psychological empowerment, which in turn influenced both intrinsic motivation and creative process engagement (p. 107)”. They found evidence that these latter two variables had a positive effect on creativity.
However, little attention has so far been given in the literature to the relationship between LEB and IWB instead of creativity. Krause (2004) found that freedom and autonomy were positively related to various types of innovative behaviour, including the generation, testing and implementation of ideas. Freedom and autonomy are key words that are related to empowering leadership. This is why this research assumes that LEB influences IBW.
Hypothesis 1: Leader Empowering Behaviour is positively related to Innovative Work Behaviour
Determinants of Leader Empowering Behaviour
Argyris (1998) showed that even if leaders believe in the concept of LEB, they often fail in the conversion of empowering actions into practice. Therefore, a more thorough knowledge should be gained about the determinants that influence leaders to show LEB. This research takes a closer look to four determinants. Three out of the four determinants are individual factors: leaders’ trust in followers, leaders’ personality, and leaders’ Growth Need Strength. The remaining determinant that influences leaders to show LEB is a contextual factor: Organizational Support for Innovation. This section starts with a description of leaders’ trust in followers, a determinant for which it already has been proven that it is a significant influencing factor. Thereafter, leaders’ personality and Growth Need Strength are described and used in this research as determinants of LEB. As far as known, this is the first time that the relationship of LEB with these factors is examined.
Leaders’ Trust
Hakimi, Van Knippenberg, & Giessner (2010) argued that a leaders’ trust in follower performance and integrity influences leader empowering behaviour, and that this effect is moderated by leader conscientiousness. Trust is defined as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor” (Davis & Schoorman, 1995). Leaders need trust in the performance of followers in order to be able to delegate authority and to make followers responsible. They give up control on the one hand and stay accountable for successes or failures on the other hand, so their performance will be more dependent on the quality of work of their followers. Trust in the integrity of followers can be described as trusting that a person acts in a consistent way with the same set of norms and values, where fairness is an important factor (Brower, Schoorman, & Tan, 2000). If a follower is inconsistent in his or her messages (which can strongly depend on the audience or situation) or if a follower is perceived as too eager and acting as a sneaky fellow to gain successes, a leader will not trust this person. The more a leader trusts that a follower is consistent and fair, the more that leader is willing to give more responsibilities to that follower.
Hakimi et al. (2010) proved that conscientiousness moderated the effect of leaders’ trust in their followers’ performance and integrity on LEB such that “the less impulsive a leader is, the more likely he will be able to identify that taking a careful decision implies considering the trust both in the follower’s integrity and in the follower’s performance” (p. 704). Moreover, they proved that leaders rely more on integrity than on performance information.
The findings of Hakimi et al. (2010) were based on two studies, a laboratory experiment with students and a scenario set-up with students who were asked to imagine they were a project director of a company. This thesis research could add value to these findings, in general by examining leader trust in an empirical setting instead of the experimental approach by Hakimi et al. (2010).
Hypothesis 2: Leader’s Trust in followers is positively related to Leader Empowering Behaviour
Leaders’ personality characteristics
The theory on traits assumes that leadership is dependent on the personality of the leader. This theory started in the beginning of the 18th century (Terman, 1904). The relevance of this theory is well summarized by Cowley (1931, p. 144): “the study of leadership has usually been and perhaps must always be through the study of traits”. Scholars have paid a lot of attention to the relationship
of the Big Five personality characteristics with leadership behaviour in general, as noted in the meta-analysis of Judge et al. (2002), and specifically with several types of leadership (e.g. Bono & Judge, 2004; De Hoogh et al. 2005; Judge & Bono, 2000; Ployhart, Lim, & Chan, 2001). Despite all this research, no attention has yet been paid in literature to the relationship between the Big Five personality characteristics and LEB, as a highlighted type of leadership.
However, De Hoogh et al. (2005, p.840) noticed in some research that “a couple of authors hold that charismatic or transformational leadership should also include empowering behaviours such as, delegation of responsibilities to followers, enhancing followers’ capacity to think on their own and encourage them to come up with new and creative ideas” (Yukl, 1999; Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002; Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003). Due to the overlap between charismatic leadership and LEB, the three personality characteristics that are most striking in the research on the influence of personality on charismatic leadership have been used in this research: Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. The notable findings regarding these characteristics are shared extensively in the following paragraphs. First, it is briefly discussed why two of the Big Five personality characteristics are not included in this research.
Neurotic people can be anxious, depressed, vulnerable, defensive, insecure and emotional due to a low self-esteem (McCrae & Costa, 1987). So for example, it will be hard (among other things) for leaders who score high on measures of neuroticism to set high performance standards and challenging the status quo and taking risks, which is behaviour that forms the basis of transformational leadership (Eden, 1992; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991). However, no support has been found for the hypothesized negative relationship between neuroticism and charismatic leadership without a clear explanation for the lack of significant findings (Judge & Bono, 2000; Crant & Bateman, 2000). On the other hand, a negative relationship between neuroticism and charismatic leadership did show up in the military sample of Lim & Ployart (2004). De Hoogh et al. (2005) explains this phenomenon as leading people under hazardous and life-threatening situations, where it is important that leaders stay calm and followers long for a strong command structure and leadership. As such specific conditions are generally not applicable in a business environment, it is not suitable for this thesis research to include this personality characteristic.
Although Bono & Judge (2004) found a strong relationship between the personality characteristic extraversion and charismatic leadership, this finding is less interesting because the evidence is less suited to the dimensions of LEB. Extraversion encompasses energetic, strong presence, sociable, bold, assertive, adventurous, and showing emotions (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Manifestations of extraversion of leaders are influencing and persuading others by using rhetoric and
emotional expressiveness (Judge & Bono, 2000). These aspects are particularl y important for two dimensions of charismatic leadership: vision and inspirational communication (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). However, these aspects are less relevant for the dimensions of LEB (Konczak et al., 2000) and the personality characteristic extraversion is therefore not included in this research.
Leaders’ Openness to Experience
Openness to experience is one of the five dimensions in the most well-known universal taxonomy of traits, the Big Five Model of Personality (e.g., Allik, 2005; McCrae & Costa, 1997). Openness reflects to which extent a person is curious, unconventional, broad-minded, independent, imaginative, creative, innovative, flexible, and amenable to new ideas, perspectives, and experiences (Costa & McCrae, 1992; McCrae, 1996; McCrae & Costa, 1987; McCrae & Costa, 1997). In case of the opposite, if a person is less open to experience, this is expressed by being closed-minded, shallow, traditional, simple, and that person likes routine and familiarity.
Interesting to note, giving the whole picture of this research, is the relationship between openness to experience and IWB. Park-Leduc, Feldman, & Bardi (2015) state that individuals scoring high on openness to experience “tend to value novelty (self-direction and stimulation values), and particularly novel ideas (self-direction) and broadmindedness (universalism values)”. McCrae & Costa (1997) have proposed openness to experience as an important predictor of innovative performance because a person is curious and responsive to unconventi onal thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. Madrid, Patterson, Birdi, Leiva, & Kausel (2014) extended this research by demonstrating that openness to experience intensifies the association between high-activated positive mood and IWB. George & Zhou (2001) contributed to extended research by finding interaction effects between openness to experience and three variables: positive feedback, the lack of clarity about what should be the accomplished goals (unclear ends), and the lack of clarity about how one should perform his task to reach goals and objectives (unclear means). Employees who score high on openness to experience will have the highest creative behaviour when they receive positive feedback from their leaders and have unclear ends and unclear means on their jobs.
Commencing on leadership, this facet of personality was related to charismatic or transformational leadership (Judge & Bono, 2000; Ployhart et al., 2001). Leaders scoring high on openness to experience are more likely to find new opportunities and use more unconventional methods to reach organizational goals. These expressions of leadership behaviour are in line with charismatic leadership (Bono & Judge, 2004); Judge & Bono, 2000). Furthermore, according to
McCrae & Costa (1997), leaders who score high on measures of openness to experience would be expected to provide more intellectual stimulation, as intellectual stimulation is one dimension of transformational leadership (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). As already mentioned, charismatic or transformational leadership and LEB are highly correlated (Yukl, 1999; Dvir et al., 2002; Kark et al., 2003). Thus, it is likely that openness to experience is not only a predictor for charismatic leadership, but also a determinant for leaders to show empowering behaviour. If a leader scores high on openness to experience, that leader is more broad-minded, flexible, and amenable for showing different types of leadership, including less traditional types like LEB. And because of those leaders’ love for new ideas, they will use LEB with, for example, intellectual stimulation as a manner to achieve IWB. Therefore, it is assumed that leaders need a high level of openness to experience as a driver to empowering leadership.
Hypothesis 3a: Leader’s Openness to Experience is positively related to Leader Empowering Behaviour
Leaders’ Agreeableness
People with this trait are considered as friendly, trustworthy, altruistic, warm, caring, generous, empathic, and cooperative (McCrae & Costa, 1987; Costa & McCrea, 1988). When a person is perceived as low in agreeableness, that person is seen as direct or even verbally aggressive, insulting others, slandering, not moving into others feelings, and distrusting others. As opposed to the relationship between openness to experience and IWB, the connection between agreeableness and IWB is not noteworthy.
Meanwhile Judge & Bono (2000) displayed that agreeableness, in favour of the other four personality characteristics, has the strongest relationship with transformational leadership. Charismatic leaders have a genuine interest in people, congratulate people for a job well done, are concerned with the wellbeing of others, provide meaning to the work of followers, and act as a role model (Bass, 1985; Callow, Smith, Hardy, Arthur, & Hardy, 2009). De Hoogh et al. (2005, p. 844) stated that “the willingness and ability to attend to the individual needs of followers is the core of individualized consideration, a leader behaviour which many authors see as an important part of transformational or charismatic leadership” (e.g., Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1994). To be a good leader, one needs empathy, and this is where agreeableness seems to fit in the picture of LEB. To understand the need of followers in terms of accountability, self -directed decision-making and obtaining information, leaders must be able to move into the thoughts and feelings of followers in order to understand their drivers and perspectives. And the less a leader is suspiciously that a
follower abuses this freedom and responsibility, the more a leader dares to delegate authority. Stevens & Ash (2001) demonstrated the relationship between agreeableness and participative styles of management.
On the other hand, Lim and Ployhart (2004) as well as De Hoogh et al. (2005) reported a negative relationship between agreeableness and charismatic leadership, in contrast with the findings of Judge & Bono (2000). The explanation for these findings was that in times of turbulence high agreeable leaders became less decisive and less confident of their own vision and therefore were viewed as less charismatic. Unfortunately, the scope of this research is limited due to limited amount of time that was available. Therefore, the influence of a dynamic environment is not taken into account. Elaborating on the evidence for a positive relationship and the connection between charismatic leadership and LEB, it is proposed in this research that the higher a leader scores on agreeableness, the more that leader has the understanding why LEB is valuable and the more that leader is willing to show LEB.
Hypothesis 3b: Leaders’ Agreeableness is positively related to Leader Empowering Behaviour
Leaders’ Conscientiousness
Conscientious people take responsibility, are strongly self-disciplined, have high feelings of dutifulness and determination, obey imposed policies and procedures, will deliberate their decisions and action in a thorough way, can control or even suppress impulses, work hard to achieve their goals, and carry out tasks in an accurate way (Costa & McCrae, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1987). These traits are actually all comprised by two related facets: achievement and dependability (Judge et al., 2002). When a person has a low score on conscientiousness he is wasting his time, breaks rules, finds it difficult to get down to work, shirks his duties, messes things up, needs a push to get started, jumps into things without thinking, and leaves things unfinished.
Just like openness to experience, some findings on conscientiousness in connection with IWB are worthwhile to mention. According to several scholars (Feist, 1998; George & Zhou, 2001; Walker, Koestner, & Hum, 1995) conscientiousness discourages creative behaviour. George & Zhou (2001) stated about an employee’s behaviour: “conforming, controlling one’s impulses, following rules, and striving to achieve predetermined goals all may go against seeking to change the status quo and coming up with new and better ways of doing things” (p. 515).
The link with the employee’s behaviour is followed immediately by the link with leadership behaviour by naming leadership as an important factor that serves to encourage conformity and daunt creative behaviour (e.g. Amabile, 1988; De Hoogh et al., 1995; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Scott & Bruce, 1994). When leaders score high on conscientiousness they engage in precise work instructions and close monitoring to ensure that followers perform tasks in expected ways and deliver the predetermined goals. Followers will feel the pressure to do what they are told, and will control their impulses to explore things that are out of the ordinary to avoid the risk that the leader might disapprove this (George & Zhou, 2001). When a leader scores high on conscientiousness there is no room for follower’s autonomy and self-directed decision-making and it is unlikely that the leader will coach his followers for innovative performance. This is why in this research a negative relationship between conscientiousness and LEB is expected.
Hypothesis 3c: Leaders’ Conscientiousness is negatively related to Leader Empowering Behaviour
Leaders’ Growth Need Strength (GNS)
In the literature on job design, Hackman & Oldham (1980) developed the construct of GNS: to what extent has an employee the drive to grow and develop within his job? An employee has a high GNS when he strongly desires to learn new things, wants to step out of his comfort zone to gain the maximum out of himself, and looks actively for opportunities for personal development.
According to Shalley, Gilson, & Blum (2009) a positive relationship exists between GNS and creativity with interaction between a supportive context and job complexity. As Shalley et al. (2009, p. 494) note: “the highest levels of creativity are expected when growth need strength, supportive context, and job complexity are all high. However, reduced levels of creativity are expected if only one factor is high, such as when growth need strength is high, but both context and complexity are low”.
The bridge between creativity and IWB is already made in this thesis research. So when there is an effect of GNS on creativity, it is assumed that there is also a positive relation between GNS and follower’s IWB. It is interesting to speculate about to which extent the GNS of leaders affects showing LEB. It could be said that for showing LEB it is required that the leader genuinely believes in the concept of empowering employees. If a leader appreciates personal development, growth, and autonomy for himself, it would be likely that he will stimulate this towards his fol lowers as well, which is reflected in the display of LEB. Therefore, it is assumed that it is fruitful when a leader has a
high score on GNS, so he will proactively seek to opportunities for his followers to get more autonomy, to learn new skills, and to grow in their personal development. If a leader scores low on GNS he will not be motivated to get the most out of his followers and will not encourage self-directed decision making, autonomy, skill development, and trying new ideas.
GNS is associated to openness to experience (De Jong, Van de Velde, & Jansen, 2001), and this relationship is probably supported, if hypothesis 3a (about the relationship between openness to experience and LEB) is empirically supported.
Hypothesis 4: Leaders’ growth need strength is positive related with Leader Empowering Behaviour
This thesis research does not pursue a unilateral perspective but searches for a determinant beyond leadership, a broader contextual factor within the system of an organisation with potential influence to reach every employee. Based on previous research, Yuan & Woodman (2010, p. 327) stated that “organization climate is an important contextual factor that signals expectations for behaviour and potential outcomes of these behaviours (James, Hartman, Stebbins, & Jones, 1977)”. Besides Yuan & Woodman, some other studies found empirical support for the effects of organization climate on IWB (e.g. Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989; Scott & Bruce, 1994). Given the limited number of studies and the absence of a correlation between climate and the specific leadership style of empowering, it is interesting to find out if and how organization climate is a determinant for LEB and IWB.
Organizational Support for Innovation (OSI)
According to Yuan and Woodman (2010, p. 327) “an organization climate for innovation delivers ‘expectancies’ and ‘instrumentalities’ (Scott & Bruce, 1994) so that organization members understand that being innovative is a desirable image and engaging in innovative behaviour will make them look good (image gains). Moreover, a pro-innovation climate encourages innovative behaviour because it legitimates experimentation (West & Wallace, 1991 in Yuan & Woodman), creates psychological safety for trial and error, and reduces the image risk involv ed in innovation attempts (Ashford, 1986)”. Based on this description there is a clear distinction between culture and climate. Culture is defined as a system of shared values (defining what is important) and norms (defining appropriate attitudes and behaviours) and is manifested in observable artefacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions (Schein, 1990). Climate refers to peoples’ perceptions about environmental attributes shaping expectations about outcomes and interactions in the work
environment. Scott & Bruce (1994) modified and extended the OSI construct of Siegel & Kammerer (1979) to a two-dimensional approach. The first dimension is support for innovation. Is the organization open to change, supportive to new ideas from employees and is there tolerance for differences between employees (diversity)? The second dimension is about perceptions of resource supply, the belief of employees that the organization provides them with adequate resources for accomplishing the task of innovation. With resources Scott & Bruce (1994) meant personnel, funding, and time.
This research assumes that similar empirical support will be found for the relationship between OSI and IWB, within the context of the pharmaceutical organisation where this research takes place. The findings will hopefully be more grounded by avoiding common method bias and collect data about IWB from two sources: leaders and followers themselves.
Elaborating on the finding of a relationship between OSI and IWB in the study of Yuan & Woodman (2010) it is expected in this research that there is a relationship between OSI and LEB as well. If a leader does not have the perception that the organization supports innovation and supplies employees with resources for innovation tasks, why should that leader give authority to make changes necessary to improve things, encourage employees to develop their own solutions to problems, and coach for innovative performance?
Hypothesis 5a: Organizational Support for Innovation is positively related to Leader Empowering Behaviour
Hypothesis 5b: Organizational Support for Innovation is positively related to Innovative Work Behaviour
Besides OSI as contextual factor, other research noted another important contextual factor: the quality of the relationship between an employee and his or her line manager (e.g. Graen & Scandura, 1987). Examining a leadership style is something different than the quality of the relationship with a leader. It is therefore interesting to include this construct in this research, which is described in more detail in the next paragraph.
Moderator: Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
Given the whole picture of the conceptual model of this research and the limited time available, only one moderator is addressed as a possible factor which influences the relationship between LEB and IWB. As mentioned in the introduction chapter, Leader-Member Exchange is often demonstrated as a variable in previous research regarding creativity and IWB (e.g. Zhou & George, 2001; Yuan & Woodman, 2010).
The essence of the Leader-member exchange theory is about mutual liking, trust, and respect between an employee and his or her line manager. The higher the quality of an employee’s relationship with his line manager, the more autonomy, decision latitude and resources that employee receives (e.g. Graen, Novak, & Sommerkamp, 1982; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Some scholars (Scott & Bruce, 1994; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999; Janssen & Van Yperen, 2004) found that employees were showing more IWB when the relationship with their line manager was of high quality. Yuan & Woodman (2010) extended the research on this subject by demonstrating that LMX is positively related to expected image gains from innovative behaviour. They showed that when a leader sympathizes with an employee, he is more likely to believe that innovative ideas are meaningful, which will increase the chance of image gains for the employee. Given the time constraints, the influence of image gains is disregarded in this research. It is assumed in this research that LMX will have influence on the relationship between LEB and employees’ IWB. For example, when a leader shows LEB by challenging an employee to rethink some of his basic assumptions about his work, but this employee is unsure about their relationshi p, he could doubt the intentions of his leader. Or when a leader encourage his employee to try out new ideas even if there is a change he may not succeed, how big is the change that an employee will show this behaviour if he is not sure about if his manager would bail him out at his expense?
Hypothesis 6: Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) will moderate the relationship between Leading Empowering Behaviour (LEB) and Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB). When LMX is high, the
relationship between LEB and IWB will be influenced positively resulting in a stronger relationship. If LMX is low, the relationship between LEB and IWB will be influenced negatively resulting in a weak relationship.
The constructs and proposed relations between them result in the conceptual model as showed in Figure 1.
4. Methods
This chapter describes in what kind of organization the research took place and how the sample looks like, regarding the demographics of the sample. Furthermore, this chapter provides clarity about the design of this research by stating how the research is shaped and which measurements are used. This chapter ends with a description of the steps that are made for performing the statistical analysis.
Organization
This research took place in an organization that is active in the pharmaceutical industry. Within the branch of this organization that has been researched the rapidly changing dynamic environment is expressed in a tremendous way: shortened life cycles of medicines, growing value of biotech start-up companies, unexpected emerging competitors as Google and Apple, increasing power of stakeholders, like health-insurance companies, the changing decision making unit within hospitals from medical doctors to hospital pharmacists, financial managers and board-members, increasing pressure on healthcare systems by cost effectiveness and public and political discussions about the reimbursement of medicines.
The organization is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, with highly innovative medicines in complex therapeutic areas. The focus of this research was on the Dutch office of this pharmaceutical company, with employees consisting of approximately 30 line managers and 150 subordinates. The Dutch office’s mid-level managers and directors (which are members of the local management team) were all treated as line manager for the purposes of this thesis research, due to the limited scale of the Dutch office and given the fact that these persons all have responsibilities as a line manager.
Participants
The employees of the Dutch office were asked to participate in this research. The majority of these employees are engaged in the areas of medical affairs, sales and marketing. The area of medical affairs is subdivided into medical management, clinical operations, regulatory affairs, drug safety and medical information. Staff personnel are employed over the following areas: finance,
informatics, logistics, procurement, compliance, communication, and HR. The scope of the analysis of this research is on an organizational level, so it was not relevant to ask the participants for which particular department of the organization they were employed. In the Netherlands no production or fundamental research and development takes place for the organization.
The average age of the respondents was 41.21 years (SD = 8.94), and 53.9% of the respondents was female. The average length of service was 7.57 years (SD = 6.39), the average job tenure was 4.69 years (SD = 4.32), and the average tenure of the relationship between leader and follower was 2.23 years (SD = 2.59). Looking at the level of education of the participants, 5% started their working career with a high school diploma, 9% obtained an intermediate vocational education (‘MBO’) degree, 34% obtained a bachelor’s degree on higher vocational education (‘HBO’) or academic (‘WO’) level, 34% obtained an academic master’s degree, and the remaining 9% obtained a PhD or equivalent degree. A lot of knowledge workers are employed at the Dutch office, as 86% of the respondents were highly educated participants (bachelor’s degree or higher). There was no purpose for this research to include the type of background of the participants in the information being requested, but it is generally known within the company that almost all line knowledge workers have a (bio/para)medical science background.
Procedure
The data collection process has been organized around two sources of employees: line managers, as leaders, and their subordinates, as followers. The participating subordinates completed a questionnaire on organization climate, leader behaviour and their perceived view on their own IBW. Participating line managers received two questionnaires. In the first questionnaire they were asked to answer questions about their personal characteristics and organization climate. In the second questionnaire they provided ratings for their subordinates’ IBW and to which extent they trust a particular subordinate. The questionnaires were made in Qualtrics and a link to the online survey was send to the participants by email.
A pilot was conducted for the setup of the questionnaires. Due to limited time availability no thorough pilot (which requires a sample of at least thirty people) was conducted. A small sample of five people has been used, consisting of people from the private circle of the researcher and a few people from the organization. Using the feedback from this pilot, the questionnaire s have been revised on a number of issues. The final versions of the questionnaires are included in the appendices
B to D. These questionnaires were sent to 147 subordinates and 27 line managers within the Dutch office.
Given the great amount of emails that the participating employees receive and the fact that long emails are not very well read, this research was announced to them by means of a hardcopy announcement letter that was sent to the employees’ home addresses. This has increased the rate of undivided attention and stipulated the sense of importance of the research subject for the Dutch office’s local management team. The letter contained a request of the management team to support this research by participating through filling out the online survey. To achieve a high response rate, the context of disruptive changes and the need for the company to gain a deeper inside in innovative work behaviour was emphasized and how the organization - and in particular line managers - can encourage this kind of behaviour. This message was strongly aligned with the local strategy and focus of the Dutch office for this year by making an explicit connection with an enrolled program of change making of this year. To encourage participation, the letter stated that the outcome of this research would be shared with the whole company. The announcement letter explained the bigger picture and showed the importance of this research to the employees, while the cover letters that accompanied the questionnaires were focused on pragmatic information wi th instructions and confidentiality guarantees. The text of the announcement letter can be found in appendix A.
In order to stimulate a high response rate, the researcher asked the line managers and the Dutch office’s Works Council to act as an ambassador for the research and to remember employees to participate. Furthermore, in the Dutch office’s digital newsletter (a standard communication form used at the Dutch office) attention was paid to the research as well as during a repeated broadcast on the Dutch office’s television channel. The researcher has also sent the participants an email as a friendly reminder to fill in the questionnaires.
112 subordinates (response rate of 76%) and 23 line managers (response rate of 85%) completed the questionnaires and this has yielded a pairing of 105 responses. The number of subordinates evaluated by each line manager varied from 2 to 12, where most line managers rated 5 employees.
Measurements
All items of the constructs in the questionnaires were measured by a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Some original scales asked to rate the frequency, or the importance of items and/or used a seven-point scale. For uniformity of the scales,
these scales were converted to five-point scales which rates to what extent one agrees or disagrees with the statements. The used measures of the constructs are described below, starting with the dependent variables, followed by the independent variables and the moderating variable, and ending with the control variables. All the scales and their items can be found in the surveys in the appendices B to D.
Innovative Work Behaviour of followers (IWB).
For measuring the dependent variable, IWB of followers, the 10-item scale of De Jong & Den Hartog (2010) was used, inspired by Janssen (2000), Kleysen & Street (2001), and Scott & Bruce (1994). The Cronbach’s alphas of the four dimensions are: .88 for ‘idea exploration’, .90 for ‘idea generation’, .95 for ‘idea championing’, and .93 for ‘idea implementation’. In response to the feedback of the participants of the pilot study, a few items are reformulated to avoid misinterpretations or confusion. For item 6 the word ‘influential’ is used, instead of ‘important’. Item 7 omitted the word ‘attempt’. For item 8 the word ‘systematically’ is adjusted to ‘frequently’. Following De Jong (2007), data was collected from leaders as independent source, to prevent socially desirable answers and common source bias. However, to discover to what extent the ratings from a leader and a subordinate regarding himself differ, also ratings from subordinates about themselves were collected.
Leader Empowering Behaviour (LEB)
To assess the opinion of followers about their leader’s empowering behaviour, the Leader Empowering Behaviour Questionnaire (LEBQ) of Konczak et al. (2000) was used with a total amount of 17 items. The precise Cronbach’s alphas of the six dimensions were not published, but they are all in the range of .80 to .91.
Leaders’ Trust
For this research, the 12-item scale of Hakimi et al. (2010) to measure trust is used. Hakimi et al. (2010) based this scale on two of the five dimensions of trust from the research of Mayer & Davis (1999). The Cronbach’s alphas are .88 for performance and .88 for integrity. The term ‘top management’ was changed to ‘my team’ to measure the leader’s general propensity to trust his
team. Beforehand, it was preferred in this research to measure trust per subordinate. However, to avoid that line managers were not willing to complete a second questionnaire with quite a large amount of questions per subordinate, the general propensity was measured. Because the pilot on the setup of the questionnaires resulted in feedback stating that it was really hard to rate the general propensity of trust towards a team, the items were measured per subordinate. The original 12-item scale has been shortened to 6 items, three per dimension, in order to limit the extension of the second part of the questionnaire.
Personality characteristics of leaders
To measure the chosen personal characteristics Leaders Openness to Experience,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness, in this research the 20-item mini International Personality
Item Pool was used with 4 items per characteristic (Madrid et al, 2014; Goldberg, Johnson, Eber, Hogan, Ashton, Clinger, & Gough, 2006; Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). The text of one item of conscientiousness, ‘I get chores done right away’, is reformulated in ‘ I quickly start and finish boring, routine tasks’ to avoid misunderstanding, due to possible unfamiliarity of the participants with the English language.
Leaders’ Growth Need Strength
The 4-item scale of Growth Need Strength is taken from Shalley et al. (2009) with a Cronbach’s alpha of .88, which in their turn based their scale on Hackman & Oldman (1980).
Organizational Support for Innovation (OSI)
The measurement of OSI is based on the 22-item scale of Scott & Bruce (1994). Due to the large number of items, 3 items in the dimension of support for innovation with a factor loading lower than .52 were removed and 3 items in the dimension of resource supply with a factor loading lower than .55 were removed. Item 2 was divided in two items to avoid confusion about the definition of ‘the leadership’ and avoid a double barrelled question. One item which is created is about ‘the local Management Team’ (item 2), the other one is about ‘my line manager’ (item 3). Due to possible unfamiliarity of the participants with the English language, the text in item 16 ‘the reward system here benefits mainly those who don’t rock the boat’ was changed to ‘the reward system here
benefits mainly those who are innovative’. Cronbach’s alpha for the original subscale of ‘support for innovation’ was .92. For the original subscale of ‘resource supply’ it was .77.
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)
This moderating variable was measured with the 7-item scale of Graen et al. (1982). This scale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .90.
Control variables
Gender, age, level of education, organizational tenure, job tenure, and tenure of the relationship between leader and follower are used in this research as control variables, in order to account for possible confounding effects. It could be, for example, that employees experience more leader empowering behaviour when their job tenure is higher. Previous research on creativity (e.g. George & Zhou, 2001; Shalley et al., 2000) showed a significant relation between four of these demographics: age, gender, organization tenure and education.
To demonstrate a relation between LEB and IWB it was required to measure a broader concept of leadership. In this research, LEB is compared with Transformational Leadership (TFL), given the overlap between the constructs. The question is if the relationship between LEB and IWB is stronger than TFL and IWB. TFL is measured by the 15-item scale of Rafferty & Griffin (2004), which in its turn is based on items produced by House (1998) and Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter (1990). The Cronbach’s alphas of the measurements of the five dimensions of TFL are the following: .82 for ‘articulating a vision’, .84 for ‘intellectual stimulation’, .88 for ‘inspirational communication’, .95 for ‘supportive leadership’ and .96 for ‘personal recognition’.
Statistical analysis
As already mentioned, data has been collected by means of three online surveys, one for subordinate employees (followers) and two for line managers (leaders). Survey administration started on 20 March, 2015. The surveys were closed three weeks later on 10 April, 2015. To perform statistical analyses, the Statistical software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) has been used. After recoding the reverse coded items, descriptive statistics, scale means, scale reliabilities, and correlations were computed.
Direct relationships were examined by the use of hierarchical regression. The regression analyses were conducted for the two dependent variables (1) employees’ IWB and (2) LEB. Given the fact that both dependent variables as well as two independent variables contain of different dimensions (Leader Trust, OSI), more in depth regressions were performed for more detailed findings. Employees’ IWB was measured by the leader ratings for this scale, due to subjectivity of the ratings from the subordinates about their own extent of IWB.
In order to test the moderating role of LMX for the relationship between employees’ LEB and IWB, the script of PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) was installed within SPSS. PROCESS is a computational tool for path analysis-based moderation and mediation analysis as well as their combination as a conditional process model. Model 1 was used for the conditional effect of this simple moderation.
5. Results
The reporting of the results will start in this chapter with the correlation analysis, followed by the results of the regression analyses. The latter analyses will be outlined in this chapter in sequence of direct relationships and ending with the moderation effect. Due to the large number of analyses, only the tables regarding the analyses with constructs as independent variables are included in this chapter. The tables with dimensions of constructs as independent variables can be found in appendix E. Tables containing only non-significant findings are not displayed at all.
Correlation analysis
Table 1 contains an overview of the descriptive statistics, correlations and scale reliabilities of the variables. Followers’ innovative work behaviour is rated by followers themselves, as well as by their leaders. The correlation between these measures was significant (r = .37, p < .01). To avoid a possible bias in the self-assessment of employees, the leader rated IWB construct is used for regression analysis. The correlation between leader rated IWB and LEB is non-significant (r = .13, p > .05). Looking at the three leadership related constructs the correlation between them was, as expected, significant (p < .01) with high scores of TFL – LEB (r = .88), TFL – LMX (r = .82), and LEB – LMX (r = .85.). Another observation is that the three leadership related constructs – LEB, TFL, and LMX – did not have a significant correlation with any of the leader characteristics. The lack of significant findings could be the consequence of the low number of leaders in this sample. In contrast, there were the positive significant correlations (p < .01) between employee rated OSI and the three leadership related constructs (OSI – LEB, r = .61; OSI – TFL, r = .54; OSI – LMX, r = .48). Furthermore the correlations between the five leader characteristics themselves were all significant, except the slightly negative correlation between openness to experience and conscientiousness. Finally, it is remarkable to see that the correlation between all the leader characteristics and leader rated IWB were significant, except for GNS: leader trust (r = .40, p < .01), openness to experience (r = .21, p < .05), agreeableness (r = .26, p < .01), and conscientiousness (r = .40, p < .01).
