The influence of computer-mediated communication on the relationship
between leaders’ positive mood and transformational leadership behavior
Master thesis, HRM
University of Groningen, Faculty of Behavior and Social Sciences
2 Abstract
Transformational leadership is one of the most popular and widely examined leadership styles. The present study investigates the influence of leaders’ positive mood on
3 Introduction
Leadership is an important concept for a firm, and much research has focused on this topic (Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Walter and Bruch, 2009). Leadership is related to the
satisfaction and performance of employees, for example, which are very important to a firm’s bottom-line (Den Hartog, van Muijen and Koopman, 2011; Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Zhang, Cao and Tjosvold, 2011). Transformational leadership is one of the most popular and widely examined leadership styles, according to Judge and Piccolo (2004). This leadership style can be defined by four dimensions: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Judge and Piccolo, 2004). “Idealized influence means the degree to which leaders behave in admirable ways that cause followers to identify with the leader” (Judge and Piccolo, 2004: 755), through exciting, arousing and inspiring their subordinates (Den Hartog et al., 2011). Inspirational motivation is the degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is appealing and inspiring to followers (Judge and Piccolo, 2004: 755). “Intellectual stimulation is the degree to which the leader challenges assumptions, takes risks, and solicits followers’ ideas” (Judge and Piccolo, 2004: 755). Finally,
“individualized consideration is the degree to which the leader attends to each follower’s needs, acts as a mentor or coach to followers, and listens to the follower’s concerns and needs” (Judge and Piccolo, 2004: 755). Transformational leadership style has repeatedly been shown to lead to more satisfaction, more effort, and higher performance among followers (e.g., Den Hartog et al, 2011; Judge and Piccolo, 2004; Zhang et al, 2011; Purvanoca and Bono, 2009).
Because transformational leadership is among the most popular and effective
4 personality or affect, and contextual characteristics, like social context and national culture (Walter and Bruch, 2009; Rubin, Munz and Bommer, 2005). Leaders’ mood is one of those leader characteristics. Mood is a subjective feeling that is relatively low in intensity, diffuse, enduring, and not directed toward a specific object (Johnson, 2009). The kind of mood a leader has is likely to influence his or her transformational leadership behavior (Johnson, 2009). Research suggests, in particular, that positive moods and emotions may strengthen leaders’ transformational behavior (Walter and Bruch, 2007, 2009).
5 influence the role of leaders’ positive mood for their transformational behavior. The following research question is examined in this study:
To what extent is the role of leaders’ positive mood for their transformational leadership behavior moderated by the degree to which leaders use written computer-mediated communication when interacting with followers?
By investigating this research question, I strive to contribute more clarity about the relationship between mood and transformational leadership behavior and, in particular, to highlight boundary conditions of this linkage. Focusing on CMC as a contingency factor, in particular, may be very interesting for many companies because of their increasing use of CMC.
Study Hypotheses Leaders’ positive mood and transformational behavior
First of all, I propose leaders’ positive mood to positively associate with their
6 Walter and Bruch (2007) conclude, based on this theorizing, that positive mood may enhance the optimistic, creative and self-confident behaviors which are associated with
features of transformational leadership. A leader experiencing positive mood at work may, for example, find it easier to present him- or herself as a charismatic and enthusiastic role model (i.e., idealized influence). Positive mood also increases leaders’ ability to develop and communicate an emotionally captivating vision and to gain trust and identification from followers. Communication of the vision is characterized with optimism and confidence, which is based on positive mood (i.e., inspirational motivation; Walter and Bruch, 2007). Positive mood demonstrates, based on research, that it enhances creativity and cognitive flexibility. A leader have to take risks, for example, but also have to listen to the followers’ ideas and increase their creativity (i.e., intellectual stimulation; Walter and Bruch, 2007). Positive mood enables leaders to engage in more positive relations with their followers. Leaders in a positive mood, have more positive views towards others and higher interest and social interactions, which could lead to positive relations with their followers (i.e., individualized consideration; Walter and Bruch, 2007). Accordingly, empirical research has shown that leaders who experience positive mood on the job exhibit greater levels of transformational leadership according to their followers (Johnson, 2009; Walter and Bruch, 2007). Also, Rubin et al. (2005) showed that leaders who are characterized by a high degree of positive affectivity are more likely to perform transformational leadership behavior. Building on this theoretical and empirical background, I propose the following:
H1: Leaders’ positive mood has a positive relationship with their transformational leadership behavior.
The moderating role of computer-mediated communication
7 transformational leadership behavior. Positive mood, at its core, is an intrapersonal state (Overbeck, Neale and Govan, 2010). When this mood is expressed verbally or non-verbally, however, it serves an interpersonal, informational function. Then the mood can affect the emotions, thoughts, and actions of other individuals (Overbeck et al, 2010). In other words, positive mood is an interpersonal state which only has interpersonal consequences when it is effectively expressed or communicated. These interpersonal consequences can be reduced by the circumstances of an interaction that make the effective communication of mood more difficult. CMC can be such an aggravating circumstance (Byron, 2008).
On the one hand, CMC has been suggested to break down communication barriers by making people less sensitive to contextual restrictions on behavior and encouraging them to convey information that is not otherwise conveyed through face-to-face communication (Tan et al, 1998). On the other hand, scholars have also argued that CMC can go along with
pronounced disadvantages. According to Berry (2006), for example, early research found that CMC is sometimes more difficult than face-to-face communication. In particular, written CMC, like email, has no nonverbal and related cues, which could be an advantage but also a constraint (Berry, 2006), because there is less focus on the social and personal aspects of the interaction. This means that shy people maybe dare to communicate more when they use written CMC instead of face communication. On the other hand, when using face-to-face communication, the way people talk could influence the message they want to
communicate by using nonverbal and related cues.
These features of CMC may have severe consequences for the accurate communication of affective information (e.g., mood states). Research has shown that nonverbal channels are particularly important in communicating moods and emotions; such nonverbal channels include facial expression, the tone of the voice and body posture
8 communicate in CMC that purely relies on written language and largely omits facial
expression, voice tone, and body posture (Byron, 2008; Elfenbein, 2007). There are examples of emotions in email, like emoticons, asterisks and capitals. But employees are typically advised to not use emoticons, because it is too casual and unprofessional (Byron and Baldridge, 2005). Also, it appears likely that the range of affective states expressed though such means is more restricted than in actual face-to-face communication.
Due to the above reasons, a leaders’ positive mood is less likely to translate into transformational leadership behavior when he or she mainly uses written CMC in follower interactions. In particular, leaders can successfully communicate enthusiasm according to DeKay (2006), but Byron (2008) suggests that the neutrality effect decreases the positive mood intended by the senders. This means that through the characteristics of email receivers perceive emails convey “positive mood are more emotionally neutral than intended by the sender” (i.e. idealized influence; Byron, 2008: 312). In this way, it becomes more difficult to act as a role model and setting the high expectations for followers.
The lack of cues as facial expressions and vocal tone in email make it less arousing than for example face-to-face communication (Byron, 2008). The intensity of a facial expression convey the intensity of the mood of the person, what in email is difficult to accurately convey (Byron, 2008), which makes the vision in an emotionally captivating manner difficult (i.e. inspirational motivation).
Email communication is less personal compared to face-to-face communication, which symbolizes caring (Byron, 2008). Conveying warmth and interest for individual followers and act as coach for the followers could therefore be tough (i.e. individualized consideration). All in all, the use of CMC could be one of the circumstances that makes the
9 positive mood and transformational leadership. Therefore, the following hypothesis is
suggested:
H2: A leader’s use of CMC moderates the positive relationship between the leaders' positive mood and transformational leadership, such that this relationship will be less pronounced when a leader communicates by CMC to a greater extent.
Method Data collection
The data for the present study was collected in teams from 22 organizations in 17 sectors; inter alia health care, banking, catering, e-business and communication. The teams contain one team leader and between 4 and 32 followers. In total 25 teams completed the survey, including one team leader for each group and 138 followers in total. The number of participants per team was between four and eleven. The total response rate of the sample is 50.5%. Participants of this study were mainly female; for followers and leaders both 69%. The average age of the followers is 32 years, that of leaders 35 years. The average
organizational tenure of the followers is 67 months, that of leaders 62 months.
Two different surveys are held in a team of an organization. One survey for the (team) leader and the other survey for the followers. The leader rated his or her positive mood in the first survey. The followers rated the transformational leadership behavior of the leader and the frequency of communication in different ways with the leader in the second survey. This design is used to minimize common method variance; the predictor and criterion variables are separated (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Lee and Podsakoff, 2003). All participants received a team code, which enabled me to match leaders with their followers.
10 Measures
Positive mood. Leaders’ positive mood was measured in the leaders’ survey using the job-related affective well-being scale (JAWS) from Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector and Kelloway (2000). Leaders indicated how often they experienced nine specific mood states (at ease, calm, energetic, enthusiastic, excited, inspired, relaxed and satisfied) in their job last week. This was on a seven-point scale, ranging from never (1) to always (7). Internal consistency for the nine item scale was .87.
Transformational leadership. Transformational leadership was measured through Bass and Avolio’s (2000) scale. Followers judged their leaders’ behavior in four dimensions, which are mentioned in the introduction: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Bass and Avolio, 2000). Seven-point Likert scales ranging from almost never (1) to almost always (7) were utilized. Some examples of questions are “Seeks differing perspectives when solving problems”, “Spends time teaching and coaching”, “Emphasizes the importance of having a collective sense of mission” and “Goes beyond self-interest for the good of the group” (Bass and Avolio, 2000). The internal consistency for the twenty items was .93.
Written computer-mediated communication. Written CMC was measured with a scale from Mehra (2010). Followers indicated how frequently their leader used various
11 an overall direct communication score, which was used as a control variable. The last channel ‘others’ was excluded because none of the followers used this option.
Control variables. Some control variables were added to reduce the possibility of unmeasured influences biasing the results. Specifically, gender of the leader was used because women have been shown to exhibit more transformational leadership behavior than men, although this difference was small (Walter and Bruch, 2009).
Age of the leader could influence the relationship, because it is likely that older leaders make less use of CMC, and therefore have more difficulties when they are actually using it. This could influence the communication of positive mood. Further, direct communication was used as a control variable to see if there was a difference between written CMC and direct communication between leaders and followers. Finally, negative mood was included as control variable to see whether the effects of positive mood are unique. Negative mood is measured using ten items from the JAWS scale from Van Katwyk et al. (2000), with an internal consistency of .88.
Data Analyses
The study hypotheses are tested with the use of a linear regression analysis on
individual followers’ transformational leadership ratings. In the first step the control variables negative mood and age of the leader were included. In the second step positive mood was included to test the first hypothesis. The moderator (written CMC) was included in the third step, to test if there is a direct relation with transformational leadership. Also direct
12 Results
Table 1 show the means, standard deviations and correlations between all the variables. As can be seen, positive mood and transformational leadership were positively correlated (r = .21, p < .05). Also written CMC is positively correlated with positive mood (r = .30, p<.01). The control variable direct communication is significantly correlated with transformational leadership (r = .29, p<.01), while written CMC is not significantly related with
transformational leadership. Direct communication is also significantly related to positive mood (r = .27, p<.01). Negative mood is significantly negatively related to the age of the leader (r = -.17, p<.05). Positive mood is significantly negatively related to the gender of the leader (r = -.40, p<.01).
--- Insert Table 1 about here
---In table 2 the results of the linear regression are presented. The second step of the model shows that, as expected, there is a significant positive relationship between positive mood and transformational leadership (β = .20, p < .05), after taking into account the control variables negative mood and age of the leader. So, Hypothesis 1 is supported. Positive mood contributed 3% to the prediction of transformational leadership.
In step four of the regression model can be seen that the second hypothesis is not supported; there is no significant interaction effect of positive mood and written CMC on transformational leadership behavior.
13 table 2. In this table direct communication is added as control variable (β= .27 p<.005). I will return to this unexpected finding in the discussion section.
--- Insert Table 2 about here
---Discussion
In this study the goal was to get more clarity about the relationship between positive mood of leaders and transformational leadership behaviors and the influence of written CMC on this relationship. The results show that there is a significant positive relationship between positive mood of leaders and their transformational behavior; it explains 3% of the variance in
transformational leadership behavior. It turns out that written CMC has no influence on this relationship as moderator. Hence, leaders’ transformational behavior in general, as well as the role of their positive mood for such behavior in particular, are not affected by leaders’ use of written CMC. Although the second hypothesis is not supported, this study extends prior research.
First of all, the present study considers positive mood of leaders as antecedent of transformational leadership. Corroborating previous research (e.g., Walter and Bruch, 2007), the results show that there is a positive significant relation between positive mood and transformational leadership behavior. This finding is noteworthy because it does not suffer from common method variance; positive mood was rated by leaders themselves and transformational leadership behavior was rated by individual followers.
14 note that, apparently, the increasing use of CMC as such does not seem to represent an
aggravating factor for effective leadership.
Finally, the unexpected significant relationship between direct communication and transformational leadership behavior could mean that these behaviors are more likely
performed when there is direct communication, like face-to-face communication. This makes sense, because nonverbal channels are important when communicating ambiguous and difficult messages, like a vision of the future and the support of followers’ individual needs which are transformational leadership behaviors (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002; Elfenbein, 2007; Ekman, 1972; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman and Fetter, 1990). It appears that although the use of written CMC does not diminish transformational leadership (or the role of positive mood in this regard), such leadership can benefit if more direct channels of
communication are used more frequently. Limitations
There are some limitations that must be mentioned when interpreting the results. First, the sample size of the leader is relatively small, in comparison with the sample of the
followers. This can reduce the generalizability of the findings. A second issue that must be considered is that all participating organizations were located in the Netherlands, which also decreases the generalizability for the results in other countries.
Third, the response rate is quite low; 50.5%. When all the followers in a team rate the leader there could be a more complete and reliable picture of some of the leaders’
transformational behaviors and the communication channels.
15 Future research must gain greater confidence about the direction of causality by using a longitudinal or experimental research design.
Future research
Next to the limitations, future research could help to expand the relationship of positive mood and other leadership behaviors. Because transformational leadership and transactional leadership behavior are linked, highly correlated and predict similar outcomes (Avolio, 1999; Bycio, Hackett and Allen, 1995), transactional leadership probably also could have a positive relationship with positive mood.
The results show that there is a significant relationship between direct communication and transformational leadership. Also other leadership styles could have this relationship with direct communication; future research should reveal this. For organizations it could be
important to have more understanding of the influence of direct communication and written CMC, to exploit the relationship between leaders and followers.
In this study, I chose to use positive mood as antecedent of transformational leadership behavior. Although there is no significant relationship between negative affectivity and transformational leadership behavior according to Rubin et al. (2005), other leadership behaviors (such as transactional and laissez-faire) could be influenced by the negative mood and thinking of leaders. When using written CMC as moderator, a possible relationship between negative mood and leadership behavior could be strengthened. “Because emails are text based and have a lack in cues, the emotional tone is often ambiguous” (Byron, 2008: 313). There exists a negativity effect in emails because of the lack in cues. Moods
communicated in emails are more negatively understood than intended by the sender (Byron, 2008), which could influence the relationship between negative mood and leadership
16 Practical implications
This study suggests that leaders’ positive mood strengthens their transformational leadership behaviors. Further, examining the use of written CMC as moderator is new in the literature, and could therefore be interesting for organizations.
First, the significant relationship between positive mood and transformational leadership means that if an organization wants leaders to perform more transformational leadership behaviors, they should strengthen the positive mood of leaders. This brings an implication in practical situations; leader selection. The positive mood of leaders is inter alia defined by the character of the leader, which could mean that when a leader is chosen a personality test is held. George (1992) argues, for example, that high extraversion increases the experience of positive mood. Hence, selecting extraverted leaders might increase the chance of transformational leadership behavior. Next to the characteristics, there are also contextual interventions that may increase positive mood according to Brief and Weiss (2002: 287). This can be done by creating favorable working conditions reaching from workgroup characteristics and psychical settings to organizational rewards and punishments. Thus, a favorable work environment created by the organization could increase the positive mood of leaders.
Moreover, the present study uses written CMC as moderator and explores the potential role of direct communication. Organizations need not to worry that the use of written CMC to a large extent is harmful for leadership, as long as it does not go at the cost of direct
communication. So, there is no need to discourage written CMC among leaders, but it might be a good idea for organizations to encourage the use of direct communication.
Conclusion
17 the future in organization because of the increasing use of CMC. Future research must expand this research.
18 Table 1.
*: Correlation is significant on the 0.05 level **: Correlation is significant on the 0.01 level
19 Table 2.
Linear regression on transformational leadership. (N=138).
Variables (1) Control model (2) Positive mood (3) Communication (4) Interaction model
B St.Er B St.Er B St.Er B St.Er
Gender leader -.13 .07 -.07 .08 -.06 .07 -.06 .07
Negative mood -.00 .07 .05 .07 .04 .07 .04 .07
Positive mood leader .16* .08 .13 .08 -.14 .28
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