Is the fit between leadership style and employees’ regulatory focus
the key to successful change?
Master thesis, MscBA, specialization Change Management
Laudry van der Meer 1640304
August 2012
Faculty Economics and Business University of Groningen
Supervisor: Dr. J.A. Rupert
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ABSTRACT
The increasing need for organizations to change in order to survive demands involvement and participation of all organizational members. It is important for leaders to create readiness for change during periods of change whereby employees should be motivated to work towards the organizational change goals. This study proposes that leaders can create readiness for change by encouraging and instructing their employees in a way that matches their strategic preferences for a manner of goal pursuit. Based on the regulatory fit theory, the primary hypothesis of the study is that a match between the style of a leader and employees’ regulatory focus orientations will increase the change readiness. Support was found for promotion focused employees and for prevention focused employees. Survey data was used, collected from 96 employees in different organizations in different industries, located in different countries. Results confirmed that regulatory fit had a positive impact on readiness for change of employees. The limitations of this study, the implications of these results, and possibilities for future research are discussed.
3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 5 1.1 Research Question 5 1.2 Research Objectives 7 1.3 Readers guide 8 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 9 2.1 Organizational change 9
2.2 Readiness for change 10
2.3 Leadership Styles 11
2.4 Regulatory Focus 13
2.5 Leader - Employee Regulatory Fit 15
2.6 Conceptual Model 18
3. METHODOLOGY 19
3.1 Participants 19
3.2 Procedure 20
3.3 Instruments 21
3.3.1 Readiness for change 21
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5. CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION 36
5.1 Results 36
5.2 Additional Findings 38
5.3 Limitations and Further research 38
5.4 Practical limitations 40
5.5 Conclusion 41
REFERENCES 42
APPENDIX 53
Table 4 Readiness for change questionnaire 53
Table 5 Multifactor leadership styles questionnaire 54
Table 6 Regulatory focus questionnaire 56
Appendix A Mail 1 to participants 57
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1. INTRODUCTION
“Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can”
With this catch cry, Barack Obama managed to get the majority of the American people behind him to win the American presidential elections in November 2008. Despite many presidential candidates having used the term ‘change’ in the past, this message hit home with unprecedented effectiveness. Barack Obama’s case is now held up as a superb example of how to motivate people for a change (Kaid, 2009). This is unfortunately something which is rarely achieved within modern organizations, with 70% of change initiatives failing in their intended purpose (Beer & Nohria, 2000). A key contributing factor of most of those failures is that managers are not effective in motivating their employees to make them ready to change and work towards a successful implementation of change (Neves, 2009). As a result, employee resistance can occur (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Beer, Eisentat & Spector, 1990; Regar, Mullane, Gustafson, Demarie, Berry & Grillo, 1994). Resistance to change has a widespread impact on the implementation of organizational change; employees will give little or no assistance to change, leading to falling performance and decreasing productivity (Coetsee, 1999; Fox & Armichai-Hamburger, 2001, Piderit, 2000). This is regrettable, because organizations today operate in an environment that is constantly changing, and organizations have to be prepared to react quickly to changing environments (Dyer, 1985; Elord & Tippett, 2002). Successful leaders need to be constantly nurturing employee’s readiness for change in order to overcome resistance and work toward the organizational change goals (Bass, 1997). This study focuses on leadership styles and mechanisms which help to create a strong basis for achange within an organization. As pointed out by numerous commentators, the future success of organizations rest on the ability to be progressively more adaptive to changes (Lawler & Worley, 2006; Lyons, Swindler & Offner, 2009).
1.1 Research Question
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2005). However, little is known about how the relationship between leaders and their employees can influence the successfulness of organizational change, especially how the characteristics of the employees might affect their reactions to a particular leader (Benjamin & Flynn, 2005; Howell & Shamir, 2005; Oreg & Berson, 2011). To fill this knowledge gap, this study focuses how change readiness can be enhanced through a match between a leadership style and the employee.
Benjamin and Flynn (2005) argue that one key characteristic of employees that affects their response to their leaders may be their regulatory focus. This can be defined as a manner in which employees pursue goals (Higgins, 1997). Two different regulation focuses can be distinguished: the prevention focus and the promotion focus (Idson & Higgins, 2000; Molden & Higgins, 2005). A prevention focused employee is sustained by pursuing goals in a way that avoid losses, whereas a promotion focused employee is sustained by pursuing goals in a way that support gains or advancement (Higgins, Cesario, Spiegel & Pittman, 2010).
According to the regulatory fit theory, when people are stimulated to pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their regulatory focus, people feel more engaged and are more attracted in the goal-pursuit activity (Cesario, Higgins & Scholer, 2008; Higgins, 2000; Higgins, Cesario, Spiegel & Pittman, 2010; Higgins, Idson, Freitas, Spiegel, & Molden, 2003). This phenomenon is called ‘fit’ (Higgins, 2000; Freitas & Higgins, 2002). Regulatory fit also enhances employees’ positive evaluation about an activity and increases their will to continue with the activity (Avnet & Higgins, 2003; Cesario, Higgins & Scholar, 2008). Drawing on this theory, I suggest that when a leader encourages their employees to behave in a way that sustains their strategic preferences for a manner of goal pursuit (i.e. regulatory focus), employees’ willingness to continue the change increases. It is therefore predicted that regulatory fit will positively influence employees’ readiness for change during the pursuit of organizational change initiatives. In other words, the employee will most likely change if the leader stimulates employees to goal strive in a manner that matches their regulatory focus. This study predicts that the readiness for change of employees will rise when there is a regulatory fit between the leader style and the employees’ regulatory focus.
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organization. The secondary purpose of this study is to draw attention to the extent that employee’s individual differences may play a role in leadership processes during organizational change. In order to investigate these relations between employees’ regulatory focus and readiness for change as a function of leadership styles the following research question is proposed:
“Which influence does the relationship between a employees’ regulatory focus and a perceived leadership style have on the readiness for change of employees?”
1.2 Research Objectives
Organizations aim to achieve their organizational change goals as effectively as possible. Thus, organizations want to have optimal functioning employees under outstanding leadership during times of organizational change (Ferris & Judge, 1991). In order to facilitate this successful organizational change, a deeper understanding of how to create readiness for change among members of an organization is needed. The existing literature in this field is yet to focus specifically on the regulatory fit theory in the context of leadership. For this reason, this study mainly focuses on the relationship between a leader and their employees in order to create new insights to the existing literature, add a new perspective to the field, and ultimately drive more effective organizational change.
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1.3 Readers guide
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2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This chapter sets out the variables and gives a high level context to this study. A short introduction of organizational change will be given and the dependent variable, readiness for change, will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion of the independent variables: perceived leadership styles and regulatory focus. Finally, leader-employee regulatory fit will be discussed, leading into the hypotheses of this study and an overview of the studied relations presented in a conceptual model.
2.1 Organizational change
Organizational change is defined in many different ways. Swanwick (2007) describes organizational change as a process that may be encouraged by either internal or external factors that leads to a transformation of an individual or system from one state to another. Choi and Ruona (2011: 51) define organizational change as “a situation that interrupts the normal patterns of an organization”. Other scholars define organizational change as affective events that trigger a range of intense and enduring emotional reactions from employees (Bartunek, 1984; Fugate et al., 2008; Huy, 2002; Kiefer, 2005). Evidently, organizational change can be viewed as a broad concept. As a result, it is common practice in organizational change literature to separate organizational changes into two dimensions: planned and emergent change (Burnes, 2009; Kanter, et al. 1992; Weick, 2000). Planned change is described as a deliberate ‘top down’ change which is pre-planned and solution oriented (Burnes, 2009; Lewin, 1946), whereas emergent change is described as a continuous change that is responding to a changing environment whereby everyone of the organization is evolved (Burnes, 2009; Bridges, 2003; Mintzberg, 1987). For the purpose of this study, organizational change can be either planned or emergent.
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can change the individual employees (Robertson, et al., 1993; Coetsee, 1999). As such, this study focuses on a way to increase organizational members willingness to change. When readiness for change exists, the success rate of organizational change increases significantly.
2.2 Readiness for change
A key issue in managing and planning change is creating a basis that supports change among employees (Bouckenooghe, Devos & van den Broeck, 2009). Lewin (1946) argued that the first step for creating a successful organizational change is to create an environment where employees are open to change. Specifically, change readiness should be created from the initial preparation stage in order to enhance employees’ acceptance (Rusly, Corner & Sun, 2012).
However, most organizations start to directly implement change before the individual or the group is ready to change (Jones, Jimmieson & Griffiths, 2005). Without the participation of the employees resistance to change will occur (Elord & Tippett, 2002; Holt, et al., 2007). Organizational members can exhibit negative feedback such as sabotage and absenteeism which have an extensive impact on the organization (Bouckenooghe, et al., 2009). For that reason, several scholars describe that readiness for change of employees is a necessary condition in order to attain a successful change (Armenakis & Harris, 1993; By, 2007; Frahm & Brown, 2007; Holt, et al., 2007; Levesque et al., 1999; Miller, 1994; Smith, 2005; Sokol, 1997).
Making employees ready for change increases the willingness to take risks, enhances the openness to new perspectives and reduced resistance to change of employees (Bouckenooghe, Devos & van den Broeck, 2009; Elving, 2005; Kriegel & Brandt, 1996; Lewin, 1946). Therefore, it is essential that leaders understand how to create readiness for change by assisting their employees in motivating and preparing for change and retaining low levels of resistance to change (Cummings & Worley, 2005; Elving, 2005; Self & Schreader, 2009).
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cognitively and emotionally able to accept, embrace and adopt a particular change plan”. In addition to Armenakis et al. (1993) and Holt et al. (2007) definitions, Piderit (2000) argued that readiness for change can be conceptualized in three ways, namely as a intentional state, as a cognitive state, and as a emotional state. The intentional state refers to intentions or actions in response towards the organizational change. The cognitive state refers to people’s thoughts and beliefs about the organizational change. The final element of change readiness, the emotional state, refers to the feelings and affective reactions towards the organizational change.
2.3 Leadership Styles
In times of organizational change, leaders can have a strong impact on their employees by using different styles of leadership (Benjamin & Flynn, 2005; Oreg & Berson, 2011). An important element of leadership is the role of providing certainty during uncertain times (House, 1977). Thus it is obvious that leadership must play a key role in successful implementation of change in organizations (Howard & Rafferty, 2009; Kotter, 1996; Lievens, van Geit & Coetsie, 1997).
In general, leadership is a process in which a leader influences others toward goal achievement (Bass, 1990; Bommer, Rubin & Baldwin, 2004; House, 1971; Shanker & Sayeed, 2012). Leaders can use different leadership styles to communicate to their employees how to attain organizational change goals (Devos, van der Heyden & van den Broeck, 2002, House & Mitchell, 1974; Katz & Kahn, 1987).
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employees to develop new ways of working by providing an optimistic vision of the future (Hamstra et al., 2011; Judge & Piccolo, 2004; Shanker & Sayeed, 2012). Bass (1985) identified four behavioural dimensions of transformational leadership: Charisma or Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual Stimulation, and Individualized Consideration. Charisma refers to leaders who dispose of special abilities to share a sense of mission and to provide a vision (Seltzer & Bass, 1990; Stone, Russell & Patterson, 2003) Inspirational motivation refers to leaders who are able to challenge employees to high expectations and to provide support (Bass, 1997). These leaders act as a role model for their employees (Bass & Avolio, 1995). Intellectual stimulation refers to leaders who are able to stimulate their followers to rethink the old beliefs into new perspectives and give employees new insights (Bass, 1997). Lastly, individualized consideration refers to leaders that focus on employees’ development (Seltzer & Bass, 1990). These leaders coach and mentor their employees.
To give an example, think of two leaders who have to implement a new IT system in a workplace. The transactional leader motivates their employees by giving clear expectations and formulating specific rules about how to work with the new system, whereas the transformational leader motivates their employees by encouraging and stimulating their employees to move toward till the computer system is implemented. So, transactional leadership style and transformational leadership style motivate employees to carry out their work in various ways and to use different strategies of goal achievement.
Previous studies have found evidence that transformational leadership style can positively influence the change process by persuading employees to pursue the organizational change goal with urgency, optimism and vision (Bass & Avolio, 1990; Devos, et al., 2002; Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993; Parry, 2000; Piccolo & Colquitt, 2006). Specifically, by letting the employees see the organizational change as an opportunity instead of as a threat (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993) and by inspiring passion toward the desired future state, employees become motivated to continue the organizational change (Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Oreg & Berson, 2011; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993; Shanker & Sayeed, 2012).
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Henning & Frese, 2011). Indeed, research on leadership styles has found that a match between leaders and their employees leads to better change outcomes (Fiedler, 1963; Howell & Shamir, 2005; Lok & Crawford, 1999; Wren & Dulewicz, 2005). This may mean that a match between leadership styles and employee characteristics can play an important role in organizational change. Benjamin and Flynn (2005) argue that one key characteristic of employees that affects their response to their leaders may be their regulatory focus. Therefore, the current study uses the regulatory theory in an attempt to explain the relation between a leader and an employee.
2.4 Regulatory Focus
Besides the leadership style that leaders have to stimulate their followers, employees have their own preference for a strategy in order to attain their goals (Higgins, 1997). An explanation is found in the regulatory focus theory. This theory (Higgins, 1997) describes important differences in two basic self-regulation systems that create preferences for certain strategies to pursue goals. One regulation system concerns the avoidance of penalties and focuses individuals on prevention goals, while the other regulation system concerns the achievement of incentives and focuses on promotion goals (Brockner & Higgins, 2001; Higgins, 1997; Kark & van Dijk, 2007). The prevention focus includes the need for security, duties, obligations, and responsibilities, whereas the promotion focus includes the need for hopes, wishes, and aspirations (Idson & Higgins, 2000; Molden & Higgins, 2005).
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well to make no unnecessary mistakes and to avoid all possible pitfalls (vigilant strategy), whereas the promotion focused employee tries to perform well to achieve all possible targets and to grab all possible opportunities (eager strategy). Consequently, even if prevention focused individuals and promotion focused individuals are pursuing the same desired end state, they have different preferred strategies for doing so. This indicates that in addition to have individual preferences for certain goals, individuals also have preferences for strategies to achieve the desired goals (Higgins, 1997).
Previous studies have shown that individuals with a promotion focus are more willing to change than individuals with a prevention focus (Herzenstein, Posavac & Brakus, 2007; Vaughn, Baumann & Klemann, 2008). Individuals with a promotion focus are more open to new experiences, show more willingness to take risks, and are more willing to give up an activity than individuals with a prevention focus (Brockner & Higgins, 2001; Friedman & Forster, 2001). In contrast, individuals with a prevention focus prefer more stability and maintaining the current situation to protect themselves against changes than individuals with a promotion focus (Fuglestad, Rothman & Jeffery, 2008; Higgins, 1997). In other words, individuals in a promotion focus would be more open to consider change, whereas individuals in a prevention focus would be sooner reject to change (Liberman, Idson, Camacho & Higgins, 1999). Therefore, this study expects that employees with a promotion focus show more change readiness than employees with a prevention focus.
Hypothesis 1: A promotion focused employee shows a higher level of readiness for change than a prevention focused employee.
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2.5 Leader – Employee Regulatory Fit
“When two things fit, they suit or agree with each other; they are in harmony. This captures the sense of ‘fit’ as an adaptive regulatory process. When something is experienced as fitting, it feels correct, proper, or even just. This captures the sense of ‘fit’ as an experience of feeling right about what is happening”
E.T. Higgins & A.L. Freitas: 71
The regulatory fit theory is a goal pursuit theory (Cesario, Higgins & Scholer, 2008). Regulatory fit occurs when individuals are encouraged or instructed to pursue their goals in a manner that sustains their goal orientation (Higgins, 2000; Benjamin & Flynn, 2005). This makes people more attracted towards an activity and increases the strength of engagement in the goal pursuit activity (Cesario, et al., 2008; Freitas & Higgins, 2002). The experience of ‘fit’ leads people to not only feel attracted to an activity, but it also increases their evaluation of a certain activity, which in turn can enhance performance and the value of change (Benjamin & Flynn, 2005, Cesario, et al., 2008; Freitas & Higgins, 2002; Higgins, et al., 2010). In fact, research has shown that people are more encouraged to perform their goals and more willing to continue with an activity when they experience fit between their regulatory focus and the strategies that other people use to motivate them (Avnet & Higgins, 2003; Freitas & Higgins, 2002; Freitas, Liberman & Higgins, 2002).
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regulatory focus than when there was a non-fit (eager/prevention vs. vigilant/promotion) (Higgins & Freitas, 2002).
To take an example, when employees are instructed that they will lose their job by making certain mistakes, this would fit employees with a prevention focus more than employees with a promotion focus. Whereas, when employees are instructed that they will get a bonus for realizing a job quickly, this would fit employees with a promotion focus, more than employees with a prevention focus. Apparently, when employee are motivated or instructed to goal strive in a way that suits their regulatory focus, this gives them a greater experience of regulatory fit, and therefore employees become more motivated and should experience more positive emotions about a certain activity to attain their goals (Freitas & Higgins, 2002; Locke, 1968).
Clearly employee performance and outcomes can be improved by experiencing regulatory fit, and I expect this study to show that change readiness can be increased when employees are instructed and encouraged in a way that sustains their regulatory focus. Employees that do experience a greater level of fit should exhibit an enhanced willingness to participate in an activity such as organizational change and an increased change readiness.
I suggest that in the context of leadership this implies that employees may respond in a different way to the organizational change depending on the fit between the leadership style and the regulatory focus of an employee. Specifically, employees with a promotion focus are concerned with accomplishments and advancement, which suits transformational leadership style because these leaders encourage new ways of working, and motivating development. Whereas employees with a prevention focus are concerned with safety and security, which suits transactional leadership style because these leaders motivate their employees by providing clear rules and expectations.
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tasks, which fits prevention focused employees’ who prefer stable and safe situations where there tasks are clearly defined (Brodscholl, Kober & Higgins, 2007). Furthermore, transactional leaders correct their employees to avoid differences to what is expected, which fits prevention focused employees’ preference to avoid mistakes and to take the responsibility to finish the task successfully (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Forster, Higgins & Bianco, 2003). Given these arguments, transactional leaders may be more effective in creating change readiness in their employees who have a prevention focus. We should see evidence of transactional leaders being more successful in creating higher levels of motivation, positive evaluations about the change, and increasing the change readiness amongst employees with a prevention focus. I expect that employees with a prevention focus experience greater readiness for change with transactional leaders when compared to other employees.
Hypothesis 2: A transactional style of the leader leads to more readiness for change in employees when employees have a prevention focus. In other words, a transactional leadership style moderates the relation between prevention focus employees and readiness for change.
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higher promotion focus. Therefore, I expect that employees with a promotion focus experience greater readiness for change with transformational leaders.
Hypothesis 3: A transformational style of the leader leads to more readiness for change by employees when employees have a promotion focus.. In other words, a transformational leadership style moderates the relation between promotion focused employees and readiness for change.
2.6 Conceptual Model
The conceptual model is shown below (Figure 1). The independent variables are the regulatory focus of employees and the perceived leadership styles. The study distinguishes between regulatory prevention focus and promotion focus. Perceived leadership styles, the moderator, is divided in to two leadership styles, namely transactional leadership style and transformational leadership style. Readiness for change by employees is the dependent variable. The hypothesized relationships are displayed by the arrows. The plus sign refers to a positive relation between the variables and the minus sign refers to a negative relation between the variables.
FIGURE 1
ure 1. Conceptual Model RE
3. METHODOLOGY
Transformational leadership Transactional leadership Perceived Leadership Styles
Readiness for Change of employees
Promotion Focus Prevention Focus
Employees Regulatory focus
+ -
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3. METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the way data has been gathered and analyzed. The first section contains general information about the participants and explains the procedure, where the last section describes the instruments that have been used to measure the variables and the way data has been analyzed.
The study is conducted in a quantitative way through an online survey. In general, a quantitative research has as advantage that results can be generalized to different targets (Kantowitz & Elmes, 2005). Based on this, it was important to conduct this study on a quantitative way in order to generalize the various measured targets – employees from different industries located in different countries. By generalizing the various targets, this study aimed to get deeper insights into perceived leadership styles and employee’s readiness for change among employees. Furthermore, an online survey has advantages over other procedures (i.e. interviews, written survey) such as maintaining anonymity decreasing the social desirability bias (Kantowitz & Elmes, 2005). This was important when approaching organizations undergoing change. In general, organizations were more happy to fill in the online survey by knowing that all responses remained anonymous, because the answers of the questions exist of ‘sensitive’ information for organizations.
3.1 Participants
In this study, a total of 96 participants consisting of 49 (51.0%) men and 47 (49.0%) women contributed. The participants were all employees from diverse organizations in different industries located in different countries. These industries includes financial services (9.4%), consulting (25.0%), IT (5.2%), government (infrastructure) (31.3%), engineering (4.2%), military (1.0%), telecom (1.0%), education (5.2%) and healthcare (16.7%).
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The age of all the participants ranged from 22 to 63 years (M = 41.79, SD = 10.55). The age of the male participants ranged from 25 to 61 years (M = 44.06, SD = 10.07), and the age of the female participants ranged from 22 to 63 years (M = 39.43, SD = 10.63). The participants’ tenure ranged from 1 to 34 years (M = 8.34, SD = 8.05), and they worked between 16 and 80 hours per week (M = 40.56, SD = 11.03). The participants had worked on average 2 years and 4 months (SD = 1.8)for their current superior.
A total of 58 (60.4%) of the participants filled in the questions regarding a past period of organizational change, and 38 (39.6%) of the participants filled in questions regarding a currently ongoing organizational change. In order to ensure that all participants would think about an appropriate change project, three conditions were formulated: 1) the organizational change could include any major strategic, cultural, structural or technical shift in an organization, 2) the change had taken place in the previous three years, and 3) the change could be either planned or emergent. Some examples of organizational changes filled in by the participants: “Transition of multiple offices to a new centralized corporate headquarters (planned change)”, “Changes due to market developments and market requirements (emergent change)”, and “Transition and implementation of a new ERP system (planned change). A total of 86 (90.4%) were planned organizational changes, and 10 (9.6%) were emergent
organizational changes.
3.2 Procedure
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directly linked to individual leaders or employees. Furthermore, it was explained that the online survey took approximately ten minutes to complete.
In the week after the mail was sent, the same people were contacted again by phone. It was confirmed if they would like to participate in this study and if they knew people who have experienced organizational change within an organization. After the phone call, a second email was send with the link to the online survey included (see Appendix B). The survey script was hosted Qualtrics Software. A short introduction to the survey set out the content and emphasized again that the responses would remain anonymous.
3.3 Measures
Table 1 shows an overview of the different measurements per variable. This will be followed by a detailed description of each measurement.
TABLE 1
Measurements per variable
Variables Measurements
Readiness for change OCQ (Bouckenooghe, Devos, and Van den Broeck, 2009) Leadership styles MLQ (Bass & Avolio, 1995)
Regulatory focus Based on the RWS (Wallace, Johnson, & Frazier, 2009), and Regulatory focus scale (Lockwood, Jordan & Kunda, 2002)
3.3.1 Readiness for Change
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is: “I experience the change as a positive process”. Participants were asked to rate their agreement with these items on a seven-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (see table 4 for an overview of all the items). The mean for the readiness for change scale was 4.98 (SD = 1.30), and the coefficient alpha (α) was 0.94.
Bouckenooghe et al. (2009) developed a scale to measure change readiness to overcome shortcomings of previous change readiness questionnaires. They noticed that these previous questionnaires were too specific to a certain sample of organizations. Therefore, Bouckenooghe et al (2009) designed a new scale that is generally applicable to different organizations. This study investigated employees who were working in many various industries, for that reason this questionnaire by Bouckenooghe et al. (2009) of change readiness is most suitable.
3.3.2 Perceived leadership styles
The moderator variable, perceived leadership styles, was measured by using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ: Bass & Avolio, 1995). This questionnaire consists of 27 descriptive statements concerning employees’ perception of the style of their leader. This questionnaire measured the actual behavior of the leader instead of the intended behavior of the leader, and for this reason this questionnaire was used in the study. On a scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very often) participants were asked to judge how often their supervisor showed the described behavior. Transactional leadership styles were measured by 9 items such as “My superior keeps careful track of mistakes”. Transformational leadership styles were measured by 18 items, such as “My superior makes me aware of strongly held values, ideals, and inspirations which are shared in common” (see table 5 for an overview of all the items). The mean of the transactional score was 3.02 (SD = 0.72), and the coefficient alpha (α) for the transactional scale was 0.83, whereas the mean of the transformational score was 3.31 (SD = 0.78), and the coefficient alpha for the transformational scale (α) was 0.95.
3.3.3 Regulatory focus
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when success is achieved by using a certain strategy, the same strategy will also be repeated in the next job. On a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), six items measure the prevention focus and nine items measure the promotion focus. The items designed to measure the prevention focus concern the preference of an employees’ vigilance strategy. Some examples of items are: “I am very focused on fulfilling my work obligations” and “I am very focused on completing work tasks correctly”. On the other hand, the items designed to measure the promotion focus concern the preference of an employees’ eagerness strategy. Some examples of items are: “I frequently imagine how I will achieve my hopes and aspirations” and “I often imagine myself experiencing good things that I hope will happen to me” (see table 6 for an overview of all the items). The mean of the prevention focus score was 5.47 (SD = 0.84), and the coefficient alpha (α) for the prevention focus scale was 0.85, whereas the mean of the promotion focus score was 4.94 (SD = 1.06), and the coefficient alpha for the promotion focus scale (α) was 0.89.
There has been chosen to design a regulatory focus questionnaire based on RWS (Wallace, Johnson, & Frazier, 2009) and the regulatory focus scale developed by Lockwood, Jordan, and Kunda (2002) in order to ensure a complete view of the regulatory focus in a workplace environment. Therefore, items has been selected who are suitable to the workplace environment, which suits the context of this study. Previous regulatory focus scales, on the other hand, such as regulatory focus questionnaire of Higgins, Friedman, Harlow, Idson, Ayduk and Taylor (2001) are based on someone’s developmental history by asking questions about childhood experiences. This kind of item is obviously not well suited to a focus on the workplace.
3.3.4 Factor analysis
Kaiser-Meyer-24
Olkin value was higher than 0.6, and if the Barlett’s test of sphericity were statistically significant at p<.05.
Table 2 gives an overview of the loaded items on different factors. The readiness for change items were loaded on one factor, which is not in line according to Bouckenooghe et al. (2009). They argued that the readiness for change scale exists of three different components, namely intentional readiness, cognitive readiness, and emotional readiness. A key factor that these items were loaded on one factor might be due participants who interpreted the items differently than was originally meant. To take an example: the main focus of a cognitive readiness item “I think that most changes will have a negative effect on the client we serve” was to measure employees’ thoughts and beliefs about the organizational change. It could be that these employees were very involved by the organizational change and therefore had feelings and affective reactions towards the organizational change instead of thoughts and beliefs. The alpha coefficient (reliability) was quite well, and because this readiness for change scale is used by other scholars, there has been chosen to enclose all items of this scale.
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Furthermore, the prevention focused items (prev) loaded in general on another factor than the promotion focused items (prom). However, there were two exceptions. Based on table 2, the items prom6 and prom15 loaded on both factors. One remarkable characteristic of these items loaded on both factors might be due the fact that these questions are sensitive for bias. To take an example “I frequently imagine how I will achieve my hopes and aspirations” might be caused loading on both factors due the fact that everyone may want to achieve their hopes and aspirations. Another factor that might be caused loading items on both factors is due the fact that these items might be not related to the work environment. Therefore, it could be hard for the participants to answer these questions when they were thinking about an a specific organizational change. Another example: “I am anxious that I will fall short of my responsibilities and obligations” might be caused loading on both factors due the fact that everyone can be insecure sometimes, therefore it is possible that employees filled in that there were thinking about falling short of their responsibilities even if they in general more focused on achieving positive outcomes (e.g. promotion focus). By removing these items the alpha coefficient decreases from 0.77 to 0.71. Therefore, there has been chosen to enclose all items of this scale. Table 3 shows the new factor analysis after removing some items.
TABLE 2
Factor analysis for all items
26 Lform13 .69 .21 .02 .07 .06 .05 .19 Lform14 .77 .12 .01 .17 .05 .02 .03 Lform16 .71 .06 .08 .23 .01 .14 .14 Lform17 .84 .16 .02 .03 .05 .02 .05 Lform19 .61 .02 .00 .02 .20 .10 .26 Lform20 .77 .21 .05 .01 .14 .06 .04 Lform22 .74 .06 .08 .10 .07 .11 .16 Lform23 .68 .10 .01 .03 .17 .06 .12 Lform25 .68 .29 .10 .10 .09 .19 .03 Lform26 .69 .20 .22 .19 .10 .00 .05 Lact3 .76 .12 .22 .11 .05 .07 .15 Lact6 .49 .10 .29 .24 .06 .26 .34 Lact9 .53 .03 .12 .19 .09 .28 .39 Lact12 .12 .05 .05 .09 .04 .05 .77 Lact15 .16 .11 .04 .13 .07 .03 .80 Lact18 .02 .19 .02 .12 .16 .07 .65 Lact21 .28 .19 .13 .11 .01 .02 .68 Lact24 .19 .19 .00 .04 .02 .01 .64 Lact27 .28 .16 .03 .16 .18 .22 .42 Prev1 .07 .09 .00 .25 .08 .67 .04 Prev3 .10 .02 .06 .09 .13 .72 .03 Prev5 .00 .05 .11 .16 .11 .72 .14 Prev7 .09 .06 .15 .06 .16 .77 .05 Prev9 .03 .14 .22 .09 .03 .72 .14 Prev11 .04 .08 ..19 .02 .21 .70 .01 Prom2 .60 .08 .23 .70 .17 .10 .12 Prom4 .19 .05 .17 .79 .07 .09 .03 Prom6 .09 .21 .00 .57 .42 .08 .01 Prom8 .22 .36 .04 .56 .23 .14 .07 Prom10 .02 .29 .08 .42 .49 .27 .05 Prom12 .10 .18 .07 .65 .35 .09 .17 Prom13 .04 .12 .32 .62 .32 .08 .00 Prom14 .09 .07 .09 .81 .24 .04 .03 Prom15 .04 .18 .53 .56 .28 .06 .01
Note: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax.
TABLE 3
Factor analysis for all variables
27 Read6 .60 Read7 .74 Read8 .85 Read9 .76 Lform 1 .77 Lform 2 .77 Lform 4 .70 Lform 5 .84 Lform 7 .75 Lform 8 .75 Lform 10 .79 Lform 11 .76 Lform 13 .70 Lform 14 .73 Lform 16 .67 Lform 17 .84 Lform 19 .61 Lform 20 .79 Lform 22 .73 Lform 23 .67 Lform 25 .77 Lform 26 .71 Lact 12 .82 Lact 15 .81 Lact 18 .66 Lact 21 .73 Lact 24 .77 Lact 27 .58 Prev1 .75 Prev3 .84 Prev5 .75 Prev7 .80 Prev9 .69 Prev11 .71 Prom2 .74 Prom4 .76 Prom6 .71 Prom8 .61 Prom10 .74 Prom12 .75 Prom13 .71 Prom14 .79 Prom15 .63
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A further step was the ‘Cronbach’s Alpha’ reliability analysis to check the reliability of the constructs. According to Sekaran and Bougie (2010), reliabilities less than 0.6 can be viewed as a poor reliability. Reliabilities between 0.6 and 0.7 are acceptable and reliabilities above 0.8 are considered to be good (see Table 7 for an overview).
3.4 Data Analysis
The statistical program SPSS (v.20) was used to analyze the data in order to test the hypotheses. The section below gives an overview of the data analysis.
3.4.1 Exploring data
Firstly, the received data was checked for outliers to avoid incorrect conclusions and surveys where the whole questionnaire was not completed were removed. This was necessary a total 8 times, with participants filling in just one single question or a few questions. Some items were subsequently re-coded into the same variables. This means that negatively formulated items were changed into positively formulated items.
3.4.2 Preliminary analyses
A descriptive analysis was performed to give insights about the demographical variables of the participants (e.g. means, standard deviations). Also, a correlation analysis was performed to give some indications as to what extent constructs correlated with each other and whether there were significant differences. The correlation analysis reveals nothing about the predictive power of variables (Field, 2005), therefore this study utilized the regression analysis as well.
3.4.3 Regression analyses
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4. RESULTS
This chapter describes the data that has been gathered through the online survey. The first part contains information about the descriptive and correlation analyses, whereas the last part presents the regression analyses in order to give an answer to the hypotheses.
4.1 Preliminary analyses
Table 7 shows a summary of descriptive statistics, such as the means, standard deviations, the reliability coefficients and the correlations among the variables that are used in the subsequent analyses. The reliability is measured by determining the Cronbach’s Alpha.
This table shows that the standard deviation of readiness for change is quite high (SD = 1.30), which means that the opinions of the employees about these change readiness items are widely spread. Furthermore, this table shows that a perceived transactional leadership style has a positive relation with readiness for change (r = .38, p < .001), which implies that higher level of perceived transactional leadership style results in higher levels of readiness for change. Also, this table shows that a perceived transformational leadership style has a positive relation with readiness for change (r = .47, p < .001), which implies that higher level of perceived transformational leadership style results in higher levels of readiness for change. Consistent with results from previous research (see Herzenstein, Posavac & Brakus, 2007; Vaughn, Baumann & Klemann, 2008), a promotion-focused employee has a positive relation with readiness for change (r = .33, p < .001). This implies that a high promotion focused employee results in higher levels of readiness for change.
TABLE 7
Means, standard deviations, coefficients alpha, and the correlations for all variables
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5
1. Prevention Focus b 5.47 0.84 .85
2. Promotion Focus b 4.94 1.06 -.13 .89
3. Transactional Style ª 3.02 0.72 .03 .10 .83
4. Transformational Style ª 3.31 0.78 .04 .19 .34** .95
5. Readiness for Change b 4.98 1.30 .12 .33** .38** .47** .94
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4.2 Regression analysis
This study regressed the employees’ regulatory focus on readiness for change to test the first hypothesis: a promotion focused employee shows a higher level of readiness for change than a prevention focused employee. Following Aiken and West (1996), all variables were standardized in order to minimize the impact of multicollinearity. As expected, results (see table 8) showed a significant main effect between employees with a promotion focus and readiness for change (β = 0.52, SE = 0.14, t (95) = 3.66, p < .001), so that promotion focused employees showed more change readiness than prevention focused employees. This result confirmed hypothesis 1.
TABLE 7
Regression analysis of employees’ regulatory focus on readiness for change
B SE t p
Constant -4.84 .09 0.00 .999
Prevention focus 0.17 .09 1.73 .087
Promotion focus 0.35 .09 3.65 .000
R²adjusted = .12, R²change = .14, with F(2, 93) = 7.45, p = .001
4.3 Moderation analysis
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TABLE 8
Regression analysis of employees’ regulatory focus and perceived leadership style on readiness for change
B SE t p
Concept -6.88 .09 0.00 .999
Prevention focus 0.15 .09 1.69 .095
Promotion focus 0.32 .09 3.46 .000
Transactional leadership style 0.34 .09 3.74 .000
Transformational leadership style 0.41 .09 4.63 .000
Concept -0.01 .08 -0.08 .936
Prevention focus 0.22 .08 2.56 .012
Promotion focus 0.28 .08 3.39 .001
Transactional leadership style 0.36 .08 4.29 .000
Transformational leadership style 0.37 .08 4.38 .000
Interaction transactional x prevention 0.24 .05 4.44 .000
Interaction transformational x promotion 0.29 .08 3.76 .000 Model 1. R²adjusted = .28, R²change = .55, met F(4, 91) = 13.19, p = .000
Model 2. R²adjusted = .37, R²change = .63, met F(2, 89) = 14.83, p = .000
As can be seen in table 8, significant main effects were found for transactional leadership style (β = 0.34, SE = .09, t(91) = 3.74, p < .001), and transformational leadership style (β = 0.41, SE = .09, t(91) = 4.63, p < .001). This implies that a transactional leadership style and a transformational leadership style results in more readiness for change. Furthermore, significant interaction effects were found for transactional leadership style and prevention focused employees (β = 0.24, SE = .05, t(89) = 4.44, p < .001), and transformational leadership style and promotion focused employees (β = 0.29, SE = .08, t(89) = 3.76, p < .001). These results confirmed hypothesis 2 and 3. In order to determine the nature of these interaction effects, a simple slope analysis was employed (Aiken & West, 1991).
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(β = 0.00, SE = .09, t(91) = 0.01, p = .997). The relation between the prevention focused employee and readiness for change of employees at a low or high perceived transactional leadership style is shown in Figure 2.
FIGURE 2
The interaction of perceived transactional leadership and employees’ prevention focus on readiness for change (hypothesis 1)
TABLE 9
Simple Slope coefficients of interactions between employees’ regulatory focus and perceived leadership style.
Regulatory focus Leadership style B SE t p
Prevention Transactional high 0.39 .11 3.56 .001
Transactional low 0.00 .09 0.01 .997
Promotion Transformational high 0.49 .11 4.72 .000
Transformational low -0.04 .12 -0.34 .734
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TABLE 10
Simple Slope coefficients of interactions between perceived leadership styles and employees’ regulatory focus.
Leadership style Regulatory focus B SE t p
Transactional Prev high 0.47 .11 4.28 .000
Prev low 0.09 .10 0.92 .362
Transformational Prom high 0.58 .11 5.24 .000
Prom low 0.04 .12 0.35 .723
NOTE: prev stands for prevention focus, whereas prom stands for promotion focus
Table 9 shows that the slope for promotion focused employees was positive and significant for high (+ 1 SD) perceived transformational leadership (β = 0.49, SE = .11, t(91) = 4.72, p < .001). This means that employees with a promotion focus show more readiness for change when the leader has a high transformational leadership style. The slope for promotion focused employees was negative and not significant for low (- 1 SD) perceived transformational leadership (β = -0.04, SE = .11, t(91) = -0.34, p = .735). The relation between the promotion focused employee and readiness for change of employees at a low or high perceived transformational leadership style is shown in Figure 3.
FIGURE 3
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5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This chapter contains the discussion and the conclusion. The goal is to generate new insights and deeper understandings among the first quantitative study that examines the moderating role of perceived leadership styles on the relation between employees’ regulatory focus and readiness for change of employees. Limitations, suggestions for further research, and practical implications will be provided. Lastly, an answer will be given to the proposed research question: “Which influence does the relationship between an employees’ regulatory focus and a perceived leadership style have on the readiness for change of employees?”.
5.1 Results
This study investigated the moderating role of the perceived leadership styles on the relationship between employees’ regulatory focus and readiness for change of employees. In particular, in this study I was interested whether the relation between perceived leadership styles and employees’ regulatory focus (i.e. transactional leadership style – prevention focus or transformational leadership style – promotion focus) would be positively related to readiness for change of employees. Support was found for all the hypotheses tested in this study. This means that readiness for change of employees increases when the leader adopt a leadership style that sustains the regulatory focus of the employee.
In support of hypothesis 2 the results showed that prevention focused employees show more change readiness when the leader adopt a transactional leadership style. Specifically, the change readiness of a prevention focused employee increases when the leader adopt a higher level of transactional leadership style than a lower level of transactional leadership style. Further support showed that a transactional style of the leader increases the change readiness of employees when the employee has a higher prevention focus than a lower prevention focus.
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promotion focus. This finding is in line with hypothesis 3 that a transformational style of the leader leads to more readiness for change when employees have a promotion focus.
These results are in line with the regulatory fit theory (Higgins, 2000) and the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory (Basu & Green, 1997). The leader-member exchange theory argued that a leader can improve his or her influence toward readiness for change of employees by enhancing the congruency between their leadership style and the employee (Klein & House 1995; Uhl-Bien & Arnaud, 2001).
This study examined as well the relationship between the regulatory focus of an employee and readiness for change. Support was found for the first hypothesis, which suggested that a promotion focused employee shows a higher level of readiness for change than a prevention focused employee. This is in line with the literature, which suggests that employees with a promotion focus are more open to change, more care about advancement, and more willing to give up an activity which they are working on (Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Herzenstein, et al., 2007; Vaughn, Baumann, & Klemann, 2008). However, Fuglestad and his colleagues (2008) found that individuals with a prevention focus are better in maintaining changes after successful change initiation than individuals with a promotion focus. In other words, promotion focused individuals show more change readiness than prevention focused individuals, but they are less good in maintaining the change. This might have an influence on the organization after the change initiative. Therefore, it would be interesting if future research would focus on a longitudinal study of how employees behave before, during, and after the change initiative.
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5.2 Additional Findings
Unexpected main effects were found for transactional leadership style and transformational leadership style. These findings suggest that transactional and transformational leaders increased the change readiness of their employees by using these particular leadership styles during an organizational change. This finding is partly in line with the study of Jung, Wu, and Chow (2008). They suggest that transformational leaders are effective in achieving change, because they encourage their employees to adapt them toward a desired change. More specifically, transformational leadership style make employees trust and respect the leader, and, in turn, stimulate them to achieve the organizational change goals (Mankins & Steele, 2005; Seo, Taylor, Hill, Zhang, & Tesluk, 2012; Stoker, Grutterink, & Kolk, 2012). However, according to Burnes (2009), both leadership styles are needed in order to lead an organizational change. To take an example, in a planned organizational change it is important to give directions and control the employees in order to be on schedule of an organizational change. A transactional leader will be good in those kind of situations, because transactional leaders control their employees toward a desired change, whereas a transformational leader will be good to simulate and to encourage employees to change.
5.3 Limitations and Further research
This research has drawn significant conclusions from the results. However, there are some limitations that have to be considered as well. Firstly, the results should be interpreted with caution due to a relatively small sample size (Comrey & Lee, 1992). Although, the sample size is very heterogeneous - consist of different people who are working in different industries and have different nationalities - the sample size is reasonably small to provide the statistical power needed to discover the full extent of the complex relationships proposed in the present study (Jones, et al., 2005; Moore & McCabe, 2004). The small sample size makes it harder to generalize the results to the rest of the population, and to found accuracy results (de Vocht, 2000). Further research should schedule more time to gather data so that respondents have more time to respond to the survey, as a result a larger sample size will occur and could lead to increased accuracy of the results.
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responding differently than the people from the United States. Future research could, therefore, look to the influence of different control variables, such as the possible effect of the position of employees in the organization, or the possible effect of different industries. Moreover, it would also be valuable to replicate these findings in a different sample, such as employees and leaders who are working in a changing supermarket.
Secondly, this study focused on the individual perception level. Lundberg (2004) argued that organizations only act and change through their members and, therefore, it is important that a research focuses on the individual level in order to investigate organizational change. For that reason, this study has focused at the individual level of all variables that were measured in this research. This means, that participants had to fill in questions regarding their own perception of their regulatory focus, their own perception of the style of the leader, and their perception of change readiness. Therefore, responses had to be interpreted with more caution due the higher chance that the employees reported more/less fit and readiness for change than they actually showed. As a result, the common source variance could occur (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Lee, Podsakoff, 2003). This can ensure for a limitation for this research. However, given the fact that this research promised to guarantee the anonymity may be that employees reported easier and more honestly than in a survey whereby the leader could show the results (Fisher, 1985; Siemsen, Roth & Oliveira, 2010). Therefore, the common source variance will be not a threat for the quality of this research. For further research, it would be better to measure the style of the leader by asking the leader him/herself in order to decrease the subjectivity. By having the opinion of the leader him/herself and the opinion of their employees about the leadership style, the results could be compared to increase the objectivity.
Another limitation in this research is that the variables were measured at one point in time due time constraints. Therefore, this study could not do any judgments in which phase of organizational change employees shows more or less readiness to change. Further research should measure the variables at multiple points in time or doing a longitudinal study to give insights in which the relationship between a leader and an employee influences change readiness on the longer term.
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occurs at two distinctive levels: the individual and the organizational level (Chwelos et al., 2001; Guha et al., 1997; Holt et al., 2007). The organizational-based elements include institutional resources, culture, climate, financial resources and technology utilization (Taylor & Wright, 2004; Wu, 2004; Weiner, 2009) and can have an influence on the successfulness of the change initiative as well (Rusly, Corner & Sun, 2012). Therefore, as a multilevel construct, the comprehensive assessment of change readiness should incorporate analysis at both the individual and the organizational levels (Weiner, 2009). For further research, it would be interesting to examine both individual-based elements and organizational-based elements of change readiness. Apparently, an important direction for further research is to investigate whether leader-follower regulatory fit such as described and measured in this study, leads to increases in organizational-based elements change readiness.
5.4 Practical Implications
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5.5 Conclusion
This study examined the interaction between a leader and an employee in order to get deeper insights how to increase change readiness of employees. In other words, the proposed model suggested that leaders can influence the change readiness of their employees through their leadership style that matches the regulatory focus of their employees. The relation between these variables has never been incorporated in previous research, so by testing this new model of leader-follower regulatory fit between the leadership style and the regulatory focus, the current research has added a comprehensive framework to the leadership literature. Hereby, both transactional and transformational leadership styles, and both employee’s prevention and employee’s promotion focus are utilized.
The findings show that the readiness for change of employees increases when there is a fit between the leader and the follower. Specifically, the results show that a transactional style of the leader leads to more readiness for change when employees have a high prevention focus than employees who have a low prevention focus, and a transformational style of the leader leads to more readiness for change when employees have a high promotion focus than employees who have a low promotion focus.
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