TEAMS’ OPENNESS TO CHANGE:
THE EFFECT OF LEADERS’ ATTITUDES AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
Master thesis, MscHRM
University of Groningen, Faculty of Business and Economics Final report July 30th 2008 Margreet Tijms Studentnumber: 1590928 Bergstraat 56 9717 LV GRONINGEN tel: 06-11222162 e-mail: mtijms@hotmail.com Supervisor University: Dr. F. Walter Supervisors Field of study:
Mr. W. Knobbe Ms. M. van Soest
Fortis Retail banking, The Netherlands Acknowledgements
TEAMS’ OPENNESS TO CHANGE: THE EFFECT OF LEADERS’ ATTITUDES
AND TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS
ABSTRACT
This Master thesis investigated the effect of three leader attitudes, namely personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and cynicism about organizational change, on teams’ openness to change. Transformational leadership was examined as a mediating mechanism. Study hypothesis were tested in a sample of 47 work teams from an international banking and insurance company currently facing organizational change. Results showed that personal resilience is significantly related to transformational
leadership. The other leader attitudes, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC, showed no relation with transformational leadership. There was also no relation between
INTRODUCTION
Changes happen all the time and are inevitable in the business world of today. It therefore is hard to imagine that only 30% of change programs lead to successful organizational change (Beer & Nohria, 2000). What is the reason for this very low percentage? One reason is unfavourable attitudes of employees. Changes often lead to increased feelings of anxiety, negative emotions, uncertainty, and ambiguity among employees (Bordia, Hobman, Jones, Gallois, & Callan, 2004; Kiefer, 2005). However, the ability and drive of an organization to change depends heavily on employees’ openness, readiness, and commitment to change (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993; Bernerth, 2004; Devos, Buelens, & Bouckenooghe, 2007).
Openness to change is particularly important in this respect. It consists of two elements: “(a) willingness to support the change (change acceptance) and (b) positive affect about potential consequences of the change (positive view of changes)” (Wanberg & Banas, 2000: 132). Openness to change is analogous to Lewin’s classical state of unfreezing, focusing on the early stages of the change process (Lewin, 1951). The importance of securing a favourable sentiment early in the change process cannot be overstated. When employees hear of an imminent change they form an attitude towards it almost instantly and they tend to keep this attitude during the change process (Lawrence, 1954). Thus, when they are open towards the change right from the start of the change process, this enhances the chances of success considerably.
antecedents of openness to change showed that people with high levels of personal resilience, (i.e. a combination of self-esteem, optimism, and perceived control) generally have higher levels of change acceptance (Wanberg & Banas, 2000). The same applies for change-related self-efficacy (i.e. an individual’s perceived ability to handle change in a given situation and to function well on the job despite demands of the change; Wanberg & Banas, 2000:134). A high level of change-related self-efficacy is predictive of higher levels of employee openness to change. When looking at a negative instead of a positive attitude, cynicism about organizational change (CAOC) contributes to lack of openness about change efforts in the organization (Bordia, Restubog, Jimmieson, & Irmer, 2007). Reichers, Wanous and Auslin (1997:48) note that CAOC “often combines pessimism about the likelihood of successful change with blame of those responsible for change as incompetent, lazy, or both”.
The effects of personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and CAOC on openness to change have all been examined focusing on individuals. Next to these individual effects, research has also shown that various leader attitudes are transferred towards followers on lower hierarchical levels (e.g. Griffin & Mathieu, 1997; Sy, Cote, & Saavedra, 2005). For example, a committed leader transfers his commitment to his
change of their teams.
Nevertheless, leaders cannot directly influence their followers through their attitudes; they make their attitudes observable through their behaviours. In this respect, leadership behaviour is the critical factor in enabling and driving change efforts within the organization (Gilley, 2005; Gilley, Quatro, Hoekstra, Whittle, & Maycunich, 2001; Pfeffer, 2005). In particular, transformational leadership is applicable in change
situations, as “transformational leadership is, at its core, about issues around the
processes of transformation and change” (Bass & Riggio, 2006:225). It has been shown to strongly shape followers’ work attitudes (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). Besides, its goal is to transform employees from an existing present state to an improved future state (Conger & Kanungo, 1994). The six key behaviours associated with transformational leaders are (a) identifying and articulating a vision, (b) providing an appropriate model, (c) fostering the acceptance of group goals, (d) high performance expectations, (e) providing
individualized support, and (f) intellectual stimulation (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, & Fetter, 1990). Therefore, transformational leadership behaviours are expected to be a mediating mechanism between leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and CAOC, and teams’ openness to change.
There is much theoretical similarity and empirical overlap between transformational and charismatic leadership (Hunt, 1999; Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1996; Shamir, House & Arthur, 1993). Hunt and Conger (1999) have therefore proposed that both terms can be used synonymously. I will follow their proposal in this report. I use the term
As transformational leadership behaviours are directed at the leader’s team they are a form of ambient stimuli (cf., Hackman, 1992) that influence the team as a whole.
Consistent with prior research (Shamir, Zakay, Breinin, & Popper, 1998; Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003), I therefore conceptualize both transformational leadership and its outcome, openness to change, as team-level concepts (Lim & Ployhart, 2004).
As shown in Figure 1, my conceptual model consequently suggests the leader attitudes personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and CAOC to influence
leaders’ transformational leadership behaviours, which in turn influence teams’ openness to change.
*** Insert Figure 1 about here ***
Second, I contribute to literature on openness to change. Devos et al. (2007) called for the assessment of variables to better understand the processes underlying openness to change. I intend to show that personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC of leaders affect their transformational leadership behaviour, and that this behaviour increases followers’ openness to change.
Finally, looking at this research from a practical perspective, it will help
organizations that are in the first, unfreezing, stage of the change process to understand which leadership attitudes and behaviours are in demand to increase openness to change of employees.
HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
Leaders’ Attitudes as Antecedents of Transformational Leadership Behaviours Personal resilience (Wanberg & Banas, 2000) is a concept that consists of three dimensions, namely self-esteem (i.e. a high sense of self-worth), optimism (i.e. a highly positive outlook on life) and perceived control (i.e. a view of life and situations as being under personal control). Research on each of these three dimensions suggests a positive effect of personal resilience on transformational leadership behaviours.
Starting with the first dimension, several authors have proposed a positive relation between self-esteem and transformational leadership (Limerick & Cunnington, 1993; Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000). House (1977) characterizes the charismatic leader as a person who possesses extremely high levels of self-confidence, dominance, and need for influence, and a strong conviction in the moral righteousness of his or her beliefs. This closely resembles the dimension self-esteem. House (1977) also claims that
as role models, setting high performance expectations both for themselves and for their teams, and stimulating their teams to fulfil these expectations. When leaders have no self-esteem and thus do not believe in themselves, they cannot convince others to do so either. This makes them incompetent as role model.
Second, transformational leaders are more optimistic and have a strong positive feeling towards things around them (Spreitzter and Quinn, 1996). This positive outlook plays a key role in transformational leadership behaviours, because to behave in a transformational manner leaders have to articulate a positive and inspirational vision for the future of the organization (Berson, Shamir, Avolio, & Popper, 2001; Peterson et al., 2007). Transformational leaders “transform not only their organizations, but also the mindsets of their followers through persuading them to buy into positive visions and ideas” (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000: 224). They need to be optimistic themselves to be able to make their teams feel optimistic about the future too.
have control over change situations, and that they can influence the outcome, they are expected to lead in a more transformational way.
Based on the given literature on all three dimensions of personal resilience, I hold that leaders high on personal resilience are more likely to have a clear vision and to be able to articulate this vision. These leaders are also supposed to have high performance expectations, both of themselves and of their team. Therefore I assume that leaders’ personal resilience is positively associated with their transformational leadership behaviour.
Hypothesis 1a. Leaders’ personal resilience is positively related to their transformational leadership behaviour.
The second concept in this research is change-related self-efficacy. As indicated before, Wanberg and Banas (2000:134) define change-related self-efficacy as “an individual’s perceived ability to handle change in a given situation and to function well on the job despite demands of the change”. During stressful times, such as an
organizational change, low self-efficacy may cause a negative cyclical effect in that individuals who judge themselves as incapable of coping with environmental demands will tend to dwell on personal deficiencies and magnify the severity and difficulty of the task or change at hand (Beck, 1976; Meichenbaum, 1977). Such self-doubt and worry elevate arousal, which in turn creates stress and impairs performance by creating a
Transformational leaders need to have a high level of self-efficacy, not only to cope with stressful situations themselves, but also to motivate their teams to do so.
Self-efficacy therefore is an integral component of the development of transformational
leadership (Conger & Kanungo, 1987). Transformational leaders are eager to develop and challenge themselves consciously throughout their careers (Gibbons, 1986) and have high performance expectations of themselves and of their followers. Change-related self-efficacy is needed in this respect because leaders need to keep believing in their ability to function well. If they would not believe this, each change would bring doubt and
insecurity to the leader. In this research I therefore assume, that transformational leaders have high levels of change-related self-efficacy.
Hypothesis 1b. Leaders’ change-related self-efficacy is positively related to their transformational leadership behaviour.
Cynicism has been defined as “an attitude of contempt, frustration, and distrust towards an object or multiple objects…” (Andersson, 1996:1397). Cynicism among employees has been shown to lower organizational commitment, job satisfaction, motivation to work hard and willingness to engage in organizational change efforts (Reichers et al., 1997). Wanous et al. (2000) showed that cynicism is less prevalent in managerial positions but, when present, may have uncontrollable effects.
In this thesis I focus more specifically on cynicism about organization change, CAOC, which “involves a real loss of faith in the leader of change and is a response to a history of change attempts that are not entirely or clearly successful” (Reichers et al., 1997:48). Wanous, Reichers and Auslin (2000:134) assume that “when there is
skilful attempts at organizational change will be impeded by the prevailing cynicism”. It is their assumption that high levels of CAOC tend to become their own self-fulfilling prophecy.
When combining CAOC and transformational leadership behaviours, it appears that if leaders do not believe in the success of changes introduced, they are unlikely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviours. It seems difficult for cynical leaders to articulate a new vision to their team and to provide a model that their team can follow, given that they believe changes have no chance of succeeding and people who are responsible for the change are incompetent and lazy. These leaders will not be able to set an example for their teams and support and stimulate them, lacking the motivation and openness to do so.
The previous assumptions are supported by an investigation of Bommer, Rubin and Baldwin (2004:205), which showed that “leaders with cynical attitudes regarding the potential for organizational change were significantly less likely to exhibit
transformational leadership behaviour”. I assume a similar relation, hypothesizing that leaders’ CAOC reduces their level of transformational leadership.
Hypothesis 1c. Leaders’ CAOC is negatively related to their transformational leadership behaviour.
Teams’ Openness to Change as Outcome of Transformational Leadership Behaviours
al., 2008), it appears very applicable to change situations. Transformational leaders are said to change both their organizations and the mindsets of their followers (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000). They have a major and unusual impact on their followers (House, 1977), and therefore followers perceive the correctness of their beliefs and accept the leader without question. “Followers feel strong affiliation for and affection toward the charismatic leader and therefore willingly obey” (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000:223). This is particularly
important in change situations where followers are expected to change their way of working. Accordingly, prior research has shown that followers’ commitment to organizational change increases when leaders exhibit transformational leadership behaviours (Herold et al., 2008).
When we look at the link between teams’ openness to change and
Based on the given positive influences of transformational leadership on several attitudes of followers and the relevance of transformational leadership in change
situations, I assume that a positive relationship exists between teams’ openness to change and their leaders’ transformational leadership behaviour.
Hypothesis 2. Teams’ openness to change is positively related to transformational leadership behaviour of their leader.
The mediating role of transformational leadership behaviours
Hypotheses 1a to 1c predict relationships between leaders’ attitudes and
transformational leadership behaviours, and hypothesis 2 predicts a positive relationship between transformational leadership behaviours and teams’ openness to change.
Together, these hypotheses specify a model in which leaders’ attitudes indirectly influence teams’ openness to change. When leaders are high on personal resilience and change-related self-efficacy, I expect their teams to be more open towards change. When leaders are high on CAOC, I expect their teams to be less open to change. This
assumption is supported by prior research that has shown leaders’ attitudes to influence the attitudes of their teams (e.g., Lim & Ployhart, 2004; Peterson et al., 2007). I
consequently expect that transformational leadership behaviour is a key mechanism mediating between leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and CAOC and teams’ openness to change.
Hypothesis 3. Transformational leadership behaviours will mediate the
METHODS Participants and Procedures
Survey data for the present study were collected from a multinational banking and insurance company located in the Netherlands. Employees in this company faced a substantial change at the time this research was conducted as part of another Dutch bank was acquired. The company was in the unfreezing stage at the time of this research; they were reducing the forces that maintain the organization’s behaviour at its present level (Lewin, 1951). Both leaders and followers only knew the acquisition had taken place, but were not informed about what consequences this acquisition would have for their work. This moment was ideal to investigate openness to change, as employees form their attitude towards change early in the change process and tend to keep this attitude during the complete process (Lawrence, 1954). In the unfreezing stage it is easier to influence employees’ attitudes than in later stages.
As suggested by Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff (2003), I used two different questionnaires, one for all the leaders and one for their followers, to avoid common method variance. Leaders were asked to answer questions on their personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC. Followers were asked to answer questions about the transformational leadership behaviour of their leader and about their teams’ openness to change. An independent company in Belgium sent out the
2003). Company HR professionals checked the surveys for word usage and company-specific language.
Questionnaires were sent out to all employees working in the Dutch banking offices, in total 144 leaders and 1408 followers. Ninety leaders (63%) and 568 followers (40%) completed the questionnaire. Both the leader and the follower questionnaire
contained a question about the location of the office. Leaders and followers were matched through their answer on this question. For a team to be included in the study, the leader and at least two of his or her followers were required to provide usable responses (cf. Rubin, Munz, & Bommer, 2005). The final sample therefore comprised 47 work teams, accounting for a team-level response rate of 33%.
On average, 4 followers per team provided data (min.= 2, max.= 21), not
including the team leader. Leaders were 89% male and 11% female, followers were 39% male and 61% female. Leaders were between 26 and 57 years old, with a mean of 42, followers were 41 on average, the youngest follower was 21 and the oldest 61. Leaders were employed by the company between 2 and 35 years, with a mean of 13 years and followers between 0 and 41 years, with a mean of 17 years.
Measures
assess optimism. Perceived control was measured with the 7-item Mastery Scale (Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieberman, & Mullen, 1981). For all the questions on personal resilience I used a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Scores were computed by averaging responses on the twenty-two items. Internal consistency reliability of personal resilience was α = .87. The used items are given in attachment A.
Leaders’ change-related self-efficacy. This concept was assessed via a four-item measure from Ashford (1988). A 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5
(strongly agree) was used. The change-related self-efficacy scores were computed by
averaging responses on the four items. Internal consistency reliability of this concept was α = .68. The items used are given in attachment A.
Leaders’ CAOC. Six items of the eight-item measure for CAOC from Reichers et al.’s (1997) were used. The company omitted the other two items, as they appeared unsuitable in their current situation. A 7-point scale was used, ranging from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Responses on these items were averaged to compute
leaders’ CAOC scores. Internal consistency reliability of this concept was α = .88. The items used are given in attachment A.
Leaders’ transformational leadership behaviour. The leaders’ transformational behaviours were measured by the twenty-three-item transformational leadership
individual ratings to arrive at one transformational leadership score for each leader in my study. Internal consistency reliability was α = .94. The items used are given in attachment A.
Teams’ openness to change. I used seven items of a modified version of the scale developed by Miller et al. (1994) to measure teams’ openness to change. Modifications were made to make the scale appropriate for the changes the company faced and the early stage of the change process. The original items mentioned “changes in the work team”, I used “potential changes” and I directed questions at the team-level instead of the
individual level. Wanberg and Banas (2000) made similar changes in their research. A 7-point scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), was used. I averaged all item responses to compute an overall openness to change score. After that I
aggregated followers’ ratings to arrive at one openness to change score for each team in my study. Internal consistency reliability for this concept was α = .75. The used items are given in attachment A.
Control variable – team size. Differences in team size may potentially bias research results, as leaders may find it more difficult to behave in a transformational manner when they are confronted with a large number of direct followers (cf. Atwater & Bass, 1994; Bass, 1990). I therefore included this variable in hypothesis testing to capture such potential impacts. Team size information was obtained through a question in the leader questionnaire asking leaders their number of followers.
Data analysis
outcome variable, and I entered leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy, and CAOC into the regression equation after controlling for team size.
Second, I assessed Hypothesis 2 using teams’ openness to change as dependent variable. I controlled for team size in step 1, entering leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC in step 2, and transformational leadership in step 3.
Based on these regression analyses I tested Hypothesis 3 following the stepwise approach for mediation testing suggested by Baron and Kenny (1986). First I tested whether the proposed mediator (transformational leadership) significantly predicts the dependent variable (teams’ openness to change). Second I tested whether the independent variables (leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC) predict the mediator (transformational leadership). Third, I tested whether the contribution of the independent variables (leaders’ personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC) drops substantially for partial mediation and becomes insignificant for full mediation when entered into the model together with the mediator (transformational leadership). I chose only to test these three steps. Baron and Kenny (1986) originally suggested also testing whether the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable is significant. Kenny, Kashy, and Bolger (1998) however presented an updated account of Baron and Kenny and noted that measuring this relation is no longer essential in establishing mediation.
RESULTS Descriptive statistics and correlations
positively and significantly related to leaders’ personal resilience. No other significant relations were found between the concepts, contrary to my expectations. That is, there were no relations between leaders’ change-related self-efficacy, CAOC, and
transformational leadership behaviour, and transformational leadership behaviour and teams’ openness to change showed no relation either.
*** Insert table 1 about here *** Hypothesis Testing
Table 2 depicts the linear regression results for Hypotheses 1a to 1c. Supporting Hypothesis 1a, leaders’ personal resilience was positively related to transformational leadership after controlling for team size (β = .32; p < .05). Hypothesis 1b, which argued for a positive relation between leaders’ change-related self-efficacy and transformational leadership, was not supported (β = -.06; p=n.s.). Hypothesis 1c argued for a negative relation between leaders’ CAOC and transformational leadership. This hypothesis was not supported either (β = -.12; p=n.s.).
*** Insert table 2 about here ***
Table 3, depicting linear regression results for Hypothesis 2, shows that this Hypothesis was not supported (β = -.17; p=n.s.). As in the bivariate analysis, no significant relation between transformational leadership and followers’ openness to change was found after controlling for team size.
*** Insert table 3 about here ***
change-related self-efficacy and CAOC, and transformational leadership. As
transformational leadership behaviours were not related to teams’ openness to change (Hypothesis 2) and change-related self-efficacy and CAOC were not related to
transformational leadership behaviours (Hypothesis 1b and 1c), mediation between leaders’ attitudes and teams’ openness to change through transformational leadership is not possible.
DISCUSSION Findings
The goal of the present study was to examine the effect three leaders’ attitudes, namely personal resilience, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC, have on the
openness to change of the leaders’ team. Transformational leadership was researched as a mediating mechanism. As hypothesized, my results showed that personal resilience of the leader positively influences transformational leadership behaviour; when a leader scores high on personal resilience, he or she behaves in a more transformational way. The other two attitudes, change-related self-efficacy and CAOC, were not related to
transformational leadership behaviour. Transformational leadership behaviour was also not related to openness to change of their teams. Contrary to my expectations, mediation was therefore not supported.
Contributions
Through this research, the hypothesized relation between leaders’ personal resilience and transformational leadership has been confirmed. Specifically, the research showed that leaders high on personal resilience are more likely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviours. My results also showed that there was no relation between leaders’ change-related self-efficacy, CAOC and transformational leadership. This lack of relations was unexpected. Prior research (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; Bommer et al., 2004) made me expect the concepts to be more connected.
It is interesting that both change-related self-efficacy and CAOC are attitudes specifically connected to organizational change. Transformational leadership behaviour is a general leadership style, which is often connected to organizational change, but which also is performed when organizations are not in change. Therefore, it could be that followers’ rating of their leaders’ transformational leadership behaviour is not
immediately influenced by their leaders’ attitudes towards change. It is remarkable that a study by Bommer et al. (2004) did find a negative relation between CAOC and
transformational leadership behaviours. An explanation for this difference in results could be the early, unfreezing, stage of the change process the company was in. Maybe I would have gotten different results when I asked the employees to rate their leaders’ behaviours in a later stage. Besides that, CAOC has been proven to increase as a result of little previous change, ineffective leadership practices, and lack of participation in decisions (Wanous et al. 2000). These might be moderating variables that influence the relation between leaders’ CAOC and transformational leadership behaviours.
teams’ openness to change (Conger, 1999). The results showed that there was no
significant relation between the two. This was unexpected, as transformational leadership has been linked to many other followers’ attitudes (Podsakoff et al., 1990; Yammarino, Spangler, & Bass, 1993, Herold et al., 2008). Besides that, transformational leadership is generally seen as an appropriate leadership style in changing organizations as some of the basic transformational leadership behaviours (e.g. identifying and articulating a vision, providing an appropriate model, and fostering the acceptance of group goals) in general should impact individuals’ commitment and support for a particular change (Herold et al, 2008). Scholars have however argued that the occurrence and effectiveness of
transformational leadership is dependent on relevant features of the team context. Transformational leadership for example has a stronger, more positive effect on firm performance in start-up than in established firms and is related more strongly to team performance in maximum rather than typical performance contexts (Lim & Ployhart, 2004; Peterson, Walumbwa, Byron, & Myrowitz, 2007). It could be that the relation between transformational leadership behaviours and teams’ openness to change is dependent of similar context factors, thereby explaining why my hypothesis was not supported.
Practical implications
who score high on the three dimensions of personal resilience, namely self esteem, optimism and perceived control, are more likely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviour. Personal resilience should therefore be one of the characteristics in the
competency model of leaders (i.e. broader characteristics of individuals that are related to the organizations vision and that can be used to inform HR practices; Schippmann et al. 2000). By testing job applicants for leading positions on personal resilience,
organizations may find leaders who are more likely to exhibit transformational leadership behaviours. This testing can de done in initial screening, for example through an online test. As it is easy to fill out desirable answers in this kind of tests, questions that give an indication of the level of personal resilience of the job applicant should also be part of job interviews (Cummings & Worley, 2005). An example would be to ask somebody to describe a situation in which he or she faced a challenge and to let this person explain how he or she experienced this and how he or she responded to this challenge.
Worley, 2005). The act of participation can be motivating, leading to greater effort to make the change work (Cummings & Molley, 1977).
Third, managers can learn from the lack of relation between transformational leadership and followers’ openness to change. Transformational leadership is a leadership style to aim for, as it has many positive outcomes (Podsakoff et al., 1990; Yammarino, Spangler, & Bass, 1993, Herold et al., 2008). However, this research showed that it does not influence teams’ openness to change in the early stages of the change process. Prior research has shown other concepts, such as a higher internal locus of control, and the opportunity to participate to significantly contribute to higher openness to change (Devos et al. 2007). Managers who face organizational changes and who try to achieve teams’ openness to these changes are therefore advised to focus more on other factors than transformational leadership.
Limitations
In spite of some methodological strengths of my research (minimum of two respondents per team, separate leader and follower data) there are also limitations that need to be mentioned.
small sample size, and because all data were collected in one organization and in one country.
Second, questionnaires were sent out early in the change process, and there was no possibility to question the respondents again later on. It was therefore not possible to investigate the influence that timing had on my results.
Third, even though I used separate leader and follower data, some of the results might be attributable to common method variance (Podsakoff et al., 2003). For
hypotheses 1a to 1c this should not be problematic, as I used leader ratings as input and follower ratings as outcome variable, but for hypothesis 2 it could be, as I used only followers’ ratings. But as hypothesis 2 was not supported, common method variance was not problematic in this case either.
The final limitation that needs to be mentioned is the direction of causality. In this research I assume for example that leaders personal resilience positively influences their transformational leadership behaviour. It could however also be that teams’ positive perception of their leaders’ transformational leadership resulted in more favourable leader-team relations, which effected leaders level of personal resilience positively. The large number of research on attitudes and personality characteristics of transformational leaders suggest that the direction of causality indicated in the present study is most likely (Bass, 1998; Atwater & Yammarino, 1993). Nevertheless, I cannot exclude the reverse direction of causality based on my data.
Research implications
behaviours, focussing on different stages in the change process. The company was in the unfreezing stage when the questionnaires were sent out. It would have been interesting to see whether results would have changed when I had repeated my research in the
movement stage, when real interventions would have taken place to develop new behaviours, values, and attitudes through changes in organizational structures and processes (Lewin, 1951). Perhaps leaders’ change related attitudes would have become more influential then. For future research, a particular focus on the different stages of the change process would therefore be interesting. Besides that, future scholars could look at context factors, such as the amount of previous changes, to see whether these influence the relation between leaders’ change related attitudes and transformational leadership.
Another interesting topic of study could be the context factors influencing the relation between leaders’ attitudes and teams’ openness to change mediated through transformational leadership. As openness to change is considered “a necessary initial condition for successful planned change” (Miller, Johnson, & Grau, 1994) more research should be done to see why it is not related to leaders’ attitudes and transformational leadership. Lim and Ployhart (2004) and Peterson et al. (2007) investigated several leaders’ and teams’ attitudes mediated through transformational leadership, and have focused on a number of context factors being of influence in this relation. As in my results no relation exists both between leaders’ change related attitudes and their
transformational leadership behaviour and between transformational leadership behaviour and teams’ openness to change, one could assume an essential role of influence for
Third, it would be interesting to research other leadership styles than transformational leadership. An example would be transactional leadership, as
transactional leaders set more clear-cut and relatively proximal goals and closely monitor and reward their teams for attaining these goals (Bass, 1985). This goal setting and rewarding could be essential to achieve teams’ openness to change. Another leadership style that could be researched is change leadership. Herold et al. (2008) focused on commitment to teams’ organizational change and found that change leadership per se does not influence teams’ commitment, but that its impact is a function of leaders’ transformational leadership and the level of impact the change has on the individual’s own job. It would be interesting to investigate whether this relation exists for openness to change too.
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TABLE 1
Descriptive statistics and correlations
Concept M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 1. Transformational leadership b 4.91 .59 .34* .07 -.20 .14 .12 2. Leaders’ personal resilience a 4.33 .35 .34* .36* -.30* -.03 .03 3. Leaders’ change-related self-efficacy a 4.30 .57 .07 .36* -.20 .11 -.08 4. Leaders’ cynicism about org. change a
2.71 .94 -.20 -.30 -.20 -.18 .08
5. Teams’ openness to change b
4.82 .51 .14 -.03 .11 -.18 -.16
6. Team size a 15.87 20.82 .12 .03 -.08 .08 -.16
Note. N=47 teams aRating provided through leader survey
TABLE 2
Linear regression analysis on Transformational leadership
Variable entered Transformational leadership
Step 1 Team size R2 (Adj. R2) .12 .01 (.01) Step 2 Team size
Leaders’ personal resilience
Leaders’ change-related self-efficacy Leaders’ cynicism about org. change Δ R2 R2 (Adj. R2) .11 .32* -.06 -.12 .12 .14 (.06)
TABLE 3
Linear regression analysis on Openness to change
Variable entered Openness to change
Step 1 Team size R2 (Adj. R2) -.16 .03 (.01) Step 2 Team size
Leaders’ personal resilience
Leaders’ change-related self-efficacy Leaders’ cynicism about org. change Δ R2 R2 (Adj. R2) -.14 -.12 .11 -.18 .04 .07 (.02) Step 3 Team size
Leaders’ personal resilience
