THE EFFECT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
ON EMPLOYEES’ EFFECTIVE COPING IN TIMES OF
CHANGE.
Master thesis, MSc BA, specialisation International Business Management & MSc Human Resource Management.
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
March 02, 2013 NICOLE BROMMER Student number: 1765485 Paterswoldseweg 124b 9727 BJ Groningen Tel.: +31 (0)653438559 e-mail: nicolebrommer@gmail.com Supervisor: Prof. Dr. O. Janssen Co-assessor: Dr. R.W. De Vries Acknowledgement:
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ABSTRACT
This study is the first to examine if and why, transformational leaders can help employees cope more effectively in times of change. Both transformational leadership and employee coping are much researched topics, but no previous studies have determined their relationship. This study proposes a positive effect of transformational leadership on employees’ effective coping, mediated by leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice. The more fundamental the change is the higher the need becomes for leader’s openness behaviours, therefore we propose this relationship is moderated by change radicalty. Using data collected from 100 employees in several Dutch companies, regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. No relation was found between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping. However we did find a positive relationship between transformational leadership and leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice.
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INTRODUCTION
Despite the high rate at which organizations design and implement changes, change efforts of organizations fail to deliver the desired result more often than they succeed (Attaran, 2004; Marks, 2006; Paper & Chang, 2005). Although many factors undoubtedly contribute to failed organisational change efforts, scholars and practitioners increasingly point to the important role of the “human element” in organisational change (Beer, Eisenstat, & Spector, 1990).
There is a high focus on linking leadership to change, but it is only in a small number of studies that leaders’ personal attributes or behaviours have been examined in relation to
employees’ reactions to organisational change (Bartunek, Rousseau,Rudolph, DePalma, 2006). This is surprising given that employees have to adapt to and work with the changes and are therefore a large factor in the success of change. Not only do they encounter problems like contradictions and difficulties in the implementation phase, they also encounter the emotional difficulties like anxiety and stress. To recap, they cope with the effects of the change.
The small amount of research that has looked at the employees’ side of implementing change has focused on employees’ commitment to change. Although proven to be related to the success of implementing change, commitment to change cannot be seen as the main determinant of the employee’s ability to successfully handle change. The ability to cope with change seems to be an important determinant of successful change implementation. Woodward and Hendry (2004) found that when an employee cannot cope with the change, solely being committed will not induce successful change. When the employee cannot cope, he will act with denial, avoidance or stress (Woodward & Hendry, 2004), behaviour that is undesired in a change process.
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presently no research has proven this. The present study will bridge the gap in the literature by looking at the effect of transformational leadership on the employee’s ability to effectively cope with change. This research uses the definition of transformational leadership as introduced by Bass (1985): transformational leadership refers to behaviours that articulate a clear vision, demonstrate enthusiasm and passion, and inspire and motivate employees to work hard. In addition, Woodward and Hendry (2004) found that as the change process unfolds, employees continue to evaluate what is happening and apply various coping strategies. Coping represents the cognitive and behavioural efforts of individuals to manage stressful encounters (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984)
Furthermore, this study tries to explain why transformational leadership results in
employees coping more effectively with change. Particularly, when organisational changes occur at a high rate, it is important to understand the provenance and workings of this influence. We propose that leaders can help employees cope by being open to the employees’ voice. As defined by Milliken, Morrison, and Hewlin (2003), leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice refers to the employees’ perceptions that their boss listens to them, is interested in their ideas, gives fair consideration to the ideas presented, and at least sometimes takes action upon them. Therefore, the present study will test whether leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
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radicality is used to indicate how fundamental the occurring changes are. The more radical a change, and the more coping efforts employees need to undertake, the more they will rely on their leader and his skills. For this reason the present study will use change radicality as a moderator for the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
THEORY
The organisational change context
Before elaborating on the model, it is important to understand the change context.
Changes in the organization are alterations of existing work routines and strategies that affect an organization (Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008; Shin, Taylor, & Seo, 2012). Fundamental changes in personnel, strategy, organisational identity, or established work roles and interests often trigger intense emotions (Bartunek, 1984). Routines and social relationships that were formerly relied upon to complete work tasks now change (Beer et al., 1990; Shin et al., 2012; Strebel, 1996). Consequently, change is an emotionally intense, stressful, and fatiguing process for most employees (e.g., Buono & Bowditch, 1989; Fugate, Kinicki, & Prussia, 2008; Kiefer, 2005; Shin et al., 2012). Employees may feel that the change-related demands exceed their resources, and when this happens the employee may respond with denial, avoidance or stress (Woodward & Hendry, 2004). Consequently the employees start to use coping efforts in response to organisational changes.
Transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change
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leadership and change. This research demonstrates the large influence that transformational leaders may have in the success or failure of change (Bass, 1985). However, there has been very little attention in these studies to the influence of transformational leaders on employees’
reactions to change, despite the key role employees’ reactions play in determining the success of organisational change (Bartunek et al., 2006). When employees are faced with change, coping behaviours are inevitable. Leaders can influence employees’ coping behaviour effectively, as will be demonstrated below.
Coping represents the cognitive and behavioural efforts of individuals to manage stressful encounters (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The coping literature distinguishes between two coping efforts: problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping is an attempt by the individual to manage future dangers and threats, and in order to achieve this, they adapt their dealings with the environment. Emotion-focused coping, in contrast, is aimed at reducing, preventing, or tolerating the emotional and bodily reactions that are characterized as stressful (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Analysing previous research, it becomes clear that in the future there should be more focus on specific coping strategies rather than on broad categories (Connor-Smith & Flachsbart, 2007). Since it would seems that leaders can help employees cope by helping employees adapt to their changing environment, this research will focus on effective problem-focused coping.
The following section will discuss the different sorts of behaviours demonstrated by transformational leaders that may help employees cope. Transformational leadership refers to behaviours that articulate a clear vision, demonstrate enthusiasm and passion, and inspire and motivate employees to work hard (Bass, 1985) As proposed by Rafferty and Griffin (2004), transformational leadership can be defined by five dimensions: vision, inspirational
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Although all five dimensions are outlined below, for the scope of this research and following other scholars (e.g., Howell & Hall-Merenda, 1999; Judge & Bono, 2000; Judge & Piccolo, 2004), transformational leadership will be looked at as an additive construct, in the sense that leaders are assumed to be more transformational the more their leadership behaviours represents each of the five dimensions.
The first dimension of transformational leadership by which leaders can help employees to cope effectively, is through vision. Vision is defined as the expression of an idealized picture of the future based around organisational values (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). The leader’s strong vision results in the internalisation of the organisational values and goals by the employees (McClelland, 1975). Using a strong vision, the transformational leader clearly portrays what the change entails, its necessity and the implications it will have for the employee. If the employee knows what is changing and what is expected of him in the process, the employee will have fewer problems adapting his work environment so that it meets the new expectations. This will allow the employee to manage more effectively the dangers and threats that he faces in times of change, which is more effective problem-focused coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). It seems the leader’s strong vision provides more clarity in the change process for the employee, and can thus facilitate more effective employees’ coping.
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leader can help the employee overcome the perceived threats and dangers. Positive and encouraging messages build employees’ confidence and instil motivation, which then allows them to cope more effectively with the changing environment.
Coping strategies also come into play when employees think the demands being placed on them tax or exceed their resources (Woodward & Hendry, 2004). If employees feel that the tax of their resources is used, and thus start coping, the transformational leader can help this process by being positive, encouraging, motivating and instilling confidence (Downton, 1973), so that the coping becomes more effective. The above mentioned characteristic of transformational leadership seems to positively influence coping strategies.
Another characteristic of transformational leadership that seems to enhance coping is supportive leadership. Supportive leadership is defined as expressing concern for followers and taking account of their individual needs (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). When change occurs and new demands are placed on the employee, scholars have found that too little attention is paid to
meeting these new demands (Beer et al., 1990). As changes in the organization usually include alterations of existing work routines and strategies (Herold et al., 2008; Shin et al., 2012), many different needs and concerns in dealing with the change will exist among the employees. The transformational leader will take all these different demands and needs into account. It would seem that when the leader facilitates the employees’ needs on the individual level, it becomes easier for employees to manage the dangers and threats that come with change. It seems it assures the employees that they will be facilitated with the resources they need in order to be able to adapt to the changes.
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(Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). It seems that employees will be able to better manage stressful
encounters, or cope, during change as the transformational leader facilitates considering problems from another perspective. Moreover, it is said to increase followers’ abilities to conceptualize, comprehend, and analyze problems (Bass & Avolio, 1990). It would seem that if employees become more capable in analysing and comprehending the situation, this positively contributes to their ability to cope with change.
Lastly personal recognition could also contribute to employees’ effective coping. Personal recognition is the provision of rewards such as praise and acknowledgement of effort for
achievement of specified goals (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). Successful implementation of organisational change requires a high degree of employee creativity in order to fundamentally change old ways of behaving and developing new approaches (Seo, Taylor, Hill, Zhang, Tesluk & Lorinkova, 2012). When employees know that their creativity and efforts are noticed and rewarded, this makes them more motivated to be creative and deliver input. Consequently, they can more easily change their old ways of behaving. Not only will they be more likely to induce successful change, but they will also be able to cope more effectively.
Altogether, the above suggests that transformational leadership can help employees’ cope more effectively, this leads to the first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership is positively related to employees’ effective coping with change.
Leader’s openness and employees’ change-related voice
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employees’ perceptions that their boss listens to them, is interested in their ideas, gives fair consideration to the ideas presented, and at least sometimes takes action to address the matter raised (Milliken et al., 2003).
Some interesting research that has been done on leader’s openness to voice, and
specifically on bottom-up communication strategies, which entail actively listening to employees' concerns and considering their input in making important change-related decisions. Hill, Seo, Kang, and Taylor (2012) found that these strategies help alleviate employees' sense of
vulnerability and loss of control, which then reduces the stress experienced during times of change. Therefore, leaders who are open to voice can help employees cope by understanding, and then facilitating them with the resources they need during change. Through these means,
employees can effectively manage future threats and dangers (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). However, leaders need to send signals that they are interested in and willing to act on subordinate voice, but even then, employees’ motivation to speak up should be maintained or enhanced (Detert & Burris, 2007). If the leader succeeds at motivating employees to speak up, he can better facilitate the needed resources, solve voiced problems and eliminate contradictions, consequently allowing employees to cope more effectively with change.
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implement employees’ ideas. Through this process the employee will perceive the leader as being more open to voice.
The transformational leader can also signal openness to voicing by expressing a strong vision. When a leader expresses the idealized future of the company (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004), he engages the employees in the change process. Consequently, it becomes clearer to the
employees why certain decisions need to be made. This will cause them to feel more involved in the change process, and less resistant. When the leader engages employees in the company’s vision, employees will also be more likely to express ideas and future problems.
Moreover, the transformational leader can engage in intellectual stimulation behaviours and enhance employees’ interest in, and awareness of, problems (Rafferty & Griffin, 2004). When the leader openly communicates about this, the employees will also feel freer to address their point of view. Thus employees experience the leader as more open.
Personal recognition is another transformational leader behaviour that can signal a leader’s openness to employees’ voice. It seems that when a leader indicates that he values individuals’ efforts and acknowledges and praises the employees for these efforts, the employees will experience more leader openness to their voice than when the leader does not value and acknowledge the employees’ individual efforts.
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Hypothesis 2: Transformational leadership is positively related to leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice.
Leader’s openness and employees’ effective coping with change
The above mentioned openness to employees’ change-related voice can highly influence the effectiveness of the employees’ coping with change. Coping represents the cognitive and behavioural efforts of individuals to manage stressful encounters (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Therefore to achieve more effective coping, leaders can provide employees with tools to more successfully manage these stressful encounters. For example, prior research has found that one way of helping employees effectively cope, is by listening to employees and showing empathy for the pain caused by the stress and uncertainty of organisational change (Marks, 1997).
In addition, changing old ways of behaving and developing new approaches requires a high degree of employee creativity (Seo et al., 2012). In order to be creative about new
approaches, as well as to implement them, the employee may need approval or resources from the leader. Therefore, leader’s openness to voice is of high importance, when employees need certain resources or approvals in order to be able to effectively cope with and adapt to the planned changes. Moreover, during the implementation of the change, employees will run into
discrepancies, contradictions and mixed signals. In order to effectively overcome these problems, the employees need to be able to address them to the leader. Accordingly, the leader needs to be open to them and take action upon them. This leads to the following hypothesis:
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In sum, transformational leaders possess certain qualities they can use to help employees cope more effectively with change. More specifically, transformational leaders are more open to employees’ voice. Using this quality well, they can help employees cope more effectively in times of change. Thus, transformational leadership is positively related to employees’ coping with change through leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice. Therefore the fourth hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 4: Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
Change radicality
Besides the way change is managed, the type of change seems to influence coping with change. In the change literature a distinction is made between radical change and incremental change. The literature has found that, although all employees need to accommodate and adapt as organizations change their internal processes to meet external complexity, the transition process is more difficult where change is radical rather than incremental (Bridges, 1992; Nicholson, 1990). This is because incremental change is defined as a steady flow of improvements that are exploitative, build on an existing process, and are relatively minor but can be cumulatively
important (Dosi, 1982; Levitt and March, 1988; McKendric & Wade, 2010). Because incremental changes occur continuously in organizations and are relatively minor, employees can easily make the needed adaptations. Consequently, incremental change will cause employees to demonstrate fewer coping behaviours.
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radical change (Jarvenpaa & Stoddard, 1998). Since these changes are so fundamental,
employees may feel that the demands exceed their resources (Woodward & Hendry, 2004). The changes can be intrusive and disruptive of the routines and social relationships formerly relied upon to complete important work tasks (Beer et al., 1990; Shin et al., 2012; Strebel, 1996), leading employees to feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious. These occurrences will trigger coping efforts in employees. Thus, the more radical the change, the more coping efforts employees will display.
Because change radicality triggers the coping efforts of employees, as explained above, leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice will have more influence on the employee in times of radical change. Emotions like feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious become more severe when change radicality becomes higher, magnifying the importance of leader’s openness. Employees experience increased workloads resulting from the assignment of new work tasks on top of existing ones, the need to adjust to new work relationships, and very often, the introduction of new strategic goals (e.g., Pollard, 2001; Schweiger & DeNisi, 1991, Shin et al., 2012). The more fundamental this experience is, the higher the need becomes for leader’s openness behaviours like listening to employees and creating effective two-way communication in order to help employees cope more effectively. Therefore, the fifth hypothesis is:
Hypothesis 5: Change radicality has a positive effect on the relation between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change such that this relationship is more pronounced when the change radicality is high rather than low.
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radicality for the path from leader openness to employee change-related voice. As such, this moderated mediation model clarifies why transformational leadership can influence employees’ coping with change (through leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice) and under what condition transformational leadership can promote employees’ coping with change (in case of radical changes). To test this conditional indirect effect, we formulate the following
hypothesis:
Hypothesis 6: Change radicality moderates the indirect relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change through leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice such that this indirect relationship is more pronounced when change
radicality is high rather than low.
METHODS
Sample and procedureThis study was conducted in several Dutch companies. The sample was drawn randomly, using people in all kinds of functions. The companies used are phone stores, primary schools, a welfare organization, and a governmental organization. In order to get as many participants as possible, leaders were asked to request all their subordinates to participate.
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The questionnaire consisted of items asking about transformational leadership, leader’s openness to change-related voice, change radicality and employees’ effective coping with change (see ‘measures’ -section’). The response format used for answering the items of all scales
consisted of a 7-point Likert scale, 1 “not at all true,” to 7 “completely true”. As the scales were originally developed and published in English, they were translated to Dutch, to ensure that employees fully understood the questions.
In total, useable data of 100 employees was obtained of whom exactly 50% were male and 50% were female. The average age was 28, and the average years of service were four years in the organization. Data was acquired from employees dispersed over 18 leaders.
Measures
Transformational leadership
Transformation leadership was measured using a scale developed by Rafferty & Griffin (2004). They modified a scale initially created by House (1998)and Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, and Fetter (1990), to a scale that is appropriate to be filled out by employees, which was a necessity. The Cronbach´s alpha of the scale was .88. Sample items are, “My leader challenges me to think about old problems in new ways” and “My leader encourages people to see changing environments as situations full of opportunities”.
Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice
Leader’s openness is measured using a six-item scale that Ashford, Rothbard, piderit, and Dutton (1998) have drawn from House and Rizzo’s (1972) Organisational practices
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ideas get serious consideration of my supervisor” and “I feel free to make recommendations to my supervisor to change existing procedures”.
Employees’ effective coping with change
For employee effective coping a 12-item scale developed by Judge, Thoresen, Pucik and Welbourne (1999) was used. The participants are asked to think of the most recent change that they have experienced when filling out the survey. In the end, only five items were suitable for use for the purpose of this research. The Cronbach’s alpha of the scale for self-reports is .77. Sample items are, “when dramatic changes happen in this company, I feel I handle them with ease” and, “when changes happen in this company, I react by trying to manage the change rather than complain about it”.
Radical change
For measuring change radicality, no suitable scale was found. Therefore the author created a scale for this. A thorough review of the (radical) change literature allowed me to identify the main characteristics of radical change, which were then turned into eight questions. Examples of questions about change are; “change that occurred in the last 12 months altered the way I carry out my work” and “change that occurred in the last 12 months influenced the whole organization”.
Control variables
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may be useful. Age was ranked (in years): 1 = Less than 13 years old, 2 = 13 to 17 years old, 3 = 18 to 25 years old, 4 = 26 to 34 years old, 5 = 35 to 54 years old, 6 = 55 to 64 years old, and 7 = 65 or older. Years of service was ranked (in years): 1 = less than six months, 2 = six months to one year, 3 = two to five years, 4 = six to ten years, and 5 = more than ten years.
Procedure and data analysis
First the data was checked for abnormalities, and for respondents with too many missing values. After the data was checked and cleaned, the reversed items were re-coded and the scales were tested on reliability using Cronbach’s alpha.
The Cronbach’s alphas for the scales were: transformational leadership α = .857, leader’s openness to change-related voice α = . 867 and change radicality α = . 829. These all had
sufficient Cronbach’s alphas, as α = .7 is desired. The Cronbach’s alpha of change radicality α = . 663 was not as desired, however above α = .5 the scale can still be used. Then the scales were created and the descriptive statistics were conducted. Looking at the correlations between the variables, all the control variables had to be included.
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To test hypotheses 5 and 6, change radicality was added to the regression. Because change radicality influences the model on the relationship between leader’s openness to voicing and employees’ effective coping with change, model 14 by Hayes’ (2013) plug-in was applicable to test these hypotheses.
For hypotheses 4 and 6, indirect relations also had to be tested. To do so, the Bootstrap method was used. The output of this model shows, the indirect effect, the bootstrap standard error (SE), a lower limit confidence interval (LLCI), and an upper limit confidence interval (UCLI). The output of the Bootstrap model is significant when there is no 0 between the LLCI and the UCLI values.
Because hypothesis 6 measures a conditional effect, the output also contains values for low, medium, and high of the moderator of change radicality. This basically means that the medium score is 0, the low is -1 SE, and the high is +1 SE; this allows us to see whether there is a more pronounced effect when the moderator is high, rather than low. Here it also holds that the results are only significant when there is no 0 between the LLCI and the UCLI values.
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics and correlations
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openness to employees’ voice, which implies that women perceived their leader to be more open to employees’ change-related voice than men. Lastly, years of service has a positive correlation with leader’s openness to voice, so people with more years of service experience their leaders as more open. The negative correlation between years of service and employees’ effective coping with change implies that employees who have worked at the organization longer find it more difficult to effectively cope with change.
Looking at the correlations among variables, transformational leadership has a significant correlation with leader’s openness to change-related voice, but no correlation is found with employees’ effective coping with change. No other correlations between the variables were found.
Table 1:
Means, standard deviations and correlation among variables.
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 TFL 4.95 .74 - 2 Openness 5.43 .81 .47** - 3 Change rad 4.00 1.19 .057 -.02 - 4 EECWC 4.64 .84 .015 -.02 .15 - 5 Age 4.21 1.15 -.03 .00 -.20 -.28** - 6 Gender 1.51 .50 .25* .42** -.00 -.13 -.12 - 7 Years of service 3.47 1.29 .13 .35** .07 -.25* -.02 .72** -
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). TFL: Transformational leadership, openness: Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice, change rad: Change radicality, EECWC; Employees’ effective coping with change
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Hypotheses testing
The hypotheses were tested in three different steps. First a simple linear regression was performed to test hypotheses 1. This regression tested the effect of transformational leadership and the control variables on employees’ effective coping with change. The second regression tested the mediation hypotheses 2, 3 and 4. And a third regression was run to test hypotheses 5 and 6.
Hypothesis 1 predicts that transformational leadership is positively related to employees’
effective coping with change. The control variable “age” did not significantly contribute to the prediction of employees’ effective coping with change (table 2; β = .071, p = .563). The control variables “gender” and “years of service” did significantly contribute to the prediction of employees’ effective coping with change (table 2; β = .518, p = .004 and β = -.214, p = .038). Surprisingly, transformational leadership did not significantly contribute to the prediction of employees’ effective coping with change (table 2; β = .053, p = .638). Therefore, hypothesis 1 is not supported.
Hypothesis 2 predicts transformational leadership is positively related to leader’s
openness to employees’ change-related voice. The control variables did not significantly predict leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice (table 3; “age” β = .115, p = .290, “gender” β =, 060, p = .698, “years of service” β = .125, p = .163). As expected, transformational
leadership did significantly predict leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice (table 3; β = .432, p =, 000). Therefore, hypothesis 2 is supported.
Hypothesis 3 predicts leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice is positively
related to employees’ effective coping with change. Unexpectedly, openness does not
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Hypothesis 4 predicts leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice mediates the
indirect relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change. This effect is tested using the bootstrap method. As reported in table 3 the indirect effect = .035 SE= 060 95% CI: [-.064, .170] which means hypothesis 4 is not significant. This was expected, since hypothesis 3 was already rejected.
Hypothesis 5 predicts change radicality has a positive moderation effect on the relation
between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change. This hypothesis is tested by creating an interaction term for leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and change radicality, and adding change radicality and this interaction term to the regression analysis. Because this interaction term is not significant (table 4; β= -.019, p = .832), change radicality does not significantly moderate the relation between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change. Therefore, hypothesis 5 is rejected.
Hypothesis 6 predicts that change radicality moderates the indirect relationship between
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SE= .094 95% CI: [-.087, .303]). Thus hypothesis 6 was not supported, which is not surprising since hypothesis 5 was already rejected.
Table 2
Results of Regression Analysis.
Transformational leadership on employees’ effective coping with change
Model B SE T P R² 0.005 Constant 5.593 .710 7.880 0.000*** TFL .053 .129 .410 .683 Age 0.071 .123 .580 .563 Gender -.518 .175 -2.961 .004*** Years of service -.214 .101 -2.111 .038*
***. Significant at the 0.001 level **. Significant at the 0.01 level *. Significant at the 0.05 level. TFL: transformational leadership
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Table 3
Results of Regression Analysis.
Mediator variable model: Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice
Model B SE t P R² .000*** .296 Constant 2.240 .624 3.592 .001*** TFL .432 .113 3.826 .000*** Age .115 .108 1.065 .290 Gender .060 .154 .389 .698 Years of service .125 .089 1.407 .163
Dependant variable: employees’ effective coping with change
Model B SE t P R² .010** .172 Constant 5.410 .769 7.034 .000*** TFL .017 .141 .124 .902 Openness .082 .129 .636 .527 Age .062 .124 .498 .620 Gender -.523 .176 -2.975 .004*** Years of service -.225 .103 -2.177 .033*
Indirect effect of transformational leadership on employees’ effective coping with change through leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice.
Indirect effect Bootstrap SE Bootstrap LLCI Bootstrap ULCI
.035 .060 -.064 .170
N = 84. Bootstrap Sample Size = 1000.
***. Significant at the 0.001 level **. Significant at the 0.01 level *. Significant at the 0.05 level. TFL: Transformational leadership, openness: Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice, change rad: Change radicality.
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Table 4
Results of Regression Analysis
Dependant variable: employees’ effective coping with change
Model B SE t P R² .425 Constant 4.774 2.089 2.286 .0251* TFL .006 .143 .045 .964 Openness .156 .377 .414 .680 Change rad .161 .488 .330 .742 Int_1 (openness * change rad) -.019 .088 -.213 .832 Age .073 .127 .579 .564 Gender -.497 .185 -2.695 .009** Years of service -.233 .105 -2.219 .030*
Conditional indirect effect of transformational leadership on employees’ effective coping with change mediated by leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice at low, medium, and high
values of change radicality. Change Rad. Indirect effect Bootstrap
SE Bootstrap LLCI Bootstrap ULCI Low -1 .044 .084 -.099 -.229 Medium 0 .035 .065 -.072 .184 High 1 .025 .094 -.087 .303
N = 83. Bootstrap Sample Size = 1000.
***. Significant at the 0.001 level **. Significant at the 0.01 level *. Significant at the 0.05 level. TFL: Transformational leadership, openness: Leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice,
change rad: Change radicality. Int_1 (openness * change rad): the interaction effect of leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and change radicality
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DISCUSSION
The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change. Additionally, it was hypothesized that leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice would have a mediating effect in the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change. Lastly, also a moderator was hypothesized, change radicality. Change radicality was theorized to have a positive effect on the positive relation between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change. The results indicate that some expected relations were supported, yet, other expected relations were denied.
Findings
The findings regarding the relation between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change are not consistent with the expectations. No relationship was found between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
Subsequently, the relationship between transformational leadership and leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voicing was tested. As expected, a positive relation was found between transformational leadership and leader’s openness to employees’ change-related coping. Then the relationship between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and
employees’ effective coping with change was tested, but no relationship was found. Therefore we can conclude that transformational leaders are perceived as more open to employees’ change-related voice. However, we could not conclude that leader’s openness to change-change-related voice helps employees’ effective coping with change.
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with change. But since leader’s openness to change-related employees’ voice does not influence employees’ effective coping with change, no effect could be expected here. The outcome thus confirmed that leader’s openness to change-related employees’ voice does not mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
Hereafter, the moderating effect of change radicality was tested. First the effect of change radicality on the relationship between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change was tested. However, no effect of change radicality on the relationship between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice was found. Consequently, change radicality was also found not to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
Implications for research
This research tried to examine if leaders can contribute to more successful change by helping their employees cope more effectively. The assumption was that transformational leaders posses certain qualities that may help employees cope more effectively and that this relationship would be even stronger when the changes were more radical. However no relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping was found. So contrary to what Fiol, et al., (1999) and Ben-Zur, et al., (2005) suggested, we did not find that transformational
leadership helps employees cope more effectively.
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Secondly, prior research has found that transformational leaders facilitate employees’ voicing (Deter & Burris, 2007; Liu, Zhu, & Wang, 2010). This research extends on these previous conclusion by finding that transformational leaders are more open to employees’ change-related voice. This indicates that transformational leaders do not only facilitate employees’ voice, they are also more open to it.
We also find that the leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice does not have a positive effect on employees coping. Contrarily, we did find a correlation between employees’ effective coping with change and years of service. This correlation suggests that employees who work for an organisation longer cope less effectively. This leads to believe that external factors may influence the relationship between transformational leadership and employee effective coping. Perhaps in such a manner, that they overrule the contribution that the leader could make in helping employees’ cope effectively. This would mean that personal characteristics of the employee cannot be left out when examining employees’ coping efforts.
Practical implications
The finding that transformational leaders are more open to employees’ change-related voice can have some practical implications for managers. For example, leaders who want to be more open to the voice of employees should consider adopting a transformational leadership style. Moreover, for organization who find that employees’ voice is not taken into account enough, this in implies they may want to consider pushing for more transformational leadership by managers.
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company longer. Doing so, manager may be able to enhance the employees’ effective coping during times of change.
Limitations and suggestions for future research
A first limitation is that for data collection purposes, random companies were used instead of companies specifically enduring a change process. Therefore, some people in our sample may not even have ever experienced coping behaviours, leading them to answer about what they think they would do, rather then what their actual response is in such a position. If future research would focus more on companies in, or just out of a change process, this could perhaps lead to completely different results.
Another problem concerning the data collection was the coping with change scale. The scale measured an attitude towards coping, whereas a scale measuring actual behavioural responses may have fitted the purpose of this research better. This could also be a reason why most of the hypotheses were rejected. Therefore, future research should re-examine the link between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change, using a more suitable measurement tool for employees’ effective coping with change. A suggested, more applicable measurement tool may be that of Heppener, Cook, Wright, and Johnson (1995). This measurement tool solely measures problem-focused coping. And more importantly, it makes the distinction between affective items, behavioural items and cognitive items.
An additional possibility that should be considered in re-examining this link, is that maybe too much of the employees’ ability to effectively cope with change, depends on
personality traits, such that leaders simply cannot always significantly influence the employees’ coping behaviours.
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cause a potential ‘idealized picture’ bias in the data. This entails that people respond to questions, as they would wish to, rather than how they would actually respond. Using other types of data collection, future researchers on the topic can avoid this bias.
Besides the suggestions for future research based on the limitations, there are a couple of other recommendations that could be addressed in future research. As mentioned in the theory section, there are two coping strategies, problem-focused and emotion-focused. This research concentrated on problem-focused coping. But perhaps it might be interesting for further research to find out if the proposed positive influence of transformational leadership on employees’ effective coping should be sought in emotional-focused coping, rather than in problem-focused coping.
Furthermore, this research only looked at the possibility that change radicality influenced the relationship between leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice and employees’ effective coping with change. However, it cannot be excluded that change radicality actually influences the relationship between transformational leadership and leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice. We tested this alternative model, in which change radicality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and leader’s openness to employees’ change-related voice. However, this moderation was also not significant. Future research could determine more specifically, if, and where change radicality influences the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ effective coping with change.
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Lastly, it would be interesting for future research to take into account that a
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