Gilad Chen

The two faces of transformational leadership: Empowerment and dependency.

Followers identification with the leader and the organizational unit, dependence on the leader, and empowerment by the leader are often attributed to transformational leadership in organizations. However, these hypothesized outcomes have received very little attention in empirical studies. Using a sample of 888 bank employees working under 76 branch manages, the authors tested the relationships between transformational leadership and these outcomes. They found that transformational leadership was positively related to both followers dependence and their empowerment and that personal identification mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers dependence on the leader, whereas social identification mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers empowerment. The authors discuss the implications of these findings to both theory and practice.

The role of different levels of leadership in predicting self- and collective efficacy: Evidence for discontinuity.

This study identified potential discontinuities in the antecedents of efficacy beliefs across levels of analysis, with a particular focus on the role of leadership climate at different organizational levels. Random coefficient modeling analyses conducted on data collected from 2,585 soldiers in 86 combat units confirmed that soldiers experience, role clarity, and psychological strain predicted self-efficacy to a greater extent than did leadership climate. Also, leadership climate at a higher organizational level related to self-efficacy through role clarity, whereas leadership climate at a lower organizational level related to self-efficacy through psychological strain. Group-level analyses identified leadership climate at a higher organizational level as the strongest predictor of collective efficacy. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

A FRAMEWORK FOR CONDUCTING MULTI-LEVEL CONSTRUCT VALIDATION

Organizational researchers have become increasingly interested in multi-level constructs – that is, constructs that are meaningful at multiple levels of analysis. However, despite the plethora of theoretical and empirical work on multi-level topics, explicit frameworks for validation of multi-level constructs have yet to be fully developed. Moreover, available principles for conducting construct validation assume that the construct resides at a single level of analysis. We propose a five-step framework for conceptualizing and testing multi-level constructs by integrating principles of construct validation with recent advancements in multi-level theory, research, and methodology. The utility of the framework is illustrated using theoretical and empirical examples.

The Roles of Self-Efficacy and Task Complexity in the Relationships Among Cognitive Ability, Conscientiousness, and Work-Related Performance: A Meta-Analytic Examination

Although cognitive ability and conscientiousness have been found to predict work-related performance, less is known about whether and when certain mediating variables help explain these relationships. This study examined meta-analytically whether self-efficacy mediates the cognitive ability-performance and conscientiousness-performance relationships, and whether task complexity moderates the extent to which self-efficacy mediates these relationships. Results indicated that cognitive ability and conscientiousness positively relate to self-efficacy, but that the magnitude of these relationships varies with task complexity. Furthermore, results showed that self-efficacy mediates the relationships of cognitive ability and conscientiousness with performance on simple tasks, but not on complex tasks. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

VALIDATING FROGS AND PONDS IN MULTI-LEVEL CONTEXTS: SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS

In this chapter we respond to Hofmann and Jones and Kim, who provided insightful comments on our framework for conducting multi-level construct validation. We specifically address issues surrounding the meaning, structure, and function of multi-level constructs, extending our framework for validation of within-person constructs, and frog-pond effects. In so doing, we hope to clarify further the process of validating constructs across multiple levels of analysis.

Empowered to perform: A multi-level investigation of empowerment on performance in Hospital units

Psychological empowerment has been studied intensively over the past few decades and researchers have identified a number of potent antecedents and beneficial outcomes. However, a recent meta-analy...