Ronald F. Piccolo

Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity.

This study provided a comprehensive examination of the full range of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership. Results (based on 626 correlations from 87 sources) revealed an overall validity of .44 for transformational leadership, and this validity generalized over longitudinal and multisource designs. Contingent reward (.39) and laissez-faire (-.37) leadership had the next highest overall relations; management by exception (active and passive) was inconsistently related to the criteria. Surprisingly, there were several criteria for which contingent reward leadership had stronger relations than did transformational leadership. Furthermore, transformational leadership was strongly correlated with contingent reward (.80) and laissez-faire (-.65) leadership. Transformational and contingent reward leadership generally predicted criteria controlling for the other leadership dimensions, although transformational leadership failed to predict leader job performance.

The forgotten ones? The validity of Consideration and Initiating Structure in leadership research

This study provided a meta-analysis of the relationship of the Ohio State leadership behaviors--Consideration and Initiating Structure--with leadership. Overall, 163 independent correlations for Consideration and 159 correlations for Initiating Structure were analyzed. Results revealed that both Consideration (.48) and Initiating Structure (.29) have moderately strong, nonzero relations with leadership outcomes. Consideration was more strongly related to follower satisfaction (leader satisfaction, job satisfaction), motivation, and leader effectiveness, and Initiating Structure was slightly more strongly related to leader job performance and group-organization performance. Validities did vary by leadership measure, but in most cases validities generalized regardless of the measure used. Overall, the results provide important support for the validity of Initiating Structure and Consideration in leadership research.

Explaining the justice-performance relationship: trust as exchange deepener or trust as uncertainty reducer?

Past research has revealed significant relationships between organizational justice dimensions and job performance, and trust is thought to be one mediator of those relationships. However, trust has been positioned in justice theorizing in 2 different ways, either as an indicator of the depth of an exchange relationship or as a variable that reflects levels of work-related uncertainty. Moreover, trust scholars distinguish between multiple forms of trust, including affect- and cognition-based trust, and it remains unclear which form is most relevant to justice effects. To explore these issues, we built and tested a more comprehensive model of trust mediation in which procedural, interpersonal, and distributive justice predicted affect- and cognition-based trust, with those trust forms predicting both exchange- and uncertainty-based mechanisms. The results of a field study in a hospital system revealed that the trust variables did indeed mediate the relationships between the organizational justice dimensions and job performance, with affect-based trust driving exchange-based mediation and cognition-based trust driving uncertainty-based mediation.

Do servant-leaders help satisfy follower needs? An organizational justice perspective

While theoretical work has discussed the link between servant-leadership and the satisfaction of follower needs, empirical research has yet to examine this relationship. The present article seeks to fill this void by reporting on a survey study (n = 187) linking servant-leadership to follower need and job satisfaction through the mediating mechanism of organizational justice. Drawing on the multiple needs model of justice, self-determination theory, needs-based theories of job satisfaction, and the servant-leadership literature, we find support for a theoretical model linking servant-leadership to job satisfaction with organizational justice and need satisfaction as mediators of this relationship.

Does high quality leader–member exchange accentuate the effects of organizational justice?

The current study examined interactions between leader – member exchange (LMX) and two dimensions of organizational justice—procedural and interpersonal. Results from a study of full-time employees (n = 283) in a diverse set of job types provide support for the notion that a high quality leader – member relationship (i.e., LMX) enhances the strength of the relationships between procedural and interpersonal justice and a variety of outcomes. Specifically, procedural and interpersonal justice perceptions were significantly associated with an employees felt obligation to the organization, but only when that employee reported high quality relationships with their supervisors. Results of this study extend research that attempts to integrate the organizational justice and leadership literatures.

When Leaders Fail to “Walk the Talk” Supervisor Undermining and Perceptions of Leader Hypocrisy

This research examines a condition under which supervisor undermining is related to perceptions of leader hypocrisy that then lead to employee turnover intentions. Drawing on behavioral integrity theory and arguments from the social cognition literature, the authors argue that subordinates compare supervisor undermining to an interpersonal justice expectation, as a salient social cue, to draw conclusions regarding leader hypocrisy. In turn, the cognitive conclusion that the leader is indeed a hypocrite generates uncertainty that subordinates are motivated to manage by increasing turnover intentions. The authors examine perceptions of leader hypocrisy as the mediator of their proposed theoretical model while controlling for psychological contract breach and trust in supervisor. Results from a scenario-based experiment ( N = 202) and a survey-based study ( N = 312) provide general support for the authors’ hypotheses.

Ethical Leadership and Core Job Characteristics: Designing Jobs for Employee Well-Being

Most organizations and its leaders are evaluated on specific, objective, and tangible short-term outcomes such as market, financial, and accounting metrics of organizational performance. Although this approach to measuring performance creates an environment that encourages continual innovation and growth, it also fosters a climate that puts pressure on managers at multiple levels to deliver and/or report favorable economic outcomes. The rewards for achieving financial objectives are rich (e.g., lucrative bonus packages, stock option appreciation) while the punishment for failing to achieve can be severe (e.g., dismissal). Such pressure has the potential negative consequence of driving a narrow view of success, creating dilemmas, often of an ethical nature, in terms of how decisions should be made. This is especially problematic in that employees have come to expect more from work than a narrow focus on bottom-line profits. The ethical nature of leadership has an important influence on the climate in which employees make decisions, as leaders shape the tangible and perceived characteristics of work.

Jekyll and Hyde Leadership: A Multilevel, Multisample Examination of Charisma and Abuse on Follower and Team Outcomes:

Despite the independent treatment of the positive and negative sides of leadership in the literature, evidence suggests that the same leader may demonstrate both positive and negative leadership behaviors albeit with a different frequency (i.e., Jekyll and Hyde). What impacts would such opposing leadership styles jointly have on follower and team outcomes? To address this question, the current study examines the interactive impact of charismatic leadership and abusive supervision on individual- and team-level outcomes. Findings across three different samples gathered from the United States and South Korea suggest significant moderating roles of abusive supervision in the positive relationships of charismatic leadership with follower and team outcomes. This study highlights the importance of incorporating otherwise separate perspectives on leadership and provides insights into the boundary condition that impedes the effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Thus, we call for more research on integrative models of leadership that embrace different aspects of leader behaviors.

Leadership Beyond the Tipping Point: Toward the Discovery of Inversions and Complementary Hypotheses

Leadership theories often include a contingency effect where the relationship between two or more variables is normally theorized to be monotonic, i.e., that it has a generally accepted direction—positive or negative—across the full range of the contingency variable. Most examinations of contingencies estimate how the monotonic relationship changes at mean, or near mean, levels of the moderator variable. We push the logic of moderation further to explore whether, for extra-ordinary values of the moderator, the effect may actually become non-monotonic, e.g., invert by moving from positive to negative in slope (or vice versa). Discovering such inversion effects in models of leadership would provide a deeper understanding of the operation and boundaries of theories, thereby calling for refinements of underlying theoretical assumptions. Using an innovative inductive approach, we search the leadership literature and find studies where extra-ordinary moderator values signal a potential inversion effect. We narrow onto two example leader-member exchange (LMX) studies to inductively theorize the mechanisms creating the inversion. We then generalize the logic of this mechanism to propose new theory for why such inversions might be occurring in a wider range of phenomenon beyond LMX, and discuss the associated implications for leadership and organizational theory.