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This study has two purposes. Firstly, it aims to investigate whether self-efficacy constitutes one of the mechanisms by which transformational leadership impacts on employee positivity in reacting to change. Secondly, it aims to investigate whether the extent of change moderates the relationship between transformational leadership, self-efficacy and reactions to change. This study also explores the possibility that when the extent of change is higher, the effectiveness of transformational leadership may be lower.

This study used a sample of employees where the organization was going through significant change. Employee ratings on specific scales were used to measure transformational leadership, self-efficacy, affective commitment to organizational change, and intention to support change. A cumulative change index was used to assess the number of changes employees had experienced during the change process.

The results confirmed hypothesis 1 that transformational leadership was related to affective commitment and intention to support change and this was to a high level of statistical significance. Testing hypothesis 2 that self-efficacy mediated the effect of transformational leadership on commitment and intention to support change indicated that self-efficacy did mediate in this relationship confirming both hypothesis 2a and 2 b. The results did not support hypothesis 3a, with no significant interaction effect showing that the interaction between transformational leadership and self-efficacy did not differ between low versus high extent of change. However, the results did support hypothesis 3 b with the strength of the positive relationship between self-efficacy and reactions to change differing across high versus low extent of change. For both affective commitment and intention to support change, the interaction of self-efficacy and change index was significant.

Current weaknesses in the transformational leadership research include: a bias towards heroic leadership and away from collective and shared process of leadership, the underlying processes have not been clearly identified, lack of precision about situational variables that may impact on these processes. This paper does not address the first weakness.

Self-efficacy gains importance when the extent of change is high. The results suggest that change managers should adopt a transformational style of leadership to enhance recipients’ self-efficacy to generate positive attitudes and behaviours during change. They also suggest the selection and training of managers in transformational leadership attributes and also the inclusion of this in the monitoring of managers’ behaviours in post. The research outlined in this paper makes a significant contribution to an organization’s capacity to achieve change, particularly when the extent of change is high.

This research provides ways in which organizations can better achieve change through positive processes.

Transformational leadership can create a vision of the future and inspire followers to work to achieve it and to build hope and confidence for the future. This can prevent or overcome resistance to or reluctance about change. Lack of alignment of values between employees and the organization can result in change failure. This paper provides original insight into how change can be achieved by transformational leadership building self-efficacy.

The research aims to investigate the impact of transformational leadership on employee championing behavior and to determine the mediating effect of work engagement in the context of organizational change.

This is a quantitative approach, which is based on cross-sectional data. In total, 300 available cases are processed through structural equation modeling in order to infer the results.

The results indicate that transformational leadership is significantly related to championing behavior during organizational change. Moreover, work engagement fully mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and championing behavior in the context of organizational change.

Managers should emphasize the practice of the transformational leadership approach, as well as should stress the antecedents of work engagement in order to foster the employee championing behavior in the context of organizational change.

The research contributes to the change management and human resource management literature by providing a plausible explanation of the mediating role of work engagement in connecting transformational leadership and employee championing behavior in the context of organizational change.

We develop a multilevel model of emotional processes grounded in social identity theory to explore the role of emotion in transformational leadership.

This work is conceptual in nature and develops theory surrounding emotion in organizations by integrating theories on transformational leadership, emotion management, and organizational identity.

Transformational leaders utilize interpersonal emotion management strategies to influence and respond to emotions arising from the self-evaluative processes of organizational members during times of organizational identity change.

The conceptual model detailed provides insight on the intersubjective emotional processes grounded in social identity that influence transformational leadership. Future research into transformational leadership behaviors will benefit from a multilevel perspective which includes both interpersonal emotion management and intrapersonal emotion generation related to social identity at both the within-person and between-person levels.

The proposed model expands on the role of emotions in transformational leadership by theoretically linking the specific transformational behaviors to discrete emotions displayed by followers. While previous empirical research has indicated the positive outcomes of transformational leadership and the role of emotion recognition, work has yet to be presented which explicates the role of discrete emotions in the transformational leadership process.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reactions towards organizational change in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. Furthermore, to understand the importance of followership it has been analyzed as a moderating variable in the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reactions.

A mixed methods study design was applied to investigate the factors underlying the phenomenon of transformational leadership and organizational change. A quantitative research design was followed by qualitative research questions to get more in-depth insights into the used relationships. The primary purpose of the qualitative study design was to support and strengthened the results of the main quantitative research design.

The results of the study showed that transformational leadership style was positively related to all three factors of employees’ reactions (frequency of change, trust in management and employees’ participation) towards organizational change. Moreover, followership has a significant effect on the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of employees’ reaction.

This study suggests that for successful implementation of change in organizations, the employees play an important role and that managers with transformational leadership behaviour play a critical role in shaping positive change reactions. This study also highlights that both transformational leadership and followership are essential elements in shaping recipients’ reactions, with active followers contributing to the role of leadership in the change process.

This study is the first attempt specifically in Asian context to highlight the role of followership as a moderating variable in leadership theory in the organizational change context.

Based on dual organizational theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and innovative behavior in groups. The authors proposed that group innovative behavior was influenced by transformational leadership as a group-level construct which was moderated by dual organizational change that represent organization-level resources. Furthermore, the authors identified two organizational change-related situational variables-radical change and incremental change and examined their effects on group innovative behavior.

The authors collected data from full-time employees working in groups in 43 companies, located in five cities in China including Beijing, Yantai, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Chengde. These enterprises were from a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, financing, information technology, and geological exploration. The authors chose a middle- or senior-level manager from each company to act as chief survey respondent, who were asked to contact managers and employees from a list they had provided and invite them to participate in a web-based survey (via an e-mailed link) or a paper-and-pencil survey. A total of 192 managers and 756 direct subordinates from 112 groups completed the survey.

Results found that transformational leadership was positively related to group innovative behavior, and this relationship was moderated by radical change, but not incremental change; radical change and incremental change were also positively related to group innovative behavior.

This study adopts a cross-sectional study design, which is insufficient for deriving causal inferences. Future research may adopt a longitudinal study design to investigate causal impacts. Besides, some unmeasured variables could be related to transformational leadership and innovative behavior.

The paper includes implications for adopting appropriate leadership style to motivate innovative behavior, promoting dual organizational change to boost innovative behavior, and generating greater innovative behavior for transformational leaders in times of radical change.

This cross-level study contributes to the relationship between transformational leadership and group innovative behavior in the context of dual organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of transformational school leadership on teachers’ commitment to change and the effects of organizational and teachers’ factors on teachers’ perception of transformational school leadership in the Chinese urban upper secondary school context.

The paper mainly uses quantitative methods to explore the relationships between different constructs. The author asks: to what extent can transformational school leadership practices in the urban upper secondary schools of a particular Chinese city explain the variation in teachers’ commitment to change during curriculum reform? What are the effects of organizational and teachers’ factors on teachers’ perceptions of transformational school leadership?

The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the effect of transformational school leadership was moderate when transformational school leadership and teachers’ commitment to change were treated as single variables. Four dimensions of transformational leadership practice together explained the moderate effects on four dimensions of teachers’ commitment to change, among which the effect of managing the instructional program was the most prominent. The results of multiple regression analysis also revealed that variables like culture, strategy, environment, and teachers’ age had significant relationships with teachers’ perceptions of transformational school leadership. Culture, environment, strategy, structure, and teachers’ factors such as age and grade taught had moderate effects on different dimensions of teachers’ perceptions of transformational school leadership.

This study is one of the first to explore the effects of transformational school leadership on teachers’ commitment to change in the Chinese urban upper secondary school context. The findings contribute to educational management in China and similar contexts, and this study advances knowledge and furthers the understandings of the transferability of theories to different contexts.

Followers’ affective commitment to change has been found to constitute a strong predictor of the success of change initiatives in organizations. Several studies have yet shown positive effects of transformational leadership on followers’ commitment to change. However, up to date there is no study examining the direct effects of different transformational leadership behaviors on followers’ commitment to change and the moderating impact of leaders’ commitment to change on these relationships. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study uses a cross-sectional, multilevel design based on multisource date from 38 teams from different organizations with a total of 177 participating team members. Data of leaders’ and followers’ commitment to change as well as ratings of transformational leadership behavior were captured applying a quantitative approach.

Results show a significant positive effect of the transformational leadership behavior “individual support” on followers’ affective commitment toward change. Moreover, the transformational leadership behavior “providing an appropriate model” was shown as only positively contributing to followers’ commitment to change when leaders’ own commitment toward change was high.

Due to the multilevel and multisource data, the sample is relatively small which limits the external validity of findings. Also, future studies should invest in longitudinal replication of relationships. Research on leaders’ and followers’ commitment to change should continue to develop more complete models of interacting influence factors.

For team leaders and organizations, results underline the importance of individual support of team members. Thus, leaders need to be enabled to invest individual leadership in the long run. Also, leaders need to become aware of their own commitment toward the change and, going beyond, need to develop a positive bond to the change if they want to be able to act as successful role models.

This paper contributes to existing literature by offering a more detailed insight for researchers and practitioners into the effectiveness of transformational leadership in change by exploring the impact of different transformational leadership behaviors effecting followers’ commitment to change. Moreover, it provides important knowledge about the relevance of leaders’ own commitment to change as a moderator of effective leadership in change.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate line managers’ influence on employee usage of a web-based system for occupational health management.

Questionnaires were used to measure line managers’ transformational leadership at baseline and their change-supportive managerial activities during weeks 16–52. Employee initial (weeks 16–52) and sustained (weeks 53–144) use of the web-based system was measured by extracting their frequency of logins to the system from electronic records. Data were collected from six white-collar organizations from 2011 through 2013. Mixed Poisson regressions were used to analyze the influence of transformational leadership and change-supportive managerial activities on employee usage.

As predicted, line managers’ change-supportive activities influenced the employees’ initial and sustained use of the system. Line managers’ transformational leadership had no direct effect on employees’ use of the system, however transformational leadership was indirectly associated with employees’ initial and sustained use of the system through line managers’ change-supportive activities.

The study adds to the understanding of the role line managers’ play during the implementation of occupational health interventions. The findings suggest that the line managers’ change-supportive activities directed toward the intervention are important for employees’ initial and sustained use of the system. The influence of transformational leadership was indirect, suggesting that line managers may need to direct their leadership behaviors toward the intervention to facilitate implementation.

Drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study empirically tests the impact of transformational leadership on commitment to and intention to support organizational change, proposing self-efficacy as a mediating mechanism. This study also aims to study whether the extent of change in the organization moderates the proposed relationship between transformational leadership, self-efficacy and change reactions.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 298 employees going through a major organizational change. The proposed moderated mediation relationship was tested by using PROCESS macro.

The findings showed that self-efficacy mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and reactions to change. Moreover, the extent of changes experienced by the employees moderated the relationship between self-efficacy and outcome variables. In other words, in high change contexts, self-efficacy appeared as a more salient and instrumental resource leading to positive reactions.

The results guide change managers to display a transformational leadership style to enhance self-efficacy of change recipients to generate positive attitudes and behaviors during change. Also, this study shows that self-efficacy particularly gains importance when the extent of change is high.

This study makes several important contributions to the organizational change literature. First, it shows that leaders play a crucial role in generating resources that enhance employees' positive reactions to change. Second, the conditional factor of the extent of change has not received much attention in the literature. This study raises attention to the fact that the importance of such resources may differ across low versus high extent of change contexts.

This paper aims to investigate whether leaders whose transformational leadership behavior improves after training exhibit different psychological reactions compared to leaders whose leadership behavior does not improve.

The authors followed 56 leaders taking part in a transformational leadership training program. Questionnaire measures of leaders’ self-efficacy, positive affect, perspective taking, and transformational leadership behavior were obtained pre- and post-training.

Leaders whose self-efficacy, perspective taking and positive affect increased over the training period also reported improvements in their transformational leadership behavior. In addition, leaders whose positive affect increased were more likely to receive improved transformational leadership behavior ratings from their supervisors, team members and peers.

The study supports the proposition, derived from social cognitive theory that change in transformational leadership behavior is related to change in leaders’ psychological attributes. Further research is required to establish the direction of this relationship and whether leaders’ psychological reactions represent a means through which the effectiveness of leadership interventions can be improved.

Leaders’ psychological reactions should be monitored and supported during developmental interventions. Effective leadership training interventions are important not only to achieve change in behavior, but to avoid negative psychological outcomes for leaders.

The study is unusual because it explores the relationship between leader attributes and leadership behavior longitudinally, in a training context. The longitudinal analysis, focussing on change in leaders’ psychological attributes, allowed us to explain more variance in leaders’ reactions to training.