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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the effect of cultural and social acceptance on CEO leadership.

Several instruments were used to capture key concepts (i.e. Organisational Culture Profile, Marlowe‐Crowne Social Desirability Scale, Transformational Leadership Inventory, and Leader Reward and Punishment Questionnaire), which were examined using confirmatory factor analysis. Data were collected from 635 Australian CEOs.

The results of hierarchical multi‐regression analysis clarified the importance of self‐deception and impression management as influential context factors, and how both operate at the pinnacle of organisations. The study also identifies that transformational and transactional leadership behaviours were uniquely influenced by specific cultural dimensions, and suggests that CEOs use combinations of these behaviours to respond to four cultural dimensions (i.e. emphasis on rewards, performance orientation, innovation, and stability) in order to produce competitive advantages.

The study highlights how CEOs are still vulnerable to conforming to the social norms of their organisation and also how CEOs use a repertoire of leadership behaviours, in response to the importance of different cultural dimensions.

The paper contributes to the leadership literature by directly addressing how context impacts on CEO leadership in three specific areas: social acceptance needs, demographics and culture. Further, the study investigates CEO transformational and transactional leadership behaviours rather than global constructs, and directly addresses the common method variance issue.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the applicability of transformational leadership and substitutes-for-leadership theories in Malaysia’s and Pakistan’s work settings.

This study employed a survey-based approach using professional employees in both countries as respondents. In total, 215 responses to a web-based survey in Malaysia and 523 responses to a survey administered using personal methods in Pakistan were used for the analysis.

The results revealed that Malaysia’s leaders were rated high on the dimensions of transformational and transactional leadership. The transformational leadership dimensions produced desirable effects on subordinates’ outcomes in both samples, but the contingent punishment dimension of transactional leadership produced especially undesirable effects on subordinates’ outcomes. Substitutes for leadership also independently affected subordinates’ outcomes and produced similar effects on subordinates’ outcomes in both samples. In general, the effects in the Malaysian sample are larger than those in the Pakistani sample.

The results suggest that the transformational leadership style is effective in both cultures, but the transactional leadership style is culturally contingent. While leaders in collectivist cultures like Malaysia and Pakistan should practice more transformational leadership than transactional leadership, leaders in Pakistan should be particularly careful while practicing transactional leadership because of the society’s high level of collectivism and moderately high-power distance orientation.

The results suggest that the transformational leadership style is effective in both cultures, but the transactional leadership style is culturally contingent. While leaders in collectivist cultures like Malaysia and Pakistan should practice more transformational leadership than transactional leadership, leaders in Pakistan should be particularly careful while practicing transactional leadership because of the society’s low power distance orientation.

Since this study is the first to compare the applicability of western theories in collectivist cultures that differ significantly in their power distance orientation, it contributes meaningfully to the cross-culture leadership field.

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 the relationship between transformational leadership and effort-reward imbalance as well as the moderating role of overcommitment and subjective well-being. In particular, the study focuses on the transformational leadership component individualized consideration and its relationship with effort-reward imbalance.

Using linear hierarchical regression analyses, the authors tested four hypotheses on a broad sample of 229 German employees.

The results confirm the expected relationship between transformational leadership and effort-reward imbalance and that the strongest relationship exists with individualized consideration. However, there is no support for the hypothesized moderating effects.

First, the recruitment of the sample via fora and periodicals may bias the results. Second, the dependent and the independent variables were assessed with the same method, thus facilitating a common method bias. Third, the study underlies a cross-sectional design which does not allow drawing conclusions on causality.

The findings provide implications for leaders by showing that the most effective leadership behaviours are those encompassed by the transformational leadership component individualized consideration when it comes to reducing negative health effects of adverse working conditions. Furthermore, the results suggest that overcommitment plays a major role for employees’ effort-reward imbalance and should thus be addressed by specific training measures.

Researchers have devoted little attention to revealing how effort-reward imbalance can be avoided or reduced by leaders. The study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the relationship between effort-reward imbalance and transformational leadership.

This paper aims to deal with a study aimed at clarifying the relationship between the dimensions of the perceived transformational leadership style and work motivation in a sample of female employees.

A total of 168 Lithuanian employees participated in the empirical study. Work motivation was assessed using the work extrinsic and intrinsic motivation scale (Tremblay et al., 2009). The perceived transformational leadership style was assessed with the help of the transformational leadership inventory (Podsakoff et al., 1990).

The results revealed that both intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation of female employees was enhanced when the leader was perceived as a person articulating the vision of the future, providing an appropriate role model, fostering the acceptance of group goals and applying intellectual stimulation. High-performance expectations of the transformational leader lead to an increased level of women’s extrinsic motivation.

This study contributes to the limited empirical research into the role of discrete dimensions of transformational leadership in determining both intrinsic and extrinsic work motivation of female employees.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the construct validity of leadership styles. Although several theories of leadership emerged in the past decades, integrative research on leadership constructs is rare. Thus, for the first time, the present study critically tests whether the leadership constructs of transformational and transactional leadership, consideration and initiating structure, and leader‐member‐exchange are convergent, or whether they exhibit discriminant validities, as hypothesized by theory.

Applying hierarchical structural equation modeling to the multitrait‐multimethod (MTMM) approach, the present study explored the convergent and discriminant validity of leadership constructs based on data from multiple sources. Altogether, N=148 dyads of leaders and subordinates from various industries in Germany participated in the present study.

Results demonstrated evidence for the convergence of the leadership constructs.

In leadership feedback projects in organizations, practitioners should utilize multiple rating perspectives for adequate descriptions of leadership behaviors.

Interestingly, approximately the same amount of variance in the data was due to the rating sources as it was to the leadership constructs, suggesting strong method effects in leadership research. The present study was among the first MTMM approaches that addressed the construct validity of several leadership constructs simultaneously and thus, allows new insight into the overall network of leadership theories.

This study aimed to determine the indirect effects of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on innovation performance through the serial mediation of climate for innovation and individual creativity.

Data was collected from 139 employees working in various ICT and telecommunication industries in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The analysis results revealed positive and significant relationships between transactional leadership and the creation of a climate for innovation for individuals' creativity and innovation performance. The results also indicated employees' perceptions of a supportive climate for innovation mediation, the transformational and transactional leadership and individual’ creativity relationships.

This research suggests that investing in organizational climate improvement provides a dynamic platform for creativity and innovation in the workplace.

This study is one of the first to investigate the relationships in ICT and telecommunication organizations in a developing country, the UAE. The study includes associations between transformational and transactional leaderships and employees' sense of creativity and innovation performance and the impact of employees' perceptions of a supportive climate for innovation.

The purpose of the current study is to examine the impact of organizational leadership style and employee empowerment on employees’ perception of organizational reputation by testing a hypothesized model.

A quantitative on‐line survey was conducted with 700 randomly selected employees from diverse work units of a Fortune 500 company in the United States in February 2011.

The results showed that transformational leadership positively influences employees’ perception of organizational reputation, not only directly but also indirectly, through empowering employees. Transactional leadership has a significant negative direct effect on employees’ perception of organizational reputation. Employees who feel more empowered in terms of perceived competence and decision‐making control have a more favorable evaluation of organizational reputation.

By building links between organizational reputation and the two internal antecedent factors, organizational leadership and employee empowerment, the current work extended the list of internal characteristics of excellent public relations, filled the research gap on leadership and empowerment study in public relations, and contributed to the increasing body of knowledge on internal communication.

The findings suggest that what determines the employees’ views toward the company is how they feel they are treated and whether they have enough say in decision‐making. To build a favorable internal reputation, communication professionals should educate organizational leaders of all levels and engage them in strategic, interactive, empowering, democratic and relational‐oriented transformational leadership communication behavior.

This study was among the first empirical attempts to examine organizational leadership as an influencing factor for internal communication practice and outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and evaluate a leadership development program with focus on transformational leadership and communication. It is explored whether these aspects of leadership can be trained in the course of a two-day intervention. Furthermore, it is tested if pre-training differences among leaders have an influence on the effectiveness of participating in the leadership intervention.

In the study, 38 leaders took part in the two-day training session. The control group consisted of 59 leaders. Information was collected from participating leaders’ followers (n=356) on pre- and post-training measures of transformational leadership as well as on communication skills (attentive and impression-leaving style).

Results show that transformational leadership behaviors improved more after training in the experimental group (EG) than they did in the control group. Also, ratings of the attentive communication style improved more in the EG compared to the control group. Furthermore, participants of the leadership development program benefitted to different degrees from their training. Participants who initially had a medium score showed the best improvement.

The present study advances the scope of leadership development by also considering the trainability of communication skills. Also, insights on the contingency of training effects are provided.

This study aims to examine the effects of trait goal orientations (mastery, performance-prove and performance-avoid goals) on individual-level absorptive capacity (AC), ultimately adaptive performance. This study also explores the cross-level moderating effects of transformational leadership climate on these mediated relationships.

Data from 480 participants in 76 teams from accounting firms in Northeast Thailand were analyzed using the multilevel method.

Findings showed support for positive indirect effects from approach-related goal orientations (mastery and performance-prove) to adaptive performance via AC and a negative indirect effect from avoid goal orientation to adaptive performance via AC. Results showed that a transformational leadership climate strengthens the relationship between goal orientations and AC, but only when team members have a high level of approach-related goals.

This study extends previous work by providing an understanding of how a transformational leadership context and the differences in goal orientations interact to promote or impede an individual's AC. It also extends our understanding of the mechanism of how AC mediated the effects of trait goal orientations and transformational leadership climate on adaptive performance.