• Open access
  • Published: 09 December 2020

Impact of transformational leadership on work performance, burnout and social loafing: a mediation model

  • Hira Khan 1 ,
  • Maryam Rehmat   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3377-0082 2 , 3 ,
  • Tahira Hassan Butt 3 ,
  • Saira Farooqi 2 , 3 &
  • Javaria Asim 2 , 3  

Future Business Journal volume  6 , Article number:  40 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

184k Accesses

49 Citations

13 Altmetric

Metrics details

The aim of this research was to study the effect of transformational leadership on employees’ work outcomes which include their work performances and working burnout, and their working behavior such as social loafing at workplace. Also, it studies the impact of intrinsic motivation as a mediator between transformational leadership and other stated variables. A cross-sectional survey was conducted to collect data from 308 employees working in the telecommunication sector. To test the hypotheses, Model 4 of Process Hayes was used to test direct and mediating effects among transformational leadership and employees’ work outcomes and working behavior. The results showed that transformational leadership has a significant positive relationship with mediator intrinsic motivation. The results also concluded that work performance has positive significant relationship with transformational leadership. However, there is indirect and insignificant relationship of transformational leadership with working burnout and social loafing. Therefore, it can be stated that organizational leaders must have transformational attributes by getting informed of their employees well because transformational leader can inspire employees to achieve anticipated or significant outcomes. It gives employees self-confidence over specific jobs, as well as the power to make decisions once they have been trained.

Introduction

During the last two decades, transformational leadership has gained most conspicuous place in philosophy of leadership [ 81 ]. Therefore, it is not surprising that the current evolution in leadership theory and practice has attracted the interest of both practitioners and researchers and they exhibited great deal of interest toward exploring its ascendancy for organization and individuals as well [ 72 , 87 ]. Particularly, the studies conducted during the previous decades recommends that transformational leadership is considerably related to followers’ behaviors and performance [ 20 , 65 ]. In a review on progress in the domain of leadership printed in “Annual Review of Psychology,” Avolio et al. [ 8 ] stressed the need to establish mechanisms that connect leadership to vital organizational and individual outcomes. They further stressed the need to investigate the role of mediators, so as to clarify the noteworthiness of leadership for organizations. Chan and Mak [ 20 ] in their research contended that “a variety of different influence processes may be involved in transformational leadership yet there is still room for research to further examine the process of the relationship between transformational leadership and follower attitudes and behaviors.” Transformational leadership defined as leadership approach in which a leader transforms his followers, inspires them, builds trust, encourages them, admires their innovative ideas, and develops them [ 12 ], is presently the most extensively acknowledged definition in the leadership literature.

Transformational leadership can be implicated to managerial context. Transformational leadership which is the leader’s competency to get performance of employees beyond expectations, can be more helpful and beneficial in enhancing one’s ability to intrinsically motivate them. It can improve psychological empowerment as well [ 85 ]. Transformational leadership has four components which are: (i) idealized influence, (ii) inspirational motivation to enhance confidence, (iii) intellectual stimulation, and (iv) individualized consideration [ 13 ]. Idealized influence is shown when a leader efficiently makes provision of accurate sense of mission and appropriately visualizes it. Inspirational motivation can be defined as leadership attitude which deals with emotional traits of employees, builds confidence in employees about their performances, appropriately communicates and provides actual feedback [ 68 ]. Individual consideration refers to the support of leader for each follower. It may include training and coaching, allocating tasks according to the competence of each individual and supervision of performances [ 92 ]. Intellectual stimulation describes the effort of leader to motivate and encourage his employees to be more adaptive and follow new technical approaches according to the varied situation. It may be advantageous to overcome the cues and hindrances which occur at multi stages [ 14 ]. Transformational leaders can anticipate that employees will need transformational leadership when the work is more stressful and when the work is more meaningful [ 84 ].

Extant research on the transformational leadership tried to explore its “black box” and presented empirical confirmation of its direct fruitful consequences for followers’ outcomes including work performance [ 16 , 44 , 52 , 90 ], burnout [ 40 , 82 ], and social loafing [ 5 ]. Nevertheless, there exists some room for further research, explaining the specific mechanisms by which transformational leadership influence such individuals’ behavior and psychological state particularly at organizational level [ 16 ]. Hence, this study aims at providing new comprehension of how and why and under what circumstances transformational leadership influences work performance, burnout and social loafing of employees, in Pakistani context.

Transformational leadership tends to maximize the level of professional performance of work In addition to provided literature on association of transformational leadership and work performance; researchers indicate that organizations of diverse structures highly depend upon the performance of its workers. Past studies have empirically established the positive association between work performance and transformational leadership [ 9 ]. Transformational leaders inspire their followers to have shared vision of targeted goals and standards of performance defined by the organization and also facilitate them achieve it [ 4 ]. Another factor which is highly influenced by transformational leadership is employee’s burnout which may be decreased through this particular style of leadership. Prevalence of stress is highly probable in any organizational sector [ 73 ]. Transformational leadership is most influencing factor which enhances the employee’s ability to deal with all kind of circumstances as such leader provide supportive circumstances to employees so that they can maintain the optimum level of mental health through inspirational motivation and also enhances their confidence level [ 28 , 93 ].

“Social loafing is the inclination of putting less effort while working in a team than working alone” [ 5 ]. Transformational leader, while working in a group, follows a strategy in which he can allocate various assignments and tasks according to the competencies of employee and he must evaluate performances of each individual. Social loafing is a psychological aspect of an individual which may differ from situation to situation and individual to individual [ 55 ]. Leadership literature has established that individualized consideration by the leader may deflate the degree of social loafing [ 45 ].

Building on the previous literature, this research incorporated employee intrinsic motivation as a factor that explains the linkage of transformational leadership with employee work performance, burnout and social loafing. Intrinsic motivation which is “the implementation of an action for the inherent satisfaction rather than for external reasons” [ 63 ]. Undeniably, the motivation of current workforce is not much reliant on extrinsic rewards. Rather material rewards may decline job performance in complex jobs with diverse responsibilities [ 30 ]. Further, in order to perform their duties effectively in today’s dynamic work environment, the employees need to have an elastic and highly flexible work arrangement. For that reason and for instilling good motivation among workers, organizations not only offer extrinsic rewards to them but also plan to enhance their intrinsic motivation [ 63 ]. Transformational leadership is the leadership approach which contributes to present a clear and justified organizational vision and mission by motivating workers to work toward idea through developing association with employees, consider employees’ requirements and assisting them to exert their potential positively, participates to positive outcomes for an organization [ 31 ]. Employees whose work competencies are encouraged by the leader are more likely to have higher intrinsic motivation and resultantly perform better at work. They become more focused and try to accomplish organizational goals by taking their own interests. There also exists indirect association between employees’ burnout and transformational leadership through mediating effect of intrinsic motivation [ 28 ]. Transformational leaders focus more on individual requirements and they build strong association with their employees who are supposed to perform with higher objectives, which enhances employees’ intrinsic motivation. Such motivation keeps them away from burning out [ 6 ]. We further argued that intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and social loafing. Previous studies indicate that role of intrinsic motivation discourages social loafing as it does not happen circumstantially only, but it also happens whenever an employee is low in intrinsic motivation [ 5 ].

This research makes provision of significant contribution in the literature of organizational behavior by enriching our understanding of the conditions under which transformational leadership influences employee performance, burnout and social loafing. The findings of our research allow organizations and its management to comprehend how efficiently and effectively they can follow a policy or some kind of advanced strategy in order to intrinsically motivate their employees so that they can increase the level of work performance and deflate burnout and social loafing in employees.

Literature review

Transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation.

Envisioning visions and motivating are two core jobs of effective leadership [ 24 ]. According to traditional transformational leadership literature, transformational leaders guide and encourage employee mindfulness by enunciating a vision that escalates employees’ consciousness and consideration for the significance of organizational values, goals, and performances [ 42 ]. Thusly, fundamental to the theory on transformational leadership is a strong accentuation on the part of a combined vision; that is, an idealized arrangement of objectives that the organization seeks to accomplish one day [ 18 ]. Transformational leaders, through clear enunciation, have their utmost influence on the followers’ sentiments by cultivating a feeling of success and proficiency in them. Transformational leaders are much capable to improve organizational outcomes according to the market requirements by developing human resources and creating justified modifications [ 34 ]. The reason to acquire specific knowledge is associated with the degree that what is the level of intrinsic motivation of a person and how he is keen to get knowledge by developing particular competencies and meaningful learning [ 78 ]. Transformational leadership has power to enhance the ability of psychological empowerment which is referred as intrinsic motivation [ 85 ]. According to [ 74 ], the idea of motivation is known as “the set of reasons why people behave in the ways they do”, for example, intrinsic motivation is “the motivational state in which the employees are driven by their interests in the work rather than a contract-for-rewards approach to completing a task” [ 24 ]. A study by Koh et al. [ 51 ] identified that intrinsic motivation is highly influenced by the transformational leadership, as the transformational leader guides and supports effectively, self-motivation to be an effective and beneficial part of an organization increases as well.

Transformational leadership comprises four interconnected behavioral dimensions including “idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration” [ 11 ]. All behavioral dimensions can influence employees’ intrinsic motivation. First, transformational leaders utilize idealized influence and offer inspirational motivation through communicating an alluring collective vision [ 91 ]. This collective vision provides a meaningful idea of team’s tasks by a leader which increase the intrinsic motivation of employees [ 75 ]. Transformational leadership can develop positive outcomes such as optimism and high self-interests in all members of team which ultimately increase the pleasure and job satisfaction relevant to the task [ 26 ]. Second, the intellectual stimulation of transformational leaders boosts team members’ confidence to develop more effective emotional and situational stability and resolving their problems by their own selves [ 11 ]. They are also motivated to understand and encourage the basic knowledge and skills of other coworkers to share new ideologies. Third, transformational leaders differentiate individuals’ ideas and interests, promote their ideas to describe their uniqueness, and consider them through individualized consideration [ 11 ]. When employees observe the behaviors of their leaders, all of them feel motivated and try to construct one another’s ideas and competencies to create innovative solutions of problems. Therefore, in this article, we expect that all dimensions of transformational leadership encourage employees to invest higher willingness and energy in their work and tasks which exhibit their higher intrinsic motivation. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that:

Transformational leadership relates positively to intrinsic motivation.

Transformational leadership, intrinsic motivation and work performance

Intrinsic motivation is highly associated with the work performance. Intrinsic motivation may be defined as “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence but it is rare for employees to experience intrinsic motivation in all of their tasks” [ 76 ]. Intrinsic motivation is generated for self-developing attributes that refers to make an individual ready to be the part of learning procedure without having interests of extrinsic rewards [ 83 ]. Intrinsic motivation is basically the degree of an individual’s interest in a task completion and how he engages himself in work [ 3 ]. It describes the psychological development process with an employee’s performance [ 85 ].

According to recent operational settings, enhancing the employees’ motivation has become one of most impactful human resources strategy. Most of the organizations are tending to build up, sustain and grow their HR strategies, just to motivate their employees so that short-term and long-term goals and objectives can be achieved. In recent researches, there are numerous variables which can be influenced by employees’ intrinsic motivation like performance, creativity, and relevant outcomes. For example, it has been stated that behavior of an individual influences the work outcomes which are performance and quality as well [ 10 ]. It is strongly evidenced that motivation has a most important role between cognitive abilities and work performance. Gist [ 37 ] suggested that short term goals can be achieved through self-interest of an individual. Also, a research indicates that there is a significant and direct relationship of intrinsic motivation and job performance [ 43 ]. Furthermore, an employee’s intrinsic motivation illustrates an important contribution in organizational progress and growth [ 39 ]. The work performance indices are constructed for the degree of performance, not only for the individual level always; it also includes group and organizational performances [ 2 ]. In most employment situations, where intrinsic motivation of an employee is supposed to be high, the employee usually tries to acquire continual employment,and he/she develops interpersonal associations with his subordinates, perform better at job as they take pleasure in the process of finishing their tasks effectively [ 38 ]. Conversely, if the worker feels de-motivated, it can be resulted in low performance of work. Thus intrinsic motivation may be concluded with better performance of work while meeting organizational targets and goals [ 7 ].

As we propose the direct relationship of intrinsic motivation and performance, it may be stated that the intrinsic motivation can actively influence the performance of work as a significant workplace outcome [ 19 ]. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

Intrinsic motivation relates positively to employee work performance.

In current research, we posit that intrinsic motivation is one of the main mechanisms by which transformational leaders influence employees’ job performance. Transformational leaders may help to ensure individual’s inner motivation to perform a task efficiently which in turn increases their work performance .These leadership approaches are advantageous for both individual and organizational growth [ 36 ]. In fact, it is justified to examine how leaders motivate their employees and this motivation enhances their performance [ 12 ]. In line with the previous literature [ 22 , 23 ], we expect that transformational leadership enhances individuals’ intrinsic motivation which in turn will significantly predict employee job performance. Intrinsic motivation is known as self-directed type of motivation and represents the highest commitment and stability with the self [ 25 ]. A variety of researches indicate that higher intrinsic motivation result in better performance [ 89 ] as intrinsic motivation inspires and encourages employees to work more efficiently. Therefore, it can be hypothesized:

Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and work performance.

Transformational leadership, intrinsic motivation and employee’s working burnout

Intrinsically motivated employees persistently focus on their tasks and jobs because they find themselves more focused, attentive and exert their best efforts while being a part of an organization and in achieving the goals of their employing organization [ 76 ]. Burnout is a psychological and mental condition which happens in response to high stress level at job; it is a multi-dimensional concept which covers the following three aspects: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased personal focus for accomplishment of goals [ 77 ]. Burnout affects the interpersonal relationship of employees too [ 58 ].

Prior research indicates that there is contrary effect of intrinsic motivation on employee’s working burnout [ 70 ]. Intrinsically motivated employees find their jobs more interesting, are more optimistic, put more effort in their work, and have higher perseverance level because they gain contentment and fulfillment from performing a task itself [ 15 ]. Vallerand [ 88 ] in his study exhibit that “employees with high intrinsic motivation have higher level of vitality, positive effect, self-esteem, absorption, concentration, effort, and persistence” and when such employees went through the felling of burnout, they have more personal resources to surmount this situation. Such employees feel less exhausted, less stressed and more focused toward contributing in organization’s progress [ 49 ]. Intrinsically motivated employees feel less pressure and low stress level rather than the employees who are low in motivation [ 69 , 71 ]. Intrinsic motivation of employees’ can be negatively associated with their burnout [ 70 ].Therefore; the employees who are high in intrinsic motivation can decrease their burnout at workplace [ 50 ]. Thus, it can be hypothesized that:

Intrinsic motivation is negatively associated to employee’s working burnout.

In current research, we propose that intrinsic motivation plays a mediating role between transformational leadership and burnout. Burnout is the major concern for organizations as it influences the relevant outcomes. It results in low productivity and commitment. Hence, it causes the high turnover and absenteeism in employees [ 82 ]. Studies indicate that leaders highly contribute to employees’ health and welfare as well [ 80 ]. But the relationship between leadership behaviors and employee burnout is less studied yet [ 41 ]. As mentioned earlier, there exists a positive relationship between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation which in turn make them more competent, teach them how to handle and manage stressful conditions and reduce their burnout. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship of transformational leadership and employee’s working burnout.

Transformational leadership, intrinsic motivation and social loafing

Social loafing is defined as the tendency of individuals who exert less effort and their productivity decreases when working in groups than working individually [ 21 , 33 , 57 , 79 ]. It is a negative employee behavior and is particularly shown by individuals with lower motivation [ 1 ]. These kinds of behaviors can be resulted in low productivity and poor commitment toward a task [ 62 ] and organization as well.

Social loafing is common practice and can be observed in every organizational setting, across age and gender and in different professions and various cultures [ 46 ]. This is more alarming that it can be seen at every single workplace and considered as misconduct. The variety of factors is studied in influence of social loafing, but there is still an insufficiency of individual inherent factors such as intrinsic motivation which is part of this research framework.

“Intrinsic motivation which describes an inherent tendency that individuals engage in activities due to their inner interests, pleasure and satisfaction” [ 70 ] is negatively linked to Social loafing. George [ 33 ] established in his study on 221 salespeople that intrinsic task involvement is negatively linked to social loafing. He further exerted that intrinsically motivated individuals may have self realization that their efforts are vital for the success of their team/group and for organization as well and therefore they are less likely to be engaged in social loafing. He/she would try his/her own best to exert extra effort to accomplish the goals and tasks assigned by the leader.

Therefore, we hypothesize that:

Intrinsic motivation is negatively linked to social loafing.

Intrinsic motivation may be described as the inherent process that initiates attributes, behaviors and what defines people to moves or act [ 27 ]. Self-determination theory indicates that there are different levels of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is at the most independent end of the scale because an individual opts to get engaged in any conduct according to his own choice [ 32 ]. A leader motivates his employees by incorporated strategies which results in better achievement of goals and objectives of a firm or organization. Gilbert et al. [ 35 ]. Social loafing is defined as a reduced amount of effort and motivation while being a part of group or working in a team as compared to working individually [ 46 ]. Social loafing is well-known phenomena and can be found in all of the organizations, across gender, and age and in various occupations and different cultures [ 46 ].

Social loafing is considered as a big hindrance in organizational growth as well. It causes low potential [ 61 ], low productivity [ 29 ], and low motivation of other team members too [ 67 ]. It decreases the overall efficiency, productivity and performance of the team [ 47 ]. Social loafing is widely spread term which is also known as social disease [ 54 ].

In line with this connection, social loafing is a big moral and social issue since it is an option that “involves modifying the life plan of another individual or group of individuals” [ 60 ]. On contrast, if a transformational leader motivates his employees and encourages their performance on individual basis, then through individualized considerations and inspirational motivation, social loafing can be decreased. Therefore, it can be hypothesized:

Intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship of transformational leadership and social loafing.

Mediating role of intrinsic motivation between transformational leadership and social loafing

(Fig.  1 ).

figure 1

Theoretical framework

Sample and data collection

The data was collected through survey via emails, online surveys and printed questionnaires through convenience sampling from individuals working in the telecommunication sector. The participants were informed about the objective of this study and the assurance of confidentiality and anonymity of their responses. Respondents were assured that their information will not be assessed by any individuals except those who are authorized. After removing the duplicates, outliers and responses with missing data, we obtained 308 valid responses for further data analysis Table  1 depicts the demographic characteristics of the respondents.

  • Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership was measured by McColl-Kennedy and Anderson [ 59 ] four-item scale. Six-point Likert scale (1—strongly disagree to 6 —strongly agree) was used to measure responses. This is the most widely used scale to measure transformational leadership. Cronbach’s alpha for transformational leadership scale is 0.84.

  • Intrinsic motivation

In this study, Liu et al. [ 56 ] four-item scale was adopted to measure intrinsic motivation. To record the responses five-point Likert scale was used (1 —strongly disagree to 5—strongly agree). Cronbach’s alpha for intrinsic motivation scale is 0.89.

  • Work performance

To measure work performance [ 19 ] four-item scale was adopted. Five-point Likert scale (1—much worse to 5—much better) was used to measure responses. Cronbach’s alpha of work performance scale is 0.80.

  • Working burnout

Working burnout was measured by Kristensen et al. [ 53 ]. Seven items with five-point Likert scale (1 –never to 5—always) was used. Cronbach’s alpha of burnout scale is 0.88.

  • Social loafing

Social loafing was measured by Akgunduz and Eryilmaz [ 1 ]. Four items with five-point Likert scale (1—strongly disagree to 5—strongly agree) was used. Cronbach’s alpha of social loafing scale is 0.80.

Data analysis

After data collection, the reliability, correlation was calculated by using SPSS software. Research model was tested using Hayes Process Model 4.

Descriptive statistics

Table  2 describes descriptive statistics of all the study variables including the mean, standard deviation, and correlation. Correlation coefficients are in the anticipated directions and provide preliminary support for our study hypotheses. Our results depicts that transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation ( r  = 0. 29, p  < 0.01) are positively and significantly correlated. Further intrinsic motivation is significantly associated with work performance ( r  = .30, p  < 0.01); working burnout ( r  = − 0.59, p  < 0.01); social loafing ( r  = − 0.15, p  < 0.01).

Reliability analysis

To examine the consistency of the variables, reliability analysis is calculated. The reliabilities of all the variables with number of items are summarized in Table  3 . The values between 0.84 and 0.8 indicate good reliability. The reliability of transformational leadership is 0.84 which is good, and intrinsic motivation shows another good reliability which is 0.89. Working burnout shows 0.88 reliability. The reliability of work performance is 0.8 and the reliability of social loafing is 0.8 which is also good. So this explains that the data used is reliable.

Hypothesis testing

Results of mediation for work performance.

Firstly, we investigated the impact of Transformational Leadership (X) on Work Performance (Y) through mediating factor of Intrinsic Motivation (M). Results justify that total effect of transformational leadership on work performance (path c, Fig.  2 ) is significant ( β  = 0.13, t  = 3.07, p  < 0.01) as shown in Table  4 . The relationship between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation (path a, Fig.  4 ) is highly significant and positive which support Hypothesis 1 also ( β  = 0.31, t  = 5.20, p  < 0.01). Furthermore, the findings showed that the relationship between Intrinsic Motivation and Work Performance (path b, Fig.  2 ) is positive and significant relationship ( β  = 0.19, t  = 4.79, p  < 0.01).

figure 2

Mediation model—work performance

Our overall findings represent that there is positive and significant impact of transformational leadership on work performance (path c ′, Fig.  2 ) through the mediation of intrinsic motivation ( β  = 0.07, t  = 1.68, p  > 0.01) which accepts Hypothesis 3.

Results for mediation for working burnout

In this model we studied the relationship of Transformational Leadership(X) and Working Burnout (Y) through mediating role Intrinsic Motivation (M). Results indicated that total effect of transformational leadership on working burnout is significant ( β  = − 0.19, t  = − 3.51, p  < 0.01 We examined the relationship between the mediator, Intrinsic Motivation and the dependent variable, Working Burnout (path b , Fig.  3 ). The findings showed a significant and negative relationship ( β  = − 0.50, t  = − 11.98, p  < 0.01). This finding supports Hypothesis 4. As it is shown in Table  5 the final results determined a significant relationship between transformational leadership and working burnout with mediation of intrinsic motivation (path c ′, Fig.  3 ) ( β  = − 0.03, t  = − 0.66, p  > 0.01). Therefore Hypothesis 5 is accepted.

figure 3

Mediation model—working burnout

Results for mediation for social loafing

Our third and last finding for studied relationship between transformational leadership and social loafing through mediator intrinsic motivation, are presented in Table  6 . According to the total effect model, the relationship between transformational leadership and social loafing (path c , Fig.  4 ) is significant and negative ( β  = − 0.32, t  = − 9.57, p  < 0.01) as shown in Table  6 .

figure 4

Mediation model—social loafing

The outcomes showed that intrinsic motivation and social loafing (path b , Fig.  4 ) are insignificantly and related relationship ( β  = − 0.01, t  = − 0.31, p  > 0.01) which opposes Hypothesis 6.

Our last finding determined that transformational leadership does not have a significant negative impact on social loafing (path c ′, Fig.  3 ), while controlling intrinsic motivation ( β  = − 0.32, t  = − 9.07, p  < 0.01). Thus Hypothesis 7 is not accepted. Thus, it can be resulted that there is no mediation.

Theoretical contributions

Although, previous researches have vastly recognized the direct impact of transformational leadership on positive employee work outcomes [ 17 , 48 ], yet not all employees do not respond to transformational leadership optimistically [ 66 ]. This study overall, made an important contribution to the available literature mainly by including variables that are very essential for all work environments that are aiming toward high employee motivation and performance. The current study is a unique attempt to look at the relationship between of transformational leadership, employees’ work performance, working burnout, and social loafing and intrinsic motivation in Asian context. This study contributes to the existing literature on transformational leadership since it is among the first to investigate the indirect impact of transformational leadership on employees’ work performance, working burnout, and social loafing through intrinsic motivation. Providing empirical evidence for association between transformational leadership (independent variable), work performance, working burnout and social loafing (dependent variables) through the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation. Our empirical results provide support for our hypothesized model except for the indirect effect of transformational leadership on social loafing through intrinsic motivation. Transformational leadership consists of four elements which are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and Individualized consideration [ 13 ]. All of these elements showed very good reliability and consistency with each other. These elements actively participate to affect the outcome of intrinsic motivation [ 85 ].

This study shows that transformational leadership has a significant and positive relationship with employees’ intrinsic motivation. Previous literature supports this finding that transformational leadership promotes motivation in employees and develops positive psychological states such as meaningfulness of work, experienced responsibility for the outcomes and knowledge of work results. It indicates that transformational leadership directly exerts its influence by helping employees or followers to think more positively about themselves and their tasks, by enhancing the quality of their relationships, and by creating environments that are fair, respectful, and supportive [ 86 ] and all of these factors contribute positively toward employee’s self motivation toward his/her work (i.e., intrinsic motivation).

The positive elements of transformational leadership bring out positive psychological states by escalating intrinsic motivation among employees. Employees with increased intrinsic motivation are more effective and efficient toward their work performances. They are supposed to be converted into responsive and perform efficiently in their work [ 64 ].

This study results showed significant positive relationship of transformational leadership on working burnout through intrinsic motivation. When a transformational leader indicates support for honest and fair matters associated with employees, the employee feels less exhausted and motivated. Intrinsically motivated employees who are driven by enjoyment and interest in their work are more likely to work hard at their jobs and feel less fatigue, less emotional exhaustion, and increased desire to participate in the organization [ 49 ].

Finally, it was examined that how transformational leadership impact social loafing through Intrinsic motivation. Findings depicts that although Social loafing has a significant and negative relationship with transformational leader, but their indirect relationship through intrinsic motivation is not significant The reason behind can be that the direct strong association between transformational leader and social loafing as “transactional leaders effectively inspire followers to identify with a mission while rallying them to work together to achieve organizational objectives.” Further, social loafing in employees is also effected significantly by other factors such as workload, organizational culture, tenure of job. etc.

Practical implications

Our study also provides several practical implications for organizations. Transformational leaders who realize the significance of intrinsic motivation for employees will adopt such behaviors that are conducive for development employees’ intrinsic motivation at the workplace. The results of current study confirmed that transformational leadership through fostering intrinsic motivation create such environment which is stress free and fruitful for employee effective performance. One way to exhibit these behaviors by managers is to aim at encouraging motivation among employees based on their inherent happiness and enjoyment. Another way to enhance employees’ intrinsic motivation and involvement toward organizational success is to value their contributions and sharing organizational goals and objectives with their workers. Further, it is very essential for organizational leaders to be transformed by being informed of their employees well because transformational leader can inspire people to achieve unexpected or remarkable results. It gives workers autonomy over specific jobs, as well as the authority to make decisions once they have been trained. In that the leader can inspire workers to find better ways of achieving a goal as leadership can mobilize people into groups that can get work done, and morale, in that transformational leaders raise the well-being and motivation level of a group through excellent connection. The findings of this study also stressed the need of designing leadership coaching and training programs in order to develop transformational leadership which may include “programs for communication, motivation, and brainstorming, to train employees with the necessary resources to be more articulate and inspirational as well as to think out of the box”.

Limitations and future directions

The first limitation of this research is that cross-sectional survey has been conducted. There may be ambiguity in establishing causal direction. Results may vary while collecting data at various times. It is suggested to conduct longitudinal study design in future research to see how impact of transformational leadership on employee outcomes varies over time. Next, it represented data from only the telecom sector of Lahore, Pakistan which may limit the study generalizability it would have been advantageous to conduct this research across the diverse sectors and n different context. Another limitation of this research is that there can be a probability of response bias as all the data was collected through same source i.e., employees. For example, a person can have deliberate falsification by quoting false responses of statements, just to attain social desirability. An employee in the organization may have high degrees of social loafing but he may not state it appropriately as well. Future researchers may collect data from different sources like work performance data can be collected from supervisors.

Existing literature and this research too is having high tendency toward constructive and significant outcomes to discover impact of transformational leadership so it is suggested that in future studies impact of transformational leadership should be examined in relation to more negative employee outcomes such as turnover intention and cyber loafing.

It is also recommended to see the impact of other mediators like emotional stability between transformational leadership and employees’ various outcomes.

Furthermore, future studies can also observe the effect of different moderators such as performance appraisal politics and contingent awards on the existing research model. It might prove valuable.

Future studies can also respond to the limitations of current research by collecting data across different business sectors (education, banking, etc.) of diverse locations.

This research contributes to the field of organizational behavior by enhancing our knowledge on how a transformational leader upgrades employees’ positive work outcomes by improving their intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, their increased intrinsic motivation will develop their positive work outcomes by increasing employees’ work performance and the same time reducing their burnout and work stress. We hope that our study will stimulate future endeavors to advance our understanding in this domain.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Akgunduz Y, Eryilmaz G (2018) Does turnover intention mediate the effects of job insecurity and co-worker support on social loafing? Int J Hosp Manag 68:41–49

Google Scholar  

Aleksynska M (2018) Temporary employment, work quality, and job satisfaction. J Comp Econ 46(3):722–735

Ambrose ML, Kulik CT (1999) Old friends, new faces: motivation research in the 1990s. J Manag 25(3):231–292

Anderson HJ, Baur JE, Griffith JA, Buckley MR (2017) What works for you may not work for (Gen) Me: limitations of present leadership theories for the new generation. Leadersh Q 28(1):245–260

Arda ÖA, Yıldız B (2019) The moderating role of transformational leadership on the relationship between careerism and social loafing behaviors: a propositional review. In: Handbook of research on contemporary approaches in management and organizational strategy. IGI Global, pp 226–247

Arnold KA, Connelly CE, Gellatly IR, Walsh MM, Withey MJ (2017) Using a pattern-oriented approach to study leaders: implications for burnout and perceived role demand. J Organ Behav 38(7):1038–1056

Arnulf JK, Dysvik A, Larsen KR (2018) Measuring semantic components in training and motivation: a methodological introduction to the semantic theory of survey response. Hum Resour Dev Q 30:17–38

Avolio BJ, Walumbwa FO, Weber TJ (2009) Leadership: current theories, research, and future directions. Annu Rev Psychol 60:421–449

Barling J, Weber T, Kelloway EK (1996) Effects of transformational leadership training on attitudinal and financial outcomes: a field experiment. J Appl Psychol 81(6):827

Barrick MR, Parks L, Mount MK (2005) Self-monitoring as a moderator of the relationships between personality traits and performance. Pers Psychol 58(3):745–767

Bass BM, Riggio RE (2006) Transformational leadership, 2nd edn. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah

Bass BM (1985) Leadership and performance beyond expectations. Collier Macmillan, London

Bass BM (1990) From transactional to transformational leadership: learning to share the vision. Org Dyn 18(3):19–31

Bednall TC, Rafferty AE, Shipton H, Sanders K, Jackson JC (2018) Innovative behaviour: how much transformational leadership do you need? Br J Manag 29(4):796–816

ten Brummelhuis LL, Ter Hoeven CL, Bakker AB, Peper B (2011) Breaking through the loss cycle of burnout: the role of motivation. J Occup Organ Psychol 84(2):268–287

Buil I, Martínez E, Matute J (2019) Transformational leadership and employee performance: the role of identification, engagement and proactive personality. Int J Hosp Manag 77:64–75

Burke CS, Sims DE, Lazzara EH, Salas E (2007) Trust in leadership: a multi-level review and integration. Leadersh Q 18(6):606–632

Carton AM, Murphy C, Clark JR (2014) A (blurry) vision of the future: how leader rhetoric about ultimate goals influences performance. Acad Manag J 57:1544–1570

Çetin F, Aşkun D (2018) The effect of occupational self-efficacy on work performance through intrinsic work motivation. Manag Res Rev 41(2):186–201

Chan SCH, Mak WM (2014) Transformational leadership, pride in being a follower of the leader and organizational commitment. Leadersh Organ Dev J 35(8):674–690

Chang Y, Hou RJ, Wang K, Cui AP, Zhang CB (2020) Effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on social loafing in online travel communities. Comput Hum Behav 109:106360

Charbonneau D, Barling J, Kelloway EK (2001) Transformational leadership and sports performance: the mediating role of intrinsic motivation 1. J Appl Soc Psychol 31(7):1521–1534

Conchie SM (2013) Transformational leadership, intrinsic motivation, and trust: a moderated-mediated model of workplace safety. J Occup Health Psychol 18(2):198

Chen CHV, Li HH, Tang YY (2009) Transformational leadership and creativity: exploring the mediating effects of creative thinking and intrinsic motivation. Int J Manag Enterp Dev 6(2):198–211

Cox AE, Ullrich-French S, Tylka TL, McMahon AK (2019) The roles of self-compassion, body surveillance, and body appreciation in predicting intrinsic motivation for physical activity: cross-sectional associations, and prospective changes within a yoga context. Body Image 29:110–117

Deci EL, Ryan RM (1985) The general causality orientations scale: self-determination in personality. J Res Pers 19(2):109–134

Deci EL, Ryan RM (2008) Self-determination theory: a macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Can Psychol 49(3):182

Diebig M, Bormann KC, Rowold J (2017) Day-level transformational leadership and followers’ daily level of stress: a moderated mediation model of team cooperation, role conflict, and type of communication. Eur J Work Organ Psychol 26(2):234–249

Duffy MK, Shaw JD (2000) The Salieri syndrome: consequences of envy in groups. Small Group Res 31(1):3–23

Erez M, Gopher D, Arzi N (1990) Effects of goal difficulty, self-set goals, and monetary rewards on dual task performance. Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 47(2):247–269

Fitzgerald S, Schutte NS (2010) Increasing transformational leadership through enhancing self-efficacy. J Manag Dev 29(5):495–505

Gagné M, Deci EL (2005) Self-determination theory and work motivation. J Organ Behav 26(4):331–362

George JM (1992) Extrinsic and intrinsic origins of perceived social loafing in organizations. Acad Manag J 35(1):191–202

Ghasabeh MS, Soosay C, Reaiche C (2015) The emerging role of transformational leadership. J Dev Areas 49(6):459–467

Gilbert S, Horsman P, Kelloway EK (2016) The motivation for transformational leadership scale. Leadersh Organ Dev J 49(6):459–467

Gillet N, Fouquereau E, Bonnaud-Antignac A, Mokounkolo R, Colombat P (2013) The mediating role of organizational justice in the relationship between transformational leadership and nurses’ quality of work life: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. Int J Nurs Stud 50(10):1359–1367

Gist ME (1987) Self-efficacy: implications for organizational behavior and human resource management. Acad Manag Rev 12(3):472–485

Grant AM (2008) Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. J Appl Psychol 93(1):48

Gumusluoglu L, Ilsev A (2009) Transformational leadership, creativity, and organizational innovation. J Bus Res 62(4):461–473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2007.07.032

Article   Google Scholar  

Hildenbrand K, Sacramento CA, Binnewies C (2018) Transformational leadership and burnout: the role of thriving and followers’ openness to experience. J Occup Health Psychol 23(1):31

De Hoogh AH, Den Hartog DN (2009) Neuroticism and locus of control as moderators of the relationships of charismatic and autocratic leadership with burnout. J Appl Psychol 94(4):1058

Jensen UT, Bro LL (2018) How transformational leadership supports intrinsic motivation and public service motivation: the mediating role of basic need satisfaction. Am Rev Pub Admin 48(6):535–549

Joo BKB, Park S (2010) Career satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention. Leadersh Organ Dev J 31(6):482–500

Judge TA, Piccolo RF (2004) Transformational and transactional leadership: a metaanalytic test of their relative validity. J Appl Psychol 89(5):755–768

Kahai SS, Sosik JJ, Avolio BJ (2003) Effects of leadership style, anonymity, and rewards on creativity-relevant processes and outcomes in an electronic meeting system context. Leadersh Q 14(4–5):499–524

Karau SJ, Williams KD (1993) Social loafing: a meta-analytic review and theoretical integration. J Pers Soc Psychol 65(4):681

Karau SJ, Williams KD (1995) Social loafing: research findings, implications, and future directions. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 4(5):134–140

Khattak MN, Zolin R, Muhammad N (2020) Linking transformational leadership and continuous improvement. Manag Res Rev 43(8):931–950

Kim S (2017) National culture and public service motivation: investigating the relationship using Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions. Int Rev Admin Sci 83(1):23–40

Kim J (2018) The contrary effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on burnout and turnover intention in the public sector. Int J Manpow 39(3):486–500

Koh D, Lee K, Joshi K (2019) Transformational leadership and creativity: a meta-analytic review and identification of an integrated model. J Organ Behav 40(6):625–650

Kovjanic S, Schuh SC, Jonas K (2013) Transformational leadership and performance: an experimental investigation of the mediating effects of basic needs satisfaction and work engagement. J Occup Organ Psychol 86(4):543–555

Kristensen TS, Borritz M, Villadsen E, Christensen KB (2005) The copenhagen burnout inventory: a new tool for the assessment of burnout. Work & Stress 19(3):192–207

Latane B, Williams K, Harkins S (1979) Social loafing. Psychol Today 110:104–106

Liden RC, Wayne SJ, Jaworski RA, Bennett N (2004) Social loafing: a field investigation. J Manag 30(2):285–304

Liu Y, Raker JR, Lewis JE (2018) Evaluating student motivation in organic chemistry courses: moving from a lecture-based to a flipped approach with peer-led team learning. Chem Educ Res Pract 19(1):251–264

Luo Z, Qu H, Marnburg E (2013) Justice perceptions and drives of hotel employee social loafing behavior. Int J Hosp Manag 33:456–464

Maslach C (2003) Job burnout: new directions in research and intervention. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 12(5):189–192

McColl-Kennedy JR, Anderson RD (2002) Impact of leadership style and emotions on subordinate performance. Leadersh Q 13(5):545–559

Mihelič KK, Culiberg B (2019) Reaping the fruits of another’s labor: the role of moral meaningfulness, mindfulness, and motivation in social loafing. J Bus Ethics 160(3):713–727

Monzani L, Ripoll P, Peiró JM, Van Dick R (2014) Loafing in the digital age: the role of computer mediated communication in the relation between perceived loafing and group affective outcomes. Comput Hum Behav 33:279–285

Mulvey PW, Klein HJ (1998) The impact of perceived loafing and collective efficacy on group goal processes and group performance. Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 74(1):62–87

Nguyen HM, Mai LT, Huynh TL (2019) The role of transformational leadership toward work performance through intrinsic motivation: a study in the Pharmaceutical field in Vietnam. J Asian Finance Econ Bus 6(4):201–212

Panatik SAB, Badri SKZ, Rajab A, Rahman HA, Shah IM (2011) The impact of work family conflict on psychological well-being among school teachers in Malaysia. Proc Soc Behav Sci 29:1500–1507

Piccolo RF, Colquitt JA (2006) Transformational leadership and job behaviors: the mediating role of core job characteristics. Acad Manag J 49(2):327–340

Porter LW, Bigley GA (2003) Motivation and transformational leadership: Some organizational context issues. In: Allen RW, Porter LW, Angle HL (eds) Organizational influence processes. Routledge, New York, pp 263–274

Price KH, Harrison DA, Gavin JH (2006) Withholding inputs in team contexts: member composition, interaction processes, evaluation structure, and social loafing. J Appl Psychol 91(6):1375–1384

Rafferty AE, Griffin MA (2004) Dimensions of transformational leadership: conceptual and empirical extensions. Leadersh Q 15(3):329–354

Robbins S, Judge T (2014) Comportements organisationnels. Pearson Education

Ryan RM, Deci EL (2000) Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. Contemp Educ Psychol 25(1):54–67

Schaufeli WB, Leiter MP, Maslach C (2009) Burnout: 35 years of research and practice. Career Dev Int 14(3):204–220

Sahu S, Pathardikar A, Kumar A (2018) Transformational leadership and turnover: mediating effects of employee engagement, employer branding, and psychological attachment. Leadersh Organ Dev J 39(31):82–99. https://doi.org/10.1108/LODJ-12-2014-0243

Saleem S, Ali A, Akhtar I (2016) Impact of transformational leadership on job stress and burnout: the mediating role of self-efficacy. Int J Univ Teknol Malaysia 1–16

Santrock JW (2002) Life-span development, 8th edn. McGraw-Hill

Shamir B, House RJ, Arthur MB (1993) The motivational effects of charismatic leadership: a self-concept based theory. Organ Sci 4(4):577–594

Shin J, Grant AM (2019) Bored by interest: how intrinsic motivation in one task can reduce performance on other tasks. Acad Manag J 62(2):415–436

Shoshan HN, Venz L, & Sonnentag S (2019, July) Being recovered as an antecedent of emotional labor: a diary study. In: Academy of management proceedings, vol. 2019, no. 1. Academy of Management, Briarcliff Manor, p 14363

Silva WF, Redondo RP, Cárdenas MJ (2018) Intrinsic motivation and its association with cognitive, actitudinal and previous knowledge processes in engineering students. Contemp Engin Sci. https://doi.org/10.12988/CES.2018.79114

Simms A, Nichols T (2014) Social loafing: a review of the literature. J Manag Policy Pract 15(1):58

Skakon J, Nielsen K, Borg V, Guzman J (2010) Are leaders’ well-being, behaviours and style associated with the affective well-being of their employees? A systematic review of three decades of research. Work Stress 24(2):107–139

Sosik JJ, Jung D (2018) Intellectual stimulation: the rational side of transformational leadership. In: Full range leadership development. Routledge, pp 132–158

Tafvelin S, Nielsen K, von Thiele Schwarz U, Stenling A (2019) Leading well is a matter of resources: leader vigour and peer support augments the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout. Work Stress 33(2):156–172

Tanneberg D, Peters J, Rueckert E (2019) Intrinsic motivation and mental replay enable efficient online adaptation in stochastic recurrent networks. Neural Netw 109:67–80

Tepper BJ, Dimotakis N, Lambert LS, Koopman J, Matta FK, Man Park H, Goo W (2018) Examining follower responses to transformational leadership from a dynamic, person-environment fit perspective. Acad Manag J 61(4):1343–1368

Thomas KW, Velthouse BA (1990) Cognitive elements of empowerment: an “interpretive” model of intrinsic task motivation. Acad Manag Rev 15(4):666–681

Turnnidge J, Côté J (2017) Transformational coaching workshop: applying a person-centred approach to coach development programs. Int Sport Coach J 4(3):314–325

Udin U (2020) Transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: an empirical investigation. Revista ESPACIOS 41(01)

Vallerand IA (2017) Burnout among MD/PhD trainees: the forgotten subgroup. Acad Med 92(7):906

Vanstraelen A (2019) Discussion of “how does intrinsic motivation improve auditor judgment in complex audit tasks?”. Contemp Account Res 36(1):132–138

Walumbwa FO, Hartnell CA (2011) Understanding transformational leadership–employee performance links: the role of relational identification and self-efficacy. J Occup Organ Psychol 84(1):153–172

Wang XHF, Kim TY, Lee DR (2016) Cognitive diversity and team creativity: effects of team intrinsic motivation and transformational leadership. J Bus Res 69(9):3231–3239

Yukl G (1999) An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories. Leadersh Q 10(2):285–305

Zwingmann I, Wegge J, Wolf S, Rudolf M, Schmidt M, Richter P (2014) Is transformational leadership healthy for employees? A multilevel analysis in 16 nations. German J Hum Resour Manag 28(1–2):24–51

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank family friends and teachers for their constant help and support to conduct this research.

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Pakistan

Department of Business Administration, Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, Pakistan

Maryam Rehmat, Saira Farooqi & Javaria Asim

School of Business Administration, National College of Business Administration and Economics, Lahore, Pakistan

Maryam Rehmat, Tahira Hassan Butt, Saira Farooqi & Javaria Asim

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Every author made contribution in each of the sections.HK completed her thesis on this topic for her M.Phil degree, MR supervised her in her thesis, THB has helped in proof reading the document and incorporating the reviewer’s comments, SF helped in putting it into paper format and JA helped in the analysis. All the authors have read and approved the document.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maryam Rehmat .

Ethics declarations

Competing interest.

We do hereby solemnly affirm that we do not have any conflict of interest to declare, and that the study was conducted for purely academic/research purposes. “The authors have no competing interest.”

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Khan, H., Rehmat, M., Butt, T.H. et al. Impact of transformational leadership on work performance, burnout and social loafing: a mediation model. Futur Bus J 6 , 40 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-020-00043-8

Download citation

Received : 30 April 2020

Accepted : 02 November 2020

Published : 09 December 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-020-00043-8

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

transformational leadership research studies

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The impact of transformational leadership on affective organizational commitment and job performance: the mediating role of employee engagement.

\r\nWang Jiatong

  • 1 College of Teacher Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China
  • 2 China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China
  • 3 Treasurer Office, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, Pakistan
  • 4 School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
  • 5 The Institute of Management Sciences, PAK AIMS, Lahore, Pakistan
  • 6 Lyallpur Business School, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

This study investigated the impact of transformational leadership on affective organizational commitment and job performance with the mediating role of employee engagement. This study gathered data from 845 hotel employees in China and the structural equation modeling technique was used to verify the results. The findings indicated that transformational leadership has a positive effect on affective organizational commitment and job performance. Meanwhile, results showed that employee engagement partially mediates in the relationship between transformational leadership, affective organizational commitment, and job performance. This study contributes to the research on transformational leadership in the Chinese hospitality sector and analyzes its effects on work performance metrics. Furthermore, theoretical and practical implications were also discussed in this article.

Introduction

Leadership plays an important role in growing organizations and individual job performance ( Qi et al., 2019 ; Afsar et al., 2020 ). In particular, a leader must provide his/her followers with what they need to be effective and move toward a common vision ( Ahmad, 2018 ; Zhao and Zhou, 2019 ). Transformational leadership represents a leadership style that covert subordinates to see beyond self-interest by changing their confidence and interest to perform beyond expectations ( Jena et al., 2018 ; Khan et al., 2021c ). Transformational leadership is a crucial element for organizations that are willing to anticipate fundamental transitions to have an adequate environment for positive or adaptive changes through the effective process ( Khan et al., 2020a ; Hai and Park, 2021 ). Leaders’ action as transformational acting as learning support is nearly linked to the culture of affective organizational commitment ( Cho et al., 2019 ; Mwesigwa et al., 2020 ).

Looking into previous literature the authors have examined the studies on transformational leadership and organizational performance ( Katou, 2015 ), employee innovative behavior ( Pieterse et al., 2010 ; Choi et al., 2016 ), and counterproductive work behavior ( Kessler et al., 2013 ; Huang et al., 2021 ) in the context of banking, education, and health sectors. The research on the hospitality industry is empirically less explored. Hospitality employees are regarded as the most unique and valuable asset and the most costly investment of the hotel entities ( Hwang et al., 2021 ). In the developing countries, such as Korea, China, Vietnam, and Thailand, hospitality jobs do not seem attractive to high-quality personnel ( Wang and Abukhalifeh, 2020 ) due to several limitations, such as low wage ( Wen et al., 2018 ), few career promotion opportunities, and high physical and/or emotional stress from work (e.g., long periods of standing or sitting, dealing with many customer complaints). In addition, hospitality jobs do not merit a high social status, unlike high-tech jobs, in society at large ( Tuan, 2021 ).

Prior studies demonstrated the role of authentic ( Niu et al., 2018 ), servant ( Karatepe et al., 2020 ), and transformational leadership on job satisfaction and innovative work behavior ( Li et al., 2020a ; Khan et al., 2021a ). According to Schuckert et al. (2018) , transformational leaders are capable of allowing individuals to work collectively and transcend their self-interests through many transformational leadership dimensions such as charisma, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, and inspirational motivation. Transformational leadership holds an important and well-built impact on affective organizational commitment ( Yi et al., 2019 ).

Existing studies remarked the activist part of transformational leadership on job attitude and proactive behavior ( Steinmann et al., 2018 ) and a few studies try to identify the relationship between transformational leadership, employee engagement, and affective organizational commitment. Transformational leadership provides a positive result to employee job performance ( Khan and Khan, 2019 ), as transactional leadership looks too weak commitment of employee and their satisfaction ( Cho et al., 2019 ), discovering transformational leadership predicting to examine the performance and work-related helpful behaviors are critical for employees of the hospitality industry ( Liang et al., 2017 ; Moin et al., 2020 ). A few articles were found in journals of hospitality that examined the relationship between transformational leadership, employee engagement, affective organizational commitment, and job performance ( Gui et al., 2020 ).

Besides, research specifies the characteristics of transformational leaders such as idealize intelligent stimulus and individualized reflection are significantly associated with intellectual, expressive, and social engagement of employees ( Prikshat et al., 2020 ). The existing study indicated that transformational leadership and employee engagement had a significant effect on job performance with the mediating role of employee engagement ( Khan et al., 2020b ). Yet, few empirical studies have examined to explore in which way transformational leadership could enhance the intensity of employee engagement that gives affective organizational commitment ( Luo et al., 2019 ; Katou et al., 2020 ). Therefore, there is a research need to predict the influence of transformational leadership on the employee to improve their job performance in the hospitality sector of China.

This study contributes to the literature in the following perspectives; at first existing research indicated employee engagement holds a crucial role to control the behavior of leaders on subordinate attitude and performance ( Steinmann et al., 2018 ; Khan et al., 2021b ). Second, employee engagement as a mediator helps employees to improve their performance to achieve a competitive advantage. Thirdly, prior research indicated that there is a lack of research that explores transformational leadership on job performance and affective organizational commitment in the literature of Asian context ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ; Sungu et al., 2019 ). Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the impacts of transformational leadership on job performance and affective organizational commitment, and also the mediating effect of employee engagement on their relationships.

Theory and Hypotheses Development

Theoretical support.

Numerous researchers argued that the role of the job demands—resources model and social exchange theory (SET) in transformational leadership is to make the casual relationship between subordinate and leader for the building of shared harmony ( Cho et al., 2019 ; Katou et al., 2021 ). Employee engagement and intensity of their affective organizational commitment are linked to support transformational leadership and their ideas to enhance job performance ( Sungu et al., 2019 ). Existing research revealed that the constructive link of transformational leadership to the attitude and performance of an employee is positively associated with each other ( Cho et al., 2019 ). Transformational leadership is a vital channel for the encouragement of affective organizational commitment of employees and job performance with the mediation role of employee engagement.

Hypotheses Development

Transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment.

Transformational leadership has been identified as an important contributing factor in the development of affective organizational commitment ( Sahu et al., 2018 ). The relationship between the leader and follower has been developed when transformational leaders use individual consideration to meet follower’s needs, transcend economic transactions, and contribute to long organizational tenure and strong commitment ( Nazir and Islam, 2017 ). Previous researchers indicated that transformational leadership is the best predecessor of affective organizational commitment ( Islam et al., 2018 ). Affective organizational commitment describes “the state of emotional connection so that committed employee recognizes with, concerned and take pleasure of being of the organization”( Benevene et al., 2018 ; Rodrigo et al., 2019 ). Affective organizational commitment is more linked than normative or continuance commitment to the organization and employee’s relevant outcomes because it is related to an individual’s intrinsic motivation, whereas normative and continuance commitment is associated with the feeling of obligation or pressure ( Kim and Beehr, 2018 ).

Wong and Wong (2017) demonstrated the relationship between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment. From the Chinese perspective, an intellectual leader holds more power on affective commitment as compared with the continuance commitment. Chinese affective commitment is being considered as the sole gauge for organizational commitment ( Nazir et al., 2018 ). The existing study argued that there is a positive correlation between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment ( Buil et al., 2019 ). Hence, this study hypothesized;

H1: Transformational leadership has a positive effect on affective organizational commitment.

Transformational Leadership and Job Performance

The relationship between transformational leadership and job performance was examined by prior researchers ( Darvishmotevali and Ali, 2020 ). To enhance employee performance, transformational leadership support employees for persistence and sympathy in work duties ( Schwarz, 2017 ). Transformational leaders help to satisfy employees at work psychologically and keep them happy, resultantly enhancing employees’ job performance ( Lai et al., 2020 ). Transformational leadership defines as proactive behavior, raising awareness of the common interests of followers, and helping followers achieve goals at the highest level. Transformational leadership is a leader who can inspire, motivate, and give a great influence to his followers to do more work than expected and put aside personal interests for the benefit of the organization ( Eliyana et al., 2019 ).

An existing study discovered the constructive relationship among transformational leadership, employee innovative behavior, and attitude regarding perceived results ( Buil et al., 2019 ). Furthermore, as compared with the other leadership styles such as ethical leadership, authentic leadership, servant leadership, transformational leadership had a significant influence on employee’s performance ( Hameed et al., 2020 ), because transformational leadership holds manifold characteristics including moral values ( Rodriguez et al., 2017 ; Buil et al., 2019 ). Transformational leadership has proved to be an important tool for the employees.

From the Chinese organizational perspective, the transformational leadership constructs reliability face issues regarding the traditional way of leadership styles because of the quickly changing work environment ( Le and Lei, 2017 ). Therefore, in a Chinese context, transformational leadership is considered a vital medium to encourage the attitude of an employee and their performance. Transformational leadership theory describes that the vision needs to be communicated by the leader, who needs to motivate and inspire the employees. Leaders are effective when they involve their employees in achieving the company’s vision by trusting and involving them in goal setting. The focus of a leader should be to support the employees and to encourage critical thinking ( Dai et al., 2013 ). Therefore, the following hypothesis is predicted;

H2: Transformational leadership has a positive effect on employee job performance.

Transformational Leadership and Employee Engagement

Prior research has discussed the behavior of transformational leadership and its impact on the degree of employees engagement ( Li et al., 2019 ; Mi et al., 2019 ; Yang et al., 2020 ). The previous study revealed that transformational leadership significantly influenced job engagement ( Bui et al., 2017 ). A transformational leader can encourage employee engagement, defined as an individual employee’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral state directed toward desired organizational outcomes, by fostering his/her subordinates’ positive behaviors and attitudes toward work, and also supporting their self-efficacy to the challenging vision and goal ( Lai et al., 2020 ).

Transformational leadership behaviors are stimulating employee engagement and provide a clear vision that can help employees to internalize the organization’s goals and understand how valuable their contributions are toward achieving this vision ( Schwarz, 2017 ). Subsequently, the employees may become engaged because they are certain about the connections between their efforts and the future of their organization. Intellectual stimulation involves leaders challenging employees to critically examine situations and find creative solutions to organizational problems ( Buil et al., 2019 ). Such leader behavior may not only influence employees’ perceptions that the job is more challenging but also their perceptions of autonomy in the work climate because employees are given the flexibility to solve problems using novel methods ( Hameed et al., 2019 ). Taken together, increased perceptions of challenge and autonomy can activate employees intrinsically, and thus, may increase employee engagement ( Koroglu and Ozmen, 2021 ). Therefore, we hypothesized;

H3: Transformational leadership has a positive effect on employee engagement.

Employee Engagement and Affective Organizational Commitment

The studies conducted in the Western context demonstrated a positive relationship between employee engagement and affective organizational commitment ( Allen and Meyer, 1990 ). Besieux et al. (2015) argued that with the enhancement of employee engagement and organizational commitment gets heightened. Furthermore, the job demand-resource model explains that engagement at work is much more effective than job demand in predicting organizational commitment since the latter predisposes an employee toward more professional and emotional exhaustion and ultimately leads to burnout ( Jena et al., 2018 ). The previous investigation also indicates that a work environment that provides psychological safety and meaning ensures the commitment of the employees toward their organizations ( Koroglu and Ozmen, 2021 ).

An existing study found that helpful relation of employee engagement is positively associated with affective commitment ( Johnson et al., 2018 ; Srivastava and Singh, 2020 ). Meanwhile, research directed in the hospitality sector confirmed that corporate social responsibility and employee engagement are the positive antecedent of affective organizational commitment ( Nazir and Islam, 2020 ). Most of the studies on employee engagement and organizational commitments are predominantly based on the Western organizational setup and have used Western samples ( Buil et al., 2019 ). In the Indian context, Srivastava and Singh (2020) , have tested the factors of commitment on the ground of performance among employees to understand the level of engagement among their executives. Besieux et al. (2015) described engagement as a form of commitment that is determined by the number of mutual efforts placed by the employees and the organizational development. Thus, the following hypothesis is predicted;

H4: Employee engagement has a positive effect on affective organizational commitment.

Employee Engagement and Job Performance

Employee engagement has been defined in different ways depending upon the context, in which it has been discussed. The definition of engagement revolves around specific attributes of the employee attitude (involvement, loyalty, and commitment) and employee behavior (such as taking initiatives and productivity levels) ( Young et al., 2018 ). Many researchers identified employee engagement as a “psychological condition in work with three features including emotional, cognitive, and behavior vigor”( Albrecht et al., 2018 ; Kwon and Kim, 2020 ). Prior scholars argued that employee engagement is a positive indicator that impacts job performance ( Gupta, 2015 ; Nazir and Islam, 2017 ). Engaged employees are very much attached to their work duties and subordinate that ultimately bring employee performance ( Sahu et al., 2018 ).

Employees are capable enough to perform in the extra role when they are engaged. Albrecht et al. (2018) provided a comprehensive definition of employee engagement “as a positive, fulfilling work-related state of mind and is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.” Vigor is described as a high level of energy, while dedication is described as a mental resilience that involves being strongly involved in one’s work and to experience a sense of significance, enthusiasm, and absorption is depicted as bringing a concentrated and engrossed self in employees’ performance ( Le and Lei, 2017 ). Employee engagement at work is a better predictor of their cognitive, emotional, and behavior output, as it depicts their efforts toward the organization’s objectives by making them engage in a better way ( Reilly, 2018 ; Alagarsamy et al., 2020 ). Thus, this study offers a subsequent hypothesis;

H5: Employee engagement has a positive impact on job performance.

Mediating Role of Employee Engagement

Based on the job demands-resource (JD-R model) an employee’s engagement is enhanced by job resources and it can produce positive work outcomes ( Breevaart and Bakker, 2018 ; Kwon and Kim, 2020 ). Based on this JD-R model employee engagement has a mediating role in the relationship between job resources ( Koroglu and Ozmen, 2021 ). The behavior of leaders in the shape of transformational leadership indicates job resources toward employee engagement ( Katou et al., 2021 ). Radic et al. (2020) explained that job demand and resources impact the engagement of employees which in turn manipulates commitment toward the organization. Similarly, prior studies found that process of motivation like an instrument affects transformational leadership and performance through employee engagement ( Besieux et al., 2015 ; Jena et al., 2018 ). Sahu et al. (2018) examined employee engagement as a mediating construct in the connection between transformational leadership and turnover intention. Buil et al. (2019) established the view of employee engagement is playing a mediation role in the association between transformational leadership and job performance. Hence, we predicted the following hypotheses:

H6: Employee engagement positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment.

H7: Employee engagement positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance.

Materials and Methods

The conceptual model depicting the relationships and hypothesis is given in Figure 1 .

www.frontiersin.org

Figure 1. Conceptual model.

Sample and Data Collections

The nature of this study was cross-sectional and data were gathered from medium to upscale level (2–3 stars) hotels of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces of China. The non-probability convenience sampling technique was used because it was convenient for researchers to get data from respondents. Before going to collect data, an official email and consent letter was sent to the human resource department of the hotels. After the approval from the HR department, we visited hotels and gathered data from employees who expressed interest in participating to complete the questionnaire onsite. The data collection procedure was hectic and there was an issue of language communication, therefore, we took help from ten Chinese graduate students to facilitate the researchers in the data collection process. To secure the anonymity and confidentiality of the data, we ensured the participants that their answers were treated solely and not used for any other purpose. Moreover, we distributed 1,000 paper–pencil questionnaires among hotel staff and 900 completed surveys obtained. After the initial screening with the help of statistical software 55 questionnaires were discarded because of the incomplete forms of responses. Thus, 845 valid responses were incorporated for further analysis. The participants were (58.6%) male and (41.4%) female. Also, the highest number of the respondents (57.0%) was aged between 18 and 30 years old, with (77.0%) of them married. The majority of the respondents (59.3%) had a hospitality and hotel management diploma degree and (49.8%) of the participants were working in the hotel industry since 3 years.

Instrument Development

The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first part comprised of transformational leadership, employee engagement, affective organizational commitment, and job performance. The transformational leadership scale was based on ( Dai et al., 2013 ) scale. It comprises of 8 items. An example item was “my supervisor encourages me to think about problems from a new perspective.” The Cronbach’s alpha for transformational leadership was (0.960). Moreover, employee engagement was measured using 7 item scale used by Wang et al. (2020) . A sample item “I am proud of the work that I do.” The Cronbach’s alpha for employee engagement was (0.967). Affective organizational commitment was assessed using 6 items scale and adopted from the study of Meyer and Allen (1997) . A sample item “I feel the problems of this organization as my problems.” The Cronbach’s alpha for affective organizational commitment was (0.911). Job performance was measured using 5 items scale and adopted from the study of Ozer (2011) . A sample item “performs tasks that are expected of him/her.” The Cronbach’s alpha for job performance was (0.917). All the measurement constructs were rated using seven-point Likert scales ranging (from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree) and these measures are already tested and validated by others researchers ( Li et al., 2020b ; Shahzad et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, the second part contained the demographical information of the participants such as gender, age, education, marital status, and experience.

Data Analysis Technique

The data were analyzed using the smart-partial least squares (PLS) software version 3.0. This software is currently considered as one of the suitable software to apply PLS structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) ( Sarstedt et al., 2014 ). PLS-SEM was recommended in most business management studies ( Ali et al., 2018 ; Hair et al., 2019 ). This method is preferred for theory testing and confirmation and is appropriate for checking the existence of complex relationships. PLS-SEM allows the construction of a research paradigm based on a theory that involves transforming theories and concepts into unmeasured variables (latent) and practical concepts into metrics, all of which are connected by a theory or hypothesis ( Ringle et al., 2014 ). Hair et al. (2012) recommended that the PLS-SEM model should be assessed in three phases: identifying the global model assessment, checking the measurement model’s validity, and analyzing the relevance of the routes inside the structural equation model.

Measurement Model

To test the reliability of constructs the Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) values were assessed. According to Henseler and Fassott (2010) , the criterion for ensuring the CR is that all the values must be higher than 0.80. All the values of CR are given in Table 1 and lie between the ranges of 0.931–0.973, which confirms the CR of all of the constructs. Moreover, the Cronbach’s alpha for all he constructs was also above the threshold value of 0.70 suggested by Hair et al. (2011) . Furthermore, the AVE criterion allows its value to be greater than 0.50 ( Bagozzi and Yi, 1988 ). Therefore, Table 1 shows that the AVE values of the constructs were ranged from 0.692 to 0.838 and met the criteria. Prior researchers argue that if the values of AVE are above than an acceptable level of 0.50, it indicates adequate convergent validity.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 1. Measurement model.

In addition, discriminant validity was calculated using the Fornell–Larcker criterion as findings are shown in Table 2 . The findings show that constructs’ correlations with each other and below the square roots of their AVE ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981 ). Besides, the discriminant validity was also assessed using heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) criteria ( Hair et al., 2011 ). Table 3 results indicate that HTMT values were satisfactory and below the threshold of 0.85 as suggested by Henseler and Fassott (2010) . We also calculated the variance inflation factors (VIFs) for all constructs in our model to test for multicollinearity. All the VIF values were below 3.525, lower than the threshold of 5, indicating no concerns regarding multicollinearity issues in the data ( Sarstedt et al., 2014 ). Finally, Harman’s single factor test was used to check for common method bias in the data. According to Harman’s technique, common method bias exists when one factor emerges from factor analysis and explains more than 50% of the variance ( Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). We used the rotated solution to transfer all of the items into a one-factor analysis, yielding four factors; the first factor’s eigenvalue explains 30.61% of the variance (less than 50%). As a result, this study does not have an issue of common method bias.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 2. Table Fornell–Larcker criterion.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 3. Heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) criterion.

Structural Model

The structural model was evaluated through the 5,000 bootstrap method with the help of Smart-PLS software. The fitness of the structural model was assessed by the standardized root mean squares residual (SRMR) value. According to Henseler and Fassott (2010) , a good structural model should have below the 0.08 SRMR value. Therefore, the findings from the structural model show a (0.049) value of SRMR that was acceptable below the threshold. Moreover, to assess the value of R 2 , the structural model explained (17%) variance in employee engagement, (22%) variance in affective organizational commitment, and (26%) variance in job performance. As suggested by prior researchers, the value of R 2 and Q 2 should be > 0.10 or zero ( Chin, 2010 ). Furthermore, Figure 2 results indicate that the values of R 2 and Q 2 are greater than the threshold value. Hence, the structural model was acceptable and met the criteria for further analysis.

www.frontiersin.org

Figure 2. Measurement model.

Furthermore, we tested hypotheses relationships and results are shown in Table 4 and Figure 3 . To test H1, we found that transformational leadership had a positive and significant effect on affective organizational commitment (β = 0.296, t = 5.467, p = 0.001). Therefore, H1 was accepted. Meanwhile, we tested H2 and found that transformational leadership had a significant impact on job performance (β = 0.367, t = 7.149, p = 0.001). Consequently, H2 was supported. In addition, we hypothesized H3 and results indicate that transformational leadership had a positive influence on employee engagement (β = 0.422 , t = 6.820, p = 0.001). Thus, H3 was accepted. Besides, we tested H4 and the results illustrate that employee engagement had a positive effect on affective organizational commitment (β = 0.266, t = 4.917, p = 0.001). So, H4 was supported. At last, H5 findings show that employee engagement had a significant impact on job performance (β = 0.234, t = 4.994, p = 0.001). Hence, H5 was also accepted.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 4. Table Path coefficients (direct effects).

www.frontiersin.org

Figure 3. Structural model ( t -values).

Mediation Analysis

To test the indirect effect of employee engagement in the relationship between transformational leadership, affective organizational commitment, and job performance, the results of H6 and H7 are given in Table 5 , which indicates that employee engagement had an indirect positive influence on the relationship between transformational leadership, affective organizational commitment, and job performance with standardized path coefficients (β = 0.112, t = 3.445, p = 0.001; β = 0.099, t = 3.399, p = 0.001). Likewise, to assess partial and full mediation effect, we followed the ( Hair et al., 2012 ) approach using the variance accounted for (VAF) and analyzed the direct, indirect, and total effects. According to this method, if the value of VAF is between 20 and 80%, it presents partial mediation and if the value of VAF is more than 80%, there is full mediation that exists between the variables. Thus, Table 6 findings show that the value of VAF is below 80%, which presents partial mediation. Hence, H6 and H7 were accepted.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 5. Specific indirect effects.

www.frontiersin.org

Table 6. Mediation analysis (employee engagement as a mediator).

This study attempts to identify the role of transformational leadership as a key variable along with two dependent variables affective organizational commitment and job performance with the mediating effect of employee engagement. All the hypotheses results were verified. Prior studies revealed that transformational leadership and job performance positively affect employee engagement and affective organizational commitment ( Schwarz, 2017 ; Yang et al., 2020 ). This result is also in line with prior researchers who argue that the transformational leaders help each other to advance a higher level of morale and motivation that engage employees in the organization ( Sahu et al., 2018 ; Yang et al., 2020 ). This study finding demonstrated that employee engagement has an essential predictor and transformational leadership could improve employee affective organizational commitment and job performance if the intensity of employees’ engagement is higher in the organizations ( Jena et al., 2018 ). The findings of prior study Lai et al. (2020) found a partial mediating effect of employee engagement in the relationship between transformational leadership and job performance. A previous study found transformative leadership had no direct effect on job performance ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ) it should be mentioned that to improve job performance more emphasis should be paid to supporting an engaged workforce. Results verify regarding employee engagement role is crucial for the transformational leadership behavior and performance outcome of employees, reliable with prior researcher’s findings ( Le and Lei, 2017 ; Buil et al., 2019 ).

Theoretical Implications

Transformational leadership is influenced by numerous theoretical frameworks, such as leadership and followership and SET that focus on two-way communication among leaders and followers to build mutual respect. In this study, we have confirmed that employee engagement, their level of affective commitment, and job performance are related to supportive leadership, mutually respectful relationships, and positive group processes in organizations. Whereas previous studies investigated the positive relationship of transformational leadership with employee attitude and performance separately ( Ribeiro et al., 2018 ; Lai et al., 2020 ), this study confirmed that transformational leadership is the key catalyst in both encouraging employee affective commitment and job performance throughout the mediator, employee engagement. Moreover, based on the job demand resources (JD-R), results also specify that transformational leadership is an imperative job resource that influences employee work-related behavior ( Katou et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, our results signify the action of a transformational leader is measured such as encouraging resources of job. Reciprocal positive relations among leaders and subordinates could bring constructive links in our structure of the model.

Managerial Implications

This study provides practical contributions for policymakers, researchers, and hospitality managers. At first, it is concluded that leaders in an organization exhibit transformational leadership, which affects the perception of the employee to their responsibility and work resultantly direct to high-affective organizational commitment and job performance. So, hospitality managers require multilevel intervention leadership sessions or programs, one on one instruction for the establishment of required skills of transformational leadership for supporting workforce motivation, out-of-the-box thinking, and employee’s well-being. Being the holder of such kind of association, leaders improve skills of the transformational leadership that might expect to enhance motivation, engagement, and performance level of employees.

Second, various studies illustrated many factors that could develop employee engagement; this study attempt centered explicitly behavior and attitude of a leader that could support employees to be engaged in their work. To build transformational leadership associations, the organization will be able to establish significant results out as engaged employees. To develop better supervisory relations, staff connections help to support commitment toward the organization. For an instant, when employee and leader coach conferences create, it could bring trust and motivation among employees to achieve competitive advantage.

Third, this study results revealed the mediating role of employee engagement as crucial to support leader and employee outcome. So, it is an organizational requirement to establish a conducive atmosphere for work that upholds employee engagement. Specifically, practitioners of the hospitality industry could contribute to a constructive work environment to support employees, trust, and honor. Besides this, organizations can offer numerous resources of the job such as support from supervisor, the autonomy of the job, and positive feedback which could advance employee engagement. Hospitality industry managers could be helpful for the organizations to identify job resource value and discover for management to enhance job autonomy and meeting regarding employee successful performance.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study argued that proper leadership could support and guide employees to engage in work; however, we do not know what kinds of other leadership behaviors are appropriate to facilitate employee engagement, commitment, and performance. Future researchers can examine other leadership styles (e.g., empowering leadership) that may impact employee engagement by adding those into the structural model. In addition, this study was conducted with organizations in China. The effects of differences in practice, organizational culture, and national culture may impact the results accordingly. Moreover, future research could explore other factors as turnover intention, conflict, and stress to investigate their effect on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement.

Furthermore, this study result is based on the cross-sectional data and data were gathered from the two provinces of China, future research could use a method of longitudinal design to conduct a study among transformational leadership and insight of subordinate attitude, the performance of job, and engagement with large sample size. The relationship between affective organizational commitment and job performance was not tested in this study. A future study could test this relationship with the different samples. In addition, this study examined only the affective organizational commitment element and did not cover the other two factors of organizational commitment, e.g., continuance and normative commitment. Each factor could have a dissimilar influence on employee job-related behavior and performance. The addition of the other two components might have different results. According to Dai et al. (2013) , future researchers could examine a comparison of ethical, transactional, and transformational leadership regarding job performance and employee engagement.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Jiangsu University, China. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

MM and MA proposed the research, analyzed the experimental results, and wrote the manuscript. ZW and FG designed and carried out the experiments. WJ and SG extensively edited and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version of the manuscript.

This study was supported by the Major Planning Program of the National Social Science Foundation (Grant No. 21ZDA019) and the Beijing Universities’ Collaborative Innovation Centre of Socialist Theory with Chinese Characteristics Research (The China University of Political Science and Law).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Afsar, B., Maqsoom, A., Shahjehan, A., Afridi, S. A., Nawaz, A., and Fazliani, H. (2020). Responsible leadership and employee’s proenvironmental behavior: the role of organizational commitment, green shared vision, and internal environmental locus of control. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 27, 297–312. doi: 10.1002/CSR.1806

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Ahmad, S. (2018). Can ethical leadership inhibit workplace bullying across East and West: exploring cross-cultural interactional justice as a mediating mechanism. Eur. Manag. J. 36, 223–234. doi: 10.1016/J.EMJ.2018.01.003

Alagarsamy, S., Mehrolia, S., and Aranha, R. H. (2020). The mediating effect of employee engagement: how employee psychological empowerment impacts the employee satisfaction? A study of Maldivian tourism sector. Glob. Bus. Rev. doi: 10.1177/0972150920915315

Albrecht, S., Breidahl, E., and Marty, A. (2018). Organizational resources, organizational engagement climate, and employee engagement. Career Dev. Int. 23, 67–85. doi: 10.1108/CDI-04-2017-0064/FULL/XML

Ali, F., Rasoolimanesh, S. M., Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., and Ryu, K. (2018). An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in hospitality research. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 30, 514–538. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-10-2016-0568/FULL/XML

Allen, N. J., and Meyer, J. P. (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. J. Occup. Psychol. 63, 1–18. doi: 10.1111/J.2044-8325.1990.TB00506.X

Bagozzi, R. P., and Yi, Y. (1988). On the evaluation of structural equation models. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 1988 161, 74–94. doi: 10.1007/BF02723327

Benevene, P., Dal Corso, L., De Carlo, A., Falco, A., Carluccio, F., and Vecina, M. L. (2018). Ethical leadership as antecedent of job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment and intention to stay among volunteers of non-profit organizations. Front. Psychol. 9:2069. doi: 10.3389/FPSYG.2018.02069/BIBTEX

Besieux, T., Baillien, E., Verbeke, A. L., and Euwema, M. C. (2015). What goes around comes around: the mediation of corporate social responsibility in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement. Econ. Ind. Democracy 39, 249–271. doi: 10.1177/0143831X15614914

Breevaart, K., and Bakker, A. B. (2018). Daily job demands and employee work engagement: the role of daily transformational leadership behavior. J. Occup. Health Psychol. 23, 338–349. doi: 10.1037/OCP0000082

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Bui, H. T. M., Zeng, Y., and Higgs, M. (2017). The role of person-job fit in the relationship between transformational leadership and job engagement. J. Manag. Psychol. 32, 373–386. doi: 10.1108/JMP-05-2016-0144/FULL/XML

Buil, I., Martínez, E., and Matute, J. (2019). Transformational leadership and employee performance: the role of identification, engagement and proactive personality. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 77, 64–75. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2018.06.014

Chin, W. W. (2010). How to write up and report PLS analyses. Handb. Partial Least Squares 655–690. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-32827-8_29

Cho, Y., Shin, M., Billing, T. K., and Bhagat, R. S. (2019). Transformational leadership, transactional leadership, and affective organizational commitment: a closer look at their relationships in two distinct national contexts. Asian Bus. Manag. 183, 187–210. doi: 10.1057/S41291-019-00059-1

Choi, S. B., Kim, K., Ullah, S. M. E., and Kang, S. W. (2016). How transformational leadership facilitates innovative behavior of Korean workers: examining mediating and moderating processes. Pers. Rev. 45, 459–479. doi: 10.1108/PR-03-2014-0058/FULL/XML

Dai, Y-De, Dai, Y. Y., Chen, K. Y., and Wu, H. C. (2013). Transformational vs transactional leadership: which is better?A study on employees of international tourist hotels in taipei City. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 25, 760–778. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-DEC-2011-0223/FULL/XML

Darvishmotevali, M., and Ali, F. (2020). Job insecurity, subjective well-being and job performance: the moderating role of psychological capital. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 87:102462. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2020.102462

Eliyana, A., Ma’arif, S., and Muzakki, Z. (2019). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment effect in the transformational leadership towards employee performance. Eur. Res. Manag. Bus. Econ. 25, 144–150. doi: 10.1016/J.IEDEEN.2019.05.001

Fornell, C., and Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. J. Mark. Res. 18, 39–50. doi: 10.1177/002224378101800104

Gui, C., Luo, A., Zhang, P., and Deng, A. (2020). A meta-analysis of transformational leadership in hospitality research. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 32, 2137–2154. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-05-2019-0507/FULL/XML

Gupta, M. (2015). Corporate social responsibility, employee–company identification, and organizational commitment: mediation by employee engagement. Curr. Psychol. 2015 361, 101–109. doi: 10.1007/S12144-015-9389-8

Hai, S., and Park, I. J. (2021). The accelerating effect of intrinsic motivation and trust toward supervisor on helping behavior based on the curvilinear model among hotel frontline employees in China. J. Hosp. Tour. Manag. 47, 12–21. doi: 10.1016/J.JHTM.2021.02.009

Hair, J. F., Risher, J. J., Sarstedt, M., and Ringle, C. M. (2019). When to use and how to report the results of PLS-SEM. Eur. Bus. Rev. 31, 2–24. doi: 10.1108/EBR-11-2018-0203/FULL/XML

Hair, J. F., Sarstedt, M., Pieper, T. M., and Ringle, C. M. (2012). The use of partial least squares structural equation modeling in strategic management research: a review of past practices and recommendations for future applications. Long Range Plann. 45, 320–340. doi: 10.1016/J.LRP.2012.09.008

Hair, J. F., Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., and Mena, J. A. (2011). An assessment of the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling in marketing research. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 40, 414–433. doi: 10.1007/S11747-011-0261-6

Hameed, Z., Khan, I. U., Islam, T., Sheikh, Z., and Khan, S. U. (2019). Corporate social responsibility and employee pro-environmental behaviors: the role of perceived organizational support and organizational pride. South Asian J. Bus. Stud. 8, 246–265. doi: 10.1108/SAJBS-10-2018-0117/FULL/XML

Hameed, Z., Khan, I. U., Islam, T., Sheikh, Z., and Naeem, R. M. (2020). Do green HRM practices influence employees’ environmental performance? Int. J. Manpow. 41, 1061–1079. doi: 10.1108/IJM-08-2019-0407/FULL/XML

Henseler, J., and Fassott, G. (2010). Testing moderating effects in PLS path models: an illustration of available procedures. Handb. Partial Least Squares 713–735. doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-32827-8_31

Huang, S. Y. B., Li, M. W., and Chang, T. W. (2021). Transformational leadership, ethical leadership, and participative leadership in predicting counterproductive work behaviors: evidence from financial technology firms. Front. Psychol 12:658727. doi: 10.3389/FPSYG.2021.658727

Hwang, Y. H., Shi Crystal, X., and Wang, X. (2021). Hospitality employees’ emotions in the workplace: a systematic review of recent literature. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag 33, 3752–3796. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-12-2020-1426/FULL/XML

Islam, T., Tariq, J., and Usman, B. (2018). Transformational leadership and four-dimensional commitment: mediating role of job characteristics and moderating role of participative and directive leadership styles. J. Manag. Dev. 37, 666–683. doi: 10.1108/JMD-06-2017-0197/FULL/XML

Jena, L. K., Pradhan, S., and Panigrahy, N. P. (2018). Pursuit of organisational trust: role of employee engagement, psychological well-being and transformational leadership. Asia Pacific Manag. Rev. 23, 227–234. doi: 10.1016/J.APMRV.2017.11.001

Johnson, K. R., Park, S., and Bartlett, K. R. (2018). Perceptions of customer service orientation, training, and employee engagement in Jamaica’s hospitality sector. Eur. J. Train. Dev. 42, 191–209. doi: 10.1108/EJTD-11-2017-0094/FULL/XML

Karatepe, O. M., Aboramadan, M., and Dahleez, K. A. (2020). Does climate for creativity mediate the impact of servant leadership on management innovation and innovative behavior in the hotel industry? Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 32, 2497–2517. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-03-2020-0219/FULL/XML

Katou, A. A. (2015). Transformational leadership and organisational performance: three serially mediating mechanisms. Empl. Relations 37, 329–353. doi: 10.1108/ER-05-2014-0056/FULL/XML

Katou, A. A., Koupkas, M., and Triantafillidou, E. (2021). Job demands-resources model, transformational leadership and organizational performance: a multilevel study. Int. J. Product. Perform. Manag. doi: 10.1108/IJPPM-06-2020-0342/FULL/XML

Katou, A., Budhwar, P., and Chand, M. D. (2020). The moderating effects of transformational leadership and self-worth in the idiosyncratic deals – employee reactions relationship: a study of Indian hospitality industry. Pers. Rev. 49, 1399–1418. doi: 10.1108/PR-11-2019-0596/FULL/XML

Kessler, S. R., Bruursema, K., Rodopman, B., and Spector, P. E. (2013). Leadership, interpersonal conflict, and counterproductive work behavior: an examination of the stressor–strain process. Negot. Confl. Manag. Res. 6, 180–190. doi: 10.1111/NCMR.12009

Khan, M. M., Mubarak, S., and Islam, T. (2020a). Leading the innovation: role of trust and job crafting as sequential mediators relating servant leadership and innovative work behavior. Eur. J. Innov. Manag. Epub ahead of print. doi: 10.1108/EJIM-05-2020-0187/FULL/XML

Khan, N. A., Khan, A. N., Soomro, M. A., and Khan, S. K. (2020b). Transformational leadership and civic virtue behavior: valuing act of thriving and emotional exhaustion in the hotel industry. Asia Pacific Manag. Rev. 25, 216–225. doi: 10.1016/J.APMRV.2020.05.001

Khan, M. M., Mubarik, M. S., Ahmed, S. S., Islam, T., and Khan, E. (2021a). Innovation with flow at work: exploring the role of servant leadership in affecting innovative work behavior through flow at work. Leadersh. Organ. Dev. J. 42, 1267–1281. doi: 10.1108/LODJ-05-2021-0236/FULL/XML

Khan, M. M., Mubarik, M. S., Ahmed, S. S., Islam, T., Khan, E., Rehman, A., et al. (2021b). My meaning is my engagement: exploring the mediating role of meaning between servant leadership and work engagement. Leadersh. Organ. Dev. J. 42, 926–941. doi: 10.1108/LODJ-08-2020-0320/FULL/XML

Khan, M. M., Mubarik, M. S., Islam, T., Rehman, A., Ahmed, S. S., Khan, E., et al. (2021c). How servant leadership triggers innovative work behavior: exploring the sequential mediating role of psychological empowerment and job crafting. Eur. J. Innov. Manag. ahead-of-print, doi: 10.1108/EJIM-09-2020-0367/FULL/XML

Khan, N. A., and Khan, A. N. (2019). What followers are saying about transformational leaders fostering employee innovation via organisational learning, knowledge sharing and social media use in public organisations? Gov. Inf. Q. 36:101391. doi: 10.1016/J.GIQ.2019.07.003

Kim, M., and Beehr, T. A. (2018). Empowering leadership: leading people to be present through affective organizational commitment?*. Int. J. Hum. Resour. Manag. 31, 2017–2044. doi: 10.1080/09585192.2018.1424017

Koroglu, ş, and Ozmen, O. (2021). The mediating effect of work engagement on innovative work behavior and the role of psychological well-being in the job demands–resources (JD-R) model. Asia-Pacific J. Bus. Adm. 14, 124–144. doi: 10.1108/APJBA-09-2020-0326/FULL/XML

Kwon, K., and Kim, T. (2020). An integrative literature review of employee engagement and innovative behavior: revisiting the JD-R model. Hum. Resour. Manag. Rev. 30:100704. doi: 10.1016/J.HRMR.2019.100704

Lai, F. Y., Tang, H. C., Lu, S. C., Lee, Y. C., and Lin, C. C. (2020). Transformational leadership and job performance: the mediating role of work engagement. SAGE Open 10:21582440198. doi: 10.1177/2158244019899085

Le, P. B., and Lei, H. (2017). How transformational leadership supports knowledge sharing: evidence from chinese manufacturing and service firms. Chin. Manag. Stud. 11, 479–497. doi: 10.1108/CMS-02-2017-0039/FULL/XML

Li, C., Makhdoom, H. U. R., and Asim, S. (2020a). Impact of entrepreneurial leadership on innovative work behavior: examining mediation and moderation mechanisms. Psychol. Res. Behav. Manag. 13:105. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S236876

Li, C., Murad, M., Shahzad, F., Khan, M. A. S., Ashraf, S. F., and Dogbe, C. S. K. (2020b). Entrepreneurial passion to entrepreneurial behavior: role of entrepreneurial alertness. entrepreneurial self-efficacy and proactive personality. Front. Psychol. 11:1611. doi: 10.3389/FPSYG.2020.01611/BIBTEX

Li, H., Sajjad, N., Wang, Q., Ali, A. M., Khaqan, Z., and Amina, S. (2019). Influence of transformational leadership on employees’ Innovative work behavior in sustainable organizations: test of mediation and moderation processes. Sustain 11:1594. doi: 10.3390/SU11061594

Liang, T. L., Chang, H. F., Ko, M. H., and Lin, C. W. (2017). Transformational leadership and employee voices in the hospitality industry. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 29, 374–392. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-07-2015-0364/FULL/XML

Luo, A., Guchait, P., Lee, L., and Madera, J. M. (2019). Transformational leadership and service recovery performance: the mediating effect of emotional labor and the influence of culture. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 77, 31–39. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2018.06.011

Mi, L., Gan, X., Xu, T., Long, R., Qiao, L., and Zhu, H. (2019). A new perspective to promote organizational citizenship behaviour for the environment: the role of transformational leadership. J. Clean. Prod. 239:118002. doi: 10.1016/J.JCLEPRO.2019.118002

Meyer, J. P., and Allen, N. J. (1997). Commitment in the Workplace: Theory Research and Application. Thousand oaks, CA: Sage publications.

Google Scholar

Moin, M. F., Omar, M. K., Wei, F., Rasheed, M. I., and Hameed, Z. (2020). Green HRM and psychological safety: how transformational leadership drives follower’s job satisfaction. Curr. Issues Tour. 24, 2269–2277. doi: 10.1080/13683500.2020.1829569

Mwesigwa, R., Tusiime, I., and Ssekiziyivu, B. (2020). Leadership styles, job satisfaction and organizational commitment among academic staff in public universities. J. Manag. Dev. 39, 253–268. doi: 10.1108/JMD-02-2018-0055/FULL/XML

Nazir, O., and Islam, J. U. (2017). Enhancing organizational commitment and employee performance through employee engagement: an empirical check. South Asian J. Bus. Stud. 6, 98–114. doi: 10.1108/SAJBS-04-2016-0036/FULL/XML

Nazir, O., and Islam, J. U. (2020). Effect of CSR activities on meaningfulness, compassion, and employee engagement: a sense-making theoretical approach. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 90:102630. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2020.102630

Nazir, S., Qun, W., Hui, L., and Shafi, A. (2018). Influence of social exchange relationships on affective commitment and innovative behavior: role of perceived organizational support. Sustain 10:4418. doi: 10.3390/SU10124418

Niu, W., Yuan, Q., Qian, S., and Liu, Z. (2018). Authentic leadership and employee job behaviors: the mediating role of relational and organizational identification and the moderating role of LMX. Curr. Psychol. 2018 374, 982–994. doi: 10.1007/S12144-018-9937-0

Ozer, M. (2011). A moderated mediation model of the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors and job performance. J. Appl. Psychol. 96, 1328–1336. doi: 10.1037/A0023644

Pieterse, A. N., van Knippenberg, D., Schippers, M., and Stam, D. (2010). Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior: the moderating role of psychological empowerment. J. Organ. Behav. 31, 609–623. doi: 10.1002/JOB.650

Podsakoff, P., MacKenzie, S., Lee, J. Y., and Podsakoff, N. P. (2003). Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies. psycnet.apa.org 88, 879–903. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.88.5.879

Prikshat, V., Rajesh, J. I., and Rajaguru, R. (2020). The growth satisfaction in jobs among hospitality employees: the role of transformational leadership, interpersonal communication satisfaction and trust. J. Hum. Res. Hosp. Tour. 20, 48–74. doi: 10.1080/15332845.2020.1821427

Qi, L., Liu, B., Wei, X., and Hu, Y. (2019). Impact of inclusive leadership on employee innovative behavior: perceived organizational support as a mediator. PLoS One 14:e0212091. doi: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PONE.0212091

Radic, A., Arjona-Fuentes, J. M., Ariza-Montes, A., Han, H., and Law, R. (2020). Job demands–job resources (JD-R) model, work engagement, and well-being of cruise ship employees. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 88:102518. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2020.102518

Reilly, P. (2018). Building customer centricity in the hospitality sector: the role of talent management. Worldw. Hosp. Tour. Themes 10, 42–56. doi: 10.1108/WHATT-10-2017-0068/FULL/XML

Ribeiro, N., Yücel, İ, and Gomes, D. (2018). How transformational leadership predicts employees’ affective commitment and performance. Int. J. Prod. Perform. Manag. 67, 1901–1917. doi: 10.1108/IJPPM-09-2017-0229/FULL/XML

Ringle, C. M., Sarstedt, M., and Schlittgen, R. (2014). Genetic algorithm segmentation in partial least squares structural equation modeling. OR Spectr. 36, 251–276. doi: 10.1007/s00291-013-0320-0

Rodrigo, P., Aqueveque, C., and Duran, I. J. (2019). Do employees value strategic CSR? A tale of affective organizational commitment and its underlying mechanisms. Bus. Ethics A Eur. Rev. 28, 459–475. doi: 10.1111/BEER.12227

Rodriguez, R. A., Green, M. T., Sun, Y., and Baggerly-Hinojosa, B. (2017). Authentic leadership and transformational leadership: an incremental approach. J. Leadersh. Stud. 11, 20–35. doi: 10.1002/JLS.21501

Sahu, S., Pathardikar, A., and Kumar, A. (2018). Transformational leadership and turnover: mediating effects of employee engagement, employer branding, and psychological attachment. Leadersh. Organ. Dev. J. 39, 82–99. doi: 10.1108/LODJ-12-2014-0243/FULL/XML

Sarstedt, M., Ringle, C. M., Smith, D., Reams, R., and Hair, J. F. Jr. (2014). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM): a useful tool for family business researchers. J. Fam. Bus. Strategy 5, 105–115. doi: 10.1016/j.jfbs.2014.01.002

Schuckert, M., Kim, T. T., Paek, S., and Lee, G. (2018). Motivate to innovate: how authentic and transformational leaders influence employees’ psychological capital and service innovation behavior. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 30, 776–796. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-05-2016-0282/FULL/XML

Schwarz, G. (2017). Transformational Leadership and Job Performance: the role of organizational identification. Palgrave Handb. Leadersh. Transform. Asia 519–539. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-57940-9_28

Shahzad, F., Du, J., Khan, I., Shahbaz, M., and Murad, M. (2020). Untangling the influence of organizational compatibility on green supply chain management efforts to boost organizational performance through information technology capabilities. J. Clean. Prod. 266:122029. doi: 10.1016/J.JCLEPRO.2020.122029

Srivastava, S., and Singh, S. (2020). Linking personal growth initiative and organizational identification to employee engagement: testing the mediating- moderating effects in Indian hotel industry. J. Hosp. Tour. Manag. 45, 79–89. doi: 10.1016/J.JHTM.2020.07.005

Steinmann, B., Klug, H. J. P., and Maier, G. W. (2018). The path is the goal: how transformational leaders enhance followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. Front. Psychol. 9:2338. doi: 10.3389/FPSYG.2018.02338/BIBTEX

Sungu, L. J., Weng, Q., and Xu, X. (2019). Organizational commitment and job performance: examining the moderating roles of occupational commitment and transformational leadership. Int. J. Sel. Assess. 27, 280–290. doi: 10.1111/IJSA.12256

Tuan, L. T. (2021). Disentangling green service innovative behavior among hospitality employees: the role of customer green involvement. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 99:103045. doi: 10.1016/J.IJHM.2021.103045

Wang, C., Xu, J., Zhang, T. C., and Li, Q. M. (2020). Effects of professional identity on turnover intention in China’s hotel employees: the mediating role of employee engagement and job satisfaction. J. Hosp. Tour. Manag. 45, 10–22. doi: 10.1016/J.JHTM.2020.07.002

Wang, J., and Abukhalifeh, A. N. M. (2020). Evaluating undergraduate curriculum in hospitality management: a comparison between China and South Korea. J. Chin. Tour. Res. 17, 1–21. doi: 10.1080/19388160.2020.1788684

Wen, H., Li, X., and Kwon, J. (2018). Undergraduate Students’ Attitudes Toward and Perceptions of Hospitality Careers in Mainland China. J. Hosp. Tour. Educ. 31, 159–172. doi: 10.1080/10963758.2018.1487787

Wong, Y. W., and Wong, Y. T. (2017). The effects of perceived organisational support and affective commitment on turnover intention: a test of two competing models. J. Chin. Hum. Resour. Manag. 8, 2–21. doi: 10.1108/JCHRM-01-2017-0001/FULL/XML

Yang, C., Chen, Y., Zhao, X., and Hua, N. (2020). Transformational leadership, proactive personality and service performance: the mediating role of organizational embeddedness. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manag. 32, 267–287. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-03-2019-0244/FULL/XML

Yi, L., Uddin, M. A., Das, A. K., Mahmood, M., and Sohel, S. M. (2019). Do transformational leaders engage employees in sustainable innovative work behaviour? Perspective from a developing country. Sustain. 11:2485. doi: 10.3390/SU11092485

Young, H. R., Glerum, D. R., Wang, W., and Joseph, D. L. (2018). Who are the most engaged at work? A meta-analysis of personality and employee engagement. J. Organ. Behav. 39, 1330–1346. doi: 10.1002/JOB.2303

Zhao, H., and Zhou, Q. (2019). Exploring the impact of responsible leadership on organizational citizenship behavior for the environment: a leadership identity perspective. Sustain 11:944. doi: 10.3390/SU11040944

Keywords : transformational leadership, employee engagement, affective organizational commitment, job performance, hospitality sector, China

Citation: Jiatong W, Wang Z, Alam M, Murad M, Gul F and Gill SA (2022) The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Affective Organizational Commitment and Job Performance: The Mediating Role of Employee Engagement. Front. Psychol. 13:831060. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.831060

Received: 07 December 2021; Accepted: 22 February 2022; Published: 06 April 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Jiatong, Wang, Alam, Murad, Gul and Gill. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Zheng Wang, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Book cover

Eurasian Business Perspectives pp 161–171 Cite as

Transformational Leadership: A Qualitative Study for the Practical Usage

  • Nil Selenay Erden 7 &
  • Murat Yaşlioğlu 8  
  • Conference paper
  • First Online: 23 April 2020

612 Accesses

Part of the Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics book series (EBES,volume 13/2)

The aim of this study is to clarify the transformational leadership behaviors, related with the four dimensions of the transformational leadership construct in order to increase the consistency between theoretically defined transformational leadership behaviors and actually observed ones. In this respect, items measuring the degree of transformational leadership capability of a leader were studied and ambiguous items were chosen. Twenty participants were asked to evaluate the meaning of those items; by asking their opinions about the “specific courses of action a leader takes to behave in that particular way.” Results, presented in detail, display that participant views were a valuable tool to make the fuzzy items more concrete. Study results also highlight the possibility that transformational leadership scale can and should be improved with additional in-depth investigation.

  • Transformational leadership
  • Multifactor leadership questionnaire
  • Practical usage

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
  • Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Abdullah, Q. D. L., & Varatharajoo, K. D. R. (2017). Transformational leadership and its functionality in arts organization. International Journal of Business and Society, 18 (S4), 710–717.

Google Scholar  

Andersen, L. B., Bjørnholt, B., Bro, L. L., & Holm-Petersen, C. (2018). Achieving high quality through transformational leadership: A qualitative multilevel analysis of transformational leadership and perceived professional quality. Public Personnel Management, 47 (1), 51–72.

CrossRef   Google Scholar  

Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (1991). The full range of leadership development: Basic and advanced manuals . Binghamton, NY: Bass, Avolio, & Associates.

Bambale, A. J. A., Girei, A. A., & Barwa, T. M. (2017). Leadership styles and workers’ performance in small and medium scale industries in Adamawa state, Nigeria: A research model. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance & Marketing, 9 (2), 14–23.

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations . New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18 (3), 19–31.

Bass, B. M. (1996). A new paradigm for leadership: An inquiry into transformational leadership . US Army Research Institute.

Bass, B. M. (1999). Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8 (1), 9–32.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1992). Multifactor leadership questionnaire—Short form 6s . Binghamton, NY: Center for Leadership Studies.

Hater, J. J., & Bass, B. M. (1988). Superiors’ evaluations and subordinates’ perceptions of transformational and transactional leadership. Journal of Applied psychology, 73 (4), 695–702.

Krepia, V., Katsaragakis, S., Kaitelidou, D., & Prezerakos, P. (2018). Transformational leadership and its evolution in nursing. Progress in Health Sciences, 8 (1), 189–194.

Sabwarhal, M., Levine, H., & D’Agostino, M. J. (2017). Gender differences in the leadership styles of MPA directors. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 23 (3), 869–884.

Samanta, I., & Lamprakis, A. (2018). Modern leadership types and outcomes: The case of Greek public sector. Management: Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 23 (1), 173–191.

Sheshi, A., & Kerçini, D. (2017). The role of transactional, transformational and participative leadership in performance of SME’s in Albania. Albanian Journal of Agricultural Sciences , 285–292.

Sun, R., & Henderson, A. C. (2017). Transformational leadership and organizational processes: Influencing public performance. Public Administration Review, 77 (4), 554–565.

Uddin, M. A., Rahman, M. S., & Howladar, M. H. R. (2017). Empirical study on transformational leadership, deviant behaviour, job performance, and gender: Evidence from a study in Bangladesh. European Journal of Management Studies, 22 (2), 77–97.

Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic leadership theories. Leadership Quarterly, 10 (2), 285–306.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Organizational Behavior, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey

Nil Selenay Erden

Department of Management, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey

Murat Yaşlioğlu

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nil Selenay Erden .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Faculty of Political Sciences, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul, Turkey

Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin

MUFG Union Bank, San Francisco, CA, USA

Hakan Danis

Faculty of Tourism, Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul, Turkey

Ender Demir

School of Management and Administrative Sciences, Istanbul Sehir University, Istanbul, Turkey

Ahmet Faruk Aysan

Appendix: Online Question Form

1.1 how do leaders transform their organizations, 1.1.1 your suggestions to merge theory with practice.

Transformational leaders have inspiring future visions. Those leaders share their visions with their followers. Basically they gain their followers’ respect and trust, and persuade them to share the vision. The vision includes leader’s dreams and it is the leader’s job to make those dreams come true, by acting as a change agent. The high expectations are communicated with enthusiasm, through individualized attention. The relationships with followers include coaching and increasing their potential by leading them to required mental models and behaviors that would foster the desired change.

The abovementioned definition seems blurry. We would like to make it more clear by identifying specific leader behaviors that would be expected from a transformational leader. Help us list those behaviors by reading each item below and writing your suggestions.

The leader expresses his/her confidence that we will achieve our goals.

How does a leader display confidence? What are the actions that a leader performs to display confidence?

I have pleasure in working with him/her.

Describe the leader that you would have pleasure working with and behaviors you expect from her/him.

The leader displays a sense of power and confidence.

How does a leader display sense of power and confidence? List the leader behaviors that would display power and confidence.

The leader emphasizes the importance of having a collective sense of mission.

How does the leader emphasize the importance of collective sense of mission? Can you list specific leader behaviors?

The leader specifies the importance of having a strong sense of purpose.

How does the leader emphasize the importance of having strong sense of purpose? Can you list specific leader behaviors?

The leader treats me as an individual rather than just a member of a group.

What are the courses of action that a leader takes to treat you as an individual?

The leader focuses me on developing my strengths.

What are the courses of action a leader takes to lead you toward developing your strengths?

The leader suggests new ways of looking at how we do our jobs.

What are the courses of action a leader takes to suggest new ways of looking at performing the jobs?

Name-Surname:

Your gender:

Your educational status:

Do you work with a transformational leader: () Yes () No.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Cite this paper.

Erden, N.S., Yaşlioğlu, M. (2020). Transformational Leadership: A Qualitative Study for the Practical Usage. In: Bilgin, M., Danis, H., Demir, E., Aysan, A. (eds) Eurasian Business Perspectives. Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics, vol 13/2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40160-3_11

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40160-3_11

Published : 23 April 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-40159-7

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-40160-3

eBook Packages : Business and Management Business and Management (R0)

Share this paper

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Publish with us

Policies and ethics

  • Find a journal
  • Track your research
  • Open access
  • Published: 06 December 2018

Is transformational leadership always good for employee task performance? Examining curvilinear and moderated relationships

  • Yashuo Chen 1 ,
  • Ranran Ning 1 ,
  • Tong Yang 1 ,
  • Shangjun Feng 1 &
  • Chunjiang Yang 1  

Frontiers of Business Research in China volume  12 , Article number:  22 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

54k Accesses

22 Citations

Metrics details

Transformational leadership, generally considered as a desirable leadership style, has positive effects on various performance outcomes of employees; however, its productivity has been called into question because of a relative neglect of its negative aspects. Addressing this gap, an attempt at rethinking the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance is important. The paradoxical perspective indicates that conflicting positive and negative effects of transformational leadership can coexist, which provides possibility and rationality for thorough consideration of employees’ task performance influenced by transformational leaders. Integrating the principle of diminishing marginal utility and the “Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing (TMGT)” effect, this research explores an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Furthermore, applying social cognitive theory, we assume an employee’s proactive personality moderates the curvilinear influence of transformational leadership on employees’ task performance. As expected, results from a study of data from 209 supervisor-subordinate relationships from China showed that the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance was moderated by employees’ proactive personality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Enron, the seventh largest company in the US at its peak, suffered the fate of its final demise the subsequent year. Although “Enron is too complex a story to avail of one single explanation (e.g., an extremely prevalent excessive transformational leadership within the organizational life) for its rise and fall,” the undeniable fact is that there were “compelling vision and totalistic vision(s),” “charismatic and extremely powerful” leaders and “higher levels of compliance from followers” on the eve of bankruptcy, which provides some beneficial inspiration to consider the dark side of transformational leadership. —Tourish 2013 , pp.117–133

Introduction

Transformational leadership has been one of the most important researched topics of the past few decades since Burns ( 1978 ) introduced its concept (Ng 2017 ). Transformational leadership draws the attention of scholars because of its difference with traditional leadership styles such as directive or transactional leadership (Judge and Piccolo 2004 ; Kark et al. 2018 ). Transformational leaders can become role models who are admired, respected and trusted, disburse attention to followers’ self-development process, encourage innovation by questioning, refraining, and solving old problems through new methods, and inspire to transcend their personal interests for organizational interests (Avolio and Bass 2002 ; Bass 1990 ). Substantial evidence has shown that transformational leaders influence the expression of subordinates’ emotions, attitudes and behaviors (Bass 1997 ; Judge and Piccolo 2004 ; Liao and Chuang 2007 ; Bednall et al. 2018 ). Specifically, the overwhelming majority of studies hold that transformational leadership and desirable individual and organizational outcomes produce a positive linear relationship. For instance, transformational leadership is positively related to emotional intelligence (Brown and Reilly 2008 ), task performance (Walumbwa et al. 2008 ; Wang et al. 2005 ), organizational citizenship behaviors (Podsakoff et al. 1990 ), organizational commitment (Avolio et al. 2004 ), occupational safety (Barling et al. 2002 ), team performance (Dionne et al. 2004 ; Zhang et al. 2011 ) and team innovation (Eisenbeiss et al. 2008 ). According to the notion of “the more, the better,” transformational leadership, as a widely accepted beneficial antecedent variable, leads to beneficial consequences.

However, some scholars have indicated that in all seemingly monotonic positive relations there may exist context-specific inflection points which provide clues that previous research has failed to investigate the nature of transformational leadership comprehensively (Grant and Schwartz 2011 ; Pierce and Aguinis 2011 ; Bednall et al. 2018 ). Indeed, emerging empirical literature has revealed mixed and diverse relationships between transformational leadership and favorable behavior outcomes, including positive (Gong et al. 2009 ; Shin and Zhou 2003 ), negative (Basu and Green 1997 ; Osborn and Marion 2009 ) and non-significant direct relationships (Jaussi and Dionne 2003 ). These findings suggest that the accepted consensus with respect to the beneficial effects of transformational leadership on outcomes in the workplace are likely to be challenged. Some undesirable consequences of transformational leadership may exist under certain conditions, which have been overlooked in previous research. The inspired leadership may be a double-edged sword (Keeley 1995 ). In particular, Porter and Bigley ( 2003 ) pointed out that transformational leadership could bring about some harmful consequences for organizations. If organizational members are influenced by the competing visions of different transformational leaders, role conflict and role ambiguity of employees could be an obstacle to improving performance and efficiency. Osborn and Marion ( 2009 ) demonstrated that transformational leadership is associated with negative performance based on the analysis of 473 individual surveys. In addition, Tourish ( 2013 ) argued that transformational leadership had two sides, “the bright side and the dark side.” Lee et al. ( 2016 ) indicated that there was a curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and employee task performance. Therefore, based on the consideration of both advantages and disadvantages coexisting in inspired leadership (Keeley 1995 ), we posit that there may be a potential curvilinear pattern in the relationship between transformational leadership and desirable outcomes in the workplace, including the nature of employee task performance. Nevertheless, empirical evidence for thoroughly exploring both the advantageous and disadvantageous roles of transformational leadership in engendering followers’ organizational behaviors is scarce (Pieterse et al. 2010 ). Furthermore, less clear is whether an optimal degree of transformational leadership practice exists in the organization of science.

Predicting and explaining employee performance has historically been a considerable and complicated question in the field of organizational research (Barrick et al. 2013 ). Numerous researchers suggest that performance is the ultimate dependent variable, if not its raison deter (Organ and Paine 1999 ). To this end, the construct of employees’ task performance is adopted as the model’s outcome in any study which is influenced by transformational leadership. Specifically, considering this important yet unaddressed issue of the effects of transformational leadership on employee task performance, in this research we empirically examine the potential nonlinear relation (inverted U-shape) in the aforementioned relationship. We address the possibility of existence by adopting a paradoxical perspective confirming that conflicting positive and negative effects of transformational leadership can coexist (Smith and Lewis 2011 ). Integrating the principle of diminishing marginal utility (referring to the more a benefit is enjoyed, the lower the marginal benefit of the next unit) and TMGT effect (e.g., “Too much of any good thing can lead to unexpected negative outcomes”), transformational leadership, as a typically beneficial antecedent, reaches an inflection point where the relationship with the favorable outcomes ceases to be linear and positive. Concretely, we consider when a leader engages in too many transformational behaviors, a downturn in expected outcome—task performance could occur.

Additionally, with respect to predicting and improving employee performance research, leadership studies rarely focus on the role of employees’ meaningful individual differences in the process of leadership influence on their performance outcomes, while the personality literature neglects the significant influence of leadership (Frieder et al. 2018 ; Ostroff and Bowen 2016 ; Uhl-bien et al. 2004 ). Perhaps by taking into account leaders’ styles and followers’ characteristics, we can better understand performance and suggest important implications for organizational management research and practice. In summary, for enriching employee performance research streams and overcoming a major weakness in each research stream, it is important to recognize two aspects—leaders and followers as causal agents who influence employees’ own performance. Felfe and Schyns (2006) has already demonstrated that the perception of leadership is shaped by characteristics of the followers and follower personality characteristics may act as moderators of the relationships between transformational leadership and performance outcomes. A proactive personality is defined as “a dispositional construct that identifies differences among people in the extent to which they take action to influence their environments” (Bateman and Crant 1993 , p.103). Because proactive personality inspires individuals to master their own situations or context, the extent of proactive personality may be an important factor in the relationship between transformational leadership and performance. In particular, in the present study, we assume that in the process where transformational leadership influences employee performance, this is thought to be contingent upon the employees’ proactive personality.

This research provides three key contributions to extant transformational leadership and proactive personality literature. First, we answer the fundamental question of “what is the relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance?” We subscribe to the paradoxical perspective, the principle of diminishing marginal utility and the TMGT effect to demonstrate the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Furthermore, we find that the intermediate levels of transformational leadership may produce optimal task performance of employees which deepens our understanding of transformational leadership. Second, we explicitly investigate how subordinates’ proactive personality moderates the curvilinear influence of transformational leadership on employee task performance. It is a response to calls for the examination of boundary conditions of curvilinear relationships more generally (Baer and Oldham 2006 ; Ren and Chadee 2017 ). Third, in our model we simultaneously include transformational leadership as the antecedent of task performance and employees’ proactive personality as moderator in the influence of transformational leadership on task performance which fills the research gap on leadership that has been heavily leader-focused but with little attention paid to followers as a differentiated group. Overall, this research not only enriches the theoretical knowledge, but also has practical value to management in going beyond the conventional linear relationship.

Literature review and hypotheses development

  • Transformational leadership

Transformational leaders transform their employees’ personal values and self-concept into a higher level of organizational needs and aspirations (Avolio et al. 1999 ). According to Avolio and Bass ( 1995 ), transformational leadership has four dimensions. The first is individualized consideration, which is the degree to which a leader builds close relationships with employees and attends to followers’ needs and differences, acts as a mentor or a coach to the followers, and listens to the followers’ concerns. Intellectual stimulation is the degree to which the leader challenges assumptions, takes risks and stimulates followers to think about old problems in new ways. Inspirational motivation is the degree to which the leader articulates a vision that is appealing and inspiring to followers with high standards, communicates optimism about future goals and provides meaning for the task at hand. Idealized influence means that leaders are admired, respected and trusted, and emphasizes the importance of having a collective sense of mission. These behaviors are deemed more efficient in the “change and transformation” context.

Since the publication of Bass ( 1985 ) seminal work, a multitude of studies have documented pervasive and beneficial effects of transformational leadership on followers’ attitudinal and motivational outcomes [e.g., job satisfaction (Braun et al. 2013 ), satisfaction with leader (Bono and Judge 2003 ), motivation (Charbonneau et al. 2001 ), organizational commitment (Avolio et al. 2004 ), effort (Weiß and Süß 2016 )], followers’ behavioral outcome [e.g., performance (Wang et al. 2005 ), creativity (Gong et al. 2009 ; Bednall et al. 2018 )] and leaders’ outcomes [e.g., leader effectiveness (Erkutlu 2013 ), leader job performance (Deinert et al. 2015 )]. For instance, transformational leadership is positively related to follower perceptions of organizational support, leader-member exchange, organizational justice, trust in a supervisor (Ahmad et al. 2008 ), and psychological empowerment (Castro et al. 2008 ), while transformational leadership is negatively associated with employee perceived job stress, burnout (Flaschner et al. 2006 ), work-family conflict (Munir et al. 2012 ) and turnover (Tse et al. 2013 ).

Importantly, Seibert et al. ( 2011 ) argued that scholars have paid much attention to investigating transformational leadership because of its role in performance beyond expectations over the past quarter century. Therefore, the main content of transformational leadership literature is the potential performance implications of transformational leadership. Meanwhile, primary studies on transformational leadership have involved exploring the “beyond expectation” role of transformational leadership in performance across criterion types, levels of analysis, different study methods and in different settings. In terms of performance, many studies revealed the effects of transformational leadership on follower task performance, contextual performance, and creative performance. In terms of analysis unit, transformational leadership theory suggested that transformational leadership was associated not only with individual performance but also with group and organizational performance (Bass 1985 ; Conger et al. 2000 ; Shamir et al. 1993 ). In additional, Dvir et al. ( 2002 ) found that transformational leadership could enhance follower development and performance by a longitudinal, randomized field experiment. Tse and Chiu ( 2014 ) indicated that transformational leadership influenced employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors according to hierarchical linear modeling which used data from a sample of 250 Chinese front-line employees and their immediate managers working in banks.

Transformational leadership and task performance

A great deal of evidence has confirmed that transformational leadership is positively associated with a range of outcomes in performance (Bass and Avolio 1990 ; Kirkpatrick and Locke 1996 ; Spreitzer et al. 2005 ). Nevertheless, not every study came to positive conclusions about the influence of transformational leadership on performance outcomes. For instance, according to a study by Voigtländer ( 2016 ), transformational leadership is negatively correlated with organizational growth performance when studying the leadership of the CEO of small businesses in the US. In addition, some empirical research showed that there is no statistically significant link between transformational leadership (Kissi et al. 2013 ; Tosi et al. 2004 ) and performance of employees (Judge and Piccolo 2004 ). Furthermore, boundary conditions and a mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance are sufficiently recognized or appreciated by researchers (Menges et al. 2008 ; Menges et al. 2011 ; Pan and Lin 2015 ). Prior research proposed that group-focused transformational leadership is positively associated with team innovation (Jiang et al. 2015 ), whereas differentiated individual-focused transformational leadership is negatively related to team innovation. Li and Yuan ( 2017 ) found that the “bright side” of transformational leadership has a direct positive moderation effect, while the “dark side” has an indirect negative moderation effect via leader-leader exchange when the relationship between proactive personality and career satisfaction is empirically examined. Bednall et al. ( 2018 ) argued that the relationship between transformational leadership and follower innovative behavior is non-linear rather than having a positive linear relationship. In sum, these dual-side effects may provide clues implying the possibility of a nonlinear relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. However, there are few studies to demonstrate empirically the curvilinear effect of transformational leadership on employee task performance. Broadly speaking, task performance refers to the evaluation of the particular tasks and behaviors in traditional job descriptions (Williams and Anderson 1991 ). Meanwhile, task performance, as an important element, is considered part of employee performance appraisal indicators of almost all organizations (Manesh and Zanjirchi 2013 ).

A paradox represents contradictory yet coexisting opposing elements (Smith and Lewis 2011 ). Paradoxical thinking is prevalent in Chinese management practice. The Daoist yin-and-yang symbol posits that everything is paradoxical (Ma and Tsui 2015 ). Similarly, the Confucian “middle way” denotes the avoidance of polarization (Chen 2003 ). In addition, dialectic worldviews accept the notion that the world is contradictory, interconnected, and constantly changing (Peng and Nisbett 1999 ). Everything which exists can theoretically be both good and bad (Spencer-Rodgers et al. 2004 ). Likewise, Western literature has previously suggested paradoxes in organizations (Lewis 2000 ; Smith and Lewis 2011 ; Smith and Tushman 2005 ). Indeed, scholars have effectively explained organizational phenomena in practice through the paradox perspective (Schad et al. 2016 ). For example, competition and cooperation (Chen 2008 ), differentiation and integration (Lawrence and Lorsch 1968 ), and flexibility and control (Eisenhardt et al. 2010 ) are important elements for the most effective organizations. In addition, earlier studies indicated that paradoxical leader behaviors in people management are most effective, including maintaining both distance and closeness, treating subordinates uniformly and distinctively and enforcing control while allowing flexibility, all of which apply a paradoxical lens to examine the behaviors of leaders (Zhang et al. 2015 ). Integrating Eastern management philosophy and Western-based literature, our study explores the nature of transformational leadership by adopting the paradox perspective, which may generate new inspirations in transformational leadership research. Next, we focus on why and what of the two paradox-good and bad effects of transformational leadership on employee performance.

The law of diminishing marginal utility is pervasive in our daily life and workplace; for example, the more you travel to a place, the less novel it is. Diminishing marginal utility is initially a basic economic principle which states that as more of a product or service is consumed, the marginal benefit of the next unit decreases. If you consume too much, the marginal utility of a product or service can become negative (Easterlin 2005 ; Rabin et al. 2001 ). Diminishing marginal utility has been further extended to the organizational management field (Dhanaraj and Beamish 2004 ). In social management, once a favorable policy is issued, the management effect is often obvious in the beginning; however, as time goes by, the policy’s function becomes weaker and less suitable for the need of the social management. This is why the legal and policy departments adjust and update policies at times (Robalino et al. 2009 ). It is the same within organizational management. This principle may suggest that transformational leadership and its “marginal utility” do not have a linear relationship, which means any specific change in transformational leadership will always produce a corresponding fixed value change in the “marginal utility” in the area of management.

In addition, the TMGT effect was presented by Pierce and Aguinis ( 2011 ) to account for many paradoxical and anomalous empirical results in modern organizations and management which provides additional and persuasive support for explanation of the transformational leadership influence on employees’ performance. “The TMGT effect occurs when ordinarily beneficial antecedents (i.e., predictor variables) reach inflection points after which their relations with desired outcomes (i.e., criterion variables) cease to be linear and positive. Exceeding these inflection points is always undesirable because it leads either to waste (no additional benefit) or, worse, to undesirable outcomes (e.g., decreased individual or organizational performance)” (Pierce and Aguinis 2011 , p. 315). Ames and Flynn ( 2007 ) demonstrated that the assertiveness of a leader has an inverted U-shaped relationship with leadership effectiveness of employees. Similarly, Lee et al. ( 2016 ) also indicated the same relationship existing between empowering leadership and employee performance. The accumulation of quantitative changes results in qualitative changes (Olsen 2004 ). Namely, the positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance evolves into a negative effect of transformational leadership on employee performance. The bright and dark sides of transformational leadership would both play important roles in any situation. Shedding light on the negative side effects of transformational leadership may help explain the mixed picture of empirical findings. Beyer ( 1999 ) and Yukl ( 2009 ) stressed that negative effects of transformational and charismatic leadership have been neglected and deserve further research. Based on the abovementioned analysis, we expected that a high level of transformational leadership may lead to a decrease in employees’ task performance after an inflection point.

In fact, Howell and Avolio pointed out that the “dark side” of transformational leadership has been largely ignored, and it could lead to destructive outcomes in any organization (Howell and Avolio 1992 ). Researchers and practitioners should focus more on its negative effects (Burke 2006 ; Villiers 2014 ; Walton 2014 ). Transformational leaders who have great personal charm set a good example and help increase the receptivity of followers to their task (Bass 1985 ; Kuhnert and Lewis 1987 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). But this high charisma level also leads to potential hubris, boastfulness, greed for power and success, self-centeredness and a feeling of superiority (Villiers 2014 ; Walton 2014 ). Bass noted that transformational leaders have strong authoritarian tendencies related to excessive self-glorification and are unaccepting of criticism in order to maintain their perfect image (Bass and Avolio 1990 ). That clearly reflects that they tend to overestimate their own value but undervalue that of their followers’ (Bass 1999 ). This feature may also shift the focus of transformational leader from supporting followers to enhancing their own public image regardless of employees’ and organizations’ benefits (Resick et al. 2009 ). Likewise, transformational leaders’ over-confident, excessive pursuit of power and superiority could limit the effectiveness of transformational leadership on followers’ performance (Walton 2014 ). In addition, this is consistent with Eisenbeiss and Boerner’s ( 2013 ) contention that transformational leadership increases followers’ dependency on their leader because of their charisma. Employees depend on a leader’s guidance and inspiration and expect to receive high identity. The situation can be compared to children who need parents’ protection and security. Transformational leaders become idols and role models, whereby employees have high emotional attachment to them. As a result, followers strongly seek the leaders’ recognition and express unconditional obedience to leaders, both of which inhibit their creativity (Basu and Green 1997 ). Further, followers have feelings of loss which reduce their engagement and willingness to perform tasks as a result of the absence of transformational leaders.

Too much concern and consideration from transformational leadership can increase instrumental costs including a low level of employees’ goal achievements and task performance (Ames and Flynn 2007 ), neglecting tasks while spending more time socializing (Fleishman 1995 ) and even reducing their workload through the relational ties with their leaders. Providing positive feedback for employee performance may also ultimately undermine the goal (Kohn 1999 ). Kohn ( 2001 ) argued that this type of feedback hinders employees’ good behaviors and performance in the long run. Encouragement and praise make employees more prone to performing simple tasks in order to maintain positive comments (Kohn 1999 ). They intend to finish fewer tasks to get attention and care from leaders. Kohn ( 2001 ) found that individuals who are rewarded for performing a creative task well tend to stumble at the next task. Alternatively, individualized consideration from leaders leads to followers experiencing greater psychological stress. Conversely, followers have a moral obligation to pay back according to the principle of reciprocation. Actually, perceived individualized consideration is also a mark of favoritism and inequity which can lead to relationship deterioration between leaders and followers.

Inspirational motivation, as one of the core dimensions of transformational leadership, means reshaping followers’ values, attitudes and aspirations to achieve the organization’s shared vision (Conger et al. 2000 ). Although organizations’ interests are aligned with individuals’ principles, it is undeniable that there is a potential conflict between the self-interest of employees and efforts for the greater benefits for organizations. The process of achieving an organization’s goals could inevitably damage followers’ self-interests. Poor task performance of employees is an expression of venting their dissatisfaction because their own interests are not sufficiently satisfied. Employees may also manifest their disappointment in frequent red lights of organizational vision.

Transformational leadership emphasizes followers’ potential development and innovative consciousness rather than directly taking advantage of existing values of employees (Mills and Ungson 2003 ). However, too many transformational behaviors of leaders can lead to unexpected consequences such as overly empowering behaviors of leaders (Lee et al. 2016 ). Solving problems by themselves not only requires more time and energy seeking ways to conquer difficulties encountered in the process of work, but also leads to decreased efficiency in fulfilling core tasks (Mills and Ungson 2003 ). More and more unmotivated employees materialize and their willingness to exert effort on task performance decreases because of the absence of oversight from transformational leaders, especially when facing uninteresting or unimportant tasks. Additionally, higher autonomy and greater responsibility may lead to additional burdens such as high standards of performance, more task allocations and expression of ideas. Then, the cost of “stimulating potential” is possibly role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload and higher work stress (Spector et al. 1988 ), all of which hinder employees to achieve optimal outcomes in their task performance (Gilboa et al. 2008 ). Employees’ cognition and behaviors and even the normal mode of work can be constantly changing based on a transformational leader’s expectations. The influence of constantly changing the rhythm of work is directly embodied in the reduction of task performance (Summers et al. 1993 ). Taking these findings and reasonings together, we hypothesize as follows:

Hypothesis 1: The relationship between transformational leadership and task performance is characterized by an inverted U-shaped relationship where transformational leadership positively impacts employee task performance to a specific point (inflection point); Beyond this point the influence of transformational leadership on employee task performance declines.

Proactive personality as a moderator

Productivity or validity of transformational leadership is not consistent but depends on followers with different personality characteristics (Gong et al. 2009 ; Yun et al. 2005 ). According to the major premise of social cognitive theory, human action not only results from the surrounding environment but also from personality and cognition. Weak disposition characteristics of people can be compensated for by context-related cues and personality traits also play an important role in behavioral decisions (Bandura 1999 ). Leadership, as a shaping-the-working-context variable, takes compensatory effect for cognitive attitudes and behaviors of followers with particular traits (Howell and Avolio 1993 ; Judge et al. 2000 ; Judge and Piccolo 2004 ; Lord et al. 1986 ; Yukl 1989 ). For instance, Kark et al. ( 2003 ) pointed out that transformational leadership can promote greater innovation in employees with lower levels of proactive character orientation. In addition, Lepine and Van Dyne ( 1998 ) indicated that individuals with low self-efficacy may be more prone to influence by favorable situations. Similarly, desired individual personality characteristics may also compensate for the situation in a particular workplace. Grant and Sumanth ( 2009 ) found that employees with high intrinsic motivation maintain high performance even if supervisors are not favorable. Therefore, employees with certain personality traits better adapt to various degrees of transformational leadership than others (Ford and Fottler 1996 ).

Proactive personality, as a stable disposition personality trait, states that people with higher proactive personality are relatively unconstrained by contextual forces, and that they identify opportunities, act on them, show initiative, and strive to bring about meaningful change (Crant 2000 ). This construct is rooted in interactionism, which argues that situations are a function of the person as the person’s behavior is a function of the situation (Bowers 1973 ). In this research, we assume that proactive personality of employees would moderate the curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. Specifically, transformational leadership, when it is in middle and low degrees, has a greater positive effect on task performance when employees possess a low level of proactive personality. Otherwise, excessive transformational leadership has a less negative effect on task performance when employees hold a high level of proactive personality. In sum, the person, the external environment, and behavior continuously influence one another (Bandura 1986 ). The influence of proactive personality of employees and transformational leadership are mutually complementary.

Robust evidence has demonstrated that proactive personality is strongly relevant to desired outcomes such as work engagement (Sonnentag 2003 ), in-role performance (Fuller et al. 2006 ; Thompson 2005 ), and career success (Chan 2006 ; Seibert et al. 1999 ). Proactive people tend to maintain a strong sense of responsibility, search for opportunities to act, search for information and resources actively, and have strong needs for achievement and growth (Bateman and Crant 1993 ). Further, employees with a proactive personality would expend more effort to acquire new skills and knowledge and have more personal resources and personal achievements such as self-efficacy, self-regulation and career development (Bertolino et al. 2011 ). Studies in personality indicate that individuals with a high level of proactive personality have more potential productivity benefits due to being self-starters, and having change orientation and future-focused tactics in the pursuit process (Parker et al. 2010 ). Specifically, compared with employees who are not proactive, employees with a proactive personality invest more self-initiated effort in setting a proactive goal and make proactive goals a reality regardless of whether the external situations are good or bad. In particular, when employees are in a challenging situation, the validity of a proactive personality is more important. Accordingly, they seize opportunities, anticipate problems and make things happen utilizing a “decisive” response pattern to the external environment.

Employees with high proactive personalities might perform better than an employee with a less proactive personality when leaders are highly transformational. At low levels of transformational leadership, employees with high proactive personality may perceive insufficient circumstances or conditions for self-development, self-growth and self-achievement. Accordingly, they expend additional effort to identify various opportunities and search for important information from other contextual factors rather than merely from leaders, which does not lead to immediate effects on task performance because of their high level of investment in other aspects of organizational outcomes (Fuller and Marler 2009 ; Li et al. 2010 ; Seibert et al. 2001 ). Facing high levels of their leaders’ transformational leadership such as a high degree of work arrangement, sufficient development resources and an attractive shared vision (Avolio et al. 1999 ; Howell and Avolio 1993 ; Judge and Piccolo 2004 ), it can be regarded as a favorable and challenging situation to employees with high proactive personality because of their higher level self-goals, self-efficacy and self-responsibility (Felfe and Schyns 2006 ; Lim and Ployhart 2004 ). In other words, their self-starting, orientation change and future-focused tactics are especially effective in such situations (Parker et al. 2010 ). Their improving performance is influenced by support from external conditions and resources and by their internal personality, motivation and ability (Hurtz and Donovan 2000 ; Judge and Ilies 2002 ). Employees who have a proactive personality would actively engage in developing their skills through building networks and possessing resources, expressing their needs clearly, and identifying the value and behavior orientation of transformational leadership. Proactive employees can improve their task performance dominated by strong intrinsic motivation even if a high level of transformational leadership brings out negative aspects.

In contrast, performance behaviors of employees with a low level of proactive personality are more likely to induce outside beneficial context clues (Abele and Spurk 2009 ). On the one hand, when leaders begin to perform transformational leadership such as providing personal attention based on needs, provision of resources to overcome problems and encouragement of performance (Stone et al. 2004 ), employees with a low proactive personality would possess advantageous resources and support in finishing work tasks. Therefore, under the influence of transformational leadership, they can overcome work obstacles and improve work efficiency easily (Judge et al. 2005 ; Kim et al. 2009 ). On the other hand, employees with a low proactive personality are likely to increase their perceptions of role overload and stress beyond their working range, intentional effort, and personal ability, and even be repelled by leaders’ attention when leaders participate in more transformational behaviors such as offering a high degree of trust to employees’ performance, frequent interactive communication, and strong stimulation of innovation and creativity (Bunderson and Sutcliffe 2003 ; Dweck and Leggett 1988 ; Vandewalle et al. 1999 ). Similarly, several empirical studies illustrate that an employee with a less proactive personality is prone to be satisfied with the status quo, “muddle along” and devote less energy to work (Bunderson and Sutcliffe 2003 ; Fuller et al. 2006 ; Thompson 2005 ). In sum, we hypothesize as follows:

Hypothesis 2: Employee proactive personality positively moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. That is, task performance diminishes later for higher proactive personality compared to lower proactive personality. Transformational leadership has a greater positive impact on task performance when employees have a low level of proactive personality.

Methodology

Procedure and sample.

The participants are drawn from 7 companies in the manufacturing, telecommunications, and hotel industries distributed in northern area of China, including 3 five-star hotels, 2 chemical fiber factories and 2 communication service suppliers. In the present study, we use samples from multiple industries which avoids contextual constraints associated with any particular organization (Johns 2001 ). In addition, the design of multiple-source data also reduces less common method bias. In the survey process, we first contacted the directors of these companies’ human resources departments to request their assistance and consent to participate in this survey by means of telephone, and then requested them to set up two WeChat groups of immediate supervisors and subordinates. Each subordinate had only one immediate supervisor. Additionally, we prepared two detailed operations manuals, including steps and screenshots in order to make participants aware of how to complete the questionnaires online. Participants were told that the questionnaire was for academic research. In additional, they were also informed of the confidentiality of their responses. The completed questionnaires were collected by the researchers via WeChat, a widely used instant communication tool in China, in order to alleviate participants’ potential concern about the exposure of their answers. Employees opened the questionnaires designated for subordinates to start the answering process. Then each employee received a unique pairing code that we allocated when they finished the questionnaire, and there were notified to send the pairing code to their immediate supervisors. According to this pairing code, supervisors opened the supervisor questionnaires to complete them.

The survey used the time-lagged design. The data were collected at two points of time, with a three-month interval. During Part 1, the measure of transformational leadership, proactive personality and demographic information was completed by subordinates; we received 308 questionnaires which could be used in subsequent analysis. During Part 2 (3 months later), the measures of employees’ task performance was completed by immediate supervisors. After deleting the questionnaires with unmatched leader-employee pairs and incomplete answers, 209 supervisor-subordinate dyads were used in the present study, yielding a 59.7% response rate. Specifically, 79 samples came from the hotel industry, 66 samples were from chemical fiber factories and 64 participants worked in the telecommunication industry. The average age of employees in our sample ( n  = 209) was 28.63 years old, and 98 (46.89%) were males. 60.47 (in months) was their average organizational seniority. 7.2% of them had a master’s degree or higher, 59.8% of them had a bachelor’s degree, and 21.5% of them had graduated from college.

Prior to implementing the survey, to ensure meaning equivalence between English and Chinese, first we selected a back-translation (Brislin 1980 ) process to design the Chinese version of this questionnaire. All measures adopted in the research were translated from English to Chinese by a bilingual researcher, and then the responses were translated back into English.

Transformational leadership was measured with 14 items from Kirkman et al. ( 2009 ). The questionnaire generated scores based on following four dimensions: charismatic influence (e.g., “Provides a good model for me to follow”), individualized consideration (e.g., “Acts without considering my feeling”), inspirational motivation (e.g., “Has a clear understanding of where we are going”) and intellectual stimulation (e.g., “Has stimulated me to rethink the way I do things”). Responses ranged from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 7 (Strongly agree). The Cronbach’s alpha for this complete scale was 0.948.

  • Proactive personality

To measure proactive personality, we used the 6-item scale developed by Bateman and Crant ( 1993 ). Items are on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree). Sample items included “If I see something I don’t like, I fix it” and “No matter what the odds, if I believe in something I will make it happen.” The Cronbach’s alpha for the complete scale was 0.751.

  • Task performance

We assessed task performance using 11-item scale developed by Tsui et al. ( 1997 ). The direct leader assessed the subordinates’ task performance on a 7-point Likert scale. Responses ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Sample items were “Employee’s quantity of work is higher than average” and “Employee’s standards of work quality are higher than formal standards for this job.” In this research, the Cronbach’s alpha for the complete scale was 0.972.

Control variables

We controlled for some pivotal variables such as employees’ demographic variables included gender , organizational seniority , age , and education level that could affect the result. These variables were controlled in the process of data analysis. Prior research has suggested that those variables were related to task performance (Carter et al. 2013 ; Chan et al. 2013 ; Maslyn and Uhl-bien 2001 ). Gender as a dichotomous variable was measured and coded as 1 for male and 0 for female. The measure of organizational seniority was the number of months a participant had been in the current job, and age was evaluated in years. Education level was viewed as a continuous variable which encoded ranging from 0 (junior high school or below) to 7 (master’s degree or higher).

Analysis and results

To avoid the existing possibility of common method bias in the current study, we adopted the multiple-source data and time-lagged design following recommendations proposed in the literature by Podsakoff et al. ( 2012 ). In addition, the confidentiality of participants’ responses and personal information was strictly maintained. Harman’s one-factor analysis demonstrated that no single factor occurs and no single factor accounts for > 50% of the variance of all the relevant items. Based on the above, the results indicate that a common method bias is not a concern in the research.

Confirmatory factor analyses

Before hypotheses testing, we first conducted CFA (Mplus) procedures to verify the distinctiveness of the three variables included in the present research: transformational leadership, proactive personality and task performance. According to sub-dimension of transformational leadership, parceling was used. As is shown in Table  1 , the baseline model (3-factor model) fits the data well (χ 2 / df  = 2.177, CFI = 0.945, TLI = 0.938, RMSEA = 0.075, SRMR = 0.049). Compared with Model A (χ 2 / df  = 3.311, CFI = 0.891, TLI = 0.878, RMSEM = 0.105, SRMR = 0.093), Model B (χ 2 / df  = 3.384, CFI = 0.888, TLI = 0.874, RMSEM = 0.107, SRMR = 0.094) and Model C (χ 2 / df  = 6.912, CFI = 0.721, TLI = 0.688, RMSEM = 0.168, SRMR = 0.125), the baseline model, namely, the 3-factor model, offers a significant improvement. As such, we selected the three constructs for our analyses.

Descriptive analysis

Table  2 presents the means, standard deviations, correlations, and alpha coefficients for the variables used in the study. All variables have reasonable reliabilities, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of 0.70 or higher. Based on the bivariate associations, transformational leadership is statistically significantly correlated to task performance.

Difference tests

In consideration of the case that our data came from different industries and organizations, we need to conduct an aggregation test in order to ensure the validity of multilevel modeling analysis. Specifically, the aggregation test was to examine whether employees in the different organizations and industries were significantly differentiated. We first adopted one-way ANOVA analysis and the results ( F (6, 202) = 1.687, p  > 0.05; F (2, 202) = 1.737, p  > 0.05) demonstrates that there are no significant variations of task performance in different organizations and industries, respectively. We also tested inter-rater reliability among members of different organizations and industries by calculating intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), respectively, where ICC (1) represents the ratio of between-group variance to total variance, and ICC (2) represents the reliability of the group mean (Bliese 2000 ). The results of intra-class correlations among organizations and industries are (ICC (1)  = 0.02, ICC (2)  = 0.41) and (ICC (1)  = 0.01, ICC (2)  = 0.42). The acceptable standard of ICC (1) and ICC (2) are ICC (1)  > 0.05 and ICC (2)  > 0.5 (Klein et al. 2000 ). Therefore, according to those unsupportive indices, it is infeasible to use the HLM model for analysis.

Hypotheses testing

In order to test our hypotheses, we need to specify and estimate the following regression models. First, we tested the possibility of non-linearity (H1) in the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance as follows:

where TL 2 i  =  TL i  ×  TL i , supporting the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and task performance must satisfy the following conditions: β 0 and β 1  > 0; β 2  < 0.

Then, we tested our second hypothesis for the role of proactive personality in moderating the relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Based on the approach of Baron and Kenny ( 1986 ), we added the moderator variable (proactive personality) to Eq. ( 2 ), as follows:

where β i s are regression coefficients of equations and β 4 and β 5 are the coefficients of the interaction terms, respectively. If either β 4 and/or β 5 are statistically significant, H2 is supported. Eq. ( 1 ) tests the direct and linear relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance. Eq. ( 2 ) signifies the curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance (H1). Eq. ( 3 ) tests the moderating role of proactive personality on the transformational leadership and employees’ task performance (H2). This method is widely used to assess curvilinear relationships in management research (Burnett et al. 2015 ; Lechner et al. 2010 ; Zettler and Lang 2015 ).

We followed hierarchical regression analysis using SPSS software, and the independent variables (transformational leadership) and proactive personality variables were all mean-center for testing the interaction effects to reduce potential multicollinearity problems (Aiken and West 1994 ). Table  3 presents the results of the regression analyses.

Hypothesis 1 suggests that the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance is U-shaped. We used Janssen’s ( 2001 ) 3-step procedure. In the first step, we entered the four control variables; namely, gender , age , seniority and education (Model 1). In the second step, transformational leadership was included (Model 2). In the third step, transformational leadership squared was included (Model 3). As shown in Table 3 (Model 3), the squared term for task performance is also significant ( β  = − 0.268, p  < 0.01). β 2 is statistically-significant and satisfies the a priori inverted U-shaped relationship condition, with β 2  < 0 in the equations. Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported; namely, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and task performance (see Fig.  1 ).

figure 1

Curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and task performance

Hypothesis 2 predicts that a proactive personality moderates the curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. In Model 5, proactive personality, its interaction with transformational leadership and the product of proactive personality and transformational leadership squared were all included. The parameter estimate of β 5 is not statistically significant, while the parameter estimate of β 4 is statistically significant; thereby satisfying the condition for the moderation hypothesis. Thus, Hypothesis 2 is supported. In additional, in order to clearly reveal the moderating effect of employees’ proactive personality on the inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and task performance, we plotted the interaction in Fig.  2 and calculated the simple slopes (− 1 SD; + 1 SD) using the Johnson-Neyman technique developed by Bauer and Curran ( 2005 ). The result of the simple slopes test is that simple slope is not significant from 0 when moderating variable-proactive personality is within its change range.

figure 2

Moderating effects of proactive personality on transformational leadership and task performance

As shown in Fig. 2 , we verified the interaction effect of proactive personality, while transformational leadership and employee task performance has a non-monotonic relationship across proactive personality; the inflection point where transformational leadership starts to have a negative effect on task performance is found at higher levels of transformational leadership for those with a high proactive personality than those with a low proactive personality. Overall, Hypothesis 2 is supported.

Study 2 was conducted to test all of our hypotheses again, to replicate the findings of Study 1 in a bank context, and corroborate our results across studies (Mathison 1988 ; Webb et al. 1966 ). We hope our findings provide more confidence in the interpretation of these results and their robustness.

Participants and procedure

In Study 2, 168 employees with only one immediate supervisor, working in the Bank of China, Qinhuangdao Branch, were recruited. Fifty-five immediate supervisors of those employees also participated in the survey. Electronic survey data collection occurred in two waves. In the first wave, we collected demographic information, transformational leadership and a measure of proactive personality from employees. In the second wave, which began 2 weeks following the end of the first wave, we collected demographic information and employees’ task performance from supervisors. In the survey process, the purpose of the survey being to commit to academic research, confidentiality of personal information and answers, and operation manuals were all expounded upon in detail within a WeChat group. In addition, we provided some rewards in the WeChat group to encourage participants to fill out the questionnaires. Employees opened the subordinate questionnaires to start their answers. Then, each employee received a unique pairing code that we allocated when they finished the questionnaires, and their immediate supervisors were notified of the pairing code of each employee. Supervisors could open the supervisor questionnaires to complete questions after receiving the pairing code from their subordinates.

As a result, 139 supervisor-subordinate data were gained across the two waves. For subordinates participating in the study, 82 (59%) were women. The average age of employees was approximately 30 years old. The average tenure with the organization was 70.46 months and the average tenure within the career was 82.45 months. 88.5% of them had a college degree or higher.

Study 2 used scales and items also used in Study 1.

Similar to Study 1, we controlled for employees’ age , gender , organizational tenure , and level of education . Additionally, we controlled for career tenure . Gender was measured and coded as 1 for male and 0 for female. The measure of organizational tenure was the number of months a participant had been in the current organization and career, and age was evaluated in years. Education was viewed as a continuous variable which was encoded ranging from 1 (junior high school or below) to 5 (doctoral degree).

The result of Harman’s single factor test shows that no single factor emerges and no single factor accounts for > 50% of the variance of all the relevant items. Specifically, an exploratory factor analysis of all items explains 75.90% of the total variance and the largest factor accounts for only 38.17% of the variance. Therefore, common method bias is not a major question in the study.

Second, we conducted a series of confirmatory factor analyses in order to test whether the discriminate validity of constructs in this study was adequate. The results are shown in Table  4 . The three-factor model fits the data well, χ 2 /df = 1.865, CFI = 0.922, TLI = 0.915, RMSEA = 0.079 and SRMR = 0.062.

Third, descriptive statistics, including observed variable means, standard deviations, correlations and reliability coefficients, are presented in Table  5 . Transformational leadership is positively related to task performance. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of transformational leadership, proactive personality and task performance are 0.937, 0.819 and 0.969 respectively, which signifies that all of them have good reliability.

Finally, the results of regression analyses are shown in Table  6 . As shown in Table 6 , the coefficient for the transformational leadership quadratic term is significant ( β  = − 0.279, p  < 0.05, Model 3). Thus, there is a curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. In addition, Fig.  3 shows an inverted U-shaped relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported.

figure 3

Then, we tested the moderating influence of employees’ proactive personality on the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. In Model 5, we found that the squared interaction term TL 2 i  ×  PP i , and the interaction term TL i  ×  PP i are both statistically significant; thereby satisfying the condition for the moderation hypothesis (H2). Hypothesis 2 is supported. Furthermore, we performed simple slope analysis, with the result of plotting interaction shown in Fig.  4 .

figure 4

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ task performance. Our results suggest that the effects of transformational leadership are not a simple linear relationship but are more complicated; specifically, transformational leadership has an inverted U-shaped relationship with employees’ task performance in the work space. This study is to question this conventional view of the positive relation between transformational leadership and task performance and develops the curvilinear association in the relationship mentioned above. After reaching an inflection point, the positive influence of transformational leadership diminishes. Furthermore, drawing upon social cognitive theory, we demonstrate that employees’ proactive personality plays a statistically significant moderating role on the transformational leadership—task performance relationship.

Theoretical contributions

The findings of this study contribute to the existing literature in at least three ways. Firstly, this paper extends the understanding about the role of transformational leadership on employee performance. We challenge the notion that transformational leadership, regarded as a desirable leadership style, leads to more ideal work outcomes (Aryee et al. 2012 ; Walumbwa et al. 2008 ; Wang et al. 2005 ). By adopting a paradox perspective, TMGT effect, and the principle of diminishing marginal utility, the study explains that the influence of transformational leadership on employee task performance is more complex than the simple linear relationship conventionally assumed in previous studies. A curvilinear relationship is uncovered in this study between transformational leadership and employee task performance. Paradox offers a novel and valuable perspective for examining the nature of leadership (Eisenhardt 2000 ; Lewis et al. 2000 ). Transformational leadership’s two sides coexist, both angel and devil. Integrating the TMGT effect (Pierce and Aguinis 2013 ), and the principle of diminishing marginal utility, we clearly explain the paradoxical influence process of transformational leadership. This study also responds to the call that researchers should focus more on the negative effects of transformational leaders (Tourish and Pinnington 2002 ). In accordance with Edwards and Berry ( 2010 ), theories should contain greater specificity in order to make progress. The use of the TMGT effect and the principle of diminishing marginal utility in literature on transformational leadership expands and tests the applicative range of the principle of diminishing marginal utility and the TMGT effect in organizational management, respectively. Our findings also provide evidence that an intermediate level of transformational leadership may produce optimal and best task performance of employees.

Secondly, our study extends the transformational leadership approach by identifying the role of proactive personality in leadership effectiveness. Based on social cognitive theory, our study finds that proactive personality positively moderates the curvilinear relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. Employees with a high degree of proactive personality prefer a challenging situation, and better cope with a high degree of work arrangement, work load and sufficient resources under high levels of transformational leadership. Therefore, when employees have a higher level of proactive personality, the inflection point of the curvilinear relationship is delayed. The level of individual proactive personality needs to be considered as an important influential factor in predicting transformational leadership effectiveness and productivity; however, research which directly examines the interactional effects between transformational leadership and proactive personality on employees’ performance outcomes is scare (Wang et al. 2011 ). In order to fill the gaps of previous research, we include employees’ proactive personality as a moderator in our model. Thus, employee personality traits can play a critical role in practicing transformational leadership and follower characteristics should be understood before determining the level of transformational leadership.

Thirdly, in terms of predicting and improving employee performance research, the leadership research rarely recognizes meaningful individual differences among employees and the significant influence of leadership has been largely overlooked in previous studies of personality (Howell and Shamir 2005 ; Ostroff and Bowen 2016 ; Uhl-bien et al. 2004 ). The research, including most studies on leader-based effects for subordinates’ attitudes and behaviors and follower-based effects for themselves, has emphasized one side of actors (leaders or followers themselves), concluding that it is valid. However, we respond to the repeated calls for focusing on followers’ role in leadership research (Shamir 2007 ; Uhl-Bien et al. 2014 ) and focusing on leaderships’ role in the follower personality literature (Ostroff and Bowen 2016 ). This study bridges the gap by integrating the effect of leadership and employees’ personality on employees’ task performance. Accordingly, our study directly examines the effects of interaction between transformational leadership and proactive personality on employee task performance. The results provide a deeper, richer portrait of organizational life—one that acknowledges the influence of individuals’ trait on the individual behaviors, and the influence of leader on individual activities (Klein et al. 2000 ). This study is thus an extension of the research on task performance which is limited to a single visual angle that ignores influence from other factors.

Practical implications

Beyond theoretical contributions to the leadership literature, this study provides some meaningful practical suggestions. Firstly, this study indicates that the influence of transformational leaders on follower task performance could become negative upon exceeding a certain threshold. Therefore, transformational leadership is a mixed blessing for organizations. It would be beneficial for organizations to recognize the positive effects of transformational leadership as well as its negative aspects and to adopt the transformational leadership style with a balanced view. Maintaining balanced elements in transformational leadership such as distance and closeness with their followers, controlling work processing and making space for self-development is beneficial for employees’ performance in the organizations (Zhang et al. 2015 ). Leaders with excessive transformational behaviors appear to cause additional role burden and psychological pressure on the employees. Accordingly, organizations should provide opportunities through which employees could communicate with their leaders and colleagues at social gatherings or other recreational activities. Similarly, it is advisable that organizations offer psychological counseling for employees, give several additional days off per month for relaxation, and encourage employees to pursue further self-development or self-actualization. Additionally, this study suggests that employees’ proactive personality has a great influence on the cognition of transformational leadership behaviors. Consistent with evidence in personnel selection (Akgunduz et al. 2018 ), the selection of appropriate employees based on their proactivity appears to be effective for organizations. Managers need to consider employees’ personality traits for leadership effectiveness and employees’ personality characteristics should be matched with suitable leadership. Thus, organizations should design and develop scientific recruitment and selection procedures which take into consideration potential employees’ personality traits.

Limitations and further research

Several limitations of this study should be noted. First, considering the design of cross-sectional research, our findings may not be able to completely explain the causality in the current study. Therefore, future research should utilize longitudinal data or adopt an approach called the design of experiments to ensure the results reflect causation clearly. Second, the study samples are selected by the convenience sampling method rather than random sampling because of the limitation of human, material and financial resources and other factors, although this method has been widely adopted by previous studies. Due to the possibility that the convenience sample may produce errors, future research can provide sufficient representative samples to further increase the credibility and universality of the conclusions. In addition, we collect data only from China and could thus not avoid country context constraints. Data sets from other countries, especially Western countries, will be needed to validate the universality of our study’s results. Meanwhile, no significant difference is discovered among organizations and industries due to the small sample size (7 organizations and 3 different industries). Future research could also consider organization and industry as influential factors using multilevel analysis, and collect a greater number of samples from more organizations in different industries (Wen and Chiou 2009 ). Finally, this study only explores whether proactive personality moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and employee task performance. For greater breadth from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, future research can investigate the effect of work characteristics, employees’ emotion or motivation, and organizational characteristics as boundary conditions on the performance expression of transformational leadership in order to understand profoundly behavioral outcomes implied in the influence process of transformational leadership. Similarly, considering that transformational leadership theories have been used to predict various organizational outcomes, the analytical framework may be extended to other outcomes, such as organizational citizenship behavior and employees’ creativity. Future empirical research is needed to test the above assumptions.

Abele, A. E., & Spurk, D. (2009). The longitudinal impact of self-efficacy and career goals on objective and subjective career success. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 74 (1), 53–62.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ahmad, A., Asgari, A., Silong, A. D., & Samah, B. A. (2008). The relationship between transformational leadership behaviors, organizational justice, leader-member exchange, perceived organizational support, Trust in Management and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors. European Journal of Social Sciences, 6 (4), 140–151.

Google Scholar  

Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1994). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Evaluation Practice, 45 (1), 119–120.

Akgunduz, Y., Alkan, C., & Gök, Ö. A. (2018). Perceived organizational support, employee creativity and proactive personality: The mediating effect of meaning of work. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management, 34 , 105–114.

Ames, D. R., & Flynn, F. J. (2007). What breaks a leader: The curvilinear relation between assertiveness and leadership. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92 (2), 307–324.

Aryee, S., Walumbwa, F. O., Zhou, Q., & Hartnell, C. A. (2012). Transformational leadership, innovative behavior, and task performance: Test of mediation and moderation processes. Human Performance, 25 (1), 1–25.

Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (1995). Individual consideration viewed at multiple levels of analysis: A multi-level framework for examining the diffusion of transformational leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 6 (2), 199–218.

Avolio, B. J., & Bass, B. M. (2002). Developing potential across a full range of leadership: Cases on transactional and transformational leadership . New York: Psychology Press.

Avolio, B. J., Bass, B. M., & Jung, D. I. (1999). Re-examining the components of transformational and transactional leadership using the multifactor leadership. Journal of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 72 (4), 441–462.

Avolio, B. J., Zhu, W., Koh, W., & Bhatia, P. (2004). Transformational leadership and organizational commitment: Mediating role of psychological empowerment and moderating role of structural distance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25 (8), 951–968.

Baer, M., & Oldham, G. R. (2006). The curvilinear relation between experienced creative time pressure and creativity: Moderating effects of openness to experience and support for creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91 (4), 963.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought & Action: A Social Cognitive Theory . Englewood cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc..

Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory of personality. In A. P. Lawrence & P. J. Oliver (Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research , (pp. 154-196). New York: Guilford Publications.

Barling, J., Loughlin, C., & Kelloway, E. K. (2002). Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87 (3), 488–496.

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator–mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51 (6), 1173–1182.

Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Li, N. (2013). The theory of purposeful work behavior: The role of personality, higher-order goals, and job characteristics. Academy of Management Review, 38 (1), 132–153.

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations . London: Collier Macmillan.

Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18 (3), 19–31.

Bass, B. M. (1997). Does the transactional–transformational leadership paradigm transcend organizational and national boundaries? American Psychologist, 52 (2), 130–139.

Bass, B. M. (1999). Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership. European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology, 8 (1), 9–32.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1990). The implications of transactional and transformational leadership for individual, team, and organizational development. Research in Organizational Change & Development, 4 , 231–272.

Basu, R., & Green, S. G. (1997). Leader-member exchange and transformational leadership: An empirical examination of innovative behaviors in leader-member dyads. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27 (6), 477–499.

Bateman, T. S., & Crant, J. M. (1993). The proactive component of organizational behavior: A measure and correlates. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14 (2), 103–118.

Bauer, D. J., & Curran, P. J. (2005). Probing interactions in fixed and multilevel regression: Inferential and graphical techniques. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 40 (3), 373–400.

Bednall, T. C., E. Rafferty, A., Shipton, H., Sanders, K., & J. Jackson, C. (2018). Innovative Behaviour: How Much Transformational Leadership Do You Need? British Journal of Management, 29 (4), 796–816.

Bertolino, M., Truxillo, D. M., & Fraccaroli, F. (2011). Age as moderator of the relationship of proactive personality with training motivation, perceived career development from training, and training behavioral intentions. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32 (2), 248–263.

Beyer, J. M. (1999). Two approaches to studying charismatic leadership: Competing or complementary? Leadership Quarterly, 10 (4), 575–588.

Bliese, P. D. (2000). Within-group agreement, non-independence, and reliability: Implications for data aggregation and analysis. In K. J. Klein & S. W. J. Kozlowski (Eds.), Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions (pp. 349–381). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bono, J. E., & Judge, T. A. (2003). Self-concordance at work: Toward understanding the motivational effects of transformational leaders. Academy of Management Journal, 46 (5), 554–571.

Bowers, K. S. (1973). Situationism in psychology: An analysis and a critique. Psychological Review, 80 (5), 307–336.

Braun, S., Peus, C., Weisweiler, S., & Frey, D. (2013). Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust. The Leadership Quarterly, 24 (1), 270–283.

Brislin, R. W. (1980). Translation and content analysis of Oral and written material. In H. C. Triandis & J. W. Berry (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 389–444). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Brown, F. W., & Reilly, M. D. (2008). Emotional intelligence, transformational leadership and gender: Correlation and interaction possibilities. The Journal of International Management Studies, 3 (2), 1–9.

Bunderson, J. S., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2003). Management team learning orientation and business unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (3), 552–560.

Burke, R. J. (2006). Why leaders fail: Exploring the dark side. International Journal of Manpower, 27 (1), 91–100.

Burnett, M. F., Chiaburu, D. S., Shapiro, D. L., & Li, N. (2015). Revisiting how and when perceived organizational support enhances taking charge: An inverted U-shaped perspective. Journal of Management, 41 (7), 1805–1826.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership New York . NY: Harper and Row Publishers.

Carter, M. Z., Armenakis, A. A., Feild, H. S., & Mossholder, K. W. (2013). Transformational leadership, relationship quality, and employee performance during continuous incremental organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34 (7), 942–958.

Castro, C. B., Periñan, M. M. V., & Bueno, J. C. C. (2008). Transformational leadership and followers’ attitudes: The mediating role of psychological empowerment. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19 (10), 1842–1863.

Chan, D. (2006). Interactive effects of situational judgment effectiveness and proactive personality on work perceptions and work outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91 (2), 475–481.

Chan, S. C. H., Huang, X., Snape, E., & Lam, C. K. (2013). The Janus face of paternalistic leaders: Authoritarianism, benevolence, subordinates’ organization-based self-esteem, and performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34 (1), 108–128.

Charbonneau, D., Barling, J., & Kelloway, E. K. (2001). Transformational leadership and sports performance: The mediating role of intrinsic motivation 1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31 (7), 1521–1534.

Chen, M. J. (2003). Transcending paradox: The Chinese “middle way” perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 20 (1), 133–134.

Chen, M. J. (2008). Reconceptualizing the competition—Cooperation relationship: A transparadox perspective. Journal of Management Inquiry, 17 (4), 288–304.

Conger, J. A., Kanungo, R. N., & Menon, S. T. (2000). Charismatic leadership and follower effects. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21 (7), 747–767.

Crant, J. M. (2000). Proactive behavior in organizations. Journal of Management, 26 (3), 435–462.

Deinert, A., Homan, A. C., Boer, D., Voelpel, S. C., & Gutermann, D. (2015). Transformational leadership sub-dimensions and their link to leaders’ personality and performance. Leadership Quarterly, 26 (6), 1095–1120.

Dhanaraj, C., & Beamish, P. W. (2004). Effect of equity ownership on the survival of international joint ventures. Strategic Management Journal, 25 (3), 295–305.

Dionne, S. D., Yammarino, F. J., Atwater, L. E., & Spangler, W. D. (2004). Transformational leadership and team performance. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 17 (2), 177–193.

Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. (2002). Impact of transformational leadership on follower development and performance: A field experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 45 (4), 735–744.

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95 (2), 256–273.

Easterlin, R. A. (2005). Diminishing marginal utility of income? Caveat emptor. Social Indicators Research, 70 (3), 243–255.

Edwards, J. R., & Berry, J. W. (2010). The presence of something or the absence of nothing: Increasing theoretical precision in management research. Organizational Research Methods, 13 (4), 668–689.

Eisenbeiss, S. A., & Boerner, S. (2013). A double-edged sword: Transformational leadership and individual creativity. British Journal of Management, 24 (1), 54–68.

Eisenbeiss, S. A., van Knippenberg, D., & Boerner, S. (2008). Transformational leadership and team innovation: Integrating team climate principles. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93 (6), 1438.

Eisenhardt, K. M. (2000). Paradox, spirals, ambivalence: The new language of change and pluralism. Academy of Management Review, 25 (4), 703–705.

Eisenhardt, K. M., Furr, N. R., & Bingham, C. B. (2010). CROSSROADS—Microfoundations of performance: Balancing efficiency and flexibility in dynamic environments. Organization Science, 21 (6), 1263–1273.

Erkutlu, H. (2013). The impact of transformational leadership on organizational and leadership effectiveness. Journal of Management Development, 27 (7), 708–726.

Felfe, J., & Schyns, B. (2006). Personality and the perception of transformational leadership: The impact of extraversion, neuroticism, personal need for structure, and occupational self-efficacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36 (3), 708–739.

Flaschner, A. B., Gill, A. S., & Shachar, M. (2006). Mitigating stress and burnout by implementing transformational-leadership. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 18 (6), 469–481.

Fleishman, E. A. (1995). Consideration and structure: Another look at their role in leadership research. Monographs in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, 24 , 51–60.

Ford, R., & Fottler, M. (1996). Empowerment: A matter of degree. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 24 (3), 19–24.

Frieder, R. E., Wang, G., & Oh, I.-S. (2018). Linking job-relevant personality traits, transformational leadership, and job performance via perceived meaningfulness at work: A moderated mediation model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103 (3), 324–333.

Fuller, J. B., & Marler, L. E. (2009). Change driven by nature: A meta-analytic review of the proactive personality literature. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75 (3), 329–345.

Fuller, J. B., Marler, L. E., & Hester, K. (2006). Promoting felt responsibility for constructive change and proactive behavior: Exploring aspects of an elaborated model of work design. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27 (8), 1089–1120.

Gilboa, S., Shirom, A., Fried, Y., & Cooper, C. (2008). A meta-analysis of work demand stressors and job performance: Examining main and moderating effects. Personnel Psychology, 61 (2), 227–271.

Gong, Y., Huang, J. C., & Farh, J. L. (2009). Employee learning orientation, transformational leadership, and employee creativity: The mediating role of employee creative self-efficacy. Academy of Management Journal, 52 (4), 765–778.

Grant, A. M., & Schwartz, B. (2011). Too much of a good thing: The challenge and opportunity of the inverted U. Perspectives Psychological Science, 6 (1), 61–76.

Grant, A. M., & Sumanth, J. J. (2009). Mission possible? The performance of prosocially motivated employees depends on manager trustworthiness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94 (4), 927–944.

Howell, J. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1992). The ethics of charismatic leadership: Submission or liberation? Executive, 6 (2), 43–54.

Howell, J. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1993). Transformational leadership, transactional leadership, locus of control, and support for innovation: Key predictors of consolidated-business-unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78 (6), 891–902.

Howell, J. M., & Shamir, B. (2005). The role of followers in the charismatic leadership process: Relationships and their consequences. Academy of Management Review, 30 (1), 96–112.

Hurtz, G. M., & Donovan, J. J. (2000). Personality and job performance: The big five revisited. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85 (6), 869–879.

Janssen, O. (2001). Fairness perceptions as a moderator in the curvilinear relationships between job demands, and job performance and job satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 44 (5), 1039–1050.

Jaussi, K. S., & Dionne, S. D. (2003). Leading for creativity: The role of unconventional leader behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 14 (4–5), 475–498.

Jiang, W., Gu, Q., & Wang, G. G. (2015). To guide or to divide: The dual-side effects of transformational leadership on team innovation. Journal of Business & Psychology, 30 (4), 677–691.

Johns, A. M. (2001). Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives . New York: Routledge.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Erez, A., & Locke, E. A. (2005). Core self-evaluations and job and life satisfaction: The role of self-concordance and goal attainment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (2), 257–268.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., & Locke, E. A. (2000). Five-factor model of personality and transformational leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 85 (5), 751–765.

Judge, T. A., & Ilies, R. (2002). Relationship of personality to performance motivation: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87 (4), 797–807.

Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89 (5), 755–768.

Kark, R., Dijk, D. V., & Vashdi, D. R. (2018). Motivated or demotivated to be creative: The role of self-regulatory focus in transformational and transactional leadership processes. Applied Psychology, 67 (1), 186–224.

Kark, R., Shamir, B., & Chen, G. (2003). The two faces of transformational leadership: Empowerment and dependency. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (2), 246–255.

Keeley, M. (1995). The trouble with transformational leadership: Toward a federalist ethic for organizations. Business Ethics Quarterly, 5 (1), 67–96.

Kim, T. Y., Hon, A. H. Y., & Crant, J. M. (2009). Proactive personality, employee creativity, and newcomer outcomes: A longitudinal study. Journal of Business & Psychology, 24 (1), 93–103.

Kirkman, B. L., Chen, G. L., Farh, J. L., Chen, Z. X., & Lowe, K. B. (2009). Individual power distance orientation and follower reactions to transformational leaders: A cross-level, cross-cultural examination. Academy of Management Journal, 52 (4), 744–764.

Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1996). Direct and indirect effects of three core charismatic leadership components on performance and attitudes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81 (1), 36–51.

Kissi, J., Dainty, A., & Tuuli, M. (2013). Examining the role of transformational leadership of portfolio managers in project performance. International Journal of Project Management, 31 (4), 485–497.

Klein, K. J., Bliese, P. D., Kozlowski, S. W., Dansereau, F., Gavin, M. B., Griffin, M. A., . . . Bligh, M. C. (2000). Multilevel analytical techniques: Commonalities, differences, and continuing questions. In K. J. Klein, S. W. J. Kozlowski, Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations: Foundations, extensions, and new directions (512–553). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A's, praise, and other bribes . Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Kohn, A. (2001). Five reasons to stop saying “good job”. Young Children, 56 (5), 24–28.

Kuhnert, K. W., & Lewis, P. (1987). Transactional and transformational leadership: A constructive/developmental analysis. Academy of Management Review, 12 (4), 648–657.

Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1968). Organization and environment: Managing differentiation and integration. Administrative Science Quarterly, 13 (1), 3459–3465.

Lechner, C., Frankenberger, K., & Floyd, S. W. (2010). Task contingencies in the curvilinear relationships between intergroup networks and initiative performance. Academy of Management Journal, 53 (4), 865–889.

Lee, S., Cheong, M., Kim, M., & Yun, S. (2016). Never too much? The curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and task performance. Group & Organization Management, 42 (1), 11–38.

Lepine, J. A., & Van Dyne, L. (1998). Predicting voice behavior in work groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83 (6), 853–868.

Lewis, D., French, E., & Phetmany, T. (2000). Cross-cultural diversity, leadership and workplace relations in Australia. Asia Pacific Business Review, 7 (1), 105–124.

Lewis, M. W. (2000). Exploring paradox: Toward a more comprehensive guide. Academy of Management Review, 25 (4), 760–776.

Li, J., & Yuan, B. (2017). Both angel and devil: The suppressing effect of transformational leadership on proactive employee’s career satisfaction. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 65 , 59–70.

Li, N., Liang, J., & Crant, J. M. (2010). The role of proactive personality in job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior: A relational perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95 (2), 395–404.

Liao, H., & Chuang, A. (2007). Transforming service employees and climate: A multilevel, multisource examination of transformational leadership in building long-term service relationships. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92 (4), 1006.

Lim, B. C., & Ployhart, R. E. (2004). Transformational leadership: Relations to the five-factor model and team performance in typical and maximum contexts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89 (4), 610–621.

Lord, R. G., De Vader, C. L., & Alliger, G. M. (1986). A meta-analysis of the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions: An application of validity generalization procedures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 71 (3), 402–410.

Ma, L., & Tsui, A. S. (2015). Traditional Chinese philosophies and contemporary leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 26 (1), 13–24.

Manesh, M. H., & Zanjirchi, S. M. (2013). Weighting indicators of employee performance evaluation using Taguchi experimental design approach. European Online Journal of Natural & Social Sciences, 2 (3(s)), 875–880.

Maslyn, J. M., & Uhl-bien, M. (2001). Leader–member exchange and its dimensions: Effects of self-effort and other's effort on relationship quality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86 (4), 697.

Mathison, S. (1988). Why triangulate? Educational Researcher, 17 (2), 13–17.

Menges, J., Walter, F., Vogel, B., & Bruch, H. (2008). Mechanism and boundary conditions for performance effects of transformational leadership climate. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2008 (1), 1–6.

Menges, J. I., Walter, F., Vogel, B., & Bruch, H. (2011). Transformational leadership climate: Performance linkages, mechanisms, and boundary conditions at the organizational level. Leadership Quarterly, 22 (5), 893–909.

Mills, P. K., & Ungson, G. R. (2003). Reassessing the limits of structural empowerment: Organizational constitution and trust as controls. Academy of Management Review, 28 (1), 143–153.

Munir, F., Nielsen, K., Garde, A. H., Albertsen, K., & Carneiro, I. G. (2012). Mediating the effects of work-life conflict between transformational leadership and health-care workers’ job satisfaction and psychological wellbeing. Journal of Nursing Management, 20 (4), 512–521.

Ng, T. W. (2017). Transformational leadership and performance outcomes: Analyses of multiple mediation pathways. The Leadership Quarterly, 28 (3), 385–417.

Olsen, W. (2004). Triangulation in social research: Qualitative and quantitative methods can really be mixed. Developments in Sociology, 20 , 103–118.

Organ, D. W., & Paine, J. B. (1999). A new kind of performance for industrial and organizational psychology: Recent contributions to the study of organizational citizenship behavior. In C. L. Cooper & I. T. Robertson (Eds.), International review of industrial and organizational psychology (Vol. 14, pp. 337–368). New York: Wiley.

Osborn, R., & Marion, R. (2009). Contextual leadership, transformational leadership and the performance of international innovation seeking alliances. The Leadership Quarterly, 20 (2), 191–206.

Ostroff, C., & Bowen, D. (2016). Reflections on the 2014 decade award: : Is there strength in the construct of hr system strength? Academy of Management Review, 41 (2), 196–214.

Pan, S. Y., & Lin, K. J. (2015). Behavioral mechanism and boundary conditions of transformational process. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 30 (8), 970–985.

Parker, S. K., Bindl, U. K., & Strauss, K. (2010). Making things happen: A model of proactive motivation. Journal of Management, 36 (4), 827–856.

Peng, K., & Nisbett, R. E. (1999). Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction. American Psychologist, 54 (9), 741–754.

Pierce, J. R., & Aguinis, H. (2011). The too-much-of-a-good-thing effect in management. Journal of Management, 39 (2), 313–338.

Pierce, J. R., & Aguinis, H. (2013). Detrimental citizenship behavior: A multilevel framework of antecedents and consequences. Management & Organization Review, 11 (1), 69–99.

Pieterse, A. N., Van Knippenberg, D., Schippers, M., & Stam, D. (2010). Transformational and transactional leadership and innovative behavior: The moderating role of psychological empowerment. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 31 (4), 609–623.

Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on followers’ trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1 (2), 107–142.

Podsakoff, P. M., Mackenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2012). Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it. Annual Review of Psychology, 63 (1), 539.

Porter, L. W., & Bigley, G. A. (2003). Motivation and transformational leadership: Some organizational context issues. In R. W. Allen, L. W. Porter, & H. L. Angle (Eds.), Organizational influence processes (pp. 263–274). New York: Routledge.

Rabin, M., Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (2001). Diminishing marginal utility of wealth cannot explain risk aversion . UC Berkeley: Department of Economics, UCB.

Ren, S., & Chadee, D. (2017). Is guanxi always good for employee self-development in China? Examining non-linear and moderated relationships. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 98 , 108–117.

Resick, C. J., Whitman, D. S., Weingarden, S. M., & Hiller, N. J. (2009). The bright-side and the dark-side of CEO personality: Examining core self-evaluations, narcissism, transformational leadership, and strategic influence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94 (6), 1365–1381.

Robalino, D., Vodopivec, M., Bodor, A. (2009). Savings for unemployment in good or bad times: options for developing countries. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4516 . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1501932 .

Schad, J., Lewis, M. W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. K. (2016). Paradox research in management science: Looking Back to move forward. Academy of Management Annals, 10 (1), 1–60.

Seibert, S. E., Crant, J. M., & Kraimer, M. L. (1999). Proactive personality and career success. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84 (3), 416–427.

Seibert, S. E., Kraimer, M. L., & Crant, J. M. (2001). What do proactive people do? A longitudinal model linking proactive personality and career success. Personnel Psychology, 54 (4), 845–874.

Seibert, S. E., Wang, G., & Courtright, S. H. (2011). Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96 (5), 981–1003.

Shamir, B. (2007). From passive recipients to active co-producers: The roles of followers in the leadership process. In B. Shamir, R. Pillai, M. Bligh, & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.), Follower-centered perspectives on leadership: A tribute to J. R. Meindl . Stamford: Information Age Publishing.

Shamir, B., House, R. J., & Arthur, M. B. (1993). The motivational effects of charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory. Organization Science, 4 (4), 577–594.

Shin, S. J., & Zhou, J. (2003). Transformational leadership, conservation, and creativity: Evidence from Korea. Academy of Management Journal, 46 (6), 703–714.

Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36 (2), 381–403.

Smith, W. K., & Tushman, M. L. (2005). Managing strategic contradictions: A top management model for managing innovation streams. Organization Science, 16 (5), 522–536.

Sonnentag, S. (2003). Recovery, work engagement, and proactive behavior: A new look at the interface between nonwork and work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88 (3), 518–528.

Spector, P. E., Dwyer, D. J., & Jex, S. M. (1988). Relation of job stressors to affective, health, and performance outcomes: A comparison of multiple data sources. Journal of Applied Psychology, 73 (1), 11.

Spencer-Rodgers, J., Peng, K., Wang, L., & Hou, Y. (2004). Dialectical self-esteem and east-west differences in psychological well-being. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 30 (11), 1416–1432.

Spreitzer, G. M., Perttula, K. H., & Xin, K. (2005). Traditionality matters: An examination of the effectiveness of transformational leadership in the United States and Taiwan. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26 (3), 205–227.

Stone, A. G., Russell, R. F., & Patterson, K. (2004). Transformational versus servant leadership: A difference in leader focus. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 25 (4), 349–361.

Summers, J. J., Rosenbaum, D. A., Burns, B. D., & Ford, S. K. (1993). Production of polyrhythms. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance, 19 (2), 416–428.

Thompson, J. A. (2005). Proactive personality and job performance: A social capital perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (5), 1011–1017.

Tosi, H. L., Misangyi, V. F., Fanelli, A., Waldman, D. A., & Yammarino, F. J. (2004). CEO charisma, compensation, and firm performance. Leadership Quarterly, 15 (3), 405–420.

Tourish, D. (2013). The dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective . New York: Routledge.

Tourish, D., & Pinnington, A. (2002). Transformational leadership, corporate cultism and the spirituality paradigm: An unholy trinity in the workplace? Human Relations, 55 (2), 147–172.

Tse, H. H. M., & Chiu, W. C. K. (2014). Transformational leadership and job performance: A social identity perspective. Journal of Business Research, 67 (1), 2827–2835.

Tse, H. H. M., Huang, X., & Lam, W. (2013). Why does transformational leadership matter for employee turnover? A multi-foci social exchange perspective. Leadership Quarterly, 24 (5), 763–776.

Tsui, A. S., Pearce, J. L., Porter, L. W., & Tripoli, A. M. (1997). Alternative approaches to the employee-organization relationship: Does investment in employees pay off? Academy of Management Journal, 40 (5), 1089–1121.

Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 25 (1), 83–104.

Uhl-bien, M., Schermerhorn Jr., J. R., & Osborn, R. N. (2004). Organizational Behavior (13th ed.). Beijing: Tsinghua University Press.

Vandewalle, D., Brown, S. P., Cron, W. L., & Slocum, J. W. (1999). The influence of goal orientation and self-regulation tactics on sales performance: A longitudinal field test. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84 (2), 249–259.

Villiers, R. D. (2014). Book essay on “the dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective”. Journal of Business Research, 67 (12), 2512–2514.

Voigtländer, M. (2016). Transaction costs: A high financial burden for German home buyers. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10419/157578

Walton, M. (2014). The dark side of transformational leadership: A critical perspective. Action Learning: Research and Practice, 11 (2), 238–240.

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., & Zhu, W. (2008). How transformational leadership weaves its influence on individual job performance: The role of identification and efficacy beliefs. Personnel Psychology, 61 (4), 793–825.

Wang, G., Oh, I.-S., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Group & Organization Management, 36 (2), 223–270.

Wang, H., Law, K. S., Hackett, R. D., Wang, D., & Chen, Z. X. (2005). Leader-member exchange as a mediator of the relationship between transformational leadership and Followers’ performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 48 (3), 420–432.

Webb, E. J., Campbell, D. T., Schwartz, R. D., & Sechrest, L. (1966). Unobtrusive measures: Nonreactive research in the social sciences (Vol. 111). Chicago: Rand McNally.

Weiß, E., & Süß, S. (2016). The relationship between transformational leadership and effort-reward imbalance. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 37 (4), 450–466.

Wen, F.-H., & Chiou, H.-J. (2009). Methodology of multilevel modeling: The key issues and their solutions of hierarchical linear modeling. NTU Management Review, 19 (2), 263–294.

Williams, L. J., & Anderson, S. E. (1991). Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17 (3), 601–617.

Yukl, G. (1989). Managerial leadership: A review of theory and research. Journal of Management, 15 (2), 251–289.

Yukl, G. (2009). Leading organizational learning: Reflections on theory and research. Leadership Quarterly, 20 (1), 49–53.

Yun, S., Faraj, S., & Jr, S. H. (2005). Contingent leadership and effectiveness of trauma resuscitation teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90 (6), 1288–1296.

Zettler, I., & Lang, J. W. (2015). Employees’ political skill and job performance: An inverted U-shaped relation? Applied Psychology, 64 (3), 541–577.

Zhang, X. a., Cao, Q., & Tjosvold, D. (2011). Linking transformational leadership and team performance: A conflict management approach. Journal of Management Studies, 48 (7), 1586–1611.

Zhang, Y., Waldman, D. A., Han, Y. L., & Li, X. B. (2015). Paradoxical leader behaviors in people management: Antecedents and consequences. Academy of Management Journal, 58 (2), 538–566.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We highly appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions from Dr. Lynda Song, and others in the seminar organized by the Business School of Renmin University of China in June 2018.

Funding for this research was provided by China’s NSFC (71572170). The funding was used to support the necessary costs for completing this study, including on-site traveling, data analysis, proofreading, etc.

Availability of data and materials

Please contact author for data requests.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Economics and Management, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province, 066004, People’s Republic of China

Yashuo Chen, Ranran Ning, Tong Yang, Shangjun Feng & Chunjiang Yang

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

YCJ and CYS worked together by discussions on developing research questions and theoretical models. CYS proposed the preliminary research design and YCJ improved the research design by adding the moderator of proactive personality. NRR designed the questionnaire and YT improved it by adding more demographic information questions. FSJ collected the data and performed the data analyses. CYS wrote the first draft, NRR and YT improved dramatically the introduction and discussion sections. They worked together on the revision based on the comments of reviewers based on extensive discussions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chunjiang Yang .

Ethics declarations

Authors’ information.

Ms. Yashuo Chen is a Postgraduate in School of Economics and Management, Yanshan University, China. Her research mainly focuses on the organizational behavior and human resources management.

Ms. Ranran Ning is a Postgraduate in School of Economics and Management, Yanshan University, China. Her research mainly focuses on the organizational behavior and human resources management.

Ms. Tong Yang is a Postgraduate in School of Economics and Management, Yanshan University, China. Her research mainly focuses on the organizational behavior and human resources management.

Mr. Shangjun Feng is a Postgraduate in School of Economics and Management, Yanshan University, China. His research mainly focuses on the organizational behavior and human resources management.

Dr. Chunjiang Yang is a Professor and doctoral supervisor in the School of Economics and Management at Yanshan University in China. His academic interests mainly fall in organizational behavior and human resources management.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Chen, Y., Ning, R., Yang, T. et al. Is transformational leadership always good for employee task performance? Examining curvilinear and moderated relationships. Front. Bus. Res. China 12 , 22 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s11782-018-0044-8

Download citation

Received : 05 May 2018

Accepted : 06 November 2018

Published : 06 December 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s11782-018-0044-8

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Curvilinear relationship
  • Social cognitive theory

transformational leadership research studies

Advance

U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

  • Publications
  • Account settings
  • Advanced Search
  • Journal List
  • Int J Environ Res Public Health

Logo of ijerph

Leadership Effectiveness in Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cross-Sectional and Before–After Studies

Vincenzo restivo.

1 Department of Health Promotion, Maternal and Infant Care, Internal Medicine and Medical Specialties (PROMISE) “G. D’Alessandro”, University of Palermo, Via del Vespro 133, 90127 Palermo, Italy

Giuseppa Minutolo

Alberto battaglini.

2 Vaccines and Clinical Trials Unit, Department of Health Sciences, University of Genova, Via Antonio Pastore 1, 16132 Genova, Italy

Alberto Carli

3 Santa Chiara Hospital, Largo Medaglie d’oro 9, 38122 Trento, Italy

Michele Capraro

4 School of Public Health, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Via Olgettina 58, 20132 Milan, Italy

Maddalena Gaeta

5 Department of Public Health, Experimental and Forensic Medicine, University of Pavia, Via Forlanini 2, 27100 Pavia, Italy

Cecilia Trucchi

6 Planning, Epidemiology and Prevention Unit, Liguria Health Authority (A.Li.Sa.), IRCCS San Martino Hospital, Largo R. Benzi 10, 16132 Genoa, Italy

Carlo Favaretti

7 Centre on Leadership in Medicine, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Largo F. Vito 1, 00168 Rome, Italy

Francesco Vitale

Alessandra casuccio, associated data.

Data will be available after writing correspondence to the author.

To work efficiently in healthcare organizations and optimize resources, team members should agree with their leader’s decisions critically. However, nowadays, little evidence is available in the literature. This systematic review and meta-analysis has assessed the effectiveness of leadership interventions in improving healthcare outcomes such as performance and guidelines adherence. Overall, the search strategies retrieved 3,155 records, and 21 of them were included in the meta-analysis. Two databases were used for manuscript research: PubMed and Scopus. On 16th December 2019 the researchers searched for articles published in the English language from 2015 to 2019. Considering the study designs, the pooled leadership effectiveness was 14.0% (95%CI 10.0–18.0%) in before–after studies, whereas the correlation coefficient between leadership interventions and healthcare outcomes was 0.22 (95%CI 0.15–0.28) in the cross-sectional studies. The multi-regression analysis in the cross-sectional studies showed a higher leadership effectiveness in South America (β = 0.56; 95%CI 0.13, 0.99), in private hospitals (β = 0.60; 95%CI 0.14, 1.06), and in medical specialty (β = 0.28; 95%CI 0.02, 0.54). These results encourage the improvement of leadership culture to increase performance and guideline adherence in healthcare settings. To reach this purpose, it would be useful to introduce a leadership curriculum following undergraduate medical courses.

1. Introduction

Over the last years, patients’ outcomes, population wellness and organizational standards have become the main purposes of any healthcare structure [ 1 ]. These standards can be achieved following evidence-based practice (EBP) for diseases prevention and care [ 2 , 3 ] and optimizing available economical and human resources [ 3 , 4 ], especially in low-industrialized geographical areas [ 5 ]. This objective could be reached with effective healthcare leadership [ 3 , 4 ], which could be considered a network whose team members followed leadership critically and motivated a leader’s decisions based on the organization’s requests and targets [ 6 ]. Healthcare workers raised their compliance towards daily activities in an effective leadership context, where the leader succeeded in improving membership and performance awareness among team members [ 7 ]. Furthermore, patients could improve their health conditions in a high-level leadership framework. [ 8 ] Despite the leadership benefits for healthcare systems’ performance and patients’ outcomes [ 1 , 7 ], professionals’ confidence would decline in a damaging leadership context for workers’ health conditions and performance [ 4 , 9 , 10 ]. On the other hand, the prevention of any detrimental factor which might worsen both team performance and healthcare systems’ outcomes could demand effective leadership [ 4 , 7 , 10 ]. However, shifting from the old and assumptive leadership into a more effective and dynamic one is still a challenge [ 4 ]. Nowadays, the available evidence on the impact and effectiveness of leadership interventions is sparse and not systematically reported in the literature [ 11 , 12 ].

Recently, the spreading of the Informal Opinion Leadership style into hospital environments is changing the traditional concept of leadership. This leadership style provides a leader without any official assignment, known as an “opinion leader”, whose educational and behavioral background is suitable for the working context. Its target is to apply the best practices in healthcare creating a more familiar and collaborative team [ 2 ]. However, Flodgren et al. reported that informal leadership interventions increased healthcare outcomes [ 2 ].

Nowadays, various leadership styles are recognized with different classifications but none of them are considered the gold standard for healthcare systems because of heterogenous leadership meanings in the literature [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 12 , 13 ]. Leadership style classification by Goleman considered leaders’ behavior [ 5 , 13 ], while Chen DS-S proposed a traditional leadership style classification (charismatic, servant, transactional and transformational) [ 6 ].

Even if leadership style improvement depends on the characteristics and mission of a workplace [ 6 , 13 , 14 ], a leader should have both a high education in healthcare leadership and the behavioral qualities necessary for establishing strong human relationships and achieving a healthcare system’s goals [ 7 , 15 ]. Theoretically, any practitioner could adapt their emotive capacities and educational/working experiences to healthcare contexts, political lines, economical and human resources [ 7 ]. Nowadays, no organization adopts a policy for leader selection in a specific healthcare setting [ 15 ]. Despite the availability of a self-assessment leadership skills questionnaire for aspirant leaders and a pattern for the selection of leaders by Dubinsky et al. [ 15 ], a standardized and universally accepted method to choose leaders for healthcare organizations is still argued over [ 5 , 15 ].

Leadership failure might be caused by the arduous application of leadership skills and adaptive characteristics among team members [ 5 , 6 ]. One of the reasons for this negative event could be the lack of a standardized leadership program for medical students [ 16 , 17 ]. Consequently, working experience in healthcare settings is the only way to apply a leadership style for many medical professionals [ 12 , 16 , 17 ].

Furthermore, the literature data on leadership effectiveness in healthcare organizations were slightly significant or discordant in results. Nevertheless, the knowledge of pooled leadership effectiveness should motivate healthcare workers to apply leadership strategies in healthcare systems [ 12 ]. This systematic review and meta-analysis assesses the pooled effectiveness of leadership interventions in improving healthcare workers’ and patients’ outcomes.

2. Materials and Methods

A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement guidelines [ 18 ]. The protocol was registered on the PROSPERO database with code CRD42020198679 on 15 August 2020. Following these methodological standards, leadership interventions were evaluated as the pooled effectiveness and influential characteristic of healthcare settings, such as leadership style, workplace, settings and the study period.

2.1. Data Sources and Search Strategy

PubMed and Scopus were the two databases used for the research into the literature. On 16th December 2019, manuscripts in the English language published between 2015 and 2019 were searched by specific MeSH terms for each dataset. Those for PubMed were “leadership” OR “leadership” AND “clinical” AND “outcome” AND “public health” OR “public” AND “health” OR “public health” AND “humans”. Those for Scopus were “leadership” AND “clinical” AND “outcome” AND “public” AND “health”.

2.2. Study Selection and Data Extraction

In accordance with the PRISMA Statement, the following PICOS method was used for including articles [ 18 ]: the target population was all healthcare workers in any hospital or clinical setting (Population); the interventions were any leader’s recommendation to fulfil quality standards or performance indexes of a healthcare system (Intervention) [ 19 ]; to be included, the study should have a control group or reference at baseline as comparison (Control); and any effectiveness measure in terms of change in adherence to healthcare guidelines or performances (Outcome). In detail, any outcome implicated into healthcare workers’ capacity and characteristics in reaching a healthcare systems purposes following the highest standards was considered as performance [ 19 ]. Moreover, whatever clinical practices resulted after having respected the recommendations, procedures or statements settled previously was considered as guideline adherence [ 20 ]. The selected study design was an observational or experimental/quasi-experimental study design (trial, case control, cohort, cross-sectional, before-after study), excluding any systematic reviews, metanalyses, study protocol and guidelines (Studies).

The leaders’ interventions followed Chen’s leadership styles classification [ 6 ]. According to this, the charismatic leadership style can be defined also as an emotive leadership because of members’ strong feelings which guide the relationship with their leader. Its purpose is the improvement of workers’ motivation to reach predetermined organizational targets following a leader’s planning strategies and foresights. Servant leadership style is a sharing leadership style in whose members can increase their skills and competences through steady leader support, and they have a role in an organization’s goals. The transformational leadership style focuses on practical aspects such as new approaches for problem solving, new interventions to reach purposes, future planning and viewpoints sharing. Originality in a transformational leadership style has a key role of improving previous workers’ and healthcare system conditions in the achievement of objectives. The transactional leadership style requires a working context where technical skills are fundamental, and whose leader realizes a double-sense sharing process of knowledge and tasks with members. Furthermore, workers’ performances are improved through a rewarding system [ 6 ].

In this study, the supervisor trained the research team for practical manuscript selection and data extraction. The aim was to ensure data homogeneity and to check the authors’ procedures for selection and data collection. The screening phase was performed by four researchers reading each manuscript’s title and abstract independently and choosing to exclude any article that did not fulfill the inclusion criteria. Afterwards, the included manuscripts were searched for in the full text. They were retrieved freely, by institutional access or requesting them from the authors.

The assessment phase consisted of full-text reading to select articles following the inclusion criteria. The supervisor solved any contrasting view about article selection and variable selection.

The final database was built up by collecting the information from all included full-text articles: author, title, study year, year of publication, country/geographic location, study design, viability and type of evaluation scales for leadership competence, study period, type of intervention to improve leadership awareness, setting of leader intervention, selection modality of leaders, leadership style adopted, outcomes assessed such as guideline adherence or healthcare workers’ performance, benefits for patients’ health or patients’ outcomes improvement, public or private hospitals or healthcare units, ward specialty, intervention in single specialty or multi-professional settings, number of beds, number of healthcare workers involved in leadership interventions and sample size.

Each included article in this systematic review and meta-analysis received a standardized quality score for the specific study design, according to Newcastle–Ottawa, for the assessment of the quality of the cross-sectional study, and the Study Quality Assessment Tools by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute were used for all other study designs [ 21 , 22 ].

2.3. Statistical Data Analysis

The manuscripts metadata were extracted in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to remove duplicate articles and collect data. The included article variables for the quantitative meta-analysis were: first author, publication year, continent of study, outcome, public or private organization, hospital or local healthcare unit, surgical or non-surgical ward, multi- or single-professionals, ward specialty, sample size, quality score of each manuscript, leadership style, year of study and study design.

The measurement of the outcomes of interest (either performance or guidelines adherence) depended on the study design of the included manuscripts in the meta-analysis:

  • for cross-sectional studies, the outcome of interest was the correlation between leadership improvement and guideline adherence or healthcare performance;
  • the outcome derived from before–after studies or the trial was the percentage of leadership improvement intervention in guideline adherence or healthcare performance;
  • the incidence occurrence of improved results among exposed and not exposed healthcare workers of leadership interventions and the relative risks (RR) were the outcomes in cohort studies;
  • the odds ratio (OR) between the case of healthcare workers who had received a leadership intervention and the control group for case-control studies.

Pooled estimates were calculated using both the fixed effects and DerSimonian and Laird random effects models, weighting individual study results by the inverse of their variances [ 23 ]. Forest plots assessed the pooled estimates and the corresponding 95%CI across the studies. The heterogeneity test was performed by a chi-square test at a significance level of p < 0.05, reporting the I 2 statistic together with a 25%, 50% or 75% cut-off, indicating low, moderate, and high heterogeneity, respectively [ 24 , 25 ].

Subgroup analysis and meta-regression analyses explored the sources of significant heterogeneity. Subgroup analysis considered the leadership style (charismatic, servant, transactional and transformational), continent of study (North America, Europe, Oceania), median cut-off year of study conduction (studies conducted between 2005 and 2011 and studies conducted between 2012 and 2019), type of hospital organization (public or private hospital), type of specialty (surgical or medical specialty) and type of team (multi-professional or single-professional team).

Meta-regression analysis considered the following variables: year of starting study, continent of study conduction, public or private hospital, surgical or non-surgical specialty ward, type of healthcare service (hospital or local health unit), type of healthcare workers involved (multi- or single-professional), leadership style, and study quality score. All variables included in the model were relevant in the coefficient analysis.

To assess a potential publication bias, a graphical funnel plot reported the logarithm effect estimate and related the standard error from each study, and the Egger test was performed [ 26 , 27 ].

All data were analyzed using the statistical package STATA/SE 16.1 (StataCorp LP, College 482 Station, TX, USA), with the “metan” command used for meta-analysis, and “metafunnel”, “metabias” and “confunnel” for publication bias assessment [ 28 ].

3.1. Studies Characteristics

Overall, the search strategies retrieved 3,155 relevant records. After removing 570 (18.1%) duplicates, 2,585 (81.9%) articles were suitable for the screening phase, of which only 284 (11.0%) articles were selected for the assessment phase. During the assessment phase, 263 (92.6%) articles were excluded. The most frequent reasons of exclusion were the absence of relevant outcomes ( n = 134, 51.0%) and other study designs ( n = 61, 23.2%). Very few articles were rejected due to them being written in another language ( n = 1, 0.4%), due to the publication year being out of 2015–2019 ( n = 1, 0.4%) or having an unavailable full text ( n = 3, 1.1%).

A total of 21 (7.4%) articles were included in the qualitative and quantitative analysis, of which nine (42.9%) were cross-sectional studies and twelve (57.1%) were before and after studies ( Figure 1 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is ijerph-19-10995-g001.jpg

Flow-chart of selection manuscript phases for systematic review and meta-analysis on leadership effectiveness in healthcare workers.

The number of healthcare workers enrolled was 25,099 (median = 308, IQR = 89–1190), including at least 2,275 nurses (9.1%, median = 324, IQR = 199–458). Most of the studies involved a public hospital ( n = 16, 76.2%). Among the studies from private healthcare settings, three (60.0%) were conducted in North America. Articles which analyzed servant and charismatic leadership styles were nine (42.9%) and eight (38.1%), respectively. Interventions with a transactional leadership style were examined in six (28.6%) studies, while those with a transformational leadership style were examined in five studies (23.8%). Overall, 82 healthcare outcomes were assessed and 71 (86.6%) of them were classified as performance. Adherence-to-guidelines outcomes were 11 (13.4%), which were related mainly to hospital stay ( n = 7, 64.0%) and drug administration ( n = 3, 27.0%). Clements et al. and Lornudd et al. showed the highest number of outcomes, which were 19 (23.2%) and 12 (14.6%), respectively [ 29 , 30 ].

3.2. Leadership Effectiveness in before–after Studies

Before–after studies ( Supplementary Table S1 ) involved 22,241 (88.6%, median = 735, IQR = 68–1273) healthcare workers for a total of twelve articles, of which six (50.0%) consisted of performance and five (41.7%) of guidelines adherence and one (8.3%) of both outcomes. Among healthcare workers, there were 1,294 nurses (5.8%, median = 647, IQR = 40–1,254). Only the article by Savage et al. reported no number of involved healthcare workers [ 31 ].

The number of studies conducted after 2011 or between 2012–2019 was seven (58.3%), while only one (8.3%) article reported a study beginning both before and after 2011. Most of studies were conducted in Northern America ( n = 5, 41.7%). The servant leadership style and charismatic leadership style were the most frequently implemented, as reported in five (41.7%) and four (33.3%) articles, respectively. Only one (8.3%) study adopted a transformational leadership style.

The pooled effectiveness of leadership was 14.0% (95%CI 10.0–18.0%), with a high level of heterogeneity (I 2 = 99.9%, p < 0.0001) among the before–after studies ( Figure 2 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is ijerph-19-10995-g002.jpg

Effectiveness of leadership in before after studies. Dashed line represents the pooled effectiveness value [ 29 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ].

The highest level of effectiveness was reported by Weech-Maldonado R et al. with an effectiveness of 199% (95%CI 183–215%) based on the Cultural Competency Assessment Tool for Hospitals (CCATH) [ 39 ]. The effectiveness of leadership changed in accordance with the leadership style ( Supplementary Figure S1 ) and publication bias ( Supplementary Figure S2 ).

Multi-regression analysis indicated a negative association between leadership effectiveness and studies from Oceania, but this result was not statistically significant (β = −0.33; 95% IC −1.25, 0.59). On the other hand, a charismatic leadership style affected healthcare outcomes positively even if it was not statistically relevant (β = 0.24; 95% IC −0.69, 1.17) ( Table 1 ).

Correlation coefficients and multi-regression analysis of leadership effectiveness in before–after studies.

3.3. Leadership Effectiveness in Cross Sectional Studies

A total of 2858 (median = 199, IQR = 110–322) healthcare workers were involved in the cross-sectional studies ( Supplementary Table S2 ), of which 981 (34.3%) were nurses. Most of the studies were conducted in Asia ( n = 4, 44.4%) and North America ( n = 3, 33.3%). All of the cross-sectional studies regarded only the healthcare professionals’ performance. Multi-professional teams were involved in seven (77.8%) studies, and they were more frequently conducted in both medical and surgical wards ( n = 6, 66.7%). The leadership styles were equally distributed in the articles and two (22.2%) of them examined more than two leadership styles at the same time.

The pooled effectiveness of the leadership interventions in the cross-sectional studies had a correlation coefficient of 0.22 (95%CI 0.15–0.28), whose heterogeneity was remarkably high (I 2 = 96.7%, p < 0.0001) ( Figure 3 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is ijerph-19-10995-g003.jpg

Effectiveness of leadership in cross-sectional studies. Dashed line represents the pooled effectiveness value [ 30 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 ].

The effectiveness of leadership in the cross-sectional studies changed in accordance with the leadership style ( Supplementary Figure S3 ) and publication bias ( Supplementary Figure S4 ).

Multi-regression analysis showed a higher leadership effectiveness in studies conducted in South America (β = 0.56 95%CI 0.13–0.99) in private hospitals (β = 0.60; 95%CI 0.14–1.06) and in the medical vs. surgical specialty (β = −0.22; 95%CI −0.54, −0.02) ( Table 2 ).

Multi-regression analysis of leadership effectiveness in cross-sectional studies.

* 0.05 ≤ p < 0.01.

4. Discussion

Leadership effectiveness in healthcare settings is a topic that is already treated in a quantitative matter, but only this systematic review and meta-analysis showed the pooled effectiveness of leadership intervention improving some healthcare outcomes such as performance and adherence to guidelines. However, the assessment of leadership effectiveness could be complicated because it depends on the study methodology and selected outcomes [ 12 ]. Health outcomes might benefit from leadership interventions, as Flodgren et al. was concerned about opinion leadership [ 2 ], whose adhesion to guidelines increased by 10.8% (95% CI: 3.5–14.6%). On the other hand, other outcomes did not improve after opinion leadership interventions [ 2 ]. Another review by Ford et al. about emergency wards reported a summary from the literature data which acknowledged an improvement in trauma care management through healthcare workers’ performance and adhesion to guidelines after effective leadership interventions [ 14 ]. Nevertheless, some variables such as collaboration among different healthcare professionals and patients’ healthcare needs might affect leadership intervention effectiveness [ 14 ]. Therefore, a defined leadership style might fail in a healthcare setting rather than in other settings [ 5 , 13 , 14 ].

The leadership effectiveness assessed through cross-sectional studies was higher in South America than in other continents. A possible explanation of this result could be the more frequent use of a transactional leadership style in this area, where the transactional leadership interventions were effective at optimizing economic resources and improving healthcare workers’ performance through cash rewards [ 48 ]. Financing methods for healthcare organizations might be different from one country to another, so the effectiveness of a leadership style can change. Reaching both economic targets and patients’ wellness could be considered a challenge for any leadership intervention [ 48 ], especially in poorer countries [ 5 ].

This meta-analysis showed a negative association between leadership effectiveness and studies by surgical wards. Other research has supported these results, which reported surgical ward performance worsened in any leadership context (charismatic, servant, transactional, transformational) [ 47 ]. In those workplaces, adopting a leadership style to improve surgical performance might be challenging because of nervous tension and little available time during surgical procedures [ 47 ]. On the other hand, a cross-sectional study declared that a surgical team’s performance in private surgical settings benefitted from charismatic leadership-style interventions [ 42 ]. This style of leadership intervention might be successful among a few healthcare workers [ 42 ], where creating relationships is easier [ 6 ]. Even a nursing team’s performance in trauma care increased after charismatic leadership-style interventions because of better communicative and supportive abilities than certain other professional categories [ 29 , 47 ]. However, nowadays there is no standardized leadership in healthcare basic courses [ 5 , 6 , 12 ]. Consequently, promoting leadership culture after undergraduate medical courses could achieve a proper increase in both leadership agreement and working wellness as well as a higher quality of care. [ 17 ]. Furthermore, for healthcare workers who have already worked in a healthcare setting, leadership improvement could consist of implementing basic knowledge on that topic. Consequently, they could reach a higher quality of care practice through working wellness [ 17 ] and overcoming the lack of previous leadership training [ 17 ].

Although very few studies have included in a meta-analysis examined in private healthcare settings [ 35 , 38 , 40 , 41 , 42 ], leadership interventions had more effectiveness in private hospitals than in public hospitals. This result could be related to the continent of origin, and indeed 60.0% of these studies were derived from North America [ 38 , 41 , 42 ], where patients’ outcomes and healthcare workers’ performance could influence available hospital budgets [ 38 , 40 , 41 , 42 ], especially in peripheral healthcare units [ 38 , 41 ]. Private hospitals paid more attention to the cost-effectiveness of any healthcare action and a positive balance of capital for healthcare settings might depend on the effectiveness of leadership interventions [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Furthermore, private healthcare assistance focused on nursing performance because of its impact on both a patients’ and an organizations’ outcomes. Therefore, healthcare systems’ quality could improve with effective leadership actions for a nursing team [ 40 ].

Other factors reported in the literature could affect leadership effectiveness, although they were not examined in this meta-analysis. For instance, professionals’ specialty and gender could have an effect on these results and shape leadership style choice and effectiveness [ 1 ]. Moreover, racial differences among members might influence healthcare system performance. Weech-Maldonado et al. found a higher compliance and self-improvement by black-race professionals than white ones after transactional leadership interventions [ 39 ].

Healthcare workers’ and patients’ outcomes depended on style of leadership interventions [ 1 ]. According to the results of this meta-analysis, interventions conducted by a transactional leadership style increased healthcare outcomes, though nevertheless their effectiveness was higher in the cross-sectional studies than in the before–after studies. Conversely, the improvement by a transformational leadership style was higher in before–after studies than in the cross-sectional studies. Both a charismatic and servant leadership style increased effectiveness more in the cross-sectional studies than in the before–after studies. This data shows that any setting required a specific leadership style for improving performance and guideline adherence by each team member who could understand the importance of their role and their tasks [ 1 ]. Some outcomes had a better improvement than others. Focusing on Savage et al.’s outcomes, a transformational leadership style improved checklist adherence [ 31 ]. The time of patients’ transport by Murphy et al. was reduced after conducting interventions based on a charismatic leadership style [ 37 ]. Jodar et al. showed that performances were elevated in units whose healthcare workers were subjected to transactional and transformational leadership-style interventions [ 1 ].

These meta-analysis results were slightly relevant because of the high heterogeneity among the studies, as confirmed by both funnel plots. This publication bias might be caused by unpublished articles due to either lacking data on leadership effectiveness, failing appropriate leadership strategies in the wrong settings or non-cooperating teams [ 12 ]. The association between leadership interventions and healthcare outcomes was slightly explored or gave no statistically significant results [ 12 ], although professionals’ performance and patients’ outcomes were closely related to the adopted leadership style, as reported by the latest literature sources [ 7 ]. Other aspects than effectiveness should be investigated for leadership. For example, the evaluation of the psychological effect of leadership should be explored using other databases.

The study design choice could affect the results about leadership effectiveness, making their detection and their statistical relevance tough [ 12 ]. Despite the strongest evidence of this study design [ 50 ], nowadays, trials about leadership effectiveness on healthcare outcomes are lacking and have to be improved [ 12 ]. Notwithstanding, this analysis gave the first results of leadership effectiveness from the available study designs.

Performance and adherence to guidelines were the main two outcomes examined in this meta-analysis because of their highest impact on patients, healthcare workers and hospital organizations. They included several other types of outcomes which were independent each other and gave different effectiveness results [ 12 ]. The lack of neither an official classification nor standardized guidelines explained the heterogeneity of these outcomes. To reach consistent results, they were classified into performance and guideline adherence by the description of each outcome in the related manuscripts [ 5 , 6 , 12 ].

Another important aspect is outcome assessment after leadership interventions, which might be fulfilled by several standardized indexes and other evaluation methods [ 40 , 41 ]. Therefore, leadership interventions should be investigated in further studies [ 5 ], converging on a univocal and official leadership definition and classification to obtain comparable results among countries [ 5 , 6 , 12 ].

5. Conclusions

This meta-analysis gave the first pooled data estimating leadership effectiveness in healthcare settings. However, some of them, e.g., surgery, required a dedicated approach to select the most worthwhile leadership style for refining healthcare worker performances and guideline adhesion. This can be implemented using a standardized leadership program for surgical settings.

Only cross-sectional studies gave significant results in leadership effectiveness. For this reason, leadership effectiveness needs to be supported and strengthened by other study designs, especially those with the highest evidence levels, such as trials. Finally, further research should be carried out to define guidelines on leadership style choice and establish shared healthcare policies worldwide.

Supplementary Materials

The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/ijerph191710995/s1 , Figure S1. Leadership effectiveness by leadership style in before after studies; Figure S2. Funnel plot of before after studies; Figure S3. Leadership effectiveness in cross sectional studies by four leadership style; Figure S4. Funnel plot of cross-sectional studies; Table S1. Before after studies included in this systematic review and meta-analysis; Table S2. Cross-sectional studies included in this systematic review and meta-analysis. All outcomes were performance.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, V.R., A.C. (Alessandra Casuccio), F.V. and C.F.; methodology, V.R., M.G., A.O. and C.T.; software, V.R.; validation, G.M., A.B., A.C. (Alberto Carli) and M.C.; formal analysis, V.R.; investigation, G.M., A.B., A.C. (Alberto Carli) and M.C.; resources, A.C. (Alessandra Casuccio); data curation, G.M. and V.R.; writing—original draft preparation, G.M.; writing—review and editing, A.C. (Alessandra Casuccio), F.V., C.F., M.G., A.O., C.T., A.B., A.C. (Alberto Carli) and M.C.; visualization, G.M.; supervision, V.R.; project administration, C.F.; funding acquisition, A.C. (Alessandra Casuccio), F.V. and C.F. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethical review and approval were waived for this study due to secondary data analysis for the systematic review and meta-anlysis.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

IMAGES

  1. Transformational Leadership

    transformational leadership research studies

  2. The CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY Transformational Leadership

    transformational leadership research studies

  3. Proposed research model of how transformational leadership impacts job

    transformational leadership research studies

  4. 5 The Four I's of Transformational Leadership

    transformational leadership research studies

  5. Transformational Leadership: How to Inspire and Motivate

    transformational leadership research studies

  6. Research framework -determinants of transformational leadership

    transformational leadership research studies

VIDEO

  1. Transformational Leadership in the Non-Profit Sector

  2. Transformational Leadership

  3. A mediation moderation model of transformational leadership and intrinsic work JSER 2023 102 22 33

  4. Transformational Leadership and Contextual Performance A Quantitative Study among Nursing Staff in K

  5. Transformational Leadership

  6. National Training on Transformational Leadership in Post-Pandemic Education

COMMENTS

  1. Transformational leadership effectiveness: an evidence-based primer

    25,039 Views 2 CrossRef citations to date 0 Altmetric Listen Perspective Articles Transformational leadership effectiveness: an evidence-based primer Connie Deng , Duygu Gulseren , Carlo Isola , Kyra Grocutt & Nick Turner Pages 627-641 | Received 20 Jun 2022, Accepted 30 Sep 2022, Published online: 13 Oct 2022 Cite this article

  2. Transformational Leadership and Job Performance: The Mediating Role of

    Abstract This study proposed that transformational leaders use various behaviors to provoke followers' organizationally beneficial behaviors (e.g., better task performance and helping behaviors) through ignition of followers' work engagement.

  3. The Path Is the Goal: How Transformational Leaders Enhance Followers

    As a core finding, a multitude of studies (for an overview: Locke and Latham, 2002) revealed that setting specific and moderately difficult goals results in increases of an individual's performance as such goals direct one's attention, induce greater effort, enhance one's persistence, and elicit the use of task-related knowledge and strategies (...

  4. Impact of transformational leadership on work ...

    Research Open access Published: 09 December 2020 Impact of transformational leadership on work performance, burnout and social loafing: a mediation model Hira Khan, Maryam Rehmat, Tahira Hassan Butt, Saira Farooqi & Javaria Asim Future Business Journal 6, Article number: 40 ( 2020 ) Cite this article 181k Accesses 49 Citations 13 Altmetric Metrics

  5. Transformational leadership: Exploring common conceptions

    Izhak Berkovich examines what he describes as three common conceptions about transformational leadership. First, principals' transformational leadership behaviours are more prevalent in national contexts that are restructuring. Second, transformational behaviours are more effective than transactional behaviours.

  6. Transformational leadership in development of transformative education

    In this study, transformational leadership was extracted as the core concept. The core concept emerged from four sub-concepts including transformative management; educational policy requirements; providing a platform and community-centered education. Conclusions

  7. Journal of Leadership & The Influence of Transformational

    On one hand, transformational leadership research and theory (Avolio & Bass, 1991; Bass & Avolio, 1999) suggests that leaders influence subordinates' attitudes through their leadership style, specifically through transfor - mational leadership behaviors that encourage the accep- tance of change and innovation.

  8. Transformational leadership effectiveness: An evidence-based primer

    Meta-analytic results regarding of transformational leadership. Outcome kCorrelation Size Upper Source 53 .85 2018) Leader effectiveness 27 .64ρ Large Excluded 0 Piccolo ( 2004 .39 2006 74 .27ρ...

  9. Daily transformational leadership: A source of inspiration for follower

    Finally, expanding upon previous research providing evidence for a link between daily/weekly transformational leadership, engagement, and performance (Amor et al., 2020; Kelemen et al., 2020), we argue that daily transformational leadership is related to follower performance first through follower behaviors (strengths use and personal initiative) and then through follower work engagement (cf ...

  10. Frontiers

    The number of research studies on Google was 47,400,000 which were conducted globally, however, this case was completely conducted with Saudi Arabian universities so, only 22 studies, purely based on transformational leadership and its possible outcomes, were selected for the systematic review. The Roots of Transformational Leadership

  11. Transformational Leadership and Employee Job Satisfaction: The

    1. Introduction With the increasing competition of economic globalization and popularity of the employee-centered management approach, improving the leadership effectiveness of managers has become one of the most important ways to enhance the core competitiveness of companies and to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage [ 1 ].

  12. Transformational leadership style: a boost or hindrance to team

    Transformational leadership style: a boost or hindrance to team performance in IT sector Deepak Jaroliya, Rajni Gyanchandani Vilakshan - XIMB Journal of Management ISSN: 0973-1954 Article publication date: 20 August 2021 Issue publication date: 1 February 2022 Downloads 13643 pdf (492 KB) Abstract 1. Introduction 2. Literature review 3.

  13. Frontiers

    Furthermore, this study result is based on the cross-sectional data and data were gathered from the two provinces of China, future research could use a method of longitudinal design to conduct a study among transformational leadership and insight of subordinate attitude, the performance of job, and engagement with large sample size.

  14. Full article: Transformational leadership for researcher's

    Considering all the above, the research problem tackled in this study concerns the identified gap of knowledge of the influence of transformational leadership on (internal and external) innovativeness in scientific institutions, including such factors vital for innovativeness as organizational learning culture (Berraies et al., Citation 2020 ...

  15. An analysis of the transformational leadership theory

    ... Transformational leaders ensure that their subordinates can realise the value of what they can do. Scholars and theorists believe that the transformational type of leadership is more...

  16. Transformational Leadership: A Qualitative Study for the Practical

    Built upon transactional leadership, transformational leadership consists of four domains. 1. Charismatic leadership or idealized influence: The leader acts as a role model, respected, liked, and admired by followers. Leaders' actions demonstrate ethical conduct. Power cannot be used for personal gain. 2.

  17. Transformational Leadership and Evidence-Based Management

    In his Pulitzer Prize-winning, seminal study on leadership, James Burns identifies the essential characteristics of leadership (as distinct from the wielding of power) and distinguishes "transactional" leadership from the more potent "transformational" leadership (Burns, 1978).

  18. (PDF) Transformational Leadership: A Qualitative Study for the

    ... Transformational leaders who show themselves as pioneers to create changes that inspire employees and improve their performance and their followers will succeed while others will be left...

  19. The Influence of Transformational Leadership and Leader Attitudes on

    On one hand, transformational leadership research and theory ( Avolio & Bass, 1991; Bass & Avolio, 1999) suggests that leaders influence subordinates' attitudes through their leadership style, specifically through transformational leadership behaviors that encourage the acceptance of change and innovation.

  20. Is transformational leadership always good for employee task

    Transformational leadership. Transformational leaders transform their employees' personal values and self-concept into a higher level of organizational needs and aspirations (Avolio et al. 1999).According to Avolio and Bass (), transformational leadership has four dimensions.The first is individualized consideration, which is the degree to which a leader builds close relationships with ...

  21. A Study of Academic Leadership Styles in Higher Educationinstitutions

    Abstract: Effective academic leadership plays a crucial role in shaping the culture and performance of higher education institutions (HEIs). As faculty engagement and satisfaction are key factors influencing faculty members' productivity, retention, and overall success, understanding the impact of leadership styles on these outcomes is of utmost importance. This research paper aims to ...

  22. The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Nurses' Organizational

    Research has uncovered that organizational commitment leads to many benefits for both employees and the organization . ... This study shows that transformational leadership style creates better outcomes in nurses as compared to overly-managed and inflexible authoritarian styles . By using the transformational leadership style, nursing ...

  23. Social Sciences

    This qualitative study investigates the behaviors and strategies of effective leadership teams within ethnic community-based organizations (ECBOs) operating in the United States that consist of leaders who are themselves former refugees. Through analysis of four focus group interviews, each with three to five leaders from local Bhutanese, Burundian, Congolese, and Syrian communities, we ...

  24. 3 Examples of Transformational Leadership & Key Traits

    3. Intellectual Stimulation: Fostering Innovation. Transformational leaders need to enact change by encouraging innovation to elevate the company above the status quo. The best way to do this is to involve all team members in the conversation, giving weight to their words and respecting their ideas.

  25. The Effect of Transformational and Transactional Leadership Styles on

    According to previous research, transformational leadership leads to improved nurse performance overall, safer nursing, and higher rates of nurse satisfaction and retention ... The instrument selected to measure the independent variables in this study was Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire developed by Bass and Avolio (1996). It contains 32 ...

  26. Transformational and Transactional Leadership: Association With

    Leadership research is pervasive in the organizational literature, ... effects of transformational leadership. Further studies are needed to examine the extent to which supervisors' transformational and transactional leadership that was focused specifically on improving attitudes and implementation of evidence-based practices would lead to ...

  27. British Council Nigeria on Instagram: "The Significance of the Study UK

    The Study UK Alumni Award isn't just a trophy on..." British Council Nigeria on Instagram: "The Significance of the Study UK Alumni Award! The Study UK Alumni Award isn't just a trophy on a shelf - it's a symbol of achievement, aspiration, and the transformative power of education.

  28. Leadership Effectiveness in Healthcare Settings: A Systematic Review

    Only one (8.3%) study adopted a transformational leadership style. The pooled effectiveness of leadership was 14.0% (95%CI 10.0-18.0%), with a high level ... This meta-analysis showed a negative association between leadership effectiveness and studies by surgical wards. Other research has supported these results, which reported surgical ...