Pursuit of Whose Happiness? Executive Leaders' Transformational Behaviors and Personal Values

This paper theorizes and tests how chief executive officers' (CEOs') transformational leadership behaviors, which motivate followers to do more than expected and act for the good of the collective, influence followers' commitment. We theorize that CEOs' values may either enhance or attenuate the effect of transformational behaviors on followers, depending on followers' reactions to the congruence or incongruence between leaders' internal values and their outward transformational behaviors. Self-enhancement values—focusing on the leader's own happiness—would attenuate the effect, whereas self-transcendent values—focusing on others' happiness—would accentuate the effect of CEOs' transformational behaviors on followers' commitment. Using a sample of 45 managers in two companies in China, we validated a Q-sort method of measuring personal values. Results of a second study using cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys as well as interview data from a sample of Chinese CEOs, top managers, and middle managers supported both the attenuation and the accentuation effects and validated the idea that middle managers can detect their CEOs' values.

[1]  B. Bass,et al.  Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire , 2011 .

[2]  Kwok Leung,et al.  Never the Twain Shall Meet? Integrating Chinese and Western Management Research , 2009, Management and Organization Review.

[3]  D. Whetten.  An Examination of the Interface between Context and Theory Applied to the Study of Chinese Organizations , 2009, Management and Organization Review.

[4]  A. Tsui,et al.  Unpacking Employee Responses to Organizational Exchange Mechanisms: The Role of Social and Economic Exchange Perceptions† , 2009 .

[5]  C. Cheung,et al.  Benefits of Hong Kong Chinese CEOs' Confucian and Daoist leadership styles , 2008 .

[6]  J. Crocker,et al.  Reasons for disclosing depression matter: the consequences of having egosystem and ecosystem goals. , 2008, Social science & medicine.

[7]  Yongjuan Li,et al.  Examining conflict-handling approaches by Chinese top management teams in IT firms , 2008 .

[8]  F. Cooke.  Enterprise Culture Management in China: Insiders' Perspective , 2008, Management and Organization Review.

[9]  J. Crocker,et al.  From Egosystem to Ecosystem in Intergroup Interactions: Implications for Intergroup Reconciliation , 2008 .

[10]  J. Fisher,et al.  The social psychology of intergroup reconciliation , 2008 .

[11]  Robert A. Baron,et al.  Influence of Founder—CEOs' Personal Values on Firm Performance: Moderating Effects of Firm Age and Size† , 2007 .

[12]  D. Hambrick,et al.  It's All about Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance , 2007 .

[13]  John J. Sosik,et al.  Relationships between leadership style and vision content: The moderating role of need for social approval, self-monitoring, and need for social power , 2007 .

[14]  Mansour Javidan,et al.  Components of CEO Transformational Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility , 2006 .

[15]  William H. Bommer,et al.  Leading from Within: The Effects of Emotion Recognition and Personality on Transformational Leadership Behavior , 2005 .

[16]  R. Lord,et al.  Identity, deep structure and the development of leadership skill , 2005 .

[17]  John J. Sosik.  The role of personal values in the charismatic leadership of corporate managers: A model and preliminary field study , 2005 .

[18]  Ronald F. Piccolo,et al.  Transformational and transactional leadership: a meta-analytic test of their relative validity. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[19]  J. Piliavin,et al.  Values: Reviving a Dormant Concept , 2004 .

[20]  Carolyn P. Egri,et al.  Special Issue on Corporate Transformation in the People's Republic of China: Generation Cohorts and Personal Values: A Comparison of China and the United States , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[21]  T. Wall,et al.  On the validity of subjective measures of company performance , 2004 .

[22]  Anne S. Tsui,et al.  Utilizing Printed Media to Understand Desired Leadership Attributes in the People's Republic of China , 2003 .

[23]  A. M. Francesco,et al.  The Relationship between the Three Components of Commitment and Employee Performance in China. , 2003 .

[24]  Nick Bontis,et al.  Transformational leadership : an examination of cross-national differences and similarities , 2003 .

[25]  John J. Sosik,et al.  Beneath the mask , 2002 .

[26]  J. C. Wofford,et al.  A theoretical and empirical extension to the transformational leadership construct , 2001 .

[27]  R. J. House,et al.  Does Leadership Matter? CEO Leadership Attributes and Profitability under Conditions of Perceived Environmental Uncertainty. , 2001 .

[28]  B. Avolio,et al.  Opening the black box: An experimental investigation of the mediating effects of trust and value congruence on transformational and transactional leadership. , 2000 .

[29]  S. Schwartz,et al.  Value Consensus and Importance , 2000 .

[30]  B. Bass,et al.  Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behavior , 1999 .

[31]  Elizabeth C. Ravlin,et al.  Individual Values in Organizations: Concepts, Controversies, and Research , 1998 .

[32]  John P. Meyer,et al.  Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research, and Application , 1997 .

[33]  R. N. Kanungo,et al.  Ethical dimensions of leadership , 1995 .

[34]  Shalom H. Schwartz,et al.  Identifying Culture-Specifics in the Content and Structure of Values , 1995 .

[35]  Anthony S. Bryk,et al.  Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods , 1992 .

[36]  Jennifer A. Chatman,et al.  PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: A PROFILE COMPARISON APPROACH TO ASSESSING PERSON-ORGANIZATION FIT , 1991 .

[37]  A. Tsui,et al.  Being different: Relational demography and organizational attachment. , 1991 .

[38]  Cheryl L. Adkins,et al.  A work values approach to corporate culture: A field test of the value congruence process and its relationship to individual outcomes. , 1989 .

[39]  L. Wenquan,et al.  CONSTRUCTION OF CPM SCALE FOR LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR ASSESSMENT , 1987 .

[40]  B. Bass.  LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE BEYOND EXPECTATIONS , 1985 .

[41]  D. Hambrick,et al.  Upper Echelons: The Organization as a Reflection of Its Top Managers , 1984 .

[42]  L. James,et al.  Estimating within-group interrater reliability with and without response bias. , 1984 .

[43]  L. James.  Aggregation Bias in Estimates of Perceptual Agreement. , 1982 .

[44]  Allen C. Bluedorn.  A Unified Model of Turnover from Organizations , 1982 .

[45]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Culture′s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values , 1980 .

[46]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[47]  G. W. England.  The manager and his values : an international perspective from the United States, Japan, Korea, India, and Australia , 1977 .

[48]  C. Perrow.  Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay , 1975 .

[49]  Donald B. Rubin,et al.  The Dependability of Behavioral Measurements: Theory of Generalizability for Scores and Profiles. , 1974 .

[50]  I. Deutscher,et al.  What we say/what we do : sentiments & acts , 1974 .

[51]  W. Bennis,et al.  The Social Psychology of Organizations , 1966 .

[52]  Jeff Hill,et al.  The Book of Tao , 1962 .

[53]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[54]  T. Parsons,et al.  Toward a General Theory of Action , 1952 .

[55]  C. Kluckhohn.  2. VALUES AND VALUE-ORIENTATIONS IN THE THEORY OF ACTION: AN EXPLORATION IN DEFINITION AND CLASSIFICATION , 1951 .

[56]  F. N. House,et al.  The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers.Talcott Parsons , 1939 .

[57]  R. Burke,et al.  Leadership in organizations , 2006 .

[58]  Venkat R. Krishnan,et al.  Leader-Member Exchange, Transformational Leadership, and Value System , 2005 .

[59]  Venkat R. Krishnan,et al.  Transformational Leadership and Value System Congruence , 2002 .

[60]  Bor-Shiuan Cheng,et al.  A Cultural Analysis of Paternalistic Leadership in Chinese Organizations , 2000 .

[61]  Anne S. Tsui,et al.  Management and organizations in the Chinese context , 2000 .

[62]  S. Schwartz,et al.  Basic Individual Values, Work Values, and the Meaning of Work , 1999 .

[63]  Hcc Hui,et al.  The Moral Component of Effective Leadership: The Chinese Case , 1997 .

[64]  M. Taccetta-Chapnick.  Transformational leadership. , 1996, Nursing administration quarterly.

[65]  Pamela Ramser,et al.  Journeys into cross-cultural psychology , 1994 .

[66]  R. I. Sutton,et al.  Organizational behavior: linking individuals and groups to organizational contexts. , 1993, Annual review of psychology.

[67]  S. Schwartz.  Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries , 1992 .

[68]  E. Schein.  Organizational Culture and Leadership , 1991 .

[69]  K. Tom.  Echoes from old China : life, legends, and lore of the Middle Kingdom , 1989 .

[70]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[71]  I. Deutscher,et al.  What we say/what we do , 1973 .

[72]  K. Weick.  The social psychology of organizing , 1969 .