TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND TRUST: A CASE STUDY
Abstract
According to previous research, an employee’s trust in his/her leader has been linked to: increased individual efficiency and commitment; increased organizational performance; effective team and organizational functioning where the tasks are complex and unstructured. Considering these findings concerning the positive influence of trust on various aspects of organizational performance, we used relevant theories in literature relating to trust in organizational settings and transformational leadership to devise our research framework that aimed at gaining a better understanding of leadership behaviors leading to higher degrees of trust by followers in their leader. The results of our pilot study in a Romanian small-to medium-sized enterprise show that leader’s behaviors such as enforcing observance of organizational rules, professional objectivity in employee appraisal processes, keeping promises and commitments, fairness, as well as leader’s professional competency are essential for achieving higher degrees of trust in intra-organizational relationships. In assuming the inherent limitations of a pilot case study leading to the necessity to f{0>Dezvoltarea metodologică ulterioară, precum şi realizarea unor studii follow-up cu finanţare suficientă pentru a permite minimizarea erorilor de eşantionare sunt fără îndoială necesare pentru a confirma corelaţia dintre cele două abordări, din perspectiva societăţii „deschise” popperiene.<}0{>Further urther the methodological developments and follow-up studies, our research confirmed obvious relationships between the targeted domains, transformational leadership and trust. Also, our findings confirmed that the trust element in organizational leadership has a critical impact on building long-term employee commitment and drive for achieving higher individual and organizational performance and success.
References
Antonakis, J., Avolio, B. J., & Sivasubramaniam, N. (2003). Context and leadership: An examination of the nine-factor full-range leadership theory using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. The Leadership Quarterly, 14, 261–295.
Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, New York.
Avolio, B. J. (1999). Full leadership development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Avolio, B.J., Zhu, W., Koh, W., & Puja, B. (2004). Transformational leadership and organizational commitment: Mediating role of psychological empowerment and moderating role of structural distance Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25: 951– 968
Bass, B. M. (1998). Transformational leadership: Industry, military, and educational impact. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1995). MLQ Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire for research: Permission set. Redwood City, CA: Mindgarden.
Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1997). Full range leadership development: Manual for the multifactor leadership questionnaire. Palo Alto, CA: Mindgarden.
Boss, R. W. (1978). Trust and managerial problem solving revisited. Group and Organization Studies, 3, 331-342.
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, 117-134.
Colbert, A. E., & Witt, L. A. (2009). The Role of Goal-Focused Leadership in Enabling the Expression of Conscientiousness. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 94(3), 790-796.
Creed, D. ., & Miles, E. (1996), Trust in Organizations. A Conceptual Framework Linking Organizational Forms, Managerial Philosophies, and the Opportunity Costs of Control in R. M. Kramer and T. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations. Frontiers of Theory and Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, London, 16-38.
Davis, J. H., Schoorman, F. D., Mayer, R. C., & Tan, H. H. (2000). The trusted general manager and business unit performance: Empirical evidence of a competitive advantage. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 563–576.
De Hoogh, A. H. B., & Den Hartog, D. N. (2008). Ethical and despotic leadership, relationships with leader’s social responsibility, top management team effectiveness and subordinates’optimism: A multi-method study. Leadership Quarterly, 19, 297-311.
Dirks, K. T., & Ferrin, D. L. (2002). Trust in leadership: Meta-analytic findings and implications for organizational research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 611-628.
Dirks, K. T., & Skarlicki, D. (2004). Trust in leaders: Existing Research and Emerging Issues. In R. Kramer & K. Cook (Eds.) Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 21-40.
Flaherty, K. E., & Pappas, J. M. (2000). The role of trust in salesperson-sales manager relationships. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 20, 271-278.
Gambetta, D. (1988). Can we trust? In Gambetta, D. (Ed.), Trust: Making and breaking cooperative relations, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 213-238.
Golembiewski, R. T., & McConkie, M. (1975). The centrality of interpersonal trust in group processes. In Cooper, G. L. (Ed.), Theories of group processes. London: John Wiley & Sons, 131-185.
Harter, J.K., Schmidt, F.L. & Hayes, T.L. (2002). Business-unit level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta- analysis, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 87, 268-79.
Henry, G.T. (1990). Practical Sampling. Newbury Park: Sage.
Lendenmann, K.W., & Rapoport, A. (1980). Decision pressures in 2 x 2 games. Behavioural Science 25 107-19.
Liu, J., Siu, O. L., & Shi, K. (2010). Transformational leadership and employee well-being: The mediating role of trust in the leader and self-efficacy. Applied Psychology, 59(3), 454–479.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academic Management Review, 20, 709-734.
McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect- and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 38(1), 24-59.
Nunnally, J.C. (1978). Psychometric Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Moorman, R. H., & Fetter, R. (1990). Transformational leader behaviors and their effects on follower’s trust in leader, satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. The Leadership Quarterly, 1, 107–142.
Rotter, J. B. (1967). A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality, 35, 651-665.
Shockley-Zalabak, P., Ellis, K., & Cesaria, R. (2000, August). IABC Research Foundation unveils new study on trust. Communication World, 7-9.
Swan, J. E., Trawick Jr., I. F., Rink, D. R., & Roberts, J. J. (1988). Measuring dimensions of purchaser trust of industrial salespeople. The Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 8, 1-9.
Treviño, L. K., Brown, M., & Hartman, L. P. (2003). A qualitative investigation of perceived executive ethical leadership: Perceptions from inside and outside the executive suite. Human Relations, 56, 5-37.
Treviño, L. K., Weaver, G. R., & Reynolds, S. J. (2006). Behavioral ethics in organizations: A review. Journal of Management, 32, 951–990.
Van Knippenberg, B., & Van Knippenberg, D. (2005). Leader self-sacrifice and leader effectiveness: The moderator role of leader prototypicality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 25-37.
Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: design and methods. 4th ed., London: Sage.
Yukl, G., & Van Fleet, D. D. (1992). Theory and research on leadership in organizations. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 147–197.
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations (7th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Zand, D. E. (1972). Trust and managerial problem solving. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17, 229-239. Elkind, D. (2008a, Spring). Can we play? Greater Good, 4(4), 14-17.
Copyright information
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 - CC BY 3.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
info@iseic.cz, www.iseic.cz, ojs.journals.cz
