The Moderating Roles of Perceived Task Interdependence and Team Size in Transformational Leadership’s Relation to Team Identification: A Dimensional Analysis

Abstract

This study is aimed at investigating perceived task interdependence and team size as contingencies for team leaders’ transformational leadership influence on team identification. Data were obtained from a two-phase survey among 234 employees from ten multinational pharmaceutical subsidiaries in South Korea. Each dimension of transformational leadership by team leaders relates positively to team identification. However, the impact of leadership dimensions on team identification is attenuated by distinct moderator(s): charisma by higher perceived task interdependence, individualized consideration by larger team size, and intellectual stimulation by higher perceived task interdependence or larger team size. This study’s findings help us develop a more nuanced understanding of how transformational leadership operates. This study illustrates that team leaders’ transformational influence on team identification fluctuates, depending on the team structure. Such knowledge may help inform team leader development and team-structuring strategies used by practitioners and may contribute to improving organizational team effectiveness. This is one of the first studies showing evidence that the influence of the dimensions of transformational leadership is contingent upon distinct moderators, thereby contributing to advancing the theory of transformational leadership. Further, this study, by investigating team structure as a contingency of the transformational leadership-team identification relationship, complements previous research that focused on follower characteristics. Additionally, our explicit attention to the team as both the context of leaders’ action and the target of employee identification helps us gain a more concrete understanding of team leadership and team development issues, which are particularly salient in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry.