Abstract
While leading through goals is usually associated with a task-oriented leadership style, the present work links goal setting to transformational leadership. An online survey with two time points was conducted with employees to investigate the influence of transformational leadership on followers’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and proactive behavior via goal attributes. Findings indicate that transformational leaders influence the extent to which followers evaluate organizational goals as important and perceive them as attainable. Multiple mediation analysis revealed that these goal attributes transmit the effect of transformational leadership on followers’ job attitudes and proactive behavior. However, goal importance and goal attainability seem to be of differential importance for the different outcomes.
Highlights
The setting of goals has been emphasized to be one of the most important tasks of leaders (e.g., Tett et al, 2000), goals and leadership have commonly been considered from two relatively independent research perspectives
To test our hypothesis we modeled all variables within a single multiple mediation model
We overcome some of these shortcomings: (1) We focused on two decisive goal attributes which have widely been neglected in the study of transformational leadership so far; (2) we concentrated on goals that have been set by leaders – the traditional basis of goal setting theory and one of the main tasks leaders have to complete; and (3) we ideographically assessed organizational goals and followers’ individual evaluations of these goals
Summary
The setting of goals has been emphasized to be one of the most important tasks of leaders (e.g., Tett et al, 2000), goals and leadership have commonly been considered from two relatively independent research perspectives (cf. Berson et al, 2015). Apart from its impact on an individual’s job performance and work motivation, goal setting is an important determinant of one’s self-regulation (Latham and Locke, 1991). Their self-regulative function results as specific and difficult goals point out a discrepancy between a current and a future state and clarify the acceptable level of performance (Latham and Locke, 1991). Taskoriented leaders focus on getting their work done and completing assignments (Bass, 1990) Such leaders emphasize goals, foster their achievement, and monitor followers’ goal pursuit. Goals may be seen as a means to exert control in leader-follower interactions
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