Transformational Leadership and Job Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Meaningful Work

Abstract

Transformational leaders inspire their followers to exert more than their normal share of efforts and demonstrate unflinching loyalty towards the organizational goals. Although previous studies have reported positive influence of transformational leadership on employee’s affective organizational commitment and their contextual performance, the process by which transformational leadership influences the affective commitment and contextual performance has not yet been adequately studied. Hence, the present study will empirically investigate one such mediator’s (meaningful work) role in explaining the relationship between transformational leadership and the two job outcomes. This study includes a sample of 480 IT professionals working in several IT firms across India. SPSS 18 was used for data analysis and interpretation. Results of the present study reported a significant positive effect of transformational leadership on follower’s affective organizational commitment and contextual performance. The findings of this study also reported meaningful work partially mediating the relationship between transformational leadership and affective organizational commitment and contextual performance. The implications of the findings, limitations of the study and its scope for future research are also discussed.