Leadership, values and communication: a cross-cultural investigation of the extended full-range of leadership behaviors

This dissertation investigates the extended full-range of leadership model – including laissez-faire, transactional, transformational, and instrumental leadership – in 14 cultures. Cross-cultural leadership has increasingly attracted the attention of practitioners as well as scholars in recent years due to important challenges that international firms are facing on the global market. The aim of this dissertation is, thus, to examine cultural impacts on leader behaviors in relation to the leadership styles of the extended full-range of leadership framework to provide a comprehensive model of leadership behaviors, underlying processes (mediators), and conditions (moderators) in an intercultural context. For this purpose, three complementary and concerted empirical studies were carried out. The first study simultaneously explores all of the extended full-range of leadership styles (laissez-faire, transactional, transformational, and instrumental leadership) to identify which of these leader behaviors are most effective to enhance job satisfaction and affective commitment across cultures. The second study sheds light on the influence of cultural and individual openness values as moderators in order to investigate under which conditions the influence of transformational and instrumental leadership is particularly strong. The third study looks at the leader’s communicator style as a mediator to investigate the underlying processes of transformational and instrumental leadership in greater detail. In summary, this dissertation represents an important step towards a more robust understanding of the effectiveness of the extended full-range of leader behaviors across cultures. It contributes to the leadership literature in two key ways. On the one hand, it scrutinizes the extended full-range of leadership model – including instrumental leadership – in a wide range of different cultures. On the other hand, it expands this model in the sense of an input-process-output model which additionally includes boundary conditions. As such, this dissertation helps to reveal differentiated insights on underlying processes and conditions that shape the micro-level dynamics of leadership processes in different cultures. The main result of this dissertation is that – in line with theoretical expectations – transformational and instrumental leadership were the best predictors for job satisfaction and affective commitment across cultures. Moreover, although culture did not impact the direct relationships between transformational and instrumental leadership and job attitudes, more fine-grained analyses showed that culture had an influence on micro-processes of leadership

Doing bad through being selective in doing good: the role of within-unit variability in ethical leadership

Bormann K, Poethke U, Cohrs C, Rowold J. Doing bad through being selective in doing good: the role of within-unit variability in ethical leadership. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 2018;27(6):683-699.In this two study investigation we examined the role of ethical leadership variability defined as the differences in follower perceptions of ethical leadership with regard to the same leader. Building on a leader distance and social exchange framework, we developed a model in which a leader's span of control positively predicted ethical leadership variability, which in turn negatively affected unit job satisfaction through decreasing unit trust in the leader. Additionally, leaders' extraversion was postulated to buffer the negative indirect effect of span of control on unit job satisfaction. In Study 1, we drew a sample of 168 leaders and their 1490 immediate followers and found the expected positive indirect relationship between span of control on unit job satisfaction via ethical leadership variability. In Study 2, we analyzed a sample of 137 leaders and their 1468 followers. Results suggested that span of control was positively related to ethical leadership variability; this, in turn, was negatively related to unit job satisfaction through attenuating unit trust in the leader. As expected, extraversion reduced the negative indirect effect of span of control. Implications for ethical leadership theory, future research, and organizational practice are discussed

On the destructiveness of laissez-faire versus abusive supervision: a comparative, multilevel investigation of destructive forms of leadership

Klasmeier KN, Schleu JE, Millhoff C, Poethke U, Bormann K. On the destructiveness of laissez-faire versus abusive supervision: a comparative, multilevel investigation of destructive forms of leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology . 2021.Different forms of destructive leadership are prevalent in organizations, but rarely studied together. Additionally, most studies take an individual-level view on the consequences of destructive leadership. However, while most supervisors lead teams, it remains unclear how destructive leadership behaviours affect team processes and outcomes from a multilevel perspective. Building on this premise, we analysed the relationship of abusive supervision and laissez-faire leadership with OCB on the individual and team-level. As an important team process, we considered team trust as a mediating mechanism. Further, we investigated whether laissez-faire leadership is more harmful to OCB compared to abusive supervision. We tested our proposed model in a three-wave study with data from 658 team members out of 149 teams. Bayesian multilevel analysis generally supported our assumptions: Abusive supervision lowered team trust and subsequently OCB at the individual and team-level, whereas laissez-faire was not related to team trust on the team-level. Additionally, our results indicated that laissez-faire was more harmful to OCB than abusive supervision on both levels. Finally, implications for theory and practical use in organizations are discussed