Building effective organizations: transformational leadership, collectivist orientation, work-related attitudes and withdrawal behaviours in three emerging economies

Abstract

Previous cross-cultural research on transformational leadership has focused mainly on replicating the augmentation effects of transformational leadership over transactional leadership on followers’ attitudes and behaviours. Relatively few studies have systematically examined cultural impacts in moderating the influence of transformational leadership on work-related outcomes taking a cross-cultural perspective. Using a field survey of 577 employees from banking and financial sectors in three emerging economies, namely: China, India and Kenya, we examined the moderating effect of collectivism on the relationships between transformational leadership, work-related attitudes and perceptions of withdrawal behaviours. Our results found support for the moderating effect of collectivism on the relationship between transformational leadership and work-related outcomes, such as facets of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and perceptions of organizational withdrawal behaviours. In addition, our results lend support to the view that transformational leadership might be effective across cultures. The implications of these findings for future research on transformational leadership and cross-cultural research are discussed.

Keywords:

• Transformational leadership
• cross-cultural research
• organizational commitment
• job satisfaction
• withdrawal behaviours