Transformational leadership in crisis situations: evidence from the People's Republic of China

Abstract

While existing leadership research has tended to focus on the importance of transformational leadership in normal times, minimal attention has been paid to date to transformational leadership in crisis situations. Leadership effectiveness has been considered the most pivotal mechanism for various organizations, both during normal times and in times of crisis. In this paper, we attempt to unpack the black box underlying the relationship between transformational leadership and leadership effectiveness. From a perspective of sensemaking theory, we suggest it is just the value congruence between leaders and group members that plays as a mediating mechanism. Furthermore, combined with the features in crisis situation, we suggest that leaders' emotional control and the quality of leader–member exchange are two important factors that play the moderating role in the relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence between leaders and members. The current paper examines the effect of transformational leadership on leadership effectiveness in the context of the 5.12 earthquake that struck China on 12 May 2008. Through the collection of data from 146 groups with 146 leaders and 526 members from hospitals in the disaster area, the results confirm our arguments. Implications and suggestions for future work are discussed.

Keywords:

• emotional control
• leadership effectiveness
• LMX
• transformational leader
• value congruence

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71002049; No. 70902066), and New Teacher Fund of Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 20106102120055; No.20090201120038). We also thank the Social Science Promotion Program in Northwestern Polytechnical University and New teacher support program, as well as President Fund in Xi'an Jiaotong University (08140005).