The trickle-down effect of mayors’ and administrators’ change leadership on employees’ change-supportive behaviour during COVID-19: The importance of local root similarity

ABSTRACT

Despite extensive studies on change leadership, there is a lack of research on its multilevel nature especially in the hierarchical context of local governance. We situate our research in the context of change during COVID-19 to examine whether mayors’ change leadership has a trickle-down effect on employees’ change-supportive behaviour via the change leadership role of chief administrative officers (CAOs). We also ask whether this trickle-down effect depends on whether mayors, CAOs and employees share their local roots (i.e. local root similarity). Multi-source data were collected from 79 CAOs and 758 employees in Thailand. The proposed hypotheses were generally supported.

KEYWORDS:

• Trickle-down effect
• change leadership
• change-supportive behaviours
• politics-administration dichotomy
• local root similarity
• relational demography

Disclosure statement

The authors whose names are listed above certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Graduate School, Prince of Songkla University.