Transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership as determinants of employee satisfaction, commitment, trust, and organizational citize

TLDR

The study examined how transformational leadership behaviors influence employee attitudes and behaviors within the framework of substitutes for leadership. Data were gathered from 1,539 employees spanning diverse industries, organizational contexts, and job levels. Results showed that substitutes for leadership had limited moderating effects, yet both constructs independently explained a larger proportion of variance in follower outcomes, with several transformational behaviors linked to specific substitutes, underscoring their distinct and overlapping impacts.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to examine the effects of transformational leadership behaviors, within the context of Kerr and Jermier's (1978) substitutes for leadership. Data were collected from 1539 employees across a wide variety of different industries, organizational settings, and job levels. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis procedures generally showed that few of the substitutes variables moderated the effects of the transformational leader behaviors on followers' attitudes, role perceptions, and "in-role" and "citizenship" behaviors in a manner consistent with the predictions of Howell, Dorfman and Kerr (1986). However, the results did show that: (a) the transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership each had unique effects on follower criterion variables; (b) the total amount of variance accounted for by the substitutes for leadership and the transformational leader behaviors was substantially greater than that reported in prior leadership research; and (c) several of the transformational behaviors were significantly related to several of the substitutes for leadership variables. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the effects of transformational leader behaviors and substitutes for leadership are then discussed.