The Impact of Top-Management Actions on Employee Attitudes and Perceptions

Abstract

Popular approaches to organizational leadership note that productivity and innovation in U.S. organizations could be greatly improved if top managers placed more emphasis on organizational values and culture. Recent findings in transformational leadership research prescribe top management to develop and share a vision for the organization, model that vision, encourage innovativeness, support employee efforts, and allow employees input into decisions concerning their jobs (Bass, 1985; Kouzes & Posner, 1988). These actions should act to improve productivity by increasing positive attitudes and clarifying the roles of the employees. This study examined the relationships between these five actions and employee commitment, job satisfaction, and role ambiguity. Results suggest that top-management actions are strongly related to all three of these outcomes. The results also suggest that the effects of certain actions vary for different organizational settings.