The Relationship Between Supervisors' Big-five Personality, Trait Goal Orientation And Perceived Transformational Leadership In Chinese Enterprises

As change becomes the constant of today's corporate life and China has been a member of WTO, Chinese enterprises are facing more turbulent environments, therefore Supervisors' mental quality and leadership is very important for enterprises to survive and develop. The research on the relationship between supervisors' personality and motivation and perceived transformational leadership behavior is underrepresented in the organizational literature. The present study represents an attempt to relate supervisors' big-five personality and trait goal orientation to perceived transformational leadership behavior and examines how they influence the leader performance. Data were collected from supervisors of 73 companies in three east-coast provinces in People's Republic of China. Participants completed a questionnaire that includes a demographic survey, a five factors personality scale, a global goal orientation scale, a general self-efficacy scale, and a transformational leadership scale (from MLQ-5X, 1995). Besides, the participant's supervisor completed a superior assessment survey, and the participant's two subordinates completed another survey.The results of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (EFA and CFA) show that the construct validation of the scales is good. The five-factor model is consisted of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness; The goal orientation scale has three factors ?learning goal orientation, avoiding goal orientation, and proving goal orientation; The transformational leadership scale has second-order factor structure and could be subdivided into four facets-idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration. Results also indicate the scales are of high reliability.Multivariate Tests show that several variables influence supervisor's personality traits, which include gender, age, education; and that two variables-gender and age, influence supervisor's trait goal orientation.Results show the big-five personality traits are related with followers' extra effort, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and leader effectiveness assessed by superior; proving goal orientation is negatively related to followers'job satisfaction.The results of correlation analyses and linear regression analyses show that several dimensions of the big-five personality traits can predict the transformational leadership behavior and its several facets in varying degrees; learning goal orientation can predict the transformational leadership behavior and its facets.Finally, the relations between transformational leadership and performance outcomes and cultural differences are discussed.The research has both academic and practical value. Firstly, it inaugurates the study on the relationship between the big-five personality and trait goal orientation and transformational leadership in Chinese enterprises and recruits the research contents of industrial and organizational psychology. Secondly, it puts forward some valuable suggestions for practical work of training and selecting managers.