A Cross-level Research On Transformational Leadership And Employee Performance

In the field of management, the influence of leadership behavior on the organization and employees has been the interest of researchers. For nearly30years, with the development of statistical theory and computer technology, the research on the action mechanism of leadership behavior has come to a boom period from the theory research to the empirical research by data-driven. As the representative of the modern leadership theory, the transformational leadership is considered to be the most effective leadership. The findings of theoretical and empirical research on transformational leadership are very rich, and scholars have devoted to parse the action mechanism of transformational leadership on the organization and employees. On the other hand, as one of the most important organizational outcomes, employee performance is an important indicator to test the effectiveness of the leadership, and the research on its influencing factor also is beginning. The research on their mechanism is in a stage of deep mining with intermediary variable. From existing literature review, both the researches on transformational leadership and employee performance present limitation of sheer level analysis. With the mature of multi-level linear model technology, the multilevel researches on transformational leadership and employee performance are vividly portrayed. Under this background, two key scientific problems were born and solved in this paper. Is there multilevel influence between transformational leadership and employee performance? If there is multilevel influence, how is the influence mechanism between transformational leadership and performance?Based on this, this paper synthetically used leadership theory, performance theory and the theory of multi-hierarchy. With the method of questionnaire survey, structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear model, it integrated the variables of medium level of organization team and micro level of employees, and tried to comprehensively explain multi-hierarchical influence mechanism of transformational leadership and employee performance. The paper mainly did the research from five aspects:(1) Based on the theory and literature analysis, it has constructed multi-hierarchy theory model of transformational leadership and employee performance to link team level and individual level.(2) It used the method of questionnaire and structural equation techniques to verify the rationality of the measurement model.(3) It also involved model test of the hierarchical intermediary effect. On the basis of the theoretical model, the intermediary effects of variables from the employee level and team level were respectively analyzed.(4) It analyzed the multi-hierarchical situation effect and intermediary effect by hierarchical linear model.(5) It integrated employee level, leadership level and management scenario level to construct a multi-hierarchical management system of employee performance.This research extended the research framework of transformational leadership from a single organization, team or employee level to the multi-hierarchical research between team and employee. It aimed to expand interpretative boundary to the variables of organization result with transformational leadership. It integrated medium and micro levels of organization, and expanded existing research scope, which provides a multi-hierarchy perspective of research on variable mechanism. At the same time, the empirical research with the method of hierarchical linear model, breakthroughs technology method relied on regression analysis and structural equation model in this field, and it provides paradigm for the multi-hierarchical research.The specific structure of this paper is as follows: The first chapter is the part of introduction. This part elaborated the topic background and significance of this paper. On the base of an overview of the relevant theory, the research goal, research content and research method of this paper were determined. It clarified the logical relationship between the research content, and identified the research ideas and technical scheme.The second chapter is the part of domestic and foreign research review. With transformational leadership and employee performance as the main line, it carded research status and trends. On this basis, it determined the leader-member exchange, team atmosphere as the intermediary variables. And then, it carded the present stage of research from the connotation, structure, especially the influence mechanisms of cause and effect. Finally it confirmed three development trends:contextualization in China, the integration of the mechanism and multi-hierarchical research. The third chapter constructed multi-hierarchical model between transformational leadership and employee performance. Based on literature review, it defined the connotation of the variables, such as transformational leadership, employee performance and the leader-member exchange, and improved the corresponding scale. And then it constructed multi-hierarchical model with the intermediary effect between transformational leadership, and proposed the corresponding research hypothesis. The model contains two levels, individual and team. The employee performance is the dependent variable; team-orientated transformational leadership and employee-orientated transformational leadership are the independent variables; the team atmosphere and leader-member exchange is the intermediary variable. It helps to discuss the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance with the multi-hierarchical perspective.The fourth chapter designed the empirical research and validated measurement model. Based on the model constructing and scale designing, firstly, this chapter designed the empirical research from four aspects, the variable measurement, investigation process and sample, data structure, data analysis. And then, according to the data from questionnaire survey, it analyzed and processed the data by SPSS16.0and LISREL8.80software. The measurement models of transformational leadership, employee performance, team performance, leader-member exchange and team atmosphere were respectively verified by using statistical techniques, such as descriptive statistics, aggregation analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis.The fifth chapter is the part of hierarchical intermediary effect test. The intermediary effect model of individual employee level (employee orientated transformational leadership-leader-member exchange-employee performance) and the mediator model of team level (team orientated transformational leadership-team atmosphere, team performance) were respectively verified by path analysis technology of structural equation and LISREL8.80statistical software. The results showed that both in individual employee level and team level, transformational leadership can improve performance, and support the effectiveness of transformational leadership behavior.The sixth chapter validated multi-hierarchical linear model of transformational leadership and employee performance. The method of hierarchical linear model and HLM6.08software were used to analyze the multi-hierarchical impact of three team levels of variables, the team oriented transformational leadership, team atmosphere and team performance, to employee performance. It concretely analyzed four models, the situation model of two levels of transformational leadership on employee performance, the high-level intermediary variables model of team oriented transformational leadership and employee performance with team atmosphere as intermediary (2-2-1), the low level intermediary variables model with leader-member exchange as intermediary (2-1-1), and the complete model of team variables of three levels and the employee variables of three levels. On the basis of result analysis, it discussed multi-hierarchical mechanism of transformational leadership and employee performance.The seventh chapter is the part of management system of multi-hierarchy employee performance. Based on the influence of transformational leadership to the team atmosphere, and the multi-hierarchy impact mechanism of leader-member exchange based on social exchange to employee performance, it has constructed a management system of multi-hierarchy employee performance integrating employee level, leader level and management scenario level, and expounded its internal operation mechanism.The eighth Chapter is the part of conclusion and outlook. It summarized the whole research, and refined the research conclusions and results. It also stated the limitations of the research, and pointed out the direction of further research.Through the above research, this paper attempted to analyze the action mechanism of transformational leadership and employee performance in individual employee and team levels, from the two aspects of theory and empirical research. The innovation of this article mainly manifests in: (1) The development of transformational leadership theory:the previous research didn’t distinguish transformational leadership between different levels, but this paper defined the team oriented transformational leadership and employee oriented transformational leadership. In organizational behavior driven by leader, it has realized the hierarchical design of transformational leadership. At the same time it analyzed its action mechanism from two aspects of team and employee. And it breakthrough the limitation of sheer level in the existing research on the relationship of the transformational leadership, which broadened the research boundary of transformational leadership to better explain the effectiveness of transformational leadership.(2) The empirical research on influencing factors of multi-hierarchical employee:the previous researches on leadership-intermediary-performance were discussed from a single basic level, namely organization level, team level or individual employee level. From the multi-hierarchy view of the team and individual employee, and through the integrated use of leadership theory, performance theory, social exchange theory, and hierarchy theory, this research integrated the influence factors of employee performance across levels on the basis of mining intermediary variable. It established the theory model, and did the empirical test by empirical method of multi-hierarchy, which provided a new perspective to the research of employee performance.(3) Methods application:the empirical research in relevant field of variable relationship mostly used the methods of multiple regression and structural equation model. This paper comprehensively used two analysis technology, structural equation and hierarchical linear mode. The measurement model with latent variables and the same level model are validated by structural equation model. And multi-hierarchical relationship and interaction mechanism of transformational leadership, leader-member exchange and team performance, employee performance were revealed by hierarchical linear mode, which solved the testing of relationship model between multi-hierarchical variables. The combination of SEM and HLM provides a paradigm to solve multi-hierarchical research of variables relationship in organizational behavior.