The Effects Of Transformational Leadership On Subordinate Trust Toward Leader And Job Satisfaction: Perceived Leader Morality As A Moderator

In today’s increasingly competitive business environment, businessdevelopment is complex than ever before. Leaders must rely on the properleadership behavior onto subordinates so that they can influence theirattitudes and behavior to achieve organizational goals. Aside transformationalleadership behavior itself, Chinese traditional culture advocated by the leader’s morality will add on extra power on this influencing process or not is alsoworthy of research and analysis. The discussed problems can be summarizedas the relationship between transformational leadership behaviors(independent variables) and subordinate trust and satisfaction (dependentvariable), as well as the effect of leader’s morality as a moderator.Transformational leadership has six dimensions, including concern sharedgoals and motivate staff initiative and other key actions. Compared totraditional transactional leadership "contractual " work, transformationalleadership better specifies terms of development goals and mobilize employees’ willingness and passion. According to previous research on trust,trust is divided into cognitive-based and affective-based trust. Wehypothesized transformational leadership will enhance subordinates cognitiveand affective trust. We also assume transformational leadership behavior willimprove employee satisfaction. Combined with his personal experience, theleader’s morality and attitudes towards to subordinates will also have animpact on subordinates’ trust level. So in a summary, we hypothesize thattransformational leadership will make positive impact on subordinatestrusting and satisfaction level and will be moderated by leader’s morality.In order to conduct research on the above assumptions, we selected abouttransformational leadership, trust, job satisfaction, personal qualities ofleadership measurement scale, then made into a questionnaire. Participantswere asked to fill in the evaluation of their leader. After a study of researchdata through correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis, we foundthat: transformational leadership do strengthen the subordinates bothcognitive trust and affect trust, and also enhance subordinates ’ jobsatisfaction; Meanwhile, the leader’s morality will increase subordinatecognitive and affective trust level as well, but had nothing to do with jobsatisfaction. Statistical test results show that the leader’s morality cannotmoderate subordinate cognitive and affective trust as well as job satisfaction. Conclusion provides with hints of how to enhance subordinates trustinglevel, as well as improved job satisfaction. Business leaders can exhibittransformational leadership behaviors by conveying a clear vision, leading byexample, encouraging cooperation among subordinates, setting highperformance goals, caring individual needs, and inspiring subordinates tohave breakthrough in the work routine. So that transformational leaders canstrengthen subordinates cognitive trust and affective trust, while improvingthe subordinate satisfaction. In addition, leaders should focus on protectingtheir individual’s moral image. He who demonstrated a high morality level isnot only able to make their ability of work recognized by subordinates, andeasier making access to subordinate emotional support and trust.