Research On The Effects Of Transformational And Transactional Leadership On Follower Attitudes Toward Corporate Social Responsibility

As a variety of social problems arise in the process of enterprise operation, enterprise social responsibility has become a hot topic both in academia and management. The existing research about the effects of enterprise social responsibility on enterprise performance, enterprise reputation and employee satisfaction have been carried out deeply. To remain the sustainable development capacity of the enterprise, the social responsibilities which need to be fulfilled and how to perform better social responsibilities also have seized the attention of enterprise managers. As the main stakeholder of an enterprise, the employee is also regarded as one of the important groups that need to fulfill the social responsibility, and as a result, the papers that discuss the social responsibility from the employee angle have shown a significant growth in the recent years. However, on the other hand, through a comprehensive review of these papers, we find that, as an important component of the enterprise, the employees still poorly understand about how to fulfill the social responsibility. As the enterprise social responsibility need to be supported by employee execution ultimately, the fulfillment of enterprise social responsibility still need the cooperation and even the active participation of the employees. Moreover, many enterprises hope to influence the cognition of employees to the enterprise social responsibility through the social responsibility view of enterprise leaders and other related stakeholders. Therefore, the research key of this paper is to focus on the social responsibility attitude of the employees.Based on the hypothesis analysis between transactional leadership, transformational leadership and enterprise social responsibility attitude of employees, and the theories of social learning, self-concept and social exchange, this research assessed 271 employees, and systematically analyzed a neglected issue in the field of enterprises social responsibility that how different leaders delivered their social responsibility view to the employees through creating enterprise ethical climate. By the empirical analysis, we found that the transformational leadership has positive effects on the enterprise social responsibility attitude of the employees, the enterprise ethical climate with caring orientation has a mediated effect between transformational leadership and the enterprise social responsibility attitude of the employees. By contrast, transactional leadership has negative effects on the enterprise social responsibility attitude of the employees, and the enterprise ethical climate with caring orientation has a mediated effect between transformational leadership and the enterprise social responsibility attitude of the employees. The results of the research revealed that the functional mechanism of transactional leadership and transformational leadership on the effect of the enterprise social responsibility attitude of the employees, and in the meantime, proposed the comments on the corporate social responsibility management, which provided some new thoughts to the research field of enterprise social responsibility.