Transformational Leadership Is Positively Related to Ocb

To Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) Introduction Choosing a good leading approach is critical for a leader to succeed in leading a team in order to achieve team’s goal. Transformational leadership is one of the recommendable leadership theories for leaders to follow for motivating followers to accomplish more than what they have planned through various ways. Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is a ladder for followers to participate more and it is believed that transformational leadership can enhance the degree of OCB, but mostly through an indirect way, by influencing job satisfactions and organizational commitment and thus OCB.

This essay first focuses on how transformational leadership affect followers’ behavior. The second part will be the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfactions and organizational commitment.

Finally, I will come into the indirectly effect of transformational leadership on OCB through job satisfaction and organizational commitment, by using Perceived organizational Support, Equity theory and Social-Exchange Theory for explaination. Transformational leadership According to Burns (1978), transformational leadership is a process that tries to move the consciousness of followers up through appealing to higher ideals and values.

Bass (1985) suggests that transformational leader can make followers to pay more attention to consider the task outcomes value, act for the goal of the organization.

Besides, it can also motivate the followers to put extra effort like putting high level goals instead of performing the minimum requirements of their work. There are 4 main factors suggests by Bass (1985) on transformational leadership. They are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation.

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The first factor, idealized influence, refers to the perception and action that followers toward leader (Bass,1985). If a leader act as a role model for the followers, they can be more easily to gain trust and respect from followers. The second factor is inspirational motivation.

It means the articulation of a leader’s vision which appeal and inspire followers (Berson, Shamir, Avolio & Popper, 2001). The third factor, Individual consideration is that “assignment are delegated to followers to provide learning opportunites” (Williams, Pollai, & Schriesheim, 1999:898). The last factor, intellectual stimulation, means that leader stimulate followers’ creativity in order to think in various ways so as to increase productivity. Organizational Citizenship Bahavior (OCB) Organ (1988) defines OCB as behavior of workers which is discretionary and excess their basic job requirements.

This behavior is beneficial to organization. OCB is excluded from formally defined role prescriptions. Hence, it is hard for managers to reward employees who perform OCB and punish who does not perform (Moorman and Blakely, 1995). In aggregate, contributions from OCB enhance the effectiveness of organizational functioning. Therefore, it is the main concern of managers — what they can do to make the employees carry out OCB. Organizational Commitment (OC) Allen and Meyer(1991) constructs a three-component model about OC. They are affective commitment, calculative commitment and normative commitment.

Meyer and Allen(1991) proposes that affective commitment is the emotional attachment of individual to the organization with identification . Calculative commitment is defined as the need for an employee to stay in an organization due to their investment put and sunk costs. Normative commitment refers to the obligation of employees to remain in the organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990). In some meta-analyses (Organ and Ryan,1995) (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, Topolnytsky, 2002), they find that there is a positively relationship between affective and normative commitment and OCB, whereas no relationship between continuance commitment and OCB.

In the following study, I will mainly focus on the effect of affective and normative commitment on OCB only. Job Satisfaction Locke (1976,p. 1300) defined job satisfaction as “pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences”. If employees feel success, gain joyful from their job, higher job satisfaction is resulted. In the following paragraphs, I am going to have a look on how transformational leadership is positively influencing Job satisfaction and commitment. Transformational leadership and Organizational Commitment Followers’ organizational commitment can be easily influenced by practicing transformational leadership. For example, helping followers in solving problems on their works, getting help in making decision when they face difficulties in choosing choice, caring their needs so as to develop their potential skills, creating a common goal among leaders and followers as well as highlighting the importance of each followers in achieving goals.

Followers will then feel being supported, self-esteem is elevated and adjust themselves to get into the same vision with leaders (Kent,2001). Finally, followers will pay back the leader’s effort by putting higher commitment. The above relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment is supported by the Avolio and his colleagues’ study(2004). They carried out the study in a large public hospital in Singapore and invited 520 staff nurses to participate.

The result shows that transformational leadership is positively associated with organizational commitment through studying followers’ level of empowerment and structural distance. Although different level of empowerment and structural distance will influence the degree of organizational commitment, there is still a positive relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment.

From another study done by Emery & Barker(2007), which includes participates from banking and food industry, also find out that transformational leadership is positively correlated to organizational commitment and the level of commitment is higher than those follow transactional leader. Transformational leadership and Job satisfaction Cohrs, Abele, Dette (2006) suggest that one of the major determinants of job satisfaction is leadership and transformational leadership is one of it (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Morrman,& Fetter,1990).

By practicing transformational leadership, leaders can instruct a sense of mission and intellectual stimulation. (Bass,1985). Leaders can also know the needs and aspirations of followers so as to give them personal attention. Followers’ confidence, motivation and effectiveness can then be increased (Walumbwa&Kuchinke, 1999). Besides, Avolio and Bass (1995) believe that transformational leaders can build trust and respect with followers by giving individualized attention. When followers feel they have received the special attention from leaders, they are more willing to work harder to meet their expectations and longer-term goals.

Job satisfaction is then increased. Walumbwa and his colleagues’ (2005) has carried out a study on whether there is a relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction and organizational commitment. They have asked the participants, who are tellers and clerks form five banks in United States and seven foreign and local banks in Kenya to rate 3 items – managers’ leadership behavior, organizational commitment and job satisfaction. The result shows that transformational leadership is related to both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Emery and Barker(2007) also take study on customer contact personnel.

It also shows that transformational leadership can increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In Avolio, Bass and their colleagues’ (2004) research also shows that transformational leadership is connected with work-related behaviors and attitudes, including job satisfaction. From the above empirical studys and analyses, it is worth to believe there is a positively association between transformational leadership and job satisfaction. The above analyses and studies show out the positive relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction.

In the following paragraph, I am going to show out how job satisfaction and organizational commitment act as mediator between transformational leadership and OCB. Organizational commitment & Organizational Citizenship Behavior Organizational commitment is a multidimensional concept and I am going to use affective and normative commitment to be the mediator between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. When employee feel being cared, supported from their leader, higher affective commitment is resulted. One of the reason behind may be both are mainly related to emotion.

As giving care and support is one part of the transformational leadership, the degree of affective commitment can be increased. With a stronger affective commitment, employees are more willing to work and put more effort in achieving organizational goal. Besides, affective commitment can influence employees’ attention between the connection between their work performance and the organizational objective. They will have more evaluation on their own performance and how much their contribution is related to the success of achieving goal is. Increase in the degree of affective commitment will also increase the contribution from employees.

With higher affective commitment, they have higher motivation to work and not only perform in-role performance i. e. their basic job requirement, but also the extra-role, for example, introduce the organizational structure and normal operations to the new employees which is included as OCB. This obligation can be created by the training provided from the organization and the interaction between leader and followers. When transformational leader provide idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation to his/her followers, normative commitment of followers will be enhanced.

This can be explained by Perceived Organizational Support(Elisenberger et al,2002) and Equity Theory(Adam,1965). According to Perceived Organizational Support (Elisenberger et al,2002), employees who have received high extent of attention, trust and support will reciprocate the organization with better performance. Referring to the Equity theory, Adam(1965) suggests that employee who enjoys superior treatment from the organization after compared with others’ treatment will try to improve their work quality and productivity as return to leader or organization.

However, the work outcomes are not singly determined by one’s effort. As a result, employee will render the care and support by OCB. Therefore, with higher level of both affective commitment and normative commitment, higher degree of OCB is resulted. The positively correlation between OCB and affective commitment and normative commitment are supported by several study. Meyer and Hersocovitch(2001) claims that OCB is a consequences of OC. Besides, a positive relationship between affective and OCB is supported by O’Reilly and Chatman(1986) study.

Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch and Topolnytsky’s research(2002) also find that affective and normative commitment is positively connected to OCB. In Snape, Chan and Redman(2006) study, it shows that increase in degree of organizational commitment will increase the level of OCB. Job Satisfaction and Organizational Citizenship Behavior When transformational leaders help employees to solve problem, stimulate them to develop their potential, provide care and support to the followers’ needs, they will have a higher motivation to work and logically a better performance.

Gaining the feeling of success from job will then increase their job satisfaction. Williams and Anderson(1991) said that one of the most important predictors of OCB is job satisfaction and there is a strong positive relationship between them. In other words, the higher the job satisfaction, the higher the motivation and the better the work performance is. Griffith(2003) suggests that employees with higher job satisfaction will have a higher evaluation about the organization. They are more willing to help others and do more than what they are required to do, i. e. performing extra-role performance.

Besides, in order to reciprocate the organization as employees find satisfaction from their job, employees are more willing to commit themselves to the organization, resulting in performing OCB in return. The relationship between job satisfaction and OCB can be explained by Social Exchange Theory (Emerson, 1976). The costs and benefits from work can be both mental and physical. The “costs” of work can be the time forgone, feeling tired, rap from managers, etc. , whereas the “benefits” from the job are salaries, success in achieving organizational goals as well as the job satisfaction.

When the degree of job satisfaction is high, the benefits will increase and the cost will decrease at the same time. As a result, the “worth” to work will be increased. In order to repay the worth from work, employees is more easily to perform OCB in exchange. There are several studies and meta-analyses shows that there is a positively relationship between job satisfaction and OCB. The meta-analyses carried out by Organ and Ryan(1995) shows that there is a positive relationship between job satisfaction and OCB. Organ and Ryan(1995) makes a study on nurse about the relationship between job satisfaction and OCB and it shows a positive result.

The degree of OCB is also positively correlated to job satisfaction (Organ and Lingl, 1995) Conclusion To conclude, I have discussed the relationship between transformational leadership, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and OCB. As a transformational leader will influence the degree of followers’ organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and the degree of organizational commitment and job satisfaction is also correlated to employees’ willingness of performing OCB, it is worth to believe that transformational leadership can influence OCB indirectly.

Although there are many studies and meta-analyses have been carried out to study their relationship, the important thing is to practice it out. Leader should try to become a transformational leader to motivate and encourage their followers. Through the practice, followers will gain support and care. They will then reciprocate the organization by making improvement in both in-role and extra-role (OCB) performance. Finally, organizational efficiency and goals are improved and achieved.

References

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