The impact of leaders' character on subordinates' attitudes and behavior towards their work and leader

Abstract

The concept of character found its way into the study and discussion of leadership several years ago. Reasons for this emergence mentioned in the leadership literature ranged from corporate leadership scandals, such as the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco debacles, the failures of many U.S. financial institutions, as well as ongoing concerns about the ethics of political leaders (Riggio, Zhu, Reina, & Maroosis, 2010). And there are other reasons, why character in leadership should not be neglected, neither in leadership research nor in practice. It co-determines the way leaders use their power (Bennis, 2007), their decision and actions while confronted with many ambiguous stimuli (Hambrick & Mason, 1984), the culture they create within their group of people they lead, serves as a role-model (not only) for ethical contexts, and may even affects the quality of the daily life of leaders' subordinates (Bennis, 2007). A view aspects of character can be found in different leadership concepts, amongst which are: Ethical Leadership (Brown & Treviño, 2006), Servant Leadership (Greenleaf, 1977), Authentic Leadership (George, 2003; Avolio & Gardner, 2005), Authentic Transformational Leadership (Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999), Spiritual Leadership (Fry, 2003), and Worthy Leadership (Thompson et al., 2008). However, until 2012 the systematic study of certain aspects of character—irrespective of any specific leadership concept—was still very rare. An exception was a study by Palanski and Yammarino (2011), which examined the effect of behavioral integrity on follower job performance. Given the wide-ranging gaps in this field of research, the present doctoral thesis addresses (1) the impact of various aspects of leaders' character on followers' attitudes and behavior towards their leader and work, (2) the moderating role of subordinates' personality regarding these relationships, (3) the incremental impact of these aspects above and beyond well-known leadership concepts, and (4) the distinction of different aspects of character regarding their relation to various outcome variables, especially one of the most important in leadership—followers' trust. In Study 1, 626 participants took part in a scenario experiment, in which the impact of three aspects of leaders' character (integrity, humility/forgiveness, and interest/gratitude) on followers' perceptions of the leader's worthiness of being followed (WBF), followers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), and followers' voice behavior has been examined. In addition, the moderating effects of followers' personality traits (agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) were explored. Data from 626 participants of a scenario experiment supported the impact of leaders' character as well as the moderating impact of followers' personalities. Results showed that integrity, humility/forgiveness, and also leaders' interest/gratitude have a large impact on WBF, and a moderate to large impact on voice behavior, as well a small to moderate effect on OCB. In addition, the impact of integrity on WBF was moderated by participants' conscientiousness, humility/forgiveness on WBF was moderated by subordinates' agreeableness and neuroticism, and the impact of interest/gratitude on OCB was moderated by subordinates' neuroticism. In Study 2, the additional impact of leaders' integrity and humility/forgiveness above and beyond the impact of transformational leadership was under examination. Therefore, first a scenario experiment (N = 347) was performed. The results showed that integrity, as well as humility/forgiveness explained additional variance in WBF and participants anticipated stress, above and beyond transformational leadership. In a second sample an online survey study with 110 participants was conducted, in which the additional impact of integrity and humility/forgiveness on WBF and employees' perceived stress above and beyond the impact of transformational leadership could again be found. Regarding employees' perception of stress, only humility/forgiveness could explain variance, neither transformational leadership nor leaders' integrity did. Relative importance analyses showed that integrity and transformational leadership were equally important as predictors for WBF, whereas humility/forgiveness in comparison, was only half as important. In Study 3, the distinct impact of integrity and humility on subordinates' cognitive and affective trust was examined. The first sample (N = 254) showed by means of structural equation modeling, that integrity was primarily related to cognitive trust, and humility on affective trust. The second sample (N = 196) were conducted in order to replicate the findings from the first study with some methodical improvements. Again, integrity was found to be primarily related to cognitive trust, and humility to affective trust, whereas cognitive trust mediated the relation between integrity and affective trust. In conclusion, this doctoral thesis makes an important contribution to research on the impact of leaders' character on followers' attitudes and behavior towards their leader and work. Moreover, the gained insights permit several implications, reminding us that leaders' character cannot be left out of the equation, neither in leadership research nor in practice.