The influence of transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, trust, meaning and intention to quit on organisational citizenship behaviour

[摘要] South African organisations have to survive in an increasingly competitive andglobalised environment. Many believe that South African organisations are ill preparedfor these challenges, based on the fact that many organisations are plagued by lowproductivity, low levels of trust between employees and employers, as well as lowlevels of organisational commitment, effectiveness and efficiency. Solutions must befound for these problems and the present study offers one such solution.Organisational citizenship behaviour is essentially pro-social organisational behaviourthat is characterised by going beyond what is expected in role requirements or roledescriptions and is seen as a key driver of individual and organisational performance.Furthermore, an organisation's ability to elicit organisational citizenship behaviour isbelieved to be a vital asset that is difficult for competitors to imitate and which providesthe organisation with a competitive advantage. Having completed a literature studyconcerning possible antecedents of organisational citizenship behaviour, and taking intoaccount various suggested future directions for organisational citizenship behaviourresearch, it was decided that the present study would focus on five variables: threevariables that are characteristic of employees, and two that are characteristic of themanagement or leadership in the organisation.The primary goal of the present study was to design and conduct a scientificinvestigation that would attempt to determine the relationships between leaderemotional intelligence, transformational leadership, trust, meaning intention to quit, andorganisational citizenship behaviour, as well as to further determine the role that thesefive constructs play in influencing organisational citizenship behaviour. A study of theavailable literature was made to learn as much as possible about each of these sixconstructs and to determine what is known about the relationships that exist betweenthem. The knowledge gained from the literature study was used to propose severalhypotheses and a conceptual model explaining the relationships between theseconstructs. The relationships and the conceptual model were then empirically tested,using various (mostly confirmatory) statistical methods. This makes the present studyconfirmatory in nature. Existing measuring instruments were used to measure each of the constructs in a SouthAfrican sample (n=496). This sample represented a wide range of organisations. Eachof the measuring instruments (excepting the intention to quit scale) was subjected to adouble cross-validation Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis procedure to testits construct validity. Internal reliability was determined for all of the instruments andtheir subscales. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis and internal reliability results werethen compared to those obtained when the original measurement model was studied,using these same methods (i.e. Confirmatory Factor Analysis and internal reliability)and the data from the present sample. It was found, in all cases, that the derived factorialconfiguration differed, in some to a lesser degree and in others radically, from thatproposed by the original author/s. It was also found that the EFA-derived measurementmodels and configurations had a better fit to the data than the original measurementmodel and its configuration. Once the criteria for construct validity and internalreliability were satisfied, the rest of the statistical analyses could be conducted.The next step was to test the hypotheses concerning the individual relationships thatmade up the conceptual model. Pearson correlations and Standard Multiple Regressionwas used to study these bivariate relationships. Several indirect or mediatingrelationships followed from these direct relationships and these were tested using PathAnalysis. In a similar vein, four prediction hypotheses were formulated from theconceptual model and these were also tested, using Standard Multiple Regression.Lastly, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to see to what extent theconceptual model fitted the data obtained from the sample and to test the relationshipsbetween the constructs when taking the complete conceptual model into account.Both trust and meaning were found to individually mediate the relationships betweentransformational leadership and organisational citizenship behaviour, and leaderemotional intelligence and organisational citizenship behaviour. The relationshipbetween leader emotional intelligence and organisational citizenship behaviour wasfurther found to be mediated by transformational leadership and trust, while thisrelationship was also found to be mediated by transformational leadership and meaning.No significant direct relationships could be found between leader emotional intelligenceand organisational citizenship behaviour, or between transformational leadership andboth organisational citizenship behaviour and intention to quit. No significant correlation was found between intention to quit and organisational citizenship behavioureither. This meant that several postulated mediating hypotheses could not becorroborated. The SEM result shows that the conceptual model did not fit the data verywell, therefore an alternative model was recommended.The results in essence show that effective leaders who are emotionally intelligent andmake use of the transformational leadership style can positively influence trust andmeaning among followers. This, in turn, will motivate followers to displayorganisational citizenship behaviour and reduce their intention to quit. These arebelieved to positively influence organisational effectiveness and performance.Further conclusions were drawn from the obtained results and recommendations aremade for future studies. New insights were gained through the results and it is believedthat the present study has contributed to the field of organisational psychology andIndustrial Psychology in general, on both the academic and the practioner level.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University