The Relation of Transformational Leadership, Job Involvement and Individual Cultural Value Orientation

Eisha Lataruva1, Suharnomo2

1PhD Student Departement of Management, Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia

2 Departement of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Diponegoro University, Semarang

Transformational Leadership is mentioned as one of the variables affecting job involvement needs to be proven its influence further and how individual cultural value orientation moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement.

This study aims to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement as well as the moderating role of individual cultural values orientation of 106Indonesian female lecturers. The analysis used to analyze the data in this research is Moderated Regression Analysis

The results shows that transformational leadership,surprisingly,have a negative effect on job involvement. The dimension of Individual Cultural value orientations (collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance) partly were found to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement.Only uncertainty avoidance positively influenced the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement. Overal these finding provide ways to improve employee involvement with the role of transformational leadership. Organization need to realize the response of employee to transformational leadership can depend on their cultural values.

Keywords : Cultural Values; job involvement; transformational leadership

  1. INTRODUCTION

Employees are a valuable asset to the company. They become a factor differentiating a company with another company, even a competitive advantage for the company. For that the company always strives to increase the work performance of their employees. The better the employee performance will be the more qualified human resources of the company, this will make it more difficult for competitors to imitate it so the company will gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

One of the variables that affect employee performance is job involvement. Job involvement shows the degree to which an individual demonstrates cognitive and emotional identification in his work (Cropanzano et al., 1997; O’Driscoll & Randall, 1999) or defined as the degree to which a person is cognitively bound and concerned with the work he is doing right now (Paullay et al, 1994). Individuals who have a high level of job involvement tend to make their work a central part of their identity and consider work to be an important part of their lives (Sheikh et al., 2013). Therefore some researchers assume that employees with high levels of job involvement will show good performance and devote all their efforts to achieve corporate goals ( antara lain Rotenberg & Moberg, 2007; Ananda K.L jayawardana et al., 2013).

Based on previous research Transformational leadership is one of the variables that can affect job involvement ( Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005 ; Sheikh et al., 2013). Transformational leadership has been the subject of numerous empirical studies outsidethe US, the context in which it was developed. It is found to be associated with positive employee attitude in diverse cultural context (Walumba and Lawler, 2003; Walumba , Lawler and Avolio, 2007).Transformational leadership is believed to improve employee perceptions in work and increase employee engagement and their motivation(Morgeson & Humhrey, 2006). Through idealized influences, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration that characterize this type of leadership, a transformational leader will increase the autonomy, participation and employee opportunities. This will increase employee involvement in work. However, there has been limited empirical work examining the role of leadership in fostering the employee’s job involvement (Carmeli, 2005) and little research examining its effectiveness with the impact of cultural values (Sheikh et.al, 2012), especiallyin Indonesian culture.

Therefore, this study uses 106 female lecturer working in both public and private universities in Indonesia. Female lecturers are used as respondents because in addition to the current number of women working in Indonesia has increased significantly, also in accordance with the characteristics of knowledge workers and a professional who suggested in research on job involvement ( Keller, 1997)

This current study seeks to provide another test to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement as well as the moderating role of individual cultural values orientation, specifically collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance orientation. The result of this study are expected makes further contributionto literature of relationship between leadership behavior,job involvement and cultural values.

  1. Literature Review and Previous Studies

A.Transformational Leadership

The Transformational leadership style developed and popularized by Bass (1985) has four components: idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and individualized consideration. Idealized influence is defined as a leader's ability to bring joy - enthusiasm and spread this positive emotion to his followers (Bass, 1998). Through this component a transformational leader explains a strong vision of his followers and creates an emotional influence on his followers and organization to nurture this vision.Inspirational Motivation is the leader's ability to set an example for his followers that demonstrates self-determination and commitment to the organization. Intellectual simulation is the behavior of leaders who can invite followers to challenge their values ​​and beliefs, meaning that employees are not only satisfied with the status quo but developing an innovative solution to solve organizational problems. While Individual consideration is the ability of leaders to provide specific support to individual employees and aspire followers so as to motivate and develop confidence followers.

With these four components a transformational leader will be able to increase the autonomy, participation and employee opportunities. This will have many positive things for employees such as increasing autonomy, participation in decision-making involvement, employee motivation in the work so that ultimately will improve employee performance. (Parker et al., 2001; Morgeson & Humhrey, 2006; Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005 ; Sheikh et al., 2013). Leadership theory suggest a positive relation between transformational leadership and other constructs as organizational commitment, job involvement, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behaviour (Mester et al, 2003).

B. Job Involvement

Job involvement is the degree to which a person is cognitively bound and concerned with the work he is doing right now (Paullay et al, 1994). In addition, job involvement is also defined as the level of cognitive and emotional identification of employees to their work (Cropanzano et al., 1997; O’Driscoll & Randall, 1999). Employees who have high levels of job involvement, their work is linked to their identity, interests and purpose in life (Mudrack, 2004). Employees with high levels of job involvement are ready to benefit the organization (exchange benefits) and support to provide it through extra effort to ensure company goals can be achieved (Jayawardana, 2013). They have affective and high performance commitment to their organization ( Cohen, 1999 ; Diefendorff et al, 2002). Employees with high levels of job involvement also have high task identity, task significance and task autonomy (Chen dan Chiu, 2009). In addition, contributions to organizational goals are also high and their outgoing rates are low (Jayawardana, 2013). Job involvement also find significantly related to important organizational outcomes such as absenteeism, organizational commitment, employee turnover and job performance (Brown, 1996;James M. Deifendorff, et.al,2002; Cooper-Hakim and Viswesvaran, 2005; Paul F. Rotenberry & Philip J.Moberg,2007)

C. Individual-level Cultural Orientation

In a company or organization known there are two views in understanding the culture of the theory of convergence and divergence. The increasingly divergent Divergence theory says that the organization has a close relationship with the inherent national culture and is very difficult to change. This is what makes that countries including companies in different countries have different managerial styles.

Cultural values ​​greatly affect the attitudes and behavior of individuals, including in this case are employees. Several recent studies have grown an interest in examining the effect of individual cultural values ​​on employee behavior in the workplace with various settings (Walumba & Lawler, 2003; Tsui, NifadkarOu, 2007 ; Williamson et al, 2009; A.Z. Sheikh et al., 2013).There are three cultural dimensions of the most widely studied namely Collectivism, Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance (A.Z. Sheikh et al., 2013)

D. Hypothesis Development

Transformational Leadership and Job Involvement

Transformational leadership indicated positive relationship with job involvement ( Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005 ; Sheikh et al., 2013). They provide subordinates with confidence to put forward new ideas, accept delegated responsibility and participate in decision making and enhance perceptions of their job characteristics, which should in turn lead to greater job involvement (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006).Transformational leadership is believed to improve employee perceptions in work and increase employee involvement and their motivation(Parker et al., 2001; Morgeson & Humhrey, 2006). Although it does not examine the linkage between transformational leadership towards job involvement but previous researchshows the link between perceived leadership support to employee engagement in which the construct is very similar to transformational leadership and job involvement(May et al, 2004; Ram and Prabakar, 2011). This leads us to following hypothesis :

Hypothesis 1 : There will be a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employee job involvement

Moderating effects of Individual-level Cultural Orientation

  1. Research Methods

A. Data Collection and Sample

Data collected by using the questionnaire survey method. Respondent were female lecturers whose employed on public and private universities in Indonesia. The questionnaire was administered via online surveys. In addition, an online questionnaire was developed onGoogle Docs and the link was e-mailed or send to the respondent. Various studies in thepast have revealed that e-mail surveying is an effective way of collecting data from professionals.Data collected were 106 questionnaires. The average age of respondents is 40 years. 81% of them are married and have children. Educational background 86% of respondents had master’s degree and 50% have structural positions at their universities.

B. Measures

Measures were collected from respondents using multi-item Likert scale (from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Transformational Leadership is measured by using 8 items from

The Multifactor Leadership Quetionnaire (MLQ) form 5X (Bass and Avolio, 1995; Jyoti and Dev, 2014)which consists of 4 dimensions of transformational leadership : Idealized Influence, Inspirational Motivation, Intellectual stimulation and Individualized consideration. 4 items from the Scale developed Paullay et.al, 1994 are used to measure Job Involvement. For Individual level cultural orientation , Cultural Values Scale (Donthu and Yoo, 1998; Prasongsukarn, 2009) used to measurepower distance (4 item), uncertainty avoidance (5 item) dan collectivism (6 item). The data were analyzed using Moderated Regression.

  1. Findings and Discussion

A. Validity Test

Validity is defined as the extent to which research is accurate. From the result of validity test by using bivariate correlation indicate the correlation between each indicator to the total construct score shows a significant result (Correlation is significant at the 0,01 level). So it can be concluded that each question indicator is valid.

B. Reliability Test

Hasil dari reliability test dengan menggunakan Cronbach Alpha menunjukkan bahwa semua variabel memiliki cronbach alpha  0,60. Therefore, all item were consedered reliable, which mean that all respondents answered the questions consistently.

Tabel1.Result of Reliability test

Variabel / Cronbach Alpha
Transformational Leadership / 0,929
Job Involvement / 0,842
Power Distance / 0,699
Uncertainty Avoidance / 0,892
Collectivism / 0,88

C.Results

The result of regression shows independent and moderating variables accounted for 19,8% of the variance in job involvement. This regression model can be used to predict job involvement

(F= 4,699, p0,001). Transformational Leadership surprisingly was negative related to job involvement ( = -1,468, p  0,01). These result did not support for hypothesis 1. In addition, one of the moderating variables, uncertainty avoidance, was negatively related to job involvement ( = -1,240, p  0,001).

Three interactive variables used to examine the moderating effect of individual level cultural orientation on job involvement. Of the three dimensions (power distance, uncertainty avoidance and collectivism), only uncertainty avoidance positively moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement (in line with hypothesis 3). Contrary to hypothesis 2 and 4, power distance and collectivism did not moderate the transformational leadership-job involvement relationship.

Tabel 2. Moderated Regression Analysis (n = 106)

Job Involvement
Transformational Leadership / -1,468 **
Power Distance / -0,585
Uncertainty Avoidance / -1,240 ***
Collectivism / 0,694
Interaction effects
Transformational Leadership x Power Distance / 0,67
Transformational Leadership x Uncertainty Avoidance / 2,578 ***
Transformational Leadership x Collectivism / -0,801
Overall model
Adjusted R2 / 0,198
F / 4,699 ***

*p0.05; **p0,01; ***p0,001

  1. Discussion and Conclusion

Discussion

This study seeks to provide another test to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement as well as the moderating role of individual cultural values orientation, specifically collectivism, power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Our findings discovered the negative influence of transformational leadership on job involvement.Eventhough did not support the previous research (Cooper-Hakim & Viswesvaran, 2005 ; Sheikh et al., 2013; Nazem and Mozaiini, 2014), several other empirical studies give similar results that transformational leadership also has a negative influence on organizational outcomes such as job performance, job satisfaction, employee motivation, employee trust, job satisfaction(Podsakoff et, al. 1990; Kark and Shamir, 2003; Nguni et. Al, 2006;Babalola, 2016), which these variables are shown to have a strong relationship with job involvement.

Transformational leader on the other hand may cause some weaknesses. First increases dependence on leaders. The implications are that the subordinate employees become limited in their ability to execute a task and cannot make a decision without guidance from the leader. Psychologically, this implies that the employee motivation and self-esteem is dependent on receiving recognition and approval from the transformational leader (Kark & Shamir 2003). This can reduce the motivation and confidence that will ultimately make employees no longer enjoy doing the work. Secondly, if transformational leaders fail to make their vision a tangible reality. This dissatisfaction can lead to lower job involvement.

Third, the effect of intellectual stimulation on role ambiguity, conflict, and stress.Although intellectual stimulation may produce desirable effect in the long run, it may be that in the short run, leaders who continually urge or exhort employees/followers to search for new and better methods of doing things create ambiguity,conflicts, or other forms of stress in the minds of the employees (Podsakoff et al, 1990).Fourth Individual consideration that is not done fairly can lead to jealousy among employees thus increasing the intensity of the conflict and decreasing employee motivation. Therefore organization should pay more attention to the attitude and behaviours their employees and its leadership style tocreate pleasant experience for all categories of employees without discrimination. Manager may also needs more training on leadership style so as to apply the transformational leadership style more precisely. This finding also has other implications for the organization about the incentive strategy for employees.This can help in making them better committed to the organization. Star performers should be recognized and compensatedaccordingly in order to encourage a culture of good performance and commitment (Babalola, 2016).

Conclusion

This study made contribution to literature of relationship between leadership behavior and job involvement by examining how individual level cultural values influence responses of employee to transformational leadership in Indonesia. Spesifically uncertainty avoidance proved to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and job involvement of employees. In addition, the findings of this study support previous research that mentions the negative effect of transformational leadership on organizational outcomes.