Does transformational leadership stimulate user orientation? Evidence from a field experiment
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Author | Louise Ladegaard Bro,Ulrich Thy Jensen |
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12612 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Does transformational leadership stimulate user
orientation? Evidence from a field experiment
Louise Ladegaard Bro
1
|Ulrich Thy Jensen
2
1
VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science
Research, Aarhus, Denmark
2
School of Public Affairs, Arizona State
University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Correspondence
Ulrich Thy Jensen, School of Public Affairs,
Arizona State University, 411 N. Central Ave.,
Phoenix, 85004 Arizona, USA.
Email: ujensen@asu.edu
Funding information
Samfund og Erhverv, Det Frie Forskningsråd,
Grant/Award Number: 1327-00015B
Abstract
While doing good for specific citizens and users is often
considered a powerful motivator among public service
employees, little research has rigorously evaluated how
public managers can promote individualized prosocial moti-
vation. We follow recent studies on the behavioural implica-
tions of ‘user orientation’to explore how public managers
can use a specific leadership strategy—transformational
leadership—to reinforce employees' individualized prosocial
motivation. Combining a field experiment with 80 childcare
centre managers and survey reports from their 590 pre-
school teachers, we assess the effect of a transformational
leadership training programme on user orientation. The
results show a positive effect on user orientation three
months after the training programme but no persistent
effect 15 months after the intervention. This implies that, at
least in the short term, public managers can use transforma-
tional leadership behaviours to stimulate user orientation.
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’(Martin Luther King
Jr. 1963, p. 72)
1|INTRODUCTION
The notions of altruism and self-sacrifice have long been thought to infuse individuals with high levels of persis-
tence and vigour (Perry and Wise 1990). The focus in public administration literature has centred on the
prosocial motivation to ‘do good’for others and society, as well as on the question of what public leaders can
do to stimulate this kind of motivation. The concept of ‘transformational leadership’has received particular
Received: 24 October 2017Revised: 22 February 2019Accepted: 24 May 2019
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12612
Public Administration. 2020;98:177–193.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd177
attention, with scholars arguing that transformational leaders can develop, share and sustain a vision for the col-
lective, and use these behaviours strategically to help illustrate the prosocial aspects of the organization's
mission—and connect day-to-day work activities to core goals (Wright et al. 2012; Jensen and Bro 2018). Dis-
tinguishing between the motivation to do good for society or larger collective entities (public service
motivation—PSM) and the motivation to do good for specific others (user orientation) (Jensen and Andersen
2015), prior research has mainly focused on the link between transformational leadership and PSM (see Bro
et al. 2017 for an exception). While such studies have showcased positive correlations with PSM (e.g., Trottier
et al. 2008; Wright et al. 2012; Andersen et al. 2018; Jensen and Bro 2018), expanding our focus to user orien-
tation is important for at least three reasons.
First, the existing research possibly underestimates the importance of transformational leadership for
prosocial motivation if we focus exclusively on PSM. While a drive to contribute to society at large is noble, its
manifestation can sometimes be too abstract and detached from the actual work of individual public service pro-
viders. This is especially true in contexts characterized by frequent contact between employees and users. In
such work contexts, user orientation might be a more relevant and potent source of motivation for public
leaders to target. Second, transformational leaders might also find it more straightforward to create a vision
around specific beneficiary groups (e.g., children or students in educational institutions or patients in healthcare
organizations), since individual users represent clear and vivid examples of how the individual employee contrib-
utes to the organization's prosocial mission. As noted, existing studies focus predominantly on the relationship
between transformational leadership and PSM with the implied assumption that visions revolve around
employees' contributions to society. Before we recommend that public leaders increase employees' prosocial
motivation using society-oriented visions, we should discuss whether some contexts have more obvious benefi-
ciaries, and whether the prosocial motivation of employees can be stimulated through visions focused on these
beneficiary groups. Finally, stimulating the motivation of individuals to do good for others offers a venue for
increasing the responsiveness to user or client preferences in contexts where this is a politically desirable out-
come. On this basis, our article investigates the following research question: Does transformational leadership
stimulate user orientation?
This study combines a field experiment among 80 childcare centre managers in Denmark with survey reports
from their 590 preschool teachers. Whereas the aforementioned studies have drawn on cross-sectional designs to
investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and PSM (e.g., Trottier et al. 2008; Wright et al.
2012; Andersen et al. 2018; Jensen and Bro 2018), experimental designs are better suited to test causality. Further-
more, the long-term effects of experimental interventions remain largely underexplored. Abrell et al. (2011) and Bar-
ling et al. (1996) tracked the development of transformational leadership training over time, suggesting that
cultivating transformational leadership behaviours takes time in terms of ‘kicking in’on follower and organizational
outcomes.
This article reports training effects three months after a one-year trainingperiod of leaders and 15 months after
the training concluded. In addition to outlining the theoretical pathway from transformational leadership to user ori-
entation, and exploring the micro mechanism underlying this link, we also offer an empirical contribution by assessing
the short- and longer-term effect of this leadership strategy on motivation. Childcare is characterized by frequent
contact between service providers (preschool teachers) and service users (children). For this reason, we expect
childcare managers to be particularly likely to articulate visions centred on how their organization contributes to the
children's well-being, development and learning. To qualify this proposition, we code vision statements of a sample
of childcare centres and compare them to visions from organizations characterized by infrequent beneficiary contact:
tax offices. Doing so, the article not only tests the causal effect of transformational leadership on user orientation
but also begins to shed light on the proposed mechanism underlying the relationship between transformational lead-
ership and user orientation.
178 BRO AND JENSEN
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