Leadership influences? It depends on followers! The relationship between the Ohio State leader behaviors, employee self-regulatory focus, and task performance
| Date | 08 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-10-2018-0386 |
| Published date | 08 November 2019 |
| Pages | 491-515 |
| Author | Dongwon Choi,Minyoung Cheong,Jihye Lee |
| Subject Matter | Hr & organizational behaviour,Global hrm |
Leadership influences? It depends
on followers! The relationship
between the Ohio State leader
behaviors, employee
self-regulatory focus, and
task performance
Dongwon Choi
NEOMA Business School, Reims, France
Minyoung Cheong
School of Graduate Professional Studies at Great Valley,
Pennsylvania State University, Malvern, Pennsylvania, USA, and
Jihye Lee
College of Business Administration,
Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Abstract
Purpose –While the Ohio State leadership approach had been forgotten for several decades, scholars in the
field of leadership have begun revisiting the validity and the role of leader consideration and initiating
structure. Building on self-expansion theory, this study suggest the effects of leader consideration and
initiating structure on employee task performance. Also, integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit
theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose and examine the moderating role of employee regulatory focus
on the relationship between the Ohio State leadership behaviors and employee task performance, which was
mediated by emloyees’creative behavior as well as citizenship behavior.
Design/methodology/approach –To test the hypothesized model of this study, cross-sectional data were
collected using questionnaires. Pairs of survey packages, which included group-member surveys and a
group-leader survey, were handed out to employees in organizations. The authors collected data from 47
groups and 143 group members in 25 private companies in the Republic of Korea, including from financial,
technology, manufacturing, and research and development organizations.
Findings –The results showed that leader consideration exerts significant effects on employee task
performance. Also, the authors found the moderating role of employee regulatory promotion focus on the
relationship between leader consideration/initiating structure and employee task performance, which were
mediated by creative behavior and citizenship behavior.
Originality/value –This study contributes to the advancement of the Ohio State leadership approach by
integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit theory to investigate the distinct mechanisms and
boundary conditions of its leadership process. The current study also contributes to the literature on extra-
role behavior that the Ohio State leadership behavioral dimensions can be considered as one of the
antecedents of employees’creative and citizenship behavior.
Keywords Quantitative, Creativity, Personality, Citizenship behaviour, Leader behaviour
Paper type Research paper
Leaders exert an important influence on the emotions, cognitions, attitudes, behaviors and
task performance of employees in contemporary organizations (for a review, Yukl, 2012).
Given the important influence of leadership, scholars have investigated the nature of
leadership using various approaches, including the trait-based, behavior-based, contingency
and cognitive approaches (Ba ss, 1997; Ilies et al.,2005;Judgeetal., 2002; Shondricket al., 2010) .
Personnel Review
Vol. 49 No. 2, 2020
pp. 491-515
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-10-2018-0386
Received 5 October 2018
Revised 10 May 2019
Accepted 9 July 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
491
Leadership
influences
In light of the behavior-based leadership approach, research on the Ohio State leadership
dominated the realm of leadership literature (see Judge et al., 2004). These
studies argue for the importance of two factors, namely, consideration, which refers to
person-related leadership behaviors, including paying individualized attention to employees’
well-being, providing support, and displaying warmth, and initiating structure,
which refers to task-related leadership behaviors such as role assignment, role clarification,
showing goal-oriented attainment and sustaining organized communication channels
(Fleishman , 1973, 1995).
Using this clear and intuitively appealing taxonomy, multiple studies were conducted
(Fleishman, 1973); during the 1950s and the 1960s in particular, basing research on the Ohio
State leadership behaviors gained in popularity and trait-based leadership research was
supplanted (Judge et al., 2004). At the same time, however, the Ohio State approach is also
famous for having been mysteriously “forgotten”after receiving criticism regarding
construct validity and measurement (Ker r and Schriesheim, 1974; Korman, 1966;
Schriesheim and Kerr, 1974). Recently, scholars have begun revisiting this conventional
approach and investigating whether prior criticisms of the Ohio State leadership studies
were empirically appropriate. For instance, a series of meta-analyses by Judge et al. (2004),
DeRue et al. (2011), as well as Gottfredson and Aguinis (2017) have shown that the validity
of the Ohio State leader behaviors and these behaviors substantially correlate with
leadership effectiveness. These results suggest that the Ohio State leadership approach is
worthy of further investigation.
Given the construct validity of the Ohio State leadership approach, researchers have
examined boundary conditions that provide a more nuanced picture of the relationship
between the Ohio State leader behaviors and leadership-related outcomes, suggesting
that leadership influences can vary depending on follower characteristics (Gaudet and
Tremblay, 2017; Klein et al.,2011;Lambertet al., 2012; Lin, 2017). In the same vein, the
recent literature on leadership has called for studies that both consider leadership
influences and examine the role of followers (Avolio, 2007; Grant et al., 2011).
However, to our knowledge, there is a paucity of prior studies which explored the
moderating role of employees’motivational aspects; considering these motivational
aspects could lead to a different understanding of the effects of the Ohio State leader
behaviors (Higgins, 1997), the current state of the literature is rather surprising.
Moreover, from the practical point of view, leader consideration and initiating structure
are the fundamental leader behaviors that occur day-to-day experiences, in comparison
to other leader behaviors (e.g. transformational leadership, and abusive supervision).
Thus, understanding how such leader behaviors give different influences on employee
outcomes depending on the follower motivational characteristics is important for the
practitioners.
To fill the current research gap in the field of the Ohio State leadership, the present
study investigates the interactive effects of the Ohio State leadership behaviors and
employee motivational differences on employee task performance[1]. Specifically, by
integrating self-expansion theory (Dansereau et al., 2013) and regulatory focus fit theory
(Higgins, 2005), we examine the moderating role of employee regulatory focus on the
relationship between the Ohio State leadership behaviors and employee task
performance. First, we draw on the concept of self-expansion to explain the equifinal
effects of the Ohio State leader behaviors on employee task performance. Since self-
expansion theory explains how an individual develops one’s self-identity with including
another person, group into one’s psychological boundary (Aron and Aron, 1986), it could
explain why leader consideration and initiating structure make changes in employees’
psychological mindset and their work behaviors (Dansereau et al., 2013). Second, by
integrating regulatory focus fit theory (Higgins, 2005), we propose that self-regulatory
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