The impact of a leader’s demographic and professional characteristics on employee motivation. Do they really matter?

Pages119-141
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/ER-10-2017-0253
Published date07 January 2019
Date07 January 2019
AuthorIrene Campos-García,José Ángel Zúñiga-Vicente
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law
The impact of a leaders
demographic and
professional characteristics
on employee motivation
Do they really matter?
Irene Campos-García and José Ángel Zúñiga-Vicente
Rey Juan Carlos University, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
Purpose Building on Upper Echelons Theory and prior research on strategic leadership, the purpose of this
paper is to examine the possible effect on employee motivation of two sets of characteristics related to leaders:
demographic (gender and age); and professional development (tenure, prior career experience in the
organization and training).
Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis is based on data from a survey of Spanish
educational organizations (secondary schools). The hypotheses are tested using hierarchical multiple
regression analysis estimations.
Findings The results reveal that the characteristics linked to a leaders professional development have a
significant impact on employee (teacher) motivation. Specifically, a long tenure in office has a negative effect, while
prior career experience in an organization and continuous training have a positive impact. However, none of the
leaders demographic characteristics considered in the study has a significant impact on teacher motivation.
Practical implications Several lines of managerial and educational policy action are suggested for
improving employee (teacher) motivation, especially in the specific case of the schools considered here.
Originality/value This study is one of the first attempts to explore what impact certain leaders
characteristics have on employee motivation.
Keywords Gender, Employees, Motivation, Training
Paper type Research paper
Employees are typically considered to be one of an organizations most strategic resources
(Becker and Huselid, 2006; Hall, 1992). Their behavior and motivation can strongly affect
performance (e.g. Crook et al., 2008; Hansen and Wernerfelt, 1989; MacRae and Furnham,
2017). Research on employee motivation has attracted the attention of many researchers in
recent years. Empirical evidence has shown that employee motivation is affected by
different intrinsic factors such as competence, autonomy, responsibility, social interaction
and self-esteem and extrinsic factors such as rewards, recognition and relationships with
colleagues and supervisors or managers ( for a review of the literature on employee
motivation see Sekhar et al., 2013; Kanfer et al., 2017).
Employee motivation has traditionally been a core concern for leaders (Amabile, 1993),
as the success of the organization they manage depends largely on their employees. In fact,
one of the most relevant managerial competencies is the ability to motivate employees.
As argued by Nohria et al. (2008, p. 78), getting the best out of employees or to put it
another way, having highly motivated employees has become one of managersmost
enduring and slippery challenges.Based on two major studies of 2 global businesses and
300 Fortune 500 companies, they found evidence for a direct and positive relationship Employee Relations
Vol. 41 No. 1, 2019
pp. 119-141
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-10-2017-0253
Received 18 October 2017
Revised 16 June 2018
Accepted 20 July 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
This paper is financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(Reference: ECO2015-67434-R). The authors are grateful for the constructive comments of two referees.
119
Employee
motivation
between employee motivation and their top managersability to motivate staff. In a similar
vein, Adair (2006) suggested that about 50 percent of employee motivation depends on
leadersbehavior.
Leaders should be aware of the potential factors affecting employee motivation in order
to improve it. This is important because having motivated staff is the key to achieving
organizational goals. Motivation is also required to maintain job satisfaction and retain
high-performing employees. In this regard, it is well known that leaders can design
motivation-enhancing human resource practices with the aim of increasing employee
motivation such as internal promotion opportunities, contingent rewards and performance
management (e.g. Blom et al., 2018; Khoreva and Wechtler, 2018; Whitener, 2001). This has
been the most frequent way of examining the potential influence of leaders on employee
motivation. Less well known is how certain characteristics related to leaders may affect
employee motivation. Accordingly, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature by
addressing the following research question:
RQ1. What impact do leaderscharacteristics have on employee motivation?
More specifically, this study seeks to examine the possible effect on employee motivation of two
sets of characteristics related to leaders: demographic (e.g. gender and age); and professional
development (e.g. tenure in office, prior career experience in the organization and training).
Prior researchbased on the Upper EchelonsTheory (UET) suggests that leaderscognitive
frames, and hence their behaviors, may be conditioned by some of their observable
demographic and personal characteristics (e.g. Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007).
Because leaderscognitive framesare difficult to measure, much of theprior research applying
UET has used leadersobservable characteristics, such as their gender, age, tenure, prior
career experience and training as valid proxies for such cognitive frames (Carpenter et al.,
2004; Hambrickand Mason, 1984; Krishnanand Park, 2005; Wang et al., 2016).We formulate a
set of hypotheses by describing how such leaderscharacteristics may either facilitate or
hinder employeemotivation. We also argue that the strategic leadershipperspective, which is
rooted in UET, mayalso provide a helpful theoreticalperspective for addressing ourresearch
question, as it asserts that leaders are crucial to organizational outcomes because of the
decisions they are empowered to make and because, ultimately, they account for what
happens to the organization(Hambrick, 1989, p. 5; Vera and Crossan, 2004, p. 222).
This study contributes to the research on the determinants of employee motivation in
several ways. Researchers have long been grappling with the conditions under which
employees become internally and externally motivated to perform their tasks effectively
(e.g. Camilleri,2007; Hackman and Oldham, 1976;Manolopoulos, 2007; Word andPark, 2015).
As we explain how severalcharacteristics linkedto strategic leaders may impact on employee
motivation, we will attempt to further our understanding of motivation itself, mainly with
regard to how it may be externally influenced. On the other hand, given that motivated
employees boost organizational success, the insights into human behavior derived from this
study may help managersto draw the best out of their employees. This study mighttherefore
provide insights for practitioners and scholars to understand better which demographic and
personal characteristics of leaders could influence employee motivation, and how.
This study uses educational organizations (schools) as the research setting. This type of
organization is a particularly suitable scenario because many studies have revealed that
leaders (i.e. principals) are in a position to make a critical difference in their organizations
quality and outcomes (Day et al., 2009). International reports on education (Barber and
Mourshed, 2007; OECD, 2016) and academic research (e.g. Beare et al., 1989; Morrison, 2018)
stress that a good or excellent educational organization tends to be managed by
well-qualified leaders. In view of the impact education has on a society and its economic
system, it is important to know how certain characteristics associated with leaders are
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