Transformational leadership style, followership, and factors of employees’ reactions towards organizational change

Published date02 December 2019
Date02 December 2019
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-03-2018-0083
Pages181-209
AuthorAbdul Halim Busari,Sajjad Nawaz Khan,Siti Mariam Abdullah,Yasir Hayat Mughal
Subject MatterStrategy,International business
Transformational leadership style,
followership, and factors of employees
reactions towards organizational change
Abdul Halim Busari, Sajjad Nawaz Khan, Siti Mariam Abdullah and Yasir Hayat Mughal
Abstract
Purpose This study aims toinvestigate the relationship between transformational leadership styleand
factors of employees’ reactions towards organizational change in the telecommunication sector of
Pakistan. Furthermore, to understand the importance of followership it has been analyzed as a
moderating variable in the relationship between transformational leadership style and factors of
employees’reactions.
Design/methodology/approach A mixed methodsstudy design was applied to investigate the factors
underlying the phenomenon of transformational leadership and organizational change. A quantitative
research design was followed by qualitative research questions to get more in-depth insights into the
used relationships.The primary purpose of the qualitativestudy design was to support and strengthened
the resultsof the main quantitative research design.
Findings The results of the studyshowed that transformational leadershipstyle was positively related
to all three factors of employees’reactions (frequency of change, trust in management and employees
participation) towards organizational change. Moreover, followership has a significant effect on the
relationshipbetween transformational leadershipstyle and factors of employees’ reaction.
Practical implications This study suggests that for successful implementation of change in
organizations,the employees play an important role and that managers with transformationalleadership
behaviour play a critical role in shaping positive change reactions. This study also highlights that both
transformationalleadership and followership are essentialelements in shaping recipients’ reactions,with
active followerscontributing to the role of leadershipin the change process.
Originality/value This study is the first attempt specifically in Asian context to highlight the role of
followershipas a moderating variable in leadershiptheory in the organizationalchange context.
Keywords Pakistan, Organizational change, Followership, Transformational leadership style,
Employees reactions
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Over the past few decades, substantial research has been done in the field of
organizational change management. Many factors such as job demands, job knowledge
and skills, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, social relations at the workplace,
performance measurement, organizational learning, change efficacy, communication,
organizational justice, logistics and system support and many more determinants prevails in
support of organizational change programmes (Chawla and Kevin Kelloway, 2004;Cinite
et al.,2009
;Cunningham et al.,2002;Eby et al.,2000;Madsen et al.,2005;Peach et al.,
2005;Rafferty and Simons, 2006;Vithessonthi, and Thoumrungroje, 2011;Wanberg and
Banas, 2000). However, on the other hand investigation of many studies on organizational
change shows unsatisfactory results. Beer and Nohria (2000),Meaney and Pung (2008),
Burke (2010) and Burnes (2011) documented that change implementation often fails. One
Abdul Halim Busari is
based at the Department of
Human Resource
Development, Universiti
Malaysia Sarawak, Kota
Samarahan, Malaysia.
Sajjad Nawaz Khan is
based at the Department of
Human Resource
Development, Faculty of
Cognitive Sciences and
Human Development,
Universiti Malaysia
Sarawak, Kota Samarahan,
Malaysia.
Siti Mariam Abdullah is
based at the Department of
Human Resource
Development, Universiti
Malaysia Sarawak, Kota
Samarahan, Malaysia.
Yasir Hayat Mughal College
of Public Health and Health
Informatics, Qassim
University, Al Bukayriyah,
Saudi Arabia.
Received 12 March 2018
Revised 23 April 2018
10 November 2018
2 December 2018
Accepted 24 January 2019
DOI 10.1108/JABS-03-2018-0083 VOL. 14 NO. 2 2020, pp. 181-209, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1558-7894 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jPAGE 181
reason for these change failures was that during change process most attention was given
to information systems and organizational structure, whereas human resources were
ignored (Gill, 2002;Oreg et al.,2011;Penava and S
ˇehi
c, 2014). Moreover, past research
mostly focussed on the macro perspectives of organizational change like strategic change
management processes. Many of the studies concerned explaining what change looks like
and what does it stimulate the change; in what way it would improve with the passage of
time, and in what sense it mayand might be dealt with Oreg et al. (2013). Hence, Oreg et al.
(2011) argued that an organization’s existence depends upon the people (employees), to
implement organizational transformation successfully and to improve the attainment of
organizational objectives there is a need to ensured and attained the success of their
employees.
Change without leadership is hard to implement. To lead change successfully, leaders must
be capable and willing to alter their leadership styles according to the situations and the
changing demands of their business environments (Nguyen and Robinson, 2015). According
to Senior and Fleming (2006) and Al-Ali et al. (2017) a leader is a change agent who takes
initiative and brings successful changes in organizations. Upadhyay et al. (2016b)inthe
Indian context identified that leadership along with management competencies provides
handful support during the enterprise system implementation process in small and medium
size enterprises. From organizational change perspectives there have been practitioner-
oriented debates focussing on the leadership role and employees’ resistance but on the other
hand, the number of empirical studies that examine the relationship between leader behaviour
and employees’ reactions towards change is very limited (Herold et al.,2008;Holten and
Brenner, 2015;Oreg and Berson, 2011). Research indicated that if management is change-
oriented, participative, informative and fair, it produces positive reactions towards change
(Holten and Brenner, 2015;Oreg et al.,2011). During organizational change, managers
perform important roles both as a role model and drivers of change, and their behaviour
influences the interests of followers (Skakon et al.,2010). Epitropaki et a l. (2013),Kotter and
Cohen (2002) and Kegan and Lahey (2009) claimed that due to the core of the
transformational leadership are the issues related to the processes of change and
transformation, and transformational leadership behaviour are likely to be more effective
during organizational change. This study investigated the role transformationa l leadership
style in shaping employees’ reactions in organizational change context. Converse ly despite
the numbers of studies on leadership in organizational studies (Yukl, 2012), until recently little
concentration has been given to followership in leadership theory (Baker, 2007;Bligh, 2011;
Carsten et al.,2010;Kelley, 2008;Sy, 2010) especially in organizational change context . For
the success of organizations, leaders and followers are both essential, but in research most of
the attention has been given to leader’s centric approaches and leader ’s role in followers’
motivation. Authors who concerned with followership claimed that followers are the active
participants in the leadership relationship (Uhl-Bien et al.,2014;Uhl-Bien and Pillai, 2007).
Furthermore, for successful organizational change, the recognition of th e followership concept
on the individual, group and organizational levels and methods for producing good effective
followers are very important (Bennis, 2010).
Similarly, a number of studies has been conducted in Pakistani context to examine various
employees attitudinal and behaviour responses such as job satisfaction and employees’
performance (Khan et al.,2016), emotional intelligence (Malik and Masood, 2015),
innovation propensity and culture (Tipu et al., 2012), organizational innovation (Khan et al.,
2014) and transformational and transactional leadership (Khan et al.,2009). Conversely,
very few attempts have been madeto discuss employees’ reactions and followership (Khan
et al.,2018
;Yasir et al.,2016). Therefore, the perspectives of the current study were
twofold. First, is to focus on the micro-perspective of what changes feel or look likefrom the
standpoint of change recipients or employees and what role transformational leadership
style plays in shaping employee’s reactions. This study used content, context and process
factors of employees’ reactions derived from Oreg et al. (2011) model of organizational
PAGE 182 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jVOL. 14 NO. 2 2020

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