Date of Award

6-2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Psychology

Department

Social Sciences

First Reader/Committee Chair

Gilbert, Janelle

Abstract

The purpose of this study was twofold in that it explored the relationships in which transformational and transactional leadership impact particular subordinate outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Secondly, once transformational leadership was tested and shown to be a better predictor of both job satisfaction and organizational commitment when compared to transactional leadership, employee motivation and one’s broaden-and-build schema, building off of concepts from the Broaden-and-Build theory, were proposed as mediators of the relationship between transformational leaders and their subordinate’s outcomes in terms of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Transformational leadership is a strong predictor of many subordinate outcomes, but the goal of this study was to better understand the “why” in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee outcomes. After pilot testing the Broaden-And-Build Schema Questionnaire, a cross-sectional sample of employees were surveyed to assess the mediation of broaden-and-build schema and employee motivation on the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinate outcomes, job satisfaction and organizational commitment.

Participants (N = 390) responded to a survey consisting of four scales previously developed and one scale developed specifically for this study. Examining seven different hypotheses, regression analysis and SEM models were utilized to analyze the data. Regression analyses was used to analyze hypotheses 1 through 3 and it was found that transformational leadership predicted both subordinate outcomes and the mediating variables better than transactional leadership. Mediation analyses was used to analyze hypotheses 4 through 7 and it was found that while the mediations were positive, the proposed mediators did not significantly mediate the relationships.

This study strived to reiterate the importance of transformational leaders and help to give direction to leaders as to what focus is important when job satisfaction and organizational commitment are the desired outcomes. These findings add to the extensive research on transformational leaders and their subordinate outcomes.

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