Transformational Leadership Consensus Moderates the Impact of Mean Level Leadership on Innovation Climate in Human Service Organizations

Background: Although there has been extensive research on the relationship between transformational leadership (TL) and organizational climate, these studies have typically focused on a team’s average rating of the leader.  Such studies have failed to address the possibility that team members may vary in their agreement regarding leader behaviors. Such “dispersion models” capture variability in responses within an organizational unit. It has been proposed that leadership will have stronger effects when team members agree - or have consensus - about the level of leadership. This study examines the roles of transformational leadership, on innovation climate, moderated by leadership consensus. We proposed that the positive relationship between TL and innovation climate would be moderated by TL consensus (a dispersion measure). Specifically, we hypothesized that innovation climate would be highest when both absolute TL and TL consensus were high, and lowest when TL is low and TL consensus is high.

Methods: This study utilized data from a large-scale prospective research study of home-based child welfare services in the Midwestern U.S. Participants were 359 providers working in human service agencies whose teams were providing a specific evidence-based practice during the course of the longitudinal 12-wave study. Measures included the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ: Bass & Avolio) and the Team Climate for Innovation measure (TCI; Anderson & West). Each participant and team was assessed at multiple time points via web-based surveys. Response rates averaged greater than 95% over the 12 waves of data collection. Multilevel analyses were conducted using Mplus statistical software. We utilized maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors (MLR) and accounted for the nested data structure while testing direct effects and moderation effects.

Results: TL was directly related to innovation climate, and this relationship was moderated by TL consensus such that the relationship was stronger when consensus was high compared to when consensus was low.

Discussion/implications: These results have important implications for human service organizations by demonstrating the need for consistent perceptions of leadership to achieve high team level innovation climate. In addition, this study directly addresses the 2016 SSWR conference theme of “Grand Challenges for Social Work: Setting a Research Agenda for the Future.” In particular, understanding and improving leadership is critical in helping human service organizations to provide the best administrative and management practices in order to deliver the best innovative and evidence-based services. These findings also provide guidance for research and practice and support the use of both mean level and dispersion measures to identify leaders who excel as well as those needing additional supports to develop as effective leaders and create consensus among followers.  Consensus measures can help human service organizations to chart progress toward more efficient and effective leadership, and ultimately, to more effective services.