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Article Excerpt
The changing nature of employment conditions and psychological contracts means that, increasingly, employees are being asked to continually develop their skills and manage their own careers (e.g. Cappelli, 1999; lies, 1997; Waterman, Waterman, & Collard, 2000), In this environment, organizations must give employees opportunities to develop their employability in exchange for enhanced productivity and commitment as long as an employee works in the firm (Waterman et aL, 2000). As a result, organizational leaders are being confronted with demands to equip employees with the skills to succeed in this new environment. One sub dimension of the Bass (1985) model of transformational leadership, individualized consideration, has been defined as encompassing a developmental orientation towards followers and may be an important way that leaders can help followers succeed in today's business environment. Unfortunately, there has been relatively little theoretical or empirical interest in the developmental behaviours encompassed by individualized consideration. This lack of interest may be associated with a theoretically significant shift in the definition of individualized consideration away from developing subordinates to something more akin to supportive leadership (e.g. Avolio & Bass, 1995; Bass, 1999).
We argue that developmental leadership is likely to be a core transformational behaviour because it enhances followers' skills and self-efficacy and, therefore, has 'transformational effects'. In contrast, empirical research indicates that supportive leadership is strongly associated with satisfaction, but is not associated with motivation or performance (e.g. Yukl, 1999). These results suggest that supportive leadership might not have transformational effects and that the current mixture of supportive and developmental themes within the individualized consideration construct may be inappropriate. In this paper, we theoretically delineate the nature of developmental leadership by drawing on the mentoring literature and contrast this leadership construct with supportive leadership. We then propose hypotheses regarding the differential impact of developmental leadership and supportive leadership on a number of outcomes, including job satisfaction, affective commitment, career certainty and role breadth self-efficacy.
Transformational leadership
Transactional leadership involves an exchange relationship between leaders and followers such that followers receive wages or prestige for complying with a leader's wishes (Burns, 1978). In contrast, transformational leaders motivate followers to achieve high levels of performance by transforming followers' attitudes, beliefs and values as opposed to simply gaining compliance (Bass, 1985), Bass identified a number of sub dimensions of transformational leadership including charisma, which is now referred to as idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.
Empirical tests of the extraordinary effects of transformational leaders on followers have become known as tests of the 'augmentation hypothesis' (Bass, 1985; Hater & Bass, 1989). This hypothesis proposes that transformational leadership should predict performance and satisfaction beyond what can be accounted for by transactional leadership, but not vice versa. Empirical research has found support for this hypothesis (e.g. Hater & Bass, 1989) and theoretical explanations for the augmentation effect have focused on the motivational effects of charismatic and inspirational leadership. However, it may be that a large part of the effect can be attributed to the developmental impact of individualized consideration on followers. Employees may achieve beyond expectations not only because they are more inspired and motivated, but because they have developed and enhanced their skills. Below, we review discussions of individualized consideration and explore the shifting meanings attached to this construct over time.
Individualized consideration
Recent empirical evidence indicates that individualized consideration is an important leadership behaviour in the workplace (Sarros, Gray, & Densten, 2002). Bass (1985) identified a developmental orientation and individualized attention to followers as important aspects of individualized consideration. He stated that developmental leadership is evident when leaders advise staff on their careers, carefully observe and record followers' progress and encourage staff to attend technical courses. The delegation of work activities in order to provide challenges was also identified as an important developmental behaviour. In contrast, Bass discussed individualized attention as occurring when a leader pays attention to the differences among followers and discovers what motivates each individual. This author proposed that individualized attention allows leaders to become familiar with followers, enhances communication and improves information exchange.
Recently, theorists have begun to shift the focus of individualized attention from a means to promote familiarity with followers to a means to provide support. For example, AvoliO and Bass (1995, p. 202) stated that a 'leader displays more frequent individualized consideration by showing general support for the efforts of followers'. The move towards defining individualized consideration as encompassing supportive leadership as well as developmental leadership is problematic as research suggests that supportive leadership is unlikely to have transformational effects (e.g. Yukl, 1999). We propose that the two aspects of individualized consideration are distinct, and we draw on the mentoring literature in order to inform our discussion of developmental leadership and to distinguish supportive and developmental leadership.
Defining supportive and developmental leadership
Supportive leadership has received extensive attention in a variety of different research areas, including the leadership (e.g. House, 1971), occupational stress (e.g. Kahn & Byosiere, 1992) and mentoring fields (e.g. Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004). House (1981) defined a supportive leader as one who provides emotional, informational, instrumental and appraisal support to followers. However, this author stated that the most intuitive meaning of social support is emotional support, which involves the provision of sympathy, evidence of liking, caring and listening. We adopt this relatively narrow definition of supportive leadership, and focus on what House (1981) referred to as emotional support; that is, supportive leadership is defined as occurring when leaders express concern for, and take account of, followers' needs and preferences when making decisions.
Supportive leadership has been of particular interest in the occupational stress field (e.g. Cohen & Wills, 1985; Kahn & Byosiere, 1992), where researchers have identified two models through which social support influences well-being. The 'buffering hypothesis' suggests that social support is related to well-being primarily for persons experiencing stress. That is, support 'buffers' or protects people from the potentially negative influence of stressful events. The 'main effects' model proposes that social resources have a beneficial effect irrespective of whether people are under stress. Cohen and Wills (1985) conducted an influential review of the occupational stress literature, and concluded that supervisor social support has a pure buffering effect; that is, social support is only effective in the presence of an elevated stress level.
Developmental leadership has received less theoretical attention than supportive leadership, and a coherent picture of developmental leadership has yet to emerge. However, Bass (1985) identified a number of specific developmental behaviours when defining individualized consideration, including career counselling, careful observation of staff, recording followers' progress and encouraging followers to attend technical courses. These behaviours overlap with a number of behaviours identified in the mentoring literature.
Two major categories of behaviours that are similar in content to supportive and developmental leadership have been identified by authors interested in mentoring. Mentoring has been defined as 'a relationship between a younger adult, and an older, more experienced adult [who] helps the younger individual navigate the adult world and the world of work' (Kram, 1985, p. 2). Within the mentoring literature, theorists have distinguished a career-oriented function of mentoring and a psychosocial function (Kram, 1983, 1985). The psychosocial function of mentoring involves acting as a role model, providing acceptance and confirming the protege's behaviour. We focus on the career-oriented function of mentors, which encompasses the behaviours of sponsorship, exposure and visibility, coaching, protection and providing challenging assignments (Kram, 1983),
As discussed by Kram (1983, 1985), sponsorship involves actively nominating an individual for desirable lateral moves and promotions. Exposure and visibility involves a mentor providing a protege with opportunities to demonstrate competence and high levels of performance to senior staff. Coaching involves efforts to enhance a protege's knowledge and understanding and suggesting specific strategies for accomplishing work objectives and for achieving recognition and career aspirations. Protection refers to efforts to shield a protege from untimely or potentially damaging contact with senior staff. The provision of challenging assignments in conjunction with technical training and ongoing performance feedback enables the protege to develop specific competencies and to experience a sense of accomplishment in a professional role.
Examination of the career-oriented function of mentors suggests that this function captures an extensive range of behaviours that go beyond leadership or management as they are traditionally conceptualized. In addition, researchers have also argued that leadership is a more formal, overt, and indirect influence process than mentoring, and that not all leaders become effective mentors (Godshalk & Sosik, 2000; Raabe & Beehr, 2003). Nevertheless, we expect that transformational leaders will exhibit a number of developmentally-oriented behaviours, including coaching followers, identifying appropriate training courses for followers to undertake and encouraging followers to develop their job-related skills and abilities.
Differential effects of developmental and supportive leadership
The above review suggests that developmental leadership and supportive leadership encompass two distinct sets of leader behaviours. However, the empirical relationship between supportive and developmental leadership has not been addressed. We propose that there will be a positive relationship between these constructs as both supportive and developmental leadership are based on an interest in the welfare of followers. As such, leaders that are attentive to followers' needs and preferences are also likely to recognize individuals' developmental needs. Importantly, however, it is proposed that developmental leadership and supportive leadership are distinct constructs that will display discriminate validity with each other.
Hypothesis I. Developmental leadership and supportive leadership will be differentiated as distinct but related constructs.
In addition, it is proposed that developmental leadership and supportive leadership will display differential relationships with a number of outcomes. Job satisfaction, affective commitment and serf-efficacy are key outcomes of transformational leadership (Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993), and so we examine these variables in this paper. In addition, we examine career certainty, which refers to the extent to which individuals feel that they are provided with opportunities for career advancement and that their job and career are secure.
Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction refers to an individual's global feeling about their job (Spector, 1997), and authors have argued that the primary effects of supportive leadership are on affective reactions such as...
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