Oreg 2018

Academy of Management Annals
Leaders’ Impact on Organizational Change: Bridging

Theoretical and Methodological Chasms
Journal: Academy of Management Annals
Manuscript ID ANNALS-2016-0138.R5
Document Type: Article
Keywords: LEADERSHIP, change < ORGANIZATION, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Page 1 of 89 Academy of Management Annals
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3 Leadership and Organizational Change: Bridging Theoretical and Methodological Chasms
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9 Shaul Oreg1
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11 School of Business Administration
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13 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
16 oreg@huji.ac.il
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24 Yair Berson1
25 Bar-Ilan University and New York University
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27 Department of Psychology, Bar Ilan University
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29 Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel
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31 yberson@gmail.com
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49 Both authors contributed equally towards the writing of the manuscript.
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51 Notes: We thank Sharon Parker for her constructive and insightful guidance throughout the
52 review process and Daan van Knippenberg for his feedback on the proposal. We also thank Sim
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Sitkin for his insights in the initial stages of this project and Nir Milstein for his help in the
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55 article search process. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No.
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Academy of Management Annals Page 2 of 89
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3 Leaders’ Impact on Organizational Change: Bridging Theoretical and Methodological
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5 Chasms
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9 Abstract
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11 The notions of leadership and organizational change have been closely linked and frequently
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13 discussed in tandem. Whereas we know much about leadership and much about change, we
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16 know relatively little about the integration of the two. Leadership is often discussed with respect
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18 to its impact on organizations in times of change, and the literature on organizational change
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20 frequently notes the roles that managers and change agents have, as change leaders. Yet,
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23 surprisingly, the impact of leaders on change has not been studied systematically. In a
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25 comprehensive review of the literature on leadership and change we identified significant chasms
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27 across disciplines (e.g., strategy/OB), methodological approaches, and levels of analysis. We
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offer a conceptual framework to bridge these chasms and highlights the main processes through
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32 which leaders shape organizational change and influence its recipients. We identify key
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34 leadership functions and corresponding change processes through which leaders effectively
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36 implement changes. We also point to several directions for future investigation. In particular, we
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39 know very little about the role of leaders’ strategic choices in shaping employees’ responses to
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41 change, and about the roles of context and time in moderating the effects of leaders’ actions
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43 during change.
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3 Leaders’ Impact on Organizational Change: Bridging Theoretical and Methodological
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6 Chasms
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8 Traditionally, the concepts of leadership and organizational change have been closely
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10 linked and frequently discussed in tandem. The practitioner literature in particular is replete with
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discussions of how to lead organizational change (e.g., Kotter, 2007; Nadler & Tushman, 1990)
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15 and the field of change management is devoted to linking leaders’ actions with organizational
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17 change and its outcomes. Moreover, leadership is often discussed with respect to its impact on
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organizations in times of change, and, reciprocally, the literature on organizational change
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22 frequently notes the roles that managers and change agents have, as change leaders. In fact, one
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24 cannot talk about leadership without, at least implicitly, referring to a process of change (Bass,
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26 2008; Zaleznik, 1977). Yet, surprisingly, the relationships between leadership and change have
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29 not been studied systematically.
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31 Although a considerable number of studies of leaders and change has accumulated over
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33 the years, the research in this field lacks a conceptual foundation to guide research and integrate
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findings from the studies conducted. Reviews of the leadership literature (e.g., Avolio,
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38 Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009; House & Aditya, 1997) inform us about the attributes and
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40 behaviors of effective leaders, but do not sufficiently inform us about the particular relevance of
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these for the context of organizational change. Correspondingly, extant reviews of the change
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45 literature (e.g., Oreg, Vakola, & Armenakis, 2011; Rafferty, Jimmieson, & Armenakis, 2013)
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47 inform us about what instigates change and how change evolves in organizations, but do not
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49 focus on the specific role of leaders. Lacking integration, these distinct literatures have failed to
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52 provide a clear and broad understanding of leaders’ role in managing change. Based on our
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54 comprehensive review of the literature, we propose a conceptual integrative framework to
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3 highlight the main processes through which leaders shape organizational change and influence its
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6 recipients.
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8 We distinguish between two key roles that leaders undertake, and between two key paths
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10 through which leaders influence change. Specifically, with respect to leaders’ key roles we
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integrate the distinct literatures on leaders’ strategic choices (e.g., Hambrick, 2007) and leaders’
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15 style of leadership (e.g., Bass, 2008; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), and with respect to key paths of
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17 leaders’ influence, we consider both the influence on unit and organizational outcomes (e.g., R.
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S. Rubin, Dierdorff, Bommer, & Baldwin, 2009; see paths 1 and 2 in Figure 1) and the influence
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22 on change recipients (e.g., Oreg & Berson, 2011; see paths 3 and 4 in Figure 1). Furthermore,
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24 both psychological and sociological approaches, involving quantitative and qualitative
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26 methodologies, have been used for uncovering the impact that leaders have on organizational
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29 change and are at present disparate and siloed. We bridge these approaches and provide a more
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31 comprehensive understanding of the relationship between leadership and organizational change.
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33 What we Mean by Leadership and by Organizational Change
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Leadership
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38 Common to many definitions of leadership is an emphasis on the social influence process
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40 it involves, whereby leaders facilitate individual and collective efforts to accomplish common
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goals (Bass, 2008; Eberly, Johnson, Hernandez, & Avolio, 2013; Finkelstein, Hambrick, &
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45 Cannella, 2008; Yukl, 1998). Within the leadership literature, leadership constructs typically
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47 pertain to relatively stable attributes, such as personality or demographic characteristics of the
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49 leader, and the various actions in which leaders engage. With respect to leaders’ attributes,
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52 whereas OB scholars tend to study leaders’ psychographic variables (e.g., personality), strategy
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54 scholars who study leaders (Hambrick & Mason, 1984), mostly focus on executives’
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3 demographic characteristics, as proxies of psychographic variables (Priem, Lyon, & Dess, 1999).
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6 These scholars link variables such as executives’ age, tenure, and education with organizational
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8 outcomes.
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10 Beyond leaders’ attributes, a large body of leadership research has focused on leaders’
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actions, including the two broad categories of leaders’ strategic choices, and leaders’ behaviors
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15 (see Figure 1). The study of leaders’ strategic choices originated in upper echelons theory
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17 (Hambrick & Mason, 1984), according to which, leader characteristics are said to manifest in
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leaders’ strategic choices, which in turn, shape organizational outcomes. Strategic choices
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22 include formal and informal administrative choices, such as those concerning reward systems
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24 and competitive choices associated with organizational planning. Strategic choices also refer to
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26 key executive decisions about firms’ focus of investment, such as in innovation, diversification,
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29 or renewal (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). More recent research has looked at a variety of other
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31 choices and decisions, such as those associated with mergers and acquisitions and globalization
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33 (e.g., Crossland & Hambrick, 2011). Much of this literature, however, addresses organizational
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strategic choices, disregarding the explicit role of the leader. For the purpose of this review, we
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38 will include only those studies that explicitly address leaders’ strategic choices.
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40 In addition to leaders’ strategic choices, leaders’ actions are reflected in their leadership
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behaviors. We refer in these behaviors to the variety of leadership styles that have been studied
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45 (e.g., supportive leadership, authentic leadership, transformational leadership) as well as to the
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47 concept of sensegiving, which concerns leaders’ role in shaping how followers make sense of
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49 their organization’s reality (e.g., Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). Contrary to strategic choices, which
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52 are situation- (e.g., change-) specific, leader behaviors refer to a more stable leadership style, that
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54 transcends a given organizational context. Nevertheless, some of these styles, while representing
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3 stable individual orientations that characterize the leader across situations, are inherently linked
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6 with the notion of change. These include the concepts of charismatic and transformational
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8 leadership, which emphasize the transformative nature of leaders’ actions, guided by an inspiring
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10 vision (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; House, 1977; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993).
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We will include in our review both these leadership behaviors that are inherently related to
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15 change as well as other behaviors that have been studied in change contexts. In addition, in our
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17 evaluation of the findings we will also address concerns that have been raised about the
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conceptualizations and measurement and charismatic and transformational leadership (van
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22 Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013; Yukl, 1999).
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24 Organizational Change
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26 Organizational change refers to the transition of the organization from one state to
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29 another (Lewin, 1951). Whereas some research focuses generically on organizational change,
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31 other research focuses on specific types of changes, such as mergers and acquisitions,
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33 downsizing, or the incorporation of new technology. In the present review we cover all of these
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changes, as far as these are linked with leaders or leadership.
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38 Overall, the research of organizational change (for reviews see, Oreg et al., 2011; Weick
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40 & Quinn, 1999) can be classified into two streams. The first involves the processes through
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which organizational change develops and the outcomes of change. Studies within this stream
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45 aim to uncover the evolution of change and the macro-level factors that shape organizational
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47 change and its outcomes (e.g., Burke & Litwin, 1992; Hannan & Freeman, 1984). Accordingly,
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49 research within this stream tends to be sociologically based, conducted by macro-OB scholars
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52 and researchers in the field of strategy. The outcomes at focus in this research involve both the
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3 degree to which the change has succeeded (i.e., change outcomes) as well as the particular
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6 impact that the change has had on the organization (i.e., organizational outcomes).
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8 A second, somewhat newer, stream of research about change, considers change from the
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10 perspective of the change recipient (Bartunek, Rousseau, Rudolph, & DePalma, 2006; Oreg,
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Michel, & By, 2013). Research within this stream, typically conducted by micro-OB scholars,
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15 addresses the impact that organizational change has on the change recipient, focusing mainly on
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17 the psychological processes and recipients’ experiences during change, known as responses to
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change, and on more distal individual consequences of change, such as recipients’ job attitudes
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22 and personal outcomes. The literature in this stream refers to the emotions that emerge among
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24 change recipients, the change attitudes, in which the emphasis has typically been on cognitive
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26 aspects, and behavioral consequences (for a review see Oreg et al., 2011). Also involving
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29 cognitive aspects of the response to change, other research has focused on the manner in which
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31 change recipients construe change, through a process of sensemaking (Gioia & Chittipeddi,
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33 1991).
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Although most of the research we include in this review involves the impact that leaders
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38 have on the development and outcomes of change once it has been initiated, we were also
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40 interested in research that investigates how leaders’ characteristics and actions are related to the
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type of change that is initiated. In the strategy literature, decisions about the type of change to
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45 initiate are an aspect of strategic choices, whereas in the fields of organizational change and
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47 organizational development are referred to as the change content (see Figure 2; Armenakis &
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49 Bedeian, 1999; Oreg et al., 2011).
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52 Two additional, central, subjects of interest in research of organizational change include
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54 the roles of the change process and change context (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). The former
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3 pertains to the manner in which change is managed, involving the procedures that change agents
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6 employ for driving and managing change. The change process is distinct from leader behaviors,
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8 which generally pertain to the cross-situational style of the leader, whereas the change process
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10 involves the manner in which a given change is introduced and implemented. Moreover, the
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change process is not necessarily managed by a given leader, and may involve a variety of
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15 organizational members who take part in the diffusion of the change. Alongside the change
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17 process, the change context involves the organizational conditions that preceded the change and
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their role in influencing the change and its outcomes. We include in the model we propose all of
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22 these concepts and link the three leadership components (i.e., attributes, strategic actions, and
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24 behaviors) with the outcomes of change, at the individual and organizational levels (see Figure
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26 1), while considering the mediating roles of the change process and the moderating roles of the
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29 change context.
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31 Analytic Approach to the Review
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33 Article Selection
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Our emphasis in our review was primarily on empirical articles, although we also
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38 included a few key conceptual articles. Among empirical articles, we were interested in articles
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40 in which participants experienced an actual organizational change and in which aspects of
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leadership or management were assessed. We gathered the articles for the review through Google
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45 Scholar and an elaborate search of the PsychInfo, PsychArticles, and ABI/Inform databases,
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47 which cover the main domains for our review. We provide detailed descriptions of the search
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49 process in the Appendix.
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3 Coding Scheme
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6 We devised a coding scheme whereby each of the articles identified in the search process
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8 was coded on the basis of its underlying discipline (i.e., psychology/sociology) research
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10 approach (i.e., quantitative/qualitative), research design (e.g., case analysis, longitudinal study),
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nature of the sample, and level of analysis (see Table 1). The classifications of articles to
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15 discipline, research approach and level of analysis is depicted in Figure 2. We also coded the
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17 variables that pertained to leaders, the nature of the change and the organization studied, the
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change content, and the key relationships sought in each study. As could be expected, whereas
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22 the quantitative articles lent themselves more naturally to this form of analysis, it was more
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24 challenging to classify and code the qualitative studies. The effort to provide an overarching
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26 comparative and integrative perspective of the field required us to set aside some of the unique
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29 and rich attributes of each study. We provide in Table 2 a sample of the articles in our review,
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31 with information about the key leadership variables and information about the content and
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33 context of the changes studied.
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A Model of Leadership and Organizational Change
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38 Based on our analysis of the literature, we propose the model presented in Figure 1. In
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40 what follows, we describe the various model paths. We begin by describing the main effects
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pertaining to the impacts of leaders’ actions (Figure 1, paths 1-4) and the relationships between
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45 leaders’ attributes and actions (Figure 1, paths 8-9; and Table 3). We then describe the evidence
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47 about the mechanisms that mediate the main effects (Table 4), and the moderated and
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49 moderating effects of leaders’ actions (Figure 1, paths 6-7, and Table 5).
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3 Leader Actions and Outcomes
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6 As noted above, leader actions include senior leaders’ strategic choices and both senior
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8 leaders’ and middle managers’ typical behavioral style. Both sets of actions have been linked
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10 with outcomes of organizational change, although the effects of senior leaders’ strategic choices
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on change outcomes has received far less research attention than the effects of leaders’
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15 behaviors, which have been studied primarily among middle managers.
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17 Leaders’ strategic choices. To begin with, relative to research on leadership, it is harder
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to distinguish in strategy research between studies that pertain to organizational change and those
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22 that do not because the notion of change is embedded within the discussion of the purpose and
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24 effects of strategic choices. Furthermore, whereas the leadership literature clearly identifies the
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26 leader being studied, the strategy literature focuses on the organization as the decision-making
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29 entity, typically without explicitly referring to individual leaders, and only occasionally referring
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31 to the organization’s CEO. When discussing the effects of leaders’ strategic choices on change
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33 we therefore focus specifically the subset of studies that refer explicitly to both the notion of
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change and to the leader (i.e., CEO).
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38 This left us with a narrow set of studies in this category, which was the least covered set
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40 of relationships in our review (see paths 1 and 2 in Figure 1), despite the conceptual significance
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of such relationships. There were only four articles that explicitly focused on organizational
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45 change and referred to the strategic choices of leaders (i.e., CEOs), and no articles that consider
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47 the impact on change recipients. The rationale underlying this research is that through their
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49 decisions, senior leaders set organizational goals and procedures, which ultimately determine
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52 organizational outcomes (Hambrick, 2007).
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3 Leaders’ strategic choices and organizational outcomes. The studies in this section
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6 demonstrate the impact of leaders’ change-related strategic choices on the organization (Figure
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8 1, path 1). For example, in a qualitative study of newly appointed company presidents, strategic
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10 decisions such as an emphasis on communicating new agendas, implementing timetables and
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targets, and a focus on learning, were shown to increase the chances of successful
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15 implementation of strategic changes (Simons, 1994). In another study, strategic changes
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17 introduced by new CEOs of Fortune 500 firms were linked to turnover and a disruptive
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organizational climate in their organizations (Friedman & Saul, 1991). More recently, Herrmann
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22 and Nadkarni (2014) used theories of strategic change (Zajac & Kraatz, 1993) to hypothesize
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24 about leaders’ impact on the initiation and implementation of strategic change. Using survey data
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26 from 155 firms, they linked indexes of strategic change with executives’ reports of firms’
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29 performance, six months later.
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31 As noted above, in only a limited amount of research in this field, are the outcomes of
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33 strategic choices explicitly attributed to leaders. This is likely because of strategy researchers’
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focus on macro phenomena that extend beyond the individual leader. It is therefore useful to
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38 integrate insights from OB research with those of strategy to address this link between leaders’
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40 strategic choices and organizational outcomes in the context of organizational change. In a step
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toward bridging the divide between OB and strategy in this context, Waldman and Javidan
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45 (2009) propose a conceptual model about the process of mergers and acquisitions. They propose
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47 that leaders’ strategic choices, in the form of decisions about how to align organizations
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49 following a merger, will predict the mergers’ success, as a function of acquired firms’ pre-
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52 merger performance. They further trace back leaders’ strategic choices to leaders’ behavior and
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54 attributes.
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3 Leaders’ strategic choices and recipients’ reactions to change. All of the above
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6 relationships consider the direct effects of leaders’ choices on organizational outcomes.
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8 Interestingly, strategy researchers have yet to consider how strategic decisions impact recipients
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10 of the change (Figure 1, path 2), although such an impact is likely substantial. Learning about the
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impact of leaders’ strategic choices on change recipients is important not only for understanding
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15 how change influences the well-being and job attitudes of organization members, but also
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17 because of the influence change recipients’ responses have on the long-term success of the
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change and the organization (see, for example, Bartunek et al., 2006; Oreg et al., 2013).
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22 Leaders’ behaviors. More than fifty studies in our review demonstrated the effects of
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24 leaders’ behaviors on the effectiveness of change and on recipients’ reactions to the change
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26 (Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008; Oreg & Berson, 2011). The theories on which this
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29 research is based use concepts that focus on the change-related aspects of leaders’ behaviors,
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31 such as “issue-selling” (Dutton, Ashford, O'Neill, & Lawrence, 2001), transformational
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33 leadership (Bass, 1985), and, most explicitly, change-related leadership (Brockner, Konovsky,
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Cooper Schneider, & Folger, 1994). These behaviors differ from strategic choices in two
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38 respects. First, as noted above, whereas strategic choices are situation specific, leader behaviors
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40 refer to a relatively stable leadership style that transcends a specific context. Second, whereas
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strategic choices pertain to actions undertaken by senior leaders (e.g., CEOs), leader behaviors
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45 refer to leaders at all levels of the organization. As our review revealed, leaders’ behavior during
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47 change has been linked with both organizational outcomes and recipients’ responses.
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49 Leaders’ behavior and organizational outcomes. Early on, research has linked leaders’
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52 behaviors with change-related outcomes (Figure 1, path 3). For example, in a study of 108
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54 company presidents, changes in the form of executive turnover were more likely in companies
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3 led by presidents who perceived themselves as task-oriented versus person-oriented (Helmich,
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6 1975). Resembling task-oriented leadership, a results-oriented approach to leadership was
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8 expected to be more effective in implementing a modernization process in secondary schools in
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10 England (Currie, Lockett, & Suhomlinova, 2009). A mixed-method study of 197 schools,
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however, did not find support for the advantages of the results-oriented approach over one that is
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15 considered more traditional in the English school system. An analysis of the qualitative data
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17 suggested that the lack of support for the hypothesis resulted from the fact that the results-
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oriented approach was not actually implemented.
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22 In a quantitative study of 89 clinical, middle, and top managers from the UK National
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24 Health Service, both task and person behaviors were found necessary for the effective
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26 implementation of organizational change (Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache, & Alexander,
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29 2010). Person- (but not task-) oriented behaviors were important for communicating the need for
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31 change, whereas task- (but not person-) oriented behaviors were important for evaluating the
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33 implementation of the change.
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Other research considered other types of leader behaviors and their role in driving
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38 organizational change outcomes. For example, through interviews of vice presidents and
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40 department directors of a hospital, leaders’ efforts to promote change were demonstrated through
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a process of issue-selling, whereby leaders’ drew organization members’ attention to, and shaped
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45 their understanding of, key organizational events (Dutton et al., 2001). In another qualitative
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47 study, through interviews with leaders from 33 organizations undergoing change, “facilitating”
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49 and “engaging” leader behaviors were found to be most effective, and those that are “shaping”
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52 least effective (Higgs & Rowland, 2011). Effective behaviors included “ensuring that people are
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54 challenged to find their own answers” (i.e., facilitating, p. 312) and involving others in the
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3 process of change (i.e., engaging). In contrast, shaping behaviors, characterized as holding a
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6 leader-centric perspective, with a controlling and dominating approach, had a negative impact on
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8 the successful implementation of change.
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10 The benefits of involving others in the change implementation process are also
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demonstrated in research of distributed (e.g., Heck & Hallinger, 2010), shared (Bate, Khan, &
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15 Pye, 2000), and collective (Denis, Lamothe, & Langley, 2001) leadership, all of which highlight
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17 the shared nature of leadership. For example, in a study of 197 schools, positive changes in
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subjective and objectives measures of school performance were more likely among schools in
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22 which multiple members, rather than a single leader, were involved in implementing the change
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24 (Heck & Hallinger, 2010).
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26 Several of the studies we identified in our review focus on the concept of
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29 transformational leadership, linking it to the effective management of organizational change
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31 (Beatty & Lee, 1992; J. Z. Rubin & Brockner, 1975; Stoker, Grutterink, & Kolk, 2012; Waldman
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33 et al., 1998; Woodman, 1989). By its very nature, the focus of transformational leadership is on
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promoting a change among employees, which can then drive change in the organization at large
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38 (Bass, 1985). Accordingly, several of the studies we reviewed use this logic to hypothesize about
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40 the relationship between transformational leadership and change-related outcomes.
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Studies have used a variety of approaches for investigating these relationships. Whereas
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45 some of them use the typical survey measures of transformational leadership (J. Z. Rubin &
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47 Brockner, 1975; Stoker et al., 2012), others have adopted a qualitative approach, mostly through
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49 interviews, and some have used both (e.g., Kan & Parry, 2004), to uncovering the effects of a
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52 transformational style. Findings from this research include positive effects of transformational
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54 leadership on the implementation of change and its outcomes. For example, using data from 106
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3 manufacturing managers, transformational leadership was significantly correlated with unit
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6 performance, as assessed through leaders’ job performance ratings (as provided by their direct
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8 supervisors; R. S. Rubin et al., 2009). Similarly, in a study of 38 CEOs in a variety of for-profit
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10 and non-for-profit organizations implementing change, transformational leadership was linked
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with ratings of the change’s effectiveness (Stoker et al., 2012).
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15 Further supporting this link, there have also been qualitative studies of transformational
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17 leadership in the context of change (Beatty & Lee, 1992; Waldman et al., 1998). These include
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in-depth descriptions of leaders’ behaviors and provide insight into the separate effects of the
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22 various aspects of transformational leadership. In one study, the concepts of transactional and
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24 transformational leadership guided the investigation of the implementation of quality
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26 improvement programs in three organizations (Waldman et al., 1998). Using observations and
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29 interviews with employees, junior managers, and senior managers from the three organizations,
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31 the authors distinguish among the distinct effects of transactional and transformational
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33 leadership. Whereas both transactional and transformational leadership were effective in the
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promotion of organizational change, only transformational leadership determined whether
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38 quality improvement was sought to begin with, and transactional leadership contributed to
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40 activities that ensured the operational quality of the improvement programs. Similarly, using a
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different conceptualization of transformational leadership, researchers interviewed managers and
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45 employees in aerospace firms during the introduction of new technology and linked descriptions
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47 of specific leadership behaviors with effective change management (Beatty & Lee, 1992).
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49 More recently, some research focused on a component of transformational leadership that
50
51
52 more directly captures change-oriented behaviors (Sirén, Patel, & Wincent, 2016). As
53
54 hypothesized, change-related leadership was positively associated with firms’ financial
55
56
57
58
59
60
14
1
2
3 performance. By drawing attention to specific leadership behaviors, the studies above contribute
4
5
6 to the differentiation among the various aspects of transformational leadership, linking each to a
7
8 different aspect of the organizational change process, thus addressing some of the concerns
9
10 raised about the meaningfulness of and validity of the transformational leadership concept (van
11
12
13
Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).
14
15 In both the quantitative and qualitative studies above, vision is highlighted as one of the
16
17 key mechanisms through which transformational leaders successfully implement change.
18
19
Countering the one-sided, positive, view of vision, one study demonstrated that vision can be
20
21
22 both enabling and disabling for change (Landau, Drori, & Porras, 2006). Using data from a
23
24 participant observation and 91 interviews with employees and managers at multiple levels of the
25
26 organizational hierarchy, leaders’ vision was beneficial for the implementation of change as long
27
28
29 as it was up-to-date and consistent with the realities of the changing environment.
30
31 A few of the studies linking leadership behaviors to change and organizational outcomes
32
33 propose that the mechanism through which leaders drive change involves organization members’
34
35
36
understandings and reactions to the change. This literature uses concepts such as schemas
37
38 (Bartunek, 1984), sensemaking (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991), and interpretation systems (Daft &
39
40 Weick, 1984), to explain how leaders bring about change in their followers and organizations.
41
42
For example, based on interviews with company members and analyses of CEOs’ annual reports
43
44
45 letters, the effects of CEOs on changes in an organization’s identity were achieved through the
46
47 process of shaping organization members’ “logics” about the organization (Bayle-Cordier,
48
49 Mirvis, & Moingeon, 2015). In another study, leaders’ effects on the nature of an organizational
50
51
52 restructuring in a church order was established through leaders’ influence on organization
53
54 members’ interpretations of the change, through the use of “interpretive schemas” (Bartunek,
55
56
57
58
59
60
15
1
2
3 1984). This process creates a shared understanding of the change and its context, which in turn
4
5
6 shapes organization members’ responses to change and the evolution of the change.
7
8 Whereas the studies described above address processes of organizational sensegiving that
9
10 shape organization members’ cognitions about the change, other research addressed the role of
11
12
13
members’ emotional responses to change. In one study, leaders’ actions contributed to the
14
15 effective transition following being acquired, and to the achievement of expected and unexpected
16
17 business value, by reducing employees’ negative emotions about the change (Graebner, 2004).
18
19
This was achieved by determining the pace of change (i.e., “mobilizing actions”) and by
20
21
22 addressing employees’ concerns (i.e., “mitigating actions”). These latter studies therefore
23
24 highlight the well-established understanding that the effective implementation of change requires
25
26 careful attention and consideration of the change recipients (e.g., Bartunek et al., 2006).
27
28
29 Accordingly, the largest group of studies we came across in our review (see Figure 2) involves
30
31 research on change recipients’ responses and the role of leaders’ behaviors in shaping them.
32
33 Leaders’ behavior and recipients’ responses to change. Of the links in our model, the
34
35
36
relationship between leaders’ behaviors and change recipients’ responses (Figure 1, path 4) is the
37
38 most frequently studied. Much of this research is based on the theoretical argument that leaders
39
40 promote change by engaging followers and shaping their emotional and attitudinal responses
41
42
(e.g., Bartunek, Krim, Necochea, & Humphries, 1999; Shamir et al., 1993). Some of the research
43
44
45 refers to the mechanisms through which this process of engagement and shaping takes place,
46
47 such as the organizational climate (Schneider & Reichers, 1983) and the personal relationship
48
49 between leaders and followers (Graen, 2004). Most of the studies have been quantitative, with a
50
51
52 large portion focusing specifically on transformational leadership. Moreover, the majority of
53
54 these studies focus on unit leaders, rather than leaders of organizations.
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56
57
58
59
60
16
1
2
3 We separate our discussion of studies to those predicting emotions, change attitudes, and
4
5
6 behavioral consequences and job attitudes (Oreg, 2006; Piderit, 2000).
7
8 Effects on emotions. One of the primary means through which leaders impact followers is
9
10 by influencing their emotions (Huy, 2002; Shamir et al., 1993), through processes of contagion
11
12
13
(Sy, Côté, & Saavedra, 2005) or by influencing followers’ self-concept (Shamir et al., 1993).
14
15 Correspondingly, a central aspect of how change recipients respond to change involves their
16
17 affective experiences and expressions (Oreg, Bartunek, Lee, & Do, 2018). Both transformational
18
19
and authentic leadership have been linked with greater likelihood of experiencing positive
20
21
22 emotions, and lower likelihood of experiencing negative ones in the context of an organizational
23
24 change (Agote, Aramburu, & Lines, 2016; Seo et al., 2012). Both authentic and transformational
25
26 leadership elicit trust among subordinates, which alleviates negative emotions such as anxiety
27
28
29 and threat, and enhance positive ones, such as hope and enthusiasm. Authentic leadership is said
30
31 to achieve this through the exhibition of integrity and a involving subordinates in the decision-
32
33 making process (Agote et al., 2016). Similarly, conceptualizations of transformational leadership
34
35
36
emphasize the relational aspects of leadership, through which leaders influence followers (e.g.,
37
38 Howell & Shamir, 2005).
39
40 Tests of these conceptual mechanisms, however, are limited in both of the above studies
41
42
because of how leadership was measured. In the study of authentic leadership (Agote et al.,
43
44
45 2016) the authors focused on perceptions of leadership behaviors at the individual-level, rather
46
47 than aggregating to the leader level, thus providing only limited insights about the impact of
48
49 authentic leaders’ actual behaviors. In the study of transformational leadership (Seo et al., 2012),
50
51
52 like in many quantitative assessments of leaders’ effects, the conceptual mechanisms through
53
54 which leadership was said to influence followers’ emotions was not directly assessed.
55
56
57
58
59
60
17
1
2
3 Findings of qualitative research that addressed similar relationships provide additional
4
5
6 insights. For example, in a study of a large-service organization, interviews with hundreds of
7
8 mid-level managers and executives uncovered the emphasis that mid-level managers’ place on
9
10 subordinates’ emotional needs and concerns, and on encouraging subordinates to express a wider
11
12
13
range of emotions (Huy, 2002). This, in turn, reduced change recipients’ anxieties and fears
14
15 about the change. In another study, top managers’ actions were linked with their subordinates’
16
17 (i.e., middle managers’) judgements and emotional responses (Huy, Corley, & Kraatz, 2014).
18
19
Actions, such as involving middle managers in defining the content of the change, were
20
21
22 associated with positive emotional reactions, and actions such failing to follow through on
23
24 promises were associated with negative emotions, such as anxiety.
25
26 Effects on change attitudes. Another central variable in the context of organizational
27
28
29 change involves recipients’ attitudes toward change (Rafferty et al., 2013). As discussed in
30
31 reviews of the change-reactions literature, several terms have been used for conceptualizing and
32
33 measuring these attitudes, including change commitment, resistance to change, support for
34
35
36
change, and cynicism toward change. Although each of the terms highlights a specific aspect of
37
38 the attitude toward change, there appears to be significant overlap, both in definition and
39
40 measurement (see further discussion of this point below).
41
42
The largest body of research linking leader behaviors to change attitudes focused on
43
44
45 commitment to change or to the organization in the context of change. These studies vary in the
46
47 leadership style of focus and in the mediating and moderating mechanisms considered. Overall,
48
49 however, transformational (Herold, Fedor, & Caldwell, 2007; Hill, Seo, Kang, & Taylor, 2012;
50
51
52 Shin, Taylor, & Seo, 2012; Zhao, Taylor, Lee, & Lam, 2016), ethical (Cotton, Stevenson, &
53
54 Bartunek, 2017), LMX (Lee, Scandura, & Sharif, 2014; Sackmann, Eggenhofer-Rehart, & Friesl,
55
56
57
58
59
60
18
1
2
3 2009), change-related (Herold et al., 2007; Nohe, Michaelis, Menges, Zhang, & Sonntag, 2013),
4
5
6 and communication (Helpap, 2016; Sonenshein & Dholakia, 2012) behaviors are positively
7
8 linked with followers’ reports of their commitment to the change or to the changing organization.
9
10 Together, these studies demonstrate the impact that leaders can have on followers’
11
12
13
commitment to change. By examining different leadership styles, however, each of these studies
14
15 highlights a different mechanism through which leaders achieve this effect. For example,
16
17 whereas change-related leadership increases followers’ commitment to change by emphasizing
18
19
the value of change (e.g., Herold et al., 2008), LMX achieves this effect by emphasizing the
20
21
22 mutual commitment between leader and follower (Lee et al., 2014; van Dam, Oreg, & Schyns,
23
24 2008), and change communication by reducing the ambiguity of change and increasing
25
26 followers’ involvement in the change process (Helpap, 2016). As we review below, some of the
27
28
29 research in this field explicitly tested the roles of such mediating mechanisms.
30
31 A second group of studies focused on predicting recipients’ support for or openness to
32
33 change, versus resistance to it. In Waldman and Javidan’s (2009) conceptual model of leadership
34
35
36
in the context of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), both leaders’ strategic choices and behaviors,
37
38 such as emphasizing vision communication and the selective sharing of information, are said to
39
40 ultimately shape organization members’ attitudes toward the M&A, decreasing members’
41
42
resistance. A few of the studies considered commitment to change as a mediator of the
43
44
45 relationship between leadership and support or resistance to change (Helpap, 2016; Zhao et al.,
46
47 2016). In other studies, transformational (Nemanich & Keller, 2007; Oreg & Berson, 2011),
48
49 LMX (Furst & Cable, 2008; van Dam et al., 2008), and supportive (S. L. Jones & Van de Ven,
50
51
52 2016) leadership were similarly linked with recipients’ greater support for, and lesser resistance
53
54 to, change. Similarly, in a study of 108 senior organizational leaders, charismatic leadership was
55
56
57
58
59
60
19
1
2
3 linked with followers’ openness to an organizational change, which was in turn associated with
4
5
6 perceptions of these leaders’ effectiveness (Groves, 2005). The evidence seems to be consistent
7
8 across studies in which leadership is assessed on the basis of subordinates’ individual-level
9
10 perceptions (e.g., Jones & Van de Ven, 2016; Nemanich & Keller, 2007), and those in which it
11
12
13
was aggregated to the leader level (e.g., Groves, 2005; Oreg & Berson, 2011).
14
15 The third group of studies on leadership and change attitudes focused on the concept of
16
17 cynicism toward change, defined as “an attitude consisting of the futility of change along with a
18
19
loss of faith in those who are responsible for the changes” (Bommer, Rich, & Rubin, 2005, p.
20
21
22 736). These studies demonstrate the negative effect of transformational leadership on change
23
24 recipients’ cynicism toward organizational change (Bommer et al., 2005; DeCelles, Tesluk, &
25
26 Taxman, 2013; R. S. Rubin et al., 2009; Wu, Neubert, & Yi, 2007). In one of these studies,
27
28
29 cynicism toward change was assessed both at the individual and organizational levels, thus
30
31 addressing not only individuals’ attitudes but also organizational climates, which were further
32
33 shown to predict recipients’ organizational commitment (DeCelles et al., 2013).
34
35
36
Alongside the value of considering different types of attitudes toward change (e.g.,
37
38 cynicism, resistance, commitment) and the overarching finding that leaders have a significant
39
40 impact on followers’ attitude toward change, the lack of integration across studies and
41
42
insufficient examination of the particular content that is shared versus unique across these
43
44
45 constructs, leads to some redundancy in the research conducted on the one hand, and makes it
46
47 difficult to compare and contrast results on the other. Similar criticisms can be given to the use of
48
49 the leadership behaviors being investigated, which also present a significant overlap, both in
50
51
52 conceptualizations and measurement. We propose below directions for further investigation to
53
54 address this and other limitation of extant research.
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56
57
58
59
60
20
1
2
3 Effects on behavioral consequences and job attitudes. A few of the studies demonstrated
4
5
6 effects of leaders’ behaviors on outcomes such as job performance or job attitudes (e.g., Carter,
7
8 Armenakis, Feild, & Mossholder, 2012; S. L. Jones & Van de Ven, 2016; Nohe & Michaelis,
9
10 2016). These studies build on the more general, and well-established, link between leadership
11
12
13
and job outcomes (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). For example, in one study, team leaders’ charisma
14
15 was positively associated with teams’ OCB (Nohe & Michaelis, 2016). In a qualitative analysis
16
17 of a US and a Japanese firm, the effectiveness of leaders’ behavioral approaches (e.g.,
18
19
emphasizing goals, emphasizing rewards) in driving change was contingent on followers’ work
20
21
22 motives (Välikangas & Okumura, 1997). Specifically, a high congruence between leaders’
23
24 approach and followers’ motives, as in when both the leader and follower value the utility of
25
26 goals, was associated with greater likelihood of shifting followers’ organizational behavior in
27
28
29 line with the organizational change.
30
31 In some of the studies, change attitudes mediated the effects of leadership on
32
33 performance (e.g., Carter et al., 2012; S. L. Jones & Van de Ven, 2016; Nohe et al., 2013). For
34
35
36
example, in Nohe et al.’s (2013) study, recipients’ commitment to change mediated the effects of
37
38 leaders’ change-promoting behaviors (which were also mediated through follower’s perceptions
39
40 of the leader’s charisma) on their teams’ performance following the change. In other studies,
41
42
change attitudes mediated the effects of leadership on job attitudes such as organizational
43
44
45 commitment (DeCelles et al., 2013; M. A. Jones, Reynolds, Weun, & Beatty, 2003). Yet other
46
47 research linked ethical (Sharif & Scandura, 2014) and transformational (Carter et al., 2012)
48
49 leadership with organization members’ performance during change.
50
51
52 Interestingly, although charismatic leadership is typically linked with positive responses
53
54 to change (e.g., Groves, 2005), in a qualitative study, based on two case studies of hospital
55
56
57
58
59
60
21
1
2
3 departments undergoing change, department managers’ charismatic leadership (using Weber’s
4
5
6 1968/1922 conceptualization and assessed through interviews with managers’ subordinates) was
7
8 actually linked with increases in employees' behavioral resistance to the externally imposed
9
10 changes (Levay, 2010). The mechanisms through which these managers influenced change
11
12
13
resistors included their extraordinary and exceptional behavior and the articulation of a clear
14
15 mission. Yet the fact that the change was initiated from outside their departments and that they
16
17 identified with their subordinates, who resisted the change early on, drove them to use their
18
19
influence toward the increase rather than alleviation of their subordinates’ resistance. Clearly,
20
21
22 whether change leaders are also the initiators of the change, or merely its implementers, is a key
23
24 factor that determines both the process and outcomes of the change. As we discuss below,
25
26 however, studies of leadership and change give little attention to this distinction.
27
28
29 Overall, despite the importance of performance as an outcome, and the strong emphasis
30
31 in leadership research on the importance of leaders’ behaviors for performance, we remain with
32
33 very rudimentary evidence for these links in the context of organizational change. Although the
34
35
36
success or failure of an organization following change is to a great degree attributed to its leader,
37
38 much more research that explicitly links leaders’ behavior with hard independent performance
39
40 outcomes over time is necessary to empirically demonstrate this.
41
42
Effects on change recipients’ sensemaking. As described in the previous section, a
43
44
45 subfield that explicitly addresses leaders’ behavior in managing change discusses leaders’ role in
46
47 shaping the meanings that change recipients form about change (i.e., sensemaking) through a
48
49 process of sensegiving (e.g., Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991). All of the studies in this subfield have
50
51
52 been qualitative, focusing on the cognitive processes through which organization members
53
54 interpret and respond to change. Studies of leaders’ sensegiving and organizational change
55
56
57
58
59
60
22
1
2
3 outcomes are based on the understanding that leaders influence change recipients’ sensemaking.
4
5
6 The underlying rationale is that a prerequisite to dealing with change is that organization
7
8 members need to first understand the meanings of the change and its ramifications for the
9
10 organization, through a process of sensemaking (e.g., Balogun, Bartunek, & Do, 2015; Gioia &
11
12
13
Thomas, 1996). As noted, one of the key roles that leaders have in managing change is in
14
15 developing their own change interpretations (Isabella, 1990) and schemas (e.g., Balogun &
16
17 Johnson, 2004) and in turn shaping change recipients’ understandings of the change “toward a
18
19
preferred redefinition of organizational reality (Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991, p. 442). In an
20
21
22 ethnographic study of a strategic change at a large public university, organization members’
23
24 sensemaking processes were tied to a series of the university president’s actions, including
25
26 announcing the change, making personnel changes, and other key decisions that were
27
28
29 communicated to important stakeholders. The authors describe these actions as aimed at
30
31 providing “a viable interpretation of a new reality and to influence stakeholders and constituents
32
33 to adopt it as their own” (p. 443).
34
35
36
In another study, open-ended survey questions, interviews and company documents from
37
38 Fortune 500 retail stores were used to uncover the sensegiving and sensemaking processes in
39
40 stores undergoing change (Sonenshein, 2010). Store employees’ sensemaking was manifested in
41
42
change acceptance or resistance, and was shaped by store managers’ sensegiving actions. These
43
44
45 sensegiving actions took on the form of narratives about the change, such as framing the degree
46
47 of significance that employees should attribute to the change. Furthermore, managers were said
48
49 to deliberately provide ambiguous narratives to enable a sense of agreement between managers
50
51
52 and employees despite the adoption of multiple, possibly diverging, interpretations of the
53
54 change. This sense of agreement makes it easier for employees to accept change.
55
56
57
58
59
60
23
1
2
3 Closely related to the notion of sensegiving, some research highlight leaders’ role in
4
5
6 prompting cognitive shifts, by communicating one’s understanding and reframing it as a means
7
8 of engaging change constituents (Ospina & Foldy, 2009). Similarly, in one of the studies
9
10 described above, CEOs’ influence on the organizational identity was achieved through the logics
11
12
13
they emphasized for shaping organization members’ understanding of the change (Bayle-Cordier
14
15 et al., 2015). In yet other research, leaders’ and followers’ formation of meanings during change
16
17 result from a negotiation process among organization members (Thomas, Sargent, & Hardy,
18
19
2011). One finding from this research is that senior and middle managers tend to use distinct
20
21
22 communication patterns in the negotiation process. The researchers also identified two possible
23
24 dynamics that unfold when change meanings are negotiated. First, communications by senior
25
26 managers who exhibit behaviors such as inviting, proposing and clarifying are involved in a
27
28
29 generative dialogue that results in innovative and synergistic change. In contrast, when senior
30
31 managers’ communication involves dismissing, reiterating and invoking hierarchy, the dialogue
32
33 tends to be degenerative, resulting in the imposition of change, which reproduces existing
34
35
36
knowledge.
37
38 The Mediated Effects of Leaders’ Actions
39
40 When considering the processes through which leaders’ actions shape change outcomes,
41
42
we identify from our review two main mediating paths: One, which follows directly from the
43
44
45 previous section, involves the role of the change process in mediating the effects of leaders’
46
47 behaviors on recipients’ responses to change (change process as a mediator of paths 1-4 in
48
49 Figure 1; see also Table 4). The second involves the role that recipients’ responses have in
50
51
52 mediating the effects of both leaders’ strategic choices and behaviors on the organization-level
53
54 outcomes (paths 2 and 4 linked with path 5 in Figure 1; see also Table 4).
55
56
57
58
59
60
24
1
2
3 The mediating role of the change process. A variety of conceptual arguments have
4
5
6 been made for establishing the role of the change process in mediating the relationships between
7
8 leadership behavior and responses to change. As noted above, the change process pertains to the
9
10 manner in which a given change was managed (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999; Oreg et al., 2011).
11
12
13
Several studies demonstrated that factors such as effective communication (i.e., involving change
14
15 recipients in the change process) mediated the effects of leadership on recipients’ response to
16
17 change (Hill et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2014; van Dam et al., 2008) and on the success of the change
18
19
(Battilana et al., 2010). In other studies, the effects of leadership were mediated by eliciting trust
20
21
22 (Agote et al., 2016; Nohe & Michaelis, 2016; Sackmann et al., 2009), fairness (Wu et al., 2007),
23
24 empowerment (DeCelles et al., 2013) or a climate that supports creative thinking and emphasizes
25
26 goal clarity (Nemanich & Keller, 2007). Each of the mediating variables in these studies pertains
27
28
29 to the manner in which the change is implemented.
30
31 Some research addressed interrelationships among components of the change process,
32
33 such as the interplay of process justice and trust over time (Kaltiainen, Lipponen, & Holtz,
34
35
36
2017), or the impact of leaders’ communication transparency on the trust in the leader in the
37
38 context of change (Norman, Avolio, & Luthans, 2010). In other research, perceptions of leaders’
39
40 legitimacy mediated the effects of justice perceptions on change recipients’ acceptance of an
41
42
organizational merger (Tyler & De Cremer, 2005). Overall, variables within the change process
43
44
45 are more specific to the change than leaders’ behavior or style, and all have to do with the
46
47 manner and atmosphere with which the change is implemented. The leadership literature
48
49 correspondingly highlight the value of such process variables for better understanding the effects
50
51
52 of leadership on outcomes (Berson, Da'as, & Waldman, 2015; Waldman, Ramirez, House, &
53
54 Puranam, 2001).
55
56
57
58
59
60
25
1
2
3 Although the change process has been considered mostly in research that links leaders’
4
5
6 behaviors with recipients’ responses, one could similarly consider the role of change process in
7
8 mediating the effects of leaders’ behavior on change and organization outcomes. Moreover, the
9
10 change process may also mediate the effects of leaders’ strategic choices on both recipients’
11
12
13
responses and organizational outcomes. For example, it is clear that leaders’ strategic choices
14
15 have their effects on the organization and its members through numerous mechanisms and
16
17 processes. Yet to date, these mechanisms have yet to be studied explicitly. These include not
18
19
only factors within the change process (e.g., communication, participation), but also aspects of
20
21
22 leader behaviors and sensegiving processes.
23
24 The mediating role of the change recipients’ responses. As mentioned above, the
25
26 relationship between leaders’ behaviors, such as sensegiving, and organizational outcomes are
27
28
29 achieved through the impact that leaders have on change recipients (e.g., Bayle-Cordier et al.,
30
31 2015). Recipient responses similarly mediate the effect of other leader behaviors on change and
32
33 organizational outcomes. In other words, the impact on organization-level outcomes (e.g.,
34
35
36
performance) runs through the aggregation of employees’ responses to change (e.g., the
37
38 organizational change-related climate; see Figure 1, path 5). In several of the studies reviewed
39
40 above, leaders’ influence on change is explained through leaders’ impact on change recipients’
41
42
change schemas, logics or sensemaking (e.g., Bartunek, 1984; Bayle-Cordier et al., 2015; Huy,
43
44
45 2002; Huy et al., 2014). Similarly, in other research, the impact of leaders’ actions on the success
46
47 of the change was explained through their influence on recipients’ emotions (Graebner, 2004).
48
49 In another study, employees’ attitudinal resistance to change mediated the relationship
50
51
52 between supportive leadership and perceived organizational effectiveness (S. L. Jones & Van de
53
54 Ven, 2016). All of the variables in this study, however, were assessed at the individual level. In
55
56
57
58
59
60
26
1
2
3 DeCelles et al.’s (2013) study of cynicism toward change, an organizational cynicism climate,
4
5
6 comprising an aggregation of employees’ individual-level cynicism toward change, mediated the
7
8 effects transformational leadership on organizational insubordination. Similarly, in Groves’
9
10 (2005) study, an aggregate of change recipients’ openness to change significantly mediated the
11
12
13
relationship between leaders’ charisma ratings and leaders’ effectiveness. In yet another study,
14
15 team leaders’ change-promoting behavior was linked with team performance through an
16
17 aggregation (using latent group means) of change recipients’ commitment to change (Nohe et al.,
18
19
2013).
20
21
22 Recipients’ responses to change comprise several distinct components (e.g., emotions,
23
24 attitudes, behaviors). In several of the studies we reviewed, a given component of recipients’
25
26 responses mediated the effects of leaders’ behaviors on other components of recipients’
27
28
29 responses (Helpap, 2016; Seo et al., 2012; Zhao et al., 2016). Commitment to change, for
30
31 example, mediated the effects of leaders’ behaviors and change recipients’ behavioral response
32
33 to change (e.g., resistance, change implementation behaviors; Helpap, 2016; Sonenshein &
34
35
36
Dholakia, 2012; Zhao et al., 2016). In other research, recipients’ affective response to the change
37
38 mediated the effect of leaders’ behavior on recipients’ commitment to change (Seo et al., 2012).
39
40 Comparable with the role that recipients’ responses have in mediating the effects of
41
42
leaders’ behaviors, recipients’ responses are also likely to mediate the effects of leaders’ strategic
43
44
45 choices. Clearly, leaders’ strategic choices often directly concern employees and their
46
47 experiences. Given, however, the sharp divide that exists between research of strategic choices
48
49 and research of individual-level outcomes, such a possibility has yet to be considered, neither
50
51
52 conceptually nor empirically. We elaborate on this issue in our discussion.
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
27
1
2
3 Moderating Effects of Leaders’ Behaviors and Change Context
4
5
6 We distinguish between two types of moderating effects that have been studied:
7
8 moderating effects of leader behaviors on relationships between follower attributes and
9
10 followers’ reactions to change, and moderating effects of the organizational context on the
11
12
13
effects of leader behaviors.
14
15 The moderating effect of leaders’ behaviors. In addition to the role that leaders’
16
17 behaviors have in shaping recipient and organizational outcomes, a few studies demonstrated
18
19
how these behaviors moderate other effects on responses to change (Figure 1, path 6; see also
20
21
22 Table 5). In one set of studies, leaders’ fair treatment of followers (i.e., supervisory justice)
23
24 moderated the effects of the organizational justice on recipients’ experience of threat during
25
26 change (Koivisto, Lipponen, & Platow, 2013). In another study, of a transformational change
27
28
29 involving an organizational restructuring and job redesign, employees’ perceptions of their
30
31 leaders’ vision moderated the relationships between employees’ personal attributes and change-
32
33 related behaviors (Griffin, Parker, & Mason, 2010). By providing situational cues, leaders’
34
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36
vision is said to enhance the relationships between employees’ personal characteristics and
37
38 manner of responding to organizational change. Specifically, the relationships between openness
39
40 to work-role change and adaptivity, and between role-breadth self-efficacy and proactivity, were
41
42
positive and significant only when employees perceived their leader has having a strong vision
43
44
45 for the organization.
46
47 Two other studies tested the role that leaders’ behaviors can have in ameliorating their
48
49 subordinates’ dispositional inclination to resist changes (Hon, Bloom, & Crant, 2014; Oreg &
50
51
52 Berson, 2011). In one study, transformational leadership moderated the effect of dispositional
53
54 resistance to change on employees’ intentions to resist a large-scale organizational reform, such
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60
28
1
2
3 that the relationship was weaker among subordinates of transformational leaders (Oreg &
4
5
6 Berson, 2011). Similarly, empowering leadership, which involves communicating a compelling
7
8 vision and coaching subordinates, moderated the relationship between dispositional resistance to
9
10 change and employees’ creative performance, such that the relationship was weaker under
11
12
13
empowering leaders (Hon et al., 2014). Thus, although only few studies considered the
14
15 moderating effects of leaders’ behaviors in the context of change, at least some research suggests
16
17 that beyond their main effects on employee reactions to change, leadership behavior may also
18
19
enhance or attenuate the effects of followers’ orientations or of the organizational context (e.g.,
20
21
22 organizational justice) on responses to organizational change.
23
24 The moderating role of context on leader effects. As was established above, leaders’
25
26 actions, through various mediated routes, influence change and its outcomes. A number of the
27
28
29 studies we reviewed tested differences in leaders’ influence across contexts (Figure 1, path 7; see
30
31 Table 5, e.g., Allmendinger & Hackman, 1996; Groves, 2005; Välikangas & Okumura, 1997;
32
33 Waldman et al., 1998). In a few studies, the impact of leadership behavior on recipients’
34
35
36
responses to change varied across cultural settings (e.g. Lee et al., 2014; Välikangas & Okumura,
37
38 1997). For example, to test the relationship between LMX and organization members’
39
40 commitment to change, Lee et al. (2014) used data from US and Korean companies and found
41
42
that the effects were significantly stronger in the US. In Välikangas and Okumura’s (1997) study,
43
44
45 the patterns of relationships among leaders’ behavioral approach, follower motives, and the
46
47 evolution of change varied across the US and Japanese companies investigated. National culture
48
49 thus seems to play an important role, although the evidence for this is very limited. Additional
50
51
52 cross-cultural research should consider a larger variety of cultures and additional cultural
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54
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60
29
1
2
3 dimensions, preferably those that more directly pertain to the notion of change (e.g., uncertainty
4
5
6 avoidance, Hofstede, 2001).
7
8 Other studies considered aspects related to the organizational culture. For example, in
9
10 Waldman et al.’s (1998) qualitative study of changes in different types of organizations, the
11
12
13
authors point to different leadership effects in a police organization versus a hospital, and
14
15 suggest that these differences may result from differences in the organizations’ cultures. In Wu et
16
17 al.’s (2007) study, perceptions of cohesion in the organization moderated the effects of
18
19
transformational leadership on recipients’ cynicism toward change. In other studies, followers’
20
21
22 values served as the moderating context of leaders’ behaviors (Helpap, 2016; Lee et al., 2014). In
23
24 one of these studies, followers’ power distance orientation moderated the effects of leaders’
25
26 change communication strategy such that a participatory change communication style yielded
27
28
29 greater change commitment than a programmatic communication style, in particular among
30
31 followers’ with lower power distance orientations (Helpap, 2016). Similarly, beyond the
32
33 moderating effect of country (US vs. Korea), US followers’ power distance values moderated the
34
35
36
effects of LMX on followers’ affective commitment to the organizational change such that the
37
38 effect was stronger among followers with lower power distance values (Lee et al., 2014). Likely
39
40 because of the methodological difficulties of assessing and comparing multiple cultures,
41
42
however, the rigor of the evidence for the role of culture in moderating the effects of leaders on
43
44
45 change is limited.
46
47 In a few studies, the history of the organization and of its leadership explained
48
49 differences in the effects of the organization’s current leadership. In a qualitative historical study
50
51
52 of Eastern European symphony orchestras following the fall of the socialist regime in 1990, the
53
54 effectiveness of orchestra leaders’ actions for the adaptation of the orchestra depended on the
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30
1
2
3 orchestra’s prior strength as an organization (Allmendinger & Hackman, 1996). In Zhao et al.’s
4
5
6 (2016) study of leader succession, former leaders’ transformational leadership served as a
7
8 context for new leaders’ behaviors, forming a contrast effect. Specifically, former leaders’
9
10 transformational leadership moderated the effects of new leaders’ transformational leadership on
11
12
13
resistance to change, such that the relationship was negative only when the former leader was
14
15 low on transformational leadership.
16
17 Other moderators were the magnitude (Groves, 2005; Nohe & Michaelis, 2016),
18
19
frequency (Carter et al., 2012), or duration (S. L. Jones & Van de Ven, 2016) of change. In two
20
21
22 studies about change magnitude, the effects of charismatic leadership on outcomes (i.e., trust in
23
24 the leader, or leadership effectiveness) were hypothesized to be stronger under changes of a
25
26 greater magnitude, given the particular relevance of charismatic leadership in times of turbulence
27
28
29 and ambiguity (Pawar & Eastman, 1997). The hypothesis was only supported in Nohe and
30
31 Michaelis’ (2016) study. In Carter et al.’s (2012) study, the quality of the relationship between
32
33 leaders and followers (LMX) contributed to followers’ task performance and OCB, especially in
34
35
36
work teams in which changes are frequently introduced. Finally, in a longitudinal study, in which
37
38 the moderator was time, the effects of supportive leadership perceptions in reducing resistance to
39
40 change grew stronger over the duration of the change (S. L. Jones & Van de Ven, 2016).
41
42
These moderated effects were demonstrated in predictions of outcomes at both individual
43
44
45 and organizational levels, but only with respect to the impact of leader behaviors. None of the
46
47 studies we reviewed tested moderation for the effects of leaders’ strategic choices. This is likely
48
49 a function of the limited amount of research on strategic choices that explicitly considers the role
50
51
52 of leaders, as well as the divide between the literatures on strategic choices and recipients’
53
54 responses to change. Furthermore, as can be seen in Table 5, very little research has looked into
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60
31
1
2
3 the moderators of leaders’ effects on change. Researchers should consider both additional factors
4
5
6 that moderate leaders’ effects (e.g., the duration of the relationship between leaders and
7
8 followers, the hierarchical level of the leader) and additional paths of moderation (e.g., of
9
10 leaders’ strategic choices).
11
12
13
Leader Attributes and Outcomes
14
15 Beyond the relationships established between the two leader actions (i.e., strategic actions
16
17 and behaviors/sensegiving) and outcomes, a mostly separate line of research focused on leaders’
18
19
attributes, rather than actions (the indirect effects that follow paths 8 and 9 in Figure 1 on change
20
21
22 outcomes). The main argument in these studies is that leaders’ characteristics come to be
23
24 reflected in attributes of the organization and in followers’ attitudes (for a review see Oreg &
25
26 Berson, 2018), including those related to organizational change. We found a couple of studies in
27
28
29 which the outcome was at the organizational level and one in which the focus was on predicting
30
31 change recipients’ responses to the change. With respect to predictions of organizational
32
33 outcomes, we found one qualitative and one quantitative study, both of which linked attributes
34
35
36
related to leaders’ mindset with indexes of organizational post-change performance (Bowen &
37
38 Inkpen, 2009; Ndofor, Priem, Rathburn, & Dhir, 2009). In the qualitative study, through
39
40 interviews with senior managers at Johnson & Johnson, Brazil, the researchers concluded that
41
42
managers’ psychological (e.g., self-confidence and risk-taking), social (e.g., empathy and
43
44
45 extensive external networks), and intellectual (e.g., cognitive complexity) capital contributed to
46
47 managers’ mindsets, which were responsible for the company’s positive change in financial
48
49 performance (Bowen & Inkpen, 2009). Similar conclusions were reached in a quantitative study
50
51
52 with data from the US National Football League (Ndofor et al., 2009), in which head coaches’
53
54 mindset was conceptualized on the basis of the training and apprenticeship background of each
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57
58
59
60
32
1
2
3 head coach (termed “cognitive community”). Changes in new coaches’ cognitive community
4
5
6 were related to the degree to which coaches implemented changes on the field. Coaches with
7
8 training and apprenticeship background that differed from their current team were more likely to
9
10 implement more changes.
11
12
13
In one study, leaders’ personal attributes were linked with change recipients’ responses to
14
15 the organizational changes (Oreg & Berson, 2011). Specifically, school leaders’ (i.e., principals’)
16
17 dispositional resistance to change was positively, and openness to change values were
18
19
negatively, related to change recipients’ (i.e., teachers’) intentions to resist a large-scale
20
21
22 organizational reform in the school system. The rationale presented for this relationship was that
23
24 leaders who are generally inclined to shy away from change and who relatively devalue
25
26 autonomy and stimulation, make decisions that contribute to a more conservative organizational
27
28
29 culture, which in turn elicits change recipients’ resistance organizational change. Yet neither this
30
31 nor other underlying mechanisms that could explain the effects of leaders’ attributes have been
32
33 tested empirically. Thus although it may not be surprising that leaders’ attributes are reflected in
34
35
36
their followers’ responses to change and, more broadly, in organizational change-related
37
38 outcomes, the mechanisms that mediate these effects have rarely been addressed. Findings about
39
40 relationships between leaders’ attributes and leaders’ actions in the context of change offer at
41
42
least preliminary evidence for the mediating role that leaders’ actions.
43
44
45 Leader Attributes and Leaders’ Actions
46
47 Outside the realm of organizational change, leader attributes have been linked with both
48
49 leaders’ strategic choices (e.g., Hambrick, 2007; Oreg & Berson, 2018) and behaviors and styles
50
51
52 of leadership (e.g., Judge & Bono, 2000; Zaccaro, 2007). When predicting strategic choices, the
53
54 attributes on which research has focused are leaders’ demographics. In contrast, when predicting
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60
33
1
2
3 leaders’ behaviors, most research has focused on leaders’ personality traits (e.g., extraversion,
4
5
6 narcissism), and some research considered leaders’ personal values (e.g., Berson & Oreg, 2016;
7
8 Berson, Oreg, & Dvir, 2008). Overall, the studies within these domains demonstrate
9
10 relationships between who leaders are and what they do.
11
12
13
Leader attributes and leaders’ strategic choices. When considering factors that
14
15 concern leaders’ strategic choices and the types of changes initiated (i.e., change content), most
16
17 of the research has focused on relationships between top leaders’ (e.g., CEOs) demographics and
18
19
the likelihood of initiating changes in their organizations and the types of changes initiated. For
20
21
22 example, CEO age, tenure and level of education were linked with the degree of change in firms’
23
24 strategy over time (Datta, Rajagopalan, & Zhang, 2003; Weng & Lin, 2014), the initiation of
25
26 changes in company diversification (Bigley & Wiersema, 2002; Boeker, 1997; Song, 1982), an
27
28
29 emphasis on innovation (Musteen, Barker III, & Baeten, 2010), or the initiation of international
30
31 acquisitions (Matta & Beamish, 2008). In other research, CEO tenure was linked with changes in
32
33 the composition of firms’ executive team (Keck & Tushman, 1993). Similarly, top management
34
35
36
teams’ demographics, such as the average and dispersion of members’ age, tenure and levels of
37
38 education, predicted changes in firms’ corporate strategy (Wiersema & Bantel, 1992). In other
39
40 studies, managers’ social position within and outside the organization was linked with the types
41
42
and degree of changes initiated (e.g., Battilana, 2011; Fitzgerald, Ferlie, McGivern, & Buchanan,
43
44
45 2013). Yet another factor that was linked with the types of changes initiated by new leaders was
46
47 whether these leaders came to lead the organization from within or outside the organization (e.g.,
48
49 Chiu, Johnson, Hoskisson, & Pathak, 2016; Friedman & Saul, 1991; Helmich, 1975; Helmich &
50
51
52 Brown, 1972). Overall, leaders who came from outside the organization were more likely to
53
54 initiate changes that were more disruptive and broader in scope.
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60
34
1
2
3 More recently, a few studies considered aspects of top leaders’ personality and strategic
4
5
6 changes in firms. For example, given their emphasis on divergent thinking and enjoyment of
7
8 novelty, CEOs’ extraversion and openness to experience were positively associated with
9
10 strategic change initiation (Herrmann & Nadkarni, 2014). In another study, CEOs’ narcissism,
11
12
13
which is associated with individuals’ boldness, was linked with firms’ adoption of discontinuous
14
15 technologies (Gerstner, König, Enders, & Hambrick, 2013). Similarly, a small subset of studies
16
17 within a meta-analysis of research on CEOs and their strategic decisions points to a positive
18
19
relationship between CEOs self-concept (e.g., positive affectivity and risk orientation) and the
20
21
22 occurrence of changes in firms’ performance (Wang, Holmes, Oh, & Zhu, 2016). It should be
23
24 noted, however, that the initiation of change in these studies was assessed only indirectly, by
25
26 monitoring firms’ performance over time and inferring the occurrence of change.
27
28
29 A few of the studies about top leader attributes and strategic choices also proceed to
30
31 demonstrate the indirect effect of leaders’ attributes on organizational change-related outcomes.
32
33 Such an indirect effect was also proposed in a theoretical article of managerial capabilities in the
34
35
36
context of strategic change, in which the strategic changes initiated in the organization were said
37
38 to mediate the effects of top leader capabilities, such as their social and human capital, and firm
39
40 change performance (Helfat & Martin, 2015). Similarly, in Friedman and Saul’s (1991) study,
41
42
the origin (i.e., from inside or outside the organization) of new CEOs was indirectly linked with
43
44
45 the degree of disruption and turnover in the organization, through the type of strategic changes
46
47 they initiated. In Hermann and Nadkarni’s (2014) study, following the link between CEO
48
49 personality and the initiation and implementation of strategic change, strategic change was
50
51
52 linked with firm performance. In other words, CEOs’ strategic choices mediated the relationships
53
54 between their personality and firm outcomes.
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60
35
1
2
3 Overall, most of what we know about who leaders are and the change-related strategic
4
5
6 decisions that they make is about leaders’ demographics. In most cases, researchers try to infer
7
8 from these demographics about leaders’ psychological characteristics. Yet demographics serve
9
10 as only weak proxies for the psychographic variables they presume to capture (Hambrick, 2007;
11
12
13
Priem et al., 1999). As such, most of the information we have is only descriptive and provides a
14
15 very limited understanding of the psychological mechanisms that impact leaders’ choices and the
16
17 frequency and nature of the changes they initiate. The budding research we mentioned that more
18
19
directly assesses leaders’ attributes corresponds with the emerging line of research that links
20
21
22 leaders’ psychological characteristics with strategic choices beyond the specific context of
23
24 change (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2007; Gamache, McNamara, Mannor, & Johnson, 2015;
25
26 Nadkarni & Herrmann, 2010).
27
28
29 Leader attributes and leaders’ behaviors. In a number of studies, leaders’ attributes
30
31 were directly linked with their change-related behaviors. For example, early on, Helmich (1975)
32
33 linked corporate presidents’ achievement orientations and their use of a task-oriented versus an
34
35
36
employee-oriented leadership style. Leadership style was in turn linked with a higher rate of
37
38 personnel change in these presidents’ organizations. In a qualitative study of 14 South African
39
40 organizations, leaders’ personal life stories were linked with how these leaders perceived,
41
42
interpreted, and responded to organizational changes (Nkomo & Kriek, 2011). Some of the
43
44
45 research focused specifically on leaders’ self-concept as an important factor that determines their
46
47 change-related behaviors. For example, Akrivou and Bradbury-Huang (2011) proposed a
48
49 theoretical model of leaders as catalysts of change whereby leaders’ “self-system ego variables”,
50
51
52 consisting of factors such as self-complexity and self-ideal congruence, are considered a
53
54 prerequisite of leaders’ capacity to translate meaning-making into sensegiving. This translation
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60
36
1
2
3 process is achieved by communicating respect for multiple stakeholders' interests, providing a
4
5
6 pragmatic plan of action and providing a future oriented vision. In turn, these sensegiving
7
8 activities are expected to elicit high levels of organizational performance. Empirical studies
9
10 similarly point to the role of leaders’ self-perceptions in driving their change-related behaviors.
11
12
13
In one study, leaders’ self-esteem was linked with followers’ reports of their leaders’ change-
14
15 promoting behaviors, as assessed through questions such as about the degree to which the leader
16
17 “push[es] change within the unit” and “quickly chang[es] work processes that are not effective
18
19
(Paglis & Green, 2002). Similarly, managers’ positive self-views and dispositional risk tolerance
20
21
22 predicted several aspects of their coping with change, including the degree to which they
23
24 promote change and respond positively and proactively to changes (Judge, Thoresen, Pucik, &
25
26 Welbourne, 1999).
27
28
29 Other research shows relationships between leaders’ attributes and their charismatic or
30
31 transformational leadership styles. Although the degree to which these leadership styles involve
32
33 leaders’ actual behaviors has been questioned (van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013), findings of this
34
35
36
research correspond with evidence from other research about the relationship between leaders’
37
38 attributes and change-related behaviors. For example, in one of the studies mentioned above,
39
40 which linked charisma to followers’ openness to change, leaders’ social and emotional skills
41
42
predicted perceptions of these leaders’ charismatic leadership (Groves, 2005). Thus, perceptions
43
44
45 of these leaders’ charisma mediated the relationship between leaders’ skills and followers’
46
47 openness to change. In another study, leaders’ overall cynicism about organizational change was
48
49 associated with followers’ perceptions of these leaders transformational leadership, which was in
50
51
52 turn related to outcomes such as employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors as well as
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54
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60
37
1
2
3 employees’ own cynicism about change (R. S. Rubin et al., 2009). Leaders’ attributes thus
4
5
6 predict leadership styles that are linked with change-related outcomes.
7
8 Although most of the research linking leader attributes and change-related behaviors
9
10 tends to be quantitative, we found one qualitative study that yielded similar insights. In a case
11
12
13
study based on an in-depth analysis and independent coding of interviews with 70 IT executives,
14
15 leaders’ “competency potential”, which includes attributes such as empathy and hardiness, was
16
17 associated with behavioral skills, including “transformational leadership skills” and “political
18
19
skills”, as well as an orientation toward a change leadership style (Krummaker & Vogel, 2013).
20
21
22 Sufficient evidence within the organizational change literature thus exists to support the
23
24 relationships between leaders’ attributes and the types of leader actions that ultimately shape
25
26 organizational change and the responses to it. Combined with what we know about the
27
28
29 relationship between leaders’ actions and change outcomes, this evidence suggests the indirect
30
31 effect that leaders’ attributes have on change outcomes. Two of the studies we reviewed above
32
33 more directly demonstrate this indirect effect through tests of the role that leaders’ behaviors
34
35
36
have in mediating the relationships between leaders’ attributes and change recipients’ responses
37
38 to change (Groves, 2005; R. S. Rubin et al., 2009). As described above, leaders’ charisma ratings
39
40 mediated the relationship between leaders’ skills and performance ratings in the context of
41
42
change. Similarly, in Rubin et al.’s (2009) study, transformational leadership mediated the
43
44
45 relationship between leaders’ cynicism about change and employees’ cynicism about change.
46
47 Future research should consider additional forms of leadership, which more explicitly capture
48
49 leader behaviors, or which focus on narrower and more specific behaviors. Furthermore, unlike
50
51
52 the two studies mentioned above, future research of this indirect effect should aim to measure the
53
54 mediator and outcome from different sources to provide for a more rigorous test of the effect.
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57
58
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60
38
1
2
3 What Does the Evidence Tell Us and Where Do we go from Here?
4
5
6 As can be seen in Figure 1, the largest body of evidence for the influence of leaders on
7
8 organizational change points to the impact of leaders’ behaviors and styles on change recipients’
9
10 responses to the change. This evidence is based primarily on quantitative, psychologically based
11
12
13
research, most of which is multilevel, focusing on the individual and group levels (see Figure 2).
14
15 Beyond the particular styles that have been studied, we identify three key functions of leaders’
16
17 behaviors through which leaders shape recipients’ response to change. These include leadership
18
19
styles that involve: 1) effective communication (e.g., visionary leadership), 2) being supportive
20
21
22 and attentive to recipients’ concerns (e.g., supportive leadership) and 3) involving followers
23
24 (e.g., participative leadership). Although effective communication, supportiveness, and
25
26 involvement are often effective leadership styles, they appear to be singled out and particularly
27
28
29 important in the context of leading change. Accordingly, these leadership style categories
30
31 directly map on to the key factors that comprise the change process, often labeled change
32
33 information, change support, and change participation (Oreg et al., 2011). Indeed, findings of
34
35
36
the mediation studies we reviewed point to these three factors as important mechanisms that
37
38 explain how leader behaviors shape recipients’ responses to change (see Table 4).
39
40 Despite the correspondence between leadership styles and change process variables, each
41
42
style may influence more than a single change process variable, in particular given that some of
43
44
45 the styles are broad and include many distinct components, all lumped into a single leadership
46
47 construct (see a similar point by van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). Articulating a change vision,
48
49 for example, serves both to effectively communicate the goals of the change and to involve and
50
51
52 engage recipients through the change process. Nevertheless, a few of the studies we reviewed
53
54 were very helpful for disentangling the distinct leadership components that seem to be key in
55
56
57
58
59
60
39
1
2
3 facilitating change. For example, in Furst and Cable’s (2008) study, whereas leaders’ hard
4
5
6 tactics, such as legitimation, were associated with greater employee resistance to change, softer
7
8 tactics, such as consultation, which is a form of involving followers, were negatively associated
9
10 with resistance.
11
12
13
There is also significant overlap in the outcomes of the three leadership style categories.
14
15 All three have been linked with a variety of response types, comprising recipients’ affective,
16
17 cognitive, and behavioral response to change. In other words, effective communication, being
18
19
supportive, and involving recipients have each been shown to influence how recipients feel about
20
21
22 the change (more positive emotions and less negative ones), how they understand it, and the
23
24 degree to which their actions (e.g., OCB) and performance correspond with the defined goals of
25
26 the change. This difficulty in distinguishing among the effects of leader behaviors is to a great
27
28
29 degree due to the frequent reliance on broad leadership concepts rather than more specific
30
31 change-related behaviors, as well as lack of a clear distinction among several of these broad
32
33 leadership concepts (e.g., transformational, authentic, ethical, servant; Hoch, Bommer,
34
35
36
Dulebohn, & Wu, 2016).
37
38 Another relatively large section of the studies on leadership and change was that linking
39
40 leader behaviors to job-related and organizational outcomes (see Figure 1). There was somewhat
41
42
more variety in the types of leadership behaviors considered for this path, including a greater
43
44
45 portion of qualitative studies. Many of the studies that contributed to this body of evidence were
46
47 qualitative, sociologically based, with a focus on the organizational level (see top-right-back
48
49 corner of Figure 2). Overall, these studies demonstrate the effects that leader behaviors, such as
50
51
52 task behaviors, distributed leadership, and sensegiving, as well as transformational leadership,
53
54 have on the nature and success of change. The qualitative nature of many of these studies makes
55
56
57
58
59
60
40
1
2
3 it harder to generalize findings and make inferences about a given set of leader behaviors. They
4
5
6 nevertheless point to the overall positive effect that leaders have on change and to interesting
7
8 patterns and nuances that may emerge in specific organizational contexts. These nuances include,
9
10 for example, the bidirectional effects that vision can have when not effectively linked with the
11
12
13
goals of the organizational change (Landau et al., 2006). Beyond these somewhat sporadic
14
15 effects, a consistent finding was about the mediating role that recipients’ attitudes toward change
16
17 have in the effect of leaders’ behaviors on job-related outcomes, and to a lesser degree on
18
19
organizational outcomes.
20
21
22 Beyond the findings highlighted above, another interesting insight is that whereas the
23
24 quantitative research of leadership and change tends to adopt a one-sided path of influence,
25
26 whereby change leaders influence change recipients, the qualitative investigations in this field
27
28
29 often reveal the notion that agents are similarly influenced by recipients. One direction for future
30
31 research could be to quantitatively assess the nature of this relationship, including its mediating
32
33 and moderating processes.
34
35
36
Quite distinct from the research about the effects of leader behaviors, the last significant
37
38 body of studies in our review involved the link between leader personal attributes and their
39
40 change-related strategic choices. The most frequent outcome in these studies was the initiation of
41
42
change. These studies were mostly quantitative, both sociological and psychological, with a
43
44
45 focus on the organizational level (within the bottom right cubes in Figure 2). Among the
46
47 common predictors of these various change outcomes are leaders’ age, tenure, and level of
48
49 education, which were rather consistently positively linked with a greater likelihood of initiating
50
51
52 change. Similarly, individuals who came to lead the organization from outside it, were more
53
54 likely to initiate changes, in particular changes that are disruptive and broader in scope. From the
55
56
57
58
59
60
41
1
2
3 set of studies that considered leaders’ personality, findings demonstrate that being bold, self-
4
5
6 confident, and excitement-seeking, as represented in attributes such as extraversion and
7
8 narcissism, is associated with a higher likelihood of initiating change. Yet the initiation of
9
10 change in these studies was only inferred from observing changes in organizations’ performance
11
12
13
over time, rather than by explicitly capturing a deliberate decision to initiate change.
14
15 Thus, overall, we know how leader behaviors influence change recipients and change
16
17 outcomes, and we know how leader attributes are related to leaders’ strategic change-related
18
19
choices. But we know very little about how the latter effects of attributes on strategic choices are
20
21
22 related to the effects of leader behaviors. Broadly stated, one of the things that was clear from
23
24 our review was the significant chasm between research of leaders’ strategic choices and research
25
26 of recipients’ responses to change. Although executives regularly take into account the
27
28
29 implications of their choices for organization members, and realize the strategic importance of
30
31 organization members’ responses, research has yet to directly examine this link.
32
33 Another direction for future investigation involves a more complex conceptualization of
34
35
36
recipients’ responses. All in all, across leadership styles and study designs, it is clear that one
37
38 path through which leaders influence organizational change is by eliciting more positive and less
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40 negative responses to the organizational change. These effects have been demonstrated on
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42
change recipients’ emotions, attitudes, and behaviors. Yet in line with recent criticisms of the
43
44
45 research on reactions to change (Oreg et al., 2018), responses to change are treated as simplistic,
46
47 ranging from negative to positive. Such an approach overlooks the complexity that characterizes
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49 responses to change. First, beyond the valence of individuals’ responses to change, responses
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52 also vary in their level of activation (Oreg et al., 2018). Thus, both positive and negative
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54 responses to change subsume responses that vary significantly in their nature and in their
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60
42
1
2
3 antecedents and outcomes. For example, although both stress and melancholy are negative
4
5
6 emotions, and both enthusiasm and contentment are positive emotions, the leadership behaviors
7
8 that elicit each emotion may differ significantly.
9
10 Furthermore, whereas resistance to change is generally seen as an obstacle to change,
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12
13
attention has long been drawn to the benefits it holds through the information it includes about
14
15 possible problems with the change (Nord & Jermier, 1994). To benefit from this information,
16
17 leaders should remain open to adaptations in their change initiatives and rework the change
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19
together with those employees’ who maintain an active voice about it (Oreg et al., 2018).
20
21
22 Leadership styles that embody such openness to feedback from followers, such as servant
23
24 leadership (Van Dierendonck, 2011) may therefore be particularly effective in handling and
25
26 benefiting from such negative responses to change. Furthermore, such openness to recipients’
27
28
29 feedback about the change draws attention to the need to consider not only leaders’ influence on
30
31 recipients’ responses to change, but also the reciprocal impact of change recipients’ on change
32
33 leaders. Although calls for such research have been made (Ford, Ford, & D'Amelio, 2008; Oreg
34
35
36
et al., 2018), no systematic investigation of this route has yet to be conducted.
37
38 In addition, although the notion of ambivalent responses to change was highlighted
39
40 almost twenty years ago (Piderit, 2000), very little research of reactions to change has been
41
42
devoted to studying the possibility that individuals may simultaneously exhibit positive and
43
44
45 negative responses (for exceptions see Oreg & Sverdlik, 2011; Randall & Procter, 2008). None
46
47 of the studies we came across in our review considered the impact that leadership has on the
48
49 experience of ambivalence toward change. As such, an important direction for future research is
50
51
52 to consider a much broader range of possible responses to change.
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60
43
1
2
3 Beyond Compartmentalized Research: Disciplines, Methodologies, and Levels of Analysis
4
5
6 Throughout our review we discussed the various divides that exist across the studies of
7
8 leadership and change. As portrayed in Figure 2, we consider three specific divides, pertaining to
9
10 the various disciplinary underpinnings, methodological approaches, and different levels at which
11
12
13
the topic has been studied. Overall, as reflected in the generally darker shades of the bottom
14
15 cubes in Figure 2, about two thirds of the research we reviewed was quantitative. Similarly,
16
17 about two thirds of the studies were based on psychological frameworks (although several of the
18
19
articles in the review used both psychological and sociological theories). Moreover, whereas
20
21
22 psychological research tends to be more at the individual and group levels, we could also find in
23
24 our review a substantial amount of psychological research at the organizational level, which
25
26 corresponds with the growing interest of macro, strategy, researchers in psychological constructs.
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28
29 Not surprisingly, the two least-studied combinations were sociologically-based, quantitative
30
31 studies at the individual and group levels.
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33 Also not surprising is the fact that only a few psychological studies have been conducted
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35
36
via qualitative methods. Further qualitative studies of leaders’ actions in times of change could
37
38 provide important information about the particular mechanisms through which leaders influence
39
40 organization members and outcomes. Similarly, although many of the studies we reviewed
41
42
involved two levels of analysis, research has yet to be conducted at three levels of analysis,
43
44
45 incorporating both leaders of organizations (e.g., CEOs) and leaders of organization units (i.e.,
46
47 middle managers), alongside individual-level factors. Such research can demonstrate trickle
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49 down mechanisms (Liu, Liao, & Loi, 2012) that run from senior change leaders to middle
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51
52 managers, and on to employees.
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60
44
1
2
3 Related to these divides, qualitative and quantitative studies of leadership and change
4
5
6 have been siloed, lacking the exchange of ideas across approaches. Through our review we draw
7
8 meaningful links between the notion of sensemaking, which has been studied with qualitative
9
10 approaches, and other aspects of recipients’ responses which have been studied mainly
11
12
13
quantitatively. Specifically, both sensemaking and change appraisal and attitudes involve
14
15 cognitive content and processes. Scholars who address sensemaking use concepts such as change
16
17 schemas (Balogun & Johnson, 2004; Bartunek, 1984) and describe the cognitive processes
18
19
through which change recipients form meaning about change. Similarly, quantitative
20
21
22 investigations of recipients’ responses have focused on change appraisals and change attitudes as
23
24 a key variable, which also includes a cognitive component, pertaining to individuals’ evaluation
25
26 of the change (e.g., Fugate, Prussia, & Kinicki, 2012; Oreg et al., 2018). Yet insights have yet to
27
28
29 be incorporated across the two approaches and the degree to which concepts from each approach
30
31 correspond with their counterparts remains unclear.
32
33 Correspondingly, as indicated above, sensegiving refers to leaders’ actions in the aim of
34
35
36
shaping change recipients’ understandings of the change and its context. This is comparable with
37
38 many leadership behaviors which are similarly aimed at influencing recipients’ interpretations of
39
40 the change. Yet these two fields of investigation also remain entirely separate. Comparisons that
41
42
could uncover both the shared and unique content of each concept could be made through the
43
44
45 inclusion of multiple concepts within the same study, which could be either qualitative or
46
47 quantitative. Qualitative scholars may wish to incorporate concepts such as change appraisals
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49 and leadership styles into their investigations alongside the already established concepts of
50
51
52 sensemaking and sensegiving. Similarly, quantitative researchers may wish to incorporate the
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54
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57
58
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60
45
1
2
3 notions of sensemaking and sensegiving into their conceptualizations and measures, and assess
4
5
6 their incremental validity beyond extant leadership behaviors.
7
8 Additional Routes of Leaders’ Influence on Change
9
10 As noted above, much remains to be uncovered with respect to how leaders’ strategic
11
12
13
choices during change influence the organization and its members. Given, for example, that the
14
15 initiation and effective implementation of change involve distinct processes, and distinct
16
17 antecedents, future research should explicitly link strategic choices with the change
18
19
implementation process, and leader behaviors with the initiation of change. Specifically, with
20
21
22 respect to the former link, research should consider how change leaders follow through on their
23
24 strategic decisions and what type of change process (e.g., participatory, supportive) they adopt.
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26 With respect to the latter link, research should consider the relationship between a given
27
28
29 leadership style (e.g., visionary) and the likelihood that change will be initiated as well as the
30
31 content of the change initiated.
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33 Furthermore, whereas most of the research we identified about leaders’ strategic choices
34
35
36
focused on the prediction of organization-level outcomes, the large majority of studies on leader
37
38 behaviors focused on predicting individual-level outcomes. Thus, cross-fertilization between
39
40 these approaches should yield research of the relationships between leaders’ behaviors and
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42
organization-level change outcomes, in particular focusing on the individual-level outcomes of
43
44
45 strategic choices. Beyond the consideration of direct relationships between leaders’ strategic
46
47 choices and their implications for individuals, this line of research should look into the chain of
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49 factors and processes that likely mediate these effects. For example, many of the change process
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52 variables that have been considered as mediators of the effects of leaders’ behaviors may
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54 similarly mediate the effects of leaders’ strategic choices. Furthermore, other mechanisms may
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60
46
1
2
3 further mediate the impact of the change process, such as the degree to which change recipients’
4
5
6 perceive the change as personally beneficial or detrimental (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder,
7
8 1993; Oreg & Goldenberg, 2015). In addition, most of the research on the implications of
9
10 leaders’ strategic choices does not take into account change recipients’ attitudes, despite the fact
11
12
13
that a given strategic decision can unfold differently as a function of change recipients’
14
15 responses. Accordingly, future research should consider the interaction between strategic choices
16
17 and recipients’ responses for predicting change outcomes.
18
19
Correspondingly, additional research should be devoted to examining how leader
20
21
22 behaviors ultimately translate into the organization-level outcomes of change. One of the
23
24 obvious mechanisms through which these effects are achieved, as indicated in a few of the
25
26 studies we reviewed, involves the aggregation of recipients’ individual responses to the change.
27
28
29 Yet even with respect to this mechanism, only a handful of studies exist. Furthermore, more
30
31 specific and nuanced leader behaviors should be considered, beyond the common styles that have
32
33 been employed in change research. In particular, visionary leadership, which has only
34
35
36
infrequently been studied in the context of change (e.g., Landau et al., 2006), explicitly concerns
37
38 a future orientation, and involves both strategic goals and inspiring content, is a likely predictor
39
40 of both individual and organizational change outcomes. Overall, we found very little research
41
42
that captured antecedents of outcomes at both the individual and organizational levels. In
43
44
45 addition, comparable with the consideration of interactions that we proposed above between
46
47 strategic choices and recipients’ responses, it may also be useful to further consider how leader
48
49 behaviors interact with change recipients’ responses in predicting organizational outcomes. In
50
51
52 line with a leadership contingency approach (Fiedler, 1967), a given leadership style may yield
53
54 different change outcomes for different sets of followers.
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60
47
1
2
3 Moreover, the distinction between leaders’ strategic decisions and leaders’ behaviors also
4
5
6 highlights an important difference between leaders of change who are also the initiators of the
7
8 change versus those who implement changes initiated by others. Whereas the strategy literature
9
10 focuses on the former, the OB studies on leadership and change tends to focus on the latter, or to
11
12
13
disregard this distinction altogether. Thus, in many cases, change leaders are also recipients of
14
15 the change. This issue has been addressed in several qualitative studies (e.g., Balogun &
16
17 Johnson, 2004; Lüscher & Lewis, 2008), in which the focus was on understanding the process
18
19
through which middle managers make sense of the change. Studies have not, however, explicitly
20
21
22 examined the differences that likely exist in the implementation of change by those who initiate
23
24 it versus those who do not. Even studies of senior change leaders sometimes involve changes that
25
26 were dictated by external boards (Oreg & Berson, 2011). Most of the studies we reviewed about
27
28
29 the implementation of change are undertaken with the implicit assumption that the change
30
31 leaders fully understand and entirely buy into the change they are implementing, although in
32
33 reality this is clearly not always the case. This further reflects the chasm between the strategy
34
35
36
and OB literatures and points to several directions of research that should be pursued.
37
38 Beyond the separate influences of strategic choices and leader behaviors, one can also
39
40 consider the reciprocal effects that these two leader actions may have on one another. This
41
42
connection has received very little attention even outside the context of organizational change
43
44
45 (for exceptions see, Berson & Avolio, 2004; Colbert, Kristof-Brown, Bradley, & Barrick, 2008).
46
47 The meaning of this link is that the strategic choices that leaders make may impact the leadership
48
49 style that they adopt (e.g., a leader may choose to emphasize a considerate approach for some
50
51
52 strategic choices more than others) and, reciprocally, leaders’ overall style may correspond with
53
54 certain types of strategic choices. These possibilities have received no attention in research of
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60
48
1
2
3 organizational change and may open up an important direction for clarifying and explicitly
4
5
6 portraying the dual-role of leaders. Furthermore, research should consider how these two leader
7
8 roles may interact in their effects on change outcomes.
9
10 Greater Focus on Bottom-Up Influences During Change
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12
13
Most of the attention in the research of leadership and change is on the influence that
14
15 leaders have over their followers. Yet even when change is imposed by the leader, reciprocal
16
17 paths of influence take place among leaders and followers. Accordingly, leaders are both
18
19
sensegivers and sensemakers, in particular when a leader implements a change initiated by
20
21
22 others. Correspondingly, change recipients are not only sensemakers but also sensegivers.
23
24 Although the idea that change agents are also recipients has been discussed (e.g., Oreg et al.,
25
26 2018), it has yet to receive much research attention. Furthermore, the predominant view of
27
28
29 organizational change focuses on changes that are initiated from above. As informative as this
30
31 view may be, it provides only a partial depiction of what transpires during change, and overlooks
32
33 those cases in which lower-level members of the organizations initiate changes (e.g., Livne-
34
35
36
Tarandach & Bartunek, 2009). This mirrors the literature on employee proactivity (A. M. Grant
37
38 & Parker, 2009), which has similarly advocated research on the bottom-up effects of employee
39
40 proactivity on organizational outcomes.
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42
When change is initiated from below, employees are the change agents, and managers the
43
44
45 recipients. Both parties’ sensemaking and sensegiving during bottom-up change may be quite
46
47 distinct from those that take place during top-down changes. For one, the change schemas that
48
49 leaders and followers use for bottom-up change may be very different than those acquired for
50
51
52 top-down change. In addition, followers and leaders may have different reasons for concerns
53
54 about change. Whereas employees may be more susceptible to the detrimental effects of
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49
1
2
3 uncertainty, given their lower spans of control in the organization, leaders may experience
4
5
6 greater threat to their authority, in particular if they tend to hold an autocratic leadership style
7
8 (see parallel arguments in the proactivity literature, e.g., A. M. Grant, Parker, & Collins, 2009).
9
10 Related to this point, with few exceptions (Bate et al., 2000; Heck & Hallinger, 2010),
11
12
13
studies of leadership and organizational change focus on the role of a single leader. Given what
14
15 we know about the roles of involvement and participation during change, and what we know
16
17 about shared leadership outside the context of change, we expect shared leadership to be
18
19
particularly effective in managing change and eliciting favorable responses among recipients.
20
21
22 Practical Implications
23
24 First, the divide between OB and strategy with respect to research on leading change may
25
26 also have implications for practice. Effective management of change efforts should involve
27
28
29 consideration of both strategic and behavioral factors that either impede or facilitate
30
31 organizational change. For instance, consultants who advise organizations may rely on
32
33 knowledge from strategy about the role of leader attributes on the initiation of change and types
34
35
36
of changes proposed, and on knowledge from OB about the positive effects that authentic and
37
38 visionary leadership, for example, have on change recipients and outcomes. Unfortunately,
39
40 change consultants tend to specialize in either the psychological/organizational field, or in
41
42
strategy, rather than both. One implication of our review is that organizations launching change
43
44
45 interventions should remain informed in both fields. More specifically, senior leaders should
46
47 realize that their strategic decisions bear implications not only for the organizational outcomes,
48
49 but also for organization members. Correspondingly, their behaviors and personal style of
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51
52 leadership influence not only their subordinates but also broader organizational consequences.
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50
1
2
3 Second, the rich information obtained through qualitative data often counterpoints
4
5
6 findings obtained by quantitative measures and sets doubts about their validity (Jick, 1979). In
7
8 one of the studies we reviewed, for example, qualitative interviews proved to be more
9
10 informative than quantitative measures of leadership for predicting the success of nurse leaders
11
12
13
in managing change (Kan & Parry, 2004). It may therefore by particularly important for
14
15 practitioners to rely on both quantitative and qualitative methods in their assessments of leader
16
17 effectiveness. Such integration of approaches reflects one of the main themes from our review,
18
19
with respect to the need to bridge extant chasms between disciplines, methods, and levels of
20
21
22 analysis for improving our understanding of the impact of leaders on organizational change.
23
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22 Personnel Psychology, 69, 775-862.
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24 Weber, M. (1968/1922). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. New York:
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26 Bedminster Press.
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29 Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of
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31 Psychology, 50, 361-386.
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33 Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the
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38 L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior: An annual series of analytical
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44
45 changes. Journal of Management, 40(7), 2009-2032.
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47 Wiersema, M. F., & Bantel, K. A. (1992). Top management team demography and corporate
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49 strategic change. Academy of Management Journal, 91-121.
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51
52 Woodman, R. W. (1989). Organizational change and development: New arenas for inquiry and
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54 action. Journal of Management, 15(2), 205-228.
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3 Wu, C., Neubert, M. J., & Yi, X. (2007). Transformational leadership, cohesion perceptions, and
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6 employee cynicism about organizational change: The mediating role of justice
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8 perceptions. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43(3), 327-351.
9
10 Yukl, G. (1998). Leadership in organizations (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
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12
13
Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluation of conceptual weaknesses in transformational and charismatic
14
15 leadership theories. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 285-305.
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17 Yukl, G., & Lepsinger, R. (2004). Flexible leadership. San Francisco: Jossey & Bass.
18
19
Zaccaro, S. J. (2007). Trait-based perspectives of leadership. American Psychologist, 62(1), 6-
20
21
22 16.
23
24 Zajac, E. J., & Kraatz, M. S. (1993). A diametric forces model of strategic change: Assessing the
25
26 antecedents and consequences of restructuring in the higher education industry. Strategic
27
28
29 Management Journal, 14(S1), 83-102.
30
31 Zaleznik, A. (1977). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard business review, 55, 67-
32
33 78.
34
35
36
Zhao, H. H., Taylor, M. S., Lee, C., & Lam, W. (2016). Not even the past: The joint influence of
37
38 former leader and new leader in the midst of organizational change. Journal of Applied
39
40 Psychology, 101(12), 1730-1738.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
71
1
2
3
4
5
6 Table 1 - Sample of coded article
7
8
9
10 Herrmann, P., & Nadkarni, S. (2014). Managing strategic change: The
11
Reference duality of CEO personality. Strategic Management Journal, 35(9),
12
13 1318-1342.
14 Org context Ecuadorian small and medium-sized enterprises
15
16 Change content Environmental (economic) fluctuations
17 Research approach Quantitative
18 Research Design
19
20
(longitudinal, cross Longitudinal
21 sectional, etc.)
22 Type of data (self-report,
23
Self-report and archival
interview, archival, etc.)
24
Sample
25
26 (managers/executives,
120 CEOs
27 operative change
28 recipients, etc.)
29
30
Leadership variables
CEO Big-Five traits; Leaders’ strategic choice
31 (attributes/style)
32 Levels of analysis Organization
33
34 Key disciplinary
35 Psychological
underpinnings
36
37
38 CEO Big-Five predicting strategic choice; Strategic choice predicting
39 Links tested organizational performance; Big five moderates the relationship
40 between strategic choice and performance
41
42
Notes:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
72
1
2
3
4
5 Table 2. Sample of Articles Reviewed, with Key Leadership Variables, Change Content, and Organizational Context
6
7 Key leadership variables Change content Organizational context Reference
8
9 Number and kinds of leadership Eastern European symphony (Allmendinger &
The fall of the socialist regime in 1990
10 initiatives initiated orchestras Hackman, 1996)
11 Major restructuring initiative in utility Recently privatized utility in the (Balogun & Johnson,
Leaders’ sensemaking
12 core business devision UK 2004)
13 Five US districts of the
14 Leaders’ sensemaking Organizational restructuring international women’s Roman (Bartunek, 1984)
15 Catholic religious order
16 Plan to rebuild hospital on a new site;
17 Shared leadership Development a new prototype Large hospital trust in England (Bate et al., 2000)
18 organizational structure
19 10-year modernization effort aimed at
20 Managers’ person-oriented and task- improving the quality, reliability,
21 UK National Health Service (Battilana et al., 2010)
oriented behaviors effectiveness, and value of the
22
healthcare services delivered to society
23
24
Transformational leadership Growth in companies Three Midwestern US companies (Bommer et al., 2005)
25 Divestiture programs in the US
CEO origin (insider vs. outsider) Type of divestiture (Chiu et al., 2016)
26 between 1986 and 2009
27 Perceptions of leaders’ ethical Insurance company (4 divisions
Corruption recovery (Cotton et al., 2017)
28 behaviors and 19 business units)
29 Modernization process of public
Results-oriented versus professional Public secondary schools in
30 services (shift to results-oriented (Currie et al., 2009)
31
value-based leadership England
policy)
32 Leader demographics (as proxy for 118 firms in the US
33 CEO successions (Datta et al., 2003)
openness to change) manufacturing sector
34 Five change situations in five separate
35 leaders' actions on their political organizations (case studies), involving Three hospitals, a "metropolitan
36 (Denis et al., 2001)
positions mergers, implementation of new merger" and a "capital merger"
37
missions, and/or new CEOs
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
73
1
2
3
4
6
7 No actual change was studied; Study
8 was conducted in the context of a
9 Leaders’ issue-selling approach severe budget crunch and construction Large hospital (Dutton et al., 2001)
10 of new facility that served as pressures
11 for change
12 Leading marketer, distributor and
13 producer of automotive and
14 Implementation of new project-based
LMX and leaders’ influence tactics industrial products and services, (Furst & Cable, 2008)
15 software program
and a rapidly growing financial
16 services company
17
Emergence of biotechnology between Research-based pharmaceutical
18 CEO narcissism (Gerstner et al., 2013)
1980 and 2008 companies
19
20
New university president who initiated (Gioia & Chittipeddi,
Leader sensemaking and sensegiving Large public university
21 a new strategic change effort 1991)
22 Leaders’ "mobilizing actions" and Eight acquisitions of privately
Acquisitions (Graebner, 2004)
23 "mitigating actions" held technology ventures
24 Transformational change involving
Large public sector organization
25 Leader vision strength restructuring, units created and others (Griffin et al., 2010)
in Australia
26 closed, and job redesign
27 64 organizations from a variety of
28 Leaders' social control, emotional Changes experienced at the various
industries (e.g., higher education,
29 expressivity, and emotional control; organizations sampled over the past (Groves, 2005)
community development,
30 Leaders' charismatic leadership year
government)
31 There is no particular organizational
32 change studied. They researchers (Heck & Hallinger,
33 Distributed leadership Elementary schools
follow longitudinal changes in schools' 2010)
34
"improvement capacity"
35
36 Leaders' "need deficiency"; Succession
37 from inside/outside the organization; Replacement of employees Corporations in the US (Helmich, 1975)
38 Task/employee focus
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
74
1
2
3
4
6
7 Succession from inside/outside; Chemical and allied product (Helmich & Brown,
Replacement of employees
8 Leadership style (task/employee focus) corporations 1972)
9 30 different organizations, from
A variety of changes, depending on the
10 Transformational leadership the Southeastern US from a (Herold et al., 2008)
organization.
11 variety of industries.
12 120 small and medium-sized (Herrmann &
13 Leaders’ big-five traits Environmental (economic) fluctuations
Ecuadorian enterprises Nadkarni, 2014)
14 Leaders’ "framing", "creating",
15 Change initiatives provided by leaders (Higgs & Rowland,
"shaping" "facilitating" and "engaging" 33 organizations
16 behaviors
from 33 organizations 2011)
17
Leader emotions and behaviors (e.g.,
18 Large service organization
19
emotional commitment, providing Deregulation (Huy, 2002)
employing over 50000
20 positive experiences)
21 Communication of newness attitudes
Deregulation and changes in the tech
22 and providing resources; Violating Large IT employing over 50000 (Huy et al., 2014)
environment
23 recipients' expectations
24 US healthcare services (S. L. Jones & Van de
Supportive leadership Mergers and acquisitions
25 organization Ven, 2016)
26 Civil service organizations in (Kaltiainen et al.,
27 Trust in top management team Merger
Finland 2017)
28 Changes in field (internal medicine
29 Charisma and anesthesiology) and implications Hospital (Levay, 2010)
30 for structure of units
31
Paradoxical leadership, delegation and (Lüscher & Lewis,
32 Structural change Lego production facility
other managerial roles 2008)
33
34
Changes in the proportion of salaries
35 Leaders’ cognitive style/mental model spent on the different positions of NFL 28 NFL teams (Ndofor et al., 2009)
36 players in the team
37 (Nohe & Michaelis,
Charisma Companywide restructuring Large German company
38 2016)
39 Leaders’ change-promoting; Charisma Companywide restructuring Large German company (Nohe et al., 2013)
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
75
1
2
3
4
6
7 Leaders’ dispositional resistance to
(Oreg & Berson,
8 change and personal values; Large-scale organizational reform 75 public schools
2011)
9 Transformational leadership
10 Internationalization, change in Large agricultural equipment (Sackmann et al.,
LMX; Followers trust in the leader
11 strategic orientation seller 2009)
12 Fundamental change to the Headquarters of a large
13 Transformational leadership (Seo et al., 2012)
organizational structure government agency
14 Conversion of stores, involving
15 renaming divisions, remodeling and Fortune 500 entertainment and
16 Leaders’ meaning making
rebranding stores, updating product leisure products retailer
(Sonenshein, 2010)
17
assortment and work routines
18
19
Strategic change involving better
20 company integration (e.g., renaming
21 divisions, remodeling stores, revising (Sonenshein &
Managerial communication Fortune 500 specialty retailer
22 the branding strategy, expanding Dholakia, 2012)
23 product assortment, and updating
24 technology and work routines)
25 Senior and middle managers'
Culture change Telecommunications company (Thomas et al., 2011)
26 communication styles
27 Changes that had taken place over the
28 (Välikangas &
Directive/Considerate leadership time period studied (1981-1991 and GE and Eisai
29 Okumura, 1997)
1987-1993)
30 Large housing corporation in the
31 LMX Merger (van Dam et al., 2008)
Netherlands
32
Manufacturing plant, hospital, (Waldman et al.,
33 Visionary leadership Quality Improvement
and national police force 1998)
34
35
Largest manufacturing firms for (Wiersema & Bantel,
Leader demographics Change in diversification strategy
36 1980 (listed in Fortune) 1992)
37 Implementation of radical,
Large Chinese hospitality
38 Transformational leadership discontinuous, intentional change (Zhao et al., 2016)
company
39 (change of customer base)
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
76
1
2
3 Table 3. Sample of the Key Main Effects Depicted in our Model
4
5 Example of Methodology and Data
6 Predictor Outcome Sample Reference
Theories/Approaches Used Used
7
8 Strategic Choices and Organizational Outcomes
9 120 CEOs of
10 Initiation and Firm performance
Strategic change (e.g., Zajac Quantitative; Surveys small- and (Herrmann &
11 implementation of (e.g., sales’
& Kraatz, 1993) and archival data medium-sized Nadkarni, 2014)
12 strategic change growth, ROA)
enterprises
13
Strategic decisions
14
15
(e.g., emphasis on Successful Qualitative; semi- 10 newly appointed
Management control theory
16 communicating new implementation of structured interviews, company (Simons, 1994)
(Schendel & Hofer, 1979)
17 agendas, a focus on strategic changes company documents presidents
18 learning)
19 Leader Behaviors and Organizational Outcomes
20
21 Qualitative;
22 The nature of an Organizations as Organizational
Leaders’ “interpretive Members of a
23 organizational interpretation systems (Daft documents and (Bartunek, 1984)
schemas” religious order
24 restructuring & Weick, 1984) interviews, participant
25 observation
26 Effective
27 transition
28
Knowledge-based theory of Qualitative; Interviews,
following the Company leaders
29 Leaders’ “mobilizing the firm (R. M. Grant, emails and phone calls,
acquisition and the and investors
30 actions” and 1996); The human side of archival data (e.g., (Graebner, 2004)
achievement of (more than 60
31 “mitigating actions” mergers and acquisitions company websites,
expected and interviews)
32 (Buono & Bowditch, 1989) business publications)
unexpected
33 business value.
34
Quantitative; Surveys
35 CEOs' change-oriented Flexible leadership theory 217 direct reports (Sirén et al.,
Firm performance using self and other
36 leadership (Yukl & Lepsinger, 2004) of CEOs 2016)
37
reports
38 38 CEOs, 76 TMT
CEOs’ transformational Change Transformational leadership (Stoker et al.,
39 Quantitative; Surveys members and 76
leadership effectiveness theory (Bass, 1985) 2012)
40 key persons
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
77
1
2
4 Predictor Outcome
Sample Reference
5
6 Leader Behaviors and Recipient Responses
7
Employees’
8 Quantitative; Surveys
Leaders’ cynicism toward Organizational cynicism
9 using self and other 687 correctional (DeCelles et al.,
10
transformational change and (Dean, Brandes, &
reports (leaders and officers 2013)
11 leadership organizational Dharwadkar, 1998)
subordinates)
12 commitment
13 101 employees and
14 Attribution theory (Heider, Quantitative; Surveys 25 managers
Employees’
15 Leaders’ influence
resistance to
1958); Leader-Member using employees’ self- (sample 1) + 66 (Furst & Cable,
16 tactics Exchange, (Dansereau, reports and reports of employees and 27 2008)
change
17 Graen, & Haga, 1975) their managers managers (sample
18 2)
19 Transformational leadership Quantitative; Surveys
20 Change leadership and 343 employees
Commitment to (Bass, 1985); Change-related using employees’ self- (Herold et al.,
21 Transformational from 30
change behaviors (Brockner et al., reports and reports of 2008)
22 leadership organizations
1994) their managers
23 Approximately 500
24 Leader emotions and
employees,
25 behaviors (e.g., Change recipients’ Qualitative; Interviews,
Work-group moods people focusing on 148
26 emotional commitment, anxieties and fears observations, archival (Huy, 2002)
27
(Bartel & Saavedra, 2000) people, including
providing positive about the change data
28 10 executives and
experiences)
29 managers
30 Employees’ Quantitative; Surveys
Senior leaders’
31 behavioral Transformational leadership using employees’ self- 75 principals, 586 (Oreg & Berson,
transformational
32 leadership
intentions to resist (Bass, 1985) reports and reports of teachers 2011)
33 change their managers
34 906 employees
Quantitative; Surveys
35 Leaders’ Affective events theory (reporting to 217
36 Behavioral using employees’ self-
transformational (Weiss & Cropanzano, managers) in Time (Seo et al., 2012)
37 response to change reports and reports of
leadership 1996) 1 + 430 employees
38 their managers
in Time 2.
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
78
1
2
4 Predictor Outcome
Sample Reference
5
6 42 interviews with
7 employees and
Qualitative; Open-ended
8 Managers’ sensegiving Change Three-stage theory of managers, 159
survey questions, (Sonenshein,
9 actions (narratives acceptance or organizational change employees
interviews and company 2010)
10 about change) resistance (Lewin, 1951) completed open-
documents
11 ended survey
12 questions
13 Leader-member exchange
14 Employees’ theory (Graen, 2004); Quantitative: Surveys
15 (van Dam et al.,
LMX resistance to Readiness for organizational using employees’ self- 235 employees
16 2008)
change change (Armenakis et al., reports
17 1993)
18 Employees’ Quantitative; Surveys
19 New leaders’
behavioral Leader succession (Ballinger using employees’ and 203 employees and
20 transformational (Zhao et al., 2016)
resistance and & Schoorman, 2007) leaders’ self and other 22 leaders
21 leadership
support for change reports
22
23 Leader Attributes and Strategic Choices
24
Upper echelons theory
25 Adoption of
(Chatterjee & Hambrick, Quantitative; Archival 78 CEOs from 33 (Gerstner et al.,
26 CEO narcissism discontinuous
27
2007; Hambrick & Mason, data companies 2013)
technology
28 1984)
29 The dynamics of CEO
CEO prior managerial Firms’ strategic Quantitative; Archival (Weng & Lin,
30 tenure (Hambrick & 139 firms
experience changes data 2014)
31 Fukutomi, 1991)
32 Top Management Team
Change in Upper echelons theory Quantitative; Archival (Wiersema &
33 demographics (e.g., 87 firms
corporate strategy (Hambrick & Mason, 1984) data Bantel, 1992)
34 tenure, age, education)
35
Leader Attributes and Leader Behaviors
36
37 Managers’ coping Quantitative; Surveys
Coping (Folkman, Lazarus, 514 matched sets
38 Positive self-concept with using managers’ and (Judge et al.,
Dunkel-Schetter, DeLongis, of leader-follower
39 and risk tolerance organizational other organization 1999)
40
& Gruen, 1986) surveys
change members’ reports
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
79
1
2
4 Predictor Outcome
Sample Reference
5
6 Quantitative; Surveys
106 managers and
7 Leaders’ Cynicism about using managers’ self-
Cynicism about their 933 (R. S. Rubin et
8 transformational organizational change reports and employees’
organizational change responding al., 2009)
9 leadership (Bommer et al., 2005) reports of their
employees
10 managers
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
80
1
2
3 Table 4. Mediation Effects Tested in the Literature on Leadership and Change
4
5
6 Predictor Mediator Criterion Reference
7
8 Leaders’ strategic choice as mediator
9 Origin of new CEO
10 Successor-induced (Friedman & Saul,
(from inside or outside Disruption and turnover
11 the organization)
changes 1991)
12
13 Strategic change
Big-five personality (Herrmann &
14 initiation and Firm performance
traits Nadkarni, 2014)
15 implementation
16
17 Leaders’ behaviors as mediator
18 Leaders’ social control,
19 Follower ratings of Followers’ openness to
emotional expressivity (Groves, 2005)*
20 charismatic behavior change
and emotional control
21
22 Leader performance,
23 Leaders’ cynicism Leaders’ leader OCB, employee
(R. S. Rubin et al.,
24 about organizational transformational commitment, employee
2009)
25 change leadership cynicism about
26 organizational change
27
Change process as mediator
28
29
30 Authentic leadership Positive and negative
Trust in leader (Agote et al., 2016)
31 perceptions emotions
32
33 Quality of relationship
Transformational Task performance and
34 leadership
between leader and
OCB
(Carter et al., 2012)
35 follower
36 Organizational
37 Transformational Cynicism toward insubordination and (DeCelles et al.,
38 leadership change climate organizational 2013)*
39
commitment
40
Perceived top-
41
42
management
Hierarchical distance Commitment to change (Hill et al., 2012)
43 communication
44 effectiveness
45 Affective commitment
Consultation with
46 LMX to organizational (Lee et al., 2014)
47
employees
change
48 Climate involving
49 Acquisition acceptance,
Transformational support for creative (Nemanich &
50 performance, job
leadership thinking and emphasis Keller, 2007)
51 satisfaction
52
on goal clarity
53 (Nohe & Michaelis,
54 Leader charisma Trust in leader Team OCB
2016)
55
56
57
58
59
60
81
1
2
3 Change process
4 characteristics
5 LMX and perceived (van Dam et al.,
(information, Resistance to change
6 development climate 2008)
participation, trust in
7
management)
8
9 Transformational Informational and Cynicism about
10 (Wu et al., 2007)
leadership interpersonal justice organizational change
11
12
13 Recipient responses as mediator
14 Organizational
15 Supportive leadership commitment and
16 (S. L. Jones & Van
and organization Change resistance perceived
17 de Ven, 2016)
fairness organizational
18 effectiveness
19
20 Transformational Employee cynicism Organizational (DeCelles et al.,
21 leadership toward change commitment 2013)*
22
23 Follower ratings of
24 Followers’ openness to Ratings of leader
leaders’ charismatic (Groves, 2005)*
25 behavior
change effectiveness
26
27 New leaders’ Employees’ behavioral
28 transformational Commitment to change resistance and support (Zhao et al., 2016)
29 leadership for change
30
31 Managers change Change recipients’
32 Resistance intentions (Helpap, 2016)
communication strategy change commitment
33
34 Change recipients’
35 Transformational Recipients’
positive and negative (Seo et al., 2012)
36 leadership commitment to change
affect
37
38 Managerial change
39 communication
Change implementation (Sonenshein &
40 (through strategy Commitment to change
behavior Dholakia, 2012)
41 worldview and benefits
42 finding)
43
44 Follower’s perceived Follower’s commitment
Team performance (Nohe et al., 2013)
45 leader charisma to change
46
* For articles that included two mediators that could be classified into different sections of this table, we
47
mention the article twice, once in each of the relevant sections.
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
82
1
2
3 Table 5. Moderation Effects Tested in the Literature on Leadership and Change
4
5
6 Predictor Criterion Moderator Reference
7
8 Moderating effects of leaders’ behaviors
9
10 Employees’ openness to
Adaptivity and Employees’ perceptions (Griffin et al.,
11 work role change and role
proactivity of leader’s vision 2010)
12 breadth self-efficacy
13 Followers’ dispositional
14 Creative performance Empowering leadership (Hon et al., 2014)
resistance to change
15
16 Experienced threat during (Koivisto et al.,
17 Organizational justice
change
Supervisory justice
2013)
18
19 Followers’ dispositional Followers’ resistance to Transformational (Oreg & Berson,
20
resistance to change an organizational reform leadership 2011)
21
22 Context’s role in moderating leaders’ effects
23
24 Task performance and (Carter et al.,
25 LMX Change frequency
OCB 2012)
26
27 Organizational change
28 Charismatic leadership Leadership effectiveness (Groves, 2005)
magnitude
29
30 Leaders’ change Followers’ power
31 communication strategy
Change commitment
distance orientation
(Helpap, 2016)
32
33 Time (the duration of the (S. L. Jones &
34 Supportive leadership Change resistance
change) Van de Ven, 2016)
35
36 Country (US vs. Korea),
LMX and consultation
37 Affective commitment to Followers’ values of
38
influence tactics (Lee et al., 2014)
organizational change collectivism and power
39 (mediator)
distance
40
41 Change impact (Nohe &
Leader charisma Trust in leader
42 (magnitude of change) Michaelis, 2016)
43 Follower motives and
44 Leaders’ behavioral Effective change (Välikangas &
culture (three-way
45 approach leadership
interaction)
Okumura, 1997)
46
47 Transformational Perceptions of cohesion
Cynicism toward change (Wu et al., 2007)
48 leadership in the organization
49
New leaders’ Employees’ behavioral Former leaders’
50
51 transformational resistance and support for transformational (Zhao et al., 2016)
52 leadership change leadership
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
83
1
2
3
4
5
6 Figure 1 – Integrative Model of Leadership and Organizational Change Processes and Outcomes
7
8
9 Leaders’ Strategic Choices \
10 Change Content 1 Change Context
11
Unit/Organization level
• Initiation of strategic change • Culture

12 • Focus on learning • Former leaders’ style
8
13 2
14 Leader
15 Attributes 7 Outcomes
16
Change Process
• Demographics
17 • Personality Change / Organizational
Outcomes
18
9 Leader Behaviors
12 \ • Firm performance
19 3 • Change effectiveness
Sensegiving
20
21 • Participative leadership
22 • Transformational leadership
4
23
5
24
25
26
27 6
28
Individual level
29 Responses to Change
30 Follower Attributes
• Emotions
• Change attitudes
31 • Behavioral consequences and outcomes
• Dispositional resistance to change
32 • Sensemaking
• Role-breadth self-efficacy
33
34
35
36
37
38
Notes: Arrow thickness and darkness represent the number of articles that examined the given link, thicker and darker arrows
39 representing a greater number of studies; Items in bullet points represent examples of the variables in each box.
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
84
1
2
3
4
5 Figure 2 – Empirical Studies on Leadership and Change in the Management Literature
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Qualitative
21
22
23
Research approach
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Quantitative
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38 Individual Group Organization
39
40 Level of analysis
41
42
43
44
Notes:
45
1. Cube shade represents the number of articles that fit within the particular combination of discipline, level of
46
analysis, and methodological approach. Darker shades represent a larger number of articles.
47
2. A given study could be classified into more than a single category.
48 3. Articles were classified into discipline on the basis of the theoretical frameworks that were used in the article. In
49 several cases, articles were coded as both psychological and sociological, and in a few cases as neither.
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
85
1
2
3 Appendix – Detailed Description of the Article Selection Procedures
4
5
6 We began by searching Google Scholar for articles that included the terms
7
8 “organizational change” and “leader” or “leaders” (equivalent to the Boolean search:
9
10 “organizational change” AND (leader OR leaders)) in their title, focusing primarily on high-
11
12
13
ranked journals but including articles with titles that seemed directly relevant to the focus of the
14
15 review. To these we added articles with which we were familiar in advance that did not come up
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17 in this search. We also obtained articles by going through their lists of references and by finding
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articles that cited them (e.g., through Google Scholar’s “cited by” option). This preliminary
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22 search yielded approximately 150 articles. After removing articles that did not meet the criteria
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24 of including an actual organizational change and involving some form of leadership or
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26 management, we remained with 57 articles.
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29 Because limiting search terms to article titles is too restrictive, and yet including these
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31 terms anywhere within the article would yield too many irrelevant articles, we conducted a
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33 second round of searches in the databases mentioned above, which allowed to search for key
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terms within the abstract, keywords, and subject. We searched for articles that include the
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38 combination of the terms “organizational change” (we also conducted a separate search with the
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40 term “organisational change”, for journals that use British English spelling) and either “leaders”
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or “leadership”. We also conducted additional searches, replacing the term “organizational
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45 change” with the terms “downsizing”, “mergers”, “organizational restructuring” and “work
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47 redesign”. To keep the review manageable, we restricted our search to the top-ranked
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49 management and applied psychology journals of the field, as well as a few second-tier journals
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52 that focus on either leadership, organizational change. The journals included were: Academy of
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54 Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal
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57
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86
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3 of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior,
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6 Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, The Leadership Quarterly,
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8 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organizational Science, Personnel
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10 Psychology, and Strategic Management Journal. We also included the Academy of Management
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Review, to cover key theoretical advancements or integrations that could inform our review. This
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15 round of searches yielded 181 articles, of which 35 overlapped with the search we conducted in
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17 the first step.
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We then conducted another round of searches replacing the terms “leader(s)” with
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22 “manager(s)”, “supervisor(s)”, and “CEO(s)”. We searched for articles that include one of these
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24 words, along with the word “change” in the abstract, and the terms “organizational change” or
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26 “strategic change” anywhere within the article: ((managers OR supervisors) and change) in
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29 abstract AND (“organizational change” OR “strategic change”). We restricted this additional
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31 search to a subset of the above journals, retaining only those published in top-tier journals:
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33 Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science
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Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision
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38 Processes, Organizational Science, Personnel Psychology, and Strategic Management Journal.
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40 Because this list of journals tends to be US-centric, we also conducted this search in the highest-
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rated (with respect to the 2016 Impact Factor) European management journal, which is the
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45 Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. This round yielded an additional 83
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47 articles, leading to a total of 286 articles. After reviewing each of these articles and removing
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49 those that did not include an organizational change or an aspect of leadership we remained with
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52 94 articles. Ten of these were theoretical or review articles that we used to inform our analysis
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54 and review. Although the articles we gathered constitute only a subset of the research linking
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87
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3 leadership with organizational change, they represent the main conceptualizations, empirical
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6 approaches and findings in this field.
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Academy of Management Annals

Leaders’ Impact on Organizational Change: Bridging

Journal: Academy of Management Annals

Document Type: Article

Keywords: LEADERSHIP, change < ORGANIZATION, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

• Initiation of strategic change • Culture

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