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Transformational
Transformational leadership and leadership
service performance for civil
servants of public organizations in
China: a two-path mediating role 215

of trust Received 9 February 2021

Revised 16 September 2021
21 December 2021
Lisan Fan Accepted 7 January 2022

Shandong Technology and Business University, Yantai, China

Cailing Feng
College of Public Administration, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
Mulyadi Robin
Department of Management, Australian Institute of Business, Adelaide, Australia, and
Xiaoyu Huang
Department of Management, California State University San Bernardino,
San Bernardino, California, USA

Abstract
Purpose – Transformational leadership and service performance of civil servants greatly affect the
government’s administrative effectiveness. However, there are few studies on the influence mechanism of
transformational leadership on service performance in the context of public organizations. Based on the social
exchange theory, this study aims to construct and examine the dual path mediating process of affective trust
and cognitive trust for the effects of transformational leadership on service performance.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing from 268 supervisor–subordinate dyads civil servants at
the municipal level in China across three waves.
Findings – Both affective trust and cognitive trust partly mediated the relationships between
transformational leadership and service performance, which supported the underlying theoretical mechanism
of social exchange theory and transformational leadership theory in explaining the dual relationship between
leaders and subordinates. This study innovatively and empirically examined the effects of transformational
leadership on service performance through dual trust in civil servants in China, thus bridging the gap in this
knowledge.
Originality/value – This study innovatively and empirically examined the effects of transformational
leadership on service performance through dual trust in civil servants in China, thus bridging the gap in this
knowledge.
Keywords Transformational leadership, Affective trust, Cognitive trust, Service performance,
Civil servants
Paper type Research paper

Chinese Management Studies

Vol. 17 No. 1, 2023
This paper was granted by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71402067), the pp. 215-230
Humanities and Social Sciences Planning Project of the Ministry of Education (No. 19YJCZH029) and © Emerald Publishing Limited
1750-614X
Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (No. ZR2019MG002). DOI 10.1108/CMS-02-2021-0050
CMS Introduction
17,1 The Chinese public service has gone through an important transformation from a
management-oriented government to a service-oriented government, thus shifting their
focus to consider the public as their customers. Subsequently, Chinese civil servants are
increasingly required to play a variety of roles over and above their regular duties, including
serving the public in various activities that may not be directly related to their personal
216 responsibilities, such as taking face-to-face meetings with the public and taking the
initiative to solve people’s difficulties. Civil servants interact with the masses directly, and
their service behavior directly affects the public’s satisfaction and loyalty to the
government. In the context of building a service-oriented government, civil servants’
service performance has become an important indicator in assessing a government’s service
effectiveness and achievements, which in turn promotes government trust, strengthens
communication and cooperation between government departments and improves overall
effectiveness. Service performance is a proxy for assessing government performance and
represents employees’ behaviors to provide service and meet customers’ needs and interests
(Liao and Chuang, 2004). However, in the existing literature, the impact of transformational
leadership on service performance is a topic rarely considered (Schaubroeck et al., 2016),
especially in public organizations.
With a history spanning over 5,000 years and centered on Confucian culture –
characterized by benevolence, emphasizing motivation-stimulated, employee-respected,
model-set, focusing on how leaders motivate subordinates to best meet people’s needs.
“Benevolence” within Chinese Confucian culture is consistent with Burns (1978)
transformational leadership, whose seminal work based on political leaders encouraged
employees to surpass their own interests coincide with the government’s concept of serving
the people, helping others and serving the society. Recognized as one of the most effective
leadership theories (Lei et al., 2020), transformational leadership motivates followers to
achieve the highest performance. In the process of communicating and sharing
organizational mission and values, transformational leadership can make employees deeply
understand and fully understand its mission and significance to society, meet their
psychological needs to serve the society and benefit others and then improve the service
performance of civil servants. Traditionally, governments have a typical bureaucratic
and pyramid organizational structure with tenured employees, but this can serve as a
barrier for transformation and leads to lower levels of performance. Prior research indicate
that transformational leadership play a key role in the process of enabling government
reform, which then allow governments to better adapt to the changing environment and
attaining higher levels of performance (Wang and Howell, 2012), specifically, engaging in
behaviors that inspire and motivate employees to engage with change and innovate
(Charbonnier-Voirin et al., 2010), and in turn, this potentially enhances organizational
adaptability to achieve healthy and sustainable development in the changing environment
(Uhl-Bien and Arena, 2018). Henceforth, we propose that transformational leadership is
likely to have a significant impact on service performance in public organizations.
Although the mediating process between transformational leadership and individual
outcomes in different contexts was very extensively studied (Chan, 2020), only a few studies
have examined the direct effect of transformational leadership on service performance
(Wang and Howell, 2012), mainly focusing on the private sector rather than government
officials in public organizations. Recent research have begun to uncover the “black box”
behind this relationship, pointing to follower’s trust in the leaders as a key mechanism for
transformational leadership effectiveness. Specifically, trust, in the process of service-
oriented government transformation, reflects the relationship between leaders and
subordinates, and transformational leadership is an antecedent of followers’ trust in leaders Transformational
(Afsar and Umrani, 2020). While previous studies have found that trust was a mediator in leadership
the relationship between transformational leadership and work performance (Jung and
Avolio, 2000), these studies tend to conceptualize trust as unidimensional, ignoring the fact
that trust may contain multiple dimensions. Dirks and Ferrin (2002) present trust as a two-
dimensional construct comprising affective and cognitive trust, the affective trust
emphasizes the degree of mutual exchange in a leader–subordinate relationship, while the
cognitive trust represents the followers’ instrumental evaluation of leaders’ significant
217
personal characteristics (e.g. ability, integrity, reliability, etc.). Previous studies have
examined the mediating role of trust in transformational leadership and follower outcomes
at the individual level, usually using trust measures that combine affective and cognitive
dimensions as one construct (Rubin et al., 2010), thus ignoring the dynamic and complex
influence of different trust types on subordinates’ reaction to transformational leadership.
At present, the new public management makes the government gradually change from the
traditional regulation to the service-orientation, which puts forward higher requirements for
civil servants’ service performance. As the subordinate civil servants who directly serve the
people, their cognitive or affective trust in transformational leadership presents specific
characteristics such as initiative, voluntariness and spontaneity, to adapt to the government
transformation, so in this study, we argue that these two dimensions may have very
different effects on the dynamic relationship between leader and subordinate civil servants.
There has been a gradual emphasis within the public administration in shifting away
from the traditional approach toward service-orientation, which puts forward higher
requirements for civil servants’ service performance. In turn, among their subordinates who
directly serve the people, their cognitive or affective trust in transformational leadership
presents specific characteristics such as initiative, voluntariness and spontaneity, to adapt
to the government transformation. Henceforth, in this study, we argue that these two
dimensions may have very different effects on the dynamic relationship between leader and
subordinate civil servants.
Social exchange theory provides a solid theoretical basis for the relationship between
leaders and followers, emphasizing that their relationship consists of reciprocal obligations
(Blau, 1964). So to address the above gap, the current study will explore whether affective-
trust and cognitive-trust in leadership play a mediating role between transformational
leadership and service performance for civil servants based on the social exchange theory.
Not only will this help us better understand and suggest how governments can make better
use of the influence of transformational leadership and promote the expected service
performance by developing trust but also help to improve government leadership style and
service effectiveness.

Theoretical background and hypothesis

Transformational leadership and service performance
As one of the most dominant leadership paradigms over the past three decades (Dinh et al.,
2014), transformational leadership is a leadership process where the leader goes beyond the
transactional elements of the leadership relationship, and as a result eliciting higher levels of
performance among the subordinates. They do this by creating a charismatic image
(idealized influence), articulating an appealing vision (inspirational motivation), challenging
widely held beliefs and encouraging out-of-the-box thinking (intellectual stimulation) and,
last but not least, recognizing and catering for the needs of the individual follower
(individualized consideration) (Bass, 1985). As far as the government is concerned,
transformational leaders can effectively clarify the service requirements for civil servants,
CMS teach them how to meet people’s needs and encourage them to show a stronger people-
17,1 centered attitude. In addition, transformational leaders are ideal role models to provide
inspiration for civil servants and further stimulate their internal motivation to actively
serve.
In this study, we identified service performance as a performance variable, arguing that
civil servants’ service performance is a proxy of the government’s service effectiveness.
218 Specifically, we propose that civil servants’ transformational leadership has an impact on
their subordinates’ service performance based on the following arguments. Social exchange
theory points out that based on reciprocity, trust and interdependence, a certain sense of
obligation and return will be created in the leadership relationship. As transformational
leaders care about their subordinates, provide them with development opportunities, and
help them grow; their subordinates are likely to feel an obligation to their leaders by
engaging in high level of work engagement, fulfilling organizational role expectations and
maintaining good interpersonal relationships. In turn, this creates a climate of mutual
respect. Through observation, imitation and internalization, we argue that subordinates will
likely demonstrate a higher level of engagement with their duties as public officers. Further,
this in turn will likely enhance their sense of identity and pride of their work, translating to
higher levels of service performance. Further, as transformational leaders engage in vision-
building, we propose that civil servants will be aware of their importance to the government,
their sense of responsibility will be enhanced, and they will have higher initiative and
enthusiasm to serve people. In addition, motivational encouragement also improves
employees’ adaptability to the dynamic organizational environment, improves flexibility
and provides support for timely response to people’s personalized needs. Therefore, we
predict:

H1. Transformational leadership will positively relate to service performance.

Transformational leadership and affective/cognitive trust

Trust is defined as a psychological state that contains a willingness to accept vulnerability
based on positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of others (McAllister, 1995),
which has been proved a key indicator of leader–follower relationship in the workplace (Le
and Lei, 2018). Civil servants’ trust in leaders, an important prerequisite for performing
exceeding expectations (Podsakoff et al., 1990), comes from the long-term interaction
between leaders and subordinates, characterized by a caring and supportive relationship.
Under these circumstances, leaders are more willing to share organizational information
with them, and civil servants trust them more. However, the previous results on the
relationship between transformational leadership and trust is inconsistent (Ugwu et al.,
2016; Phong et al., 2018), and affective/cognitive trust is less involved, especially ignoring
the social exchange mechanisms behind trust and the public context, although some studies
have confirmed that there is a significantly positive relationship between transformational
leadership and followers’ trust in their leaders (Wang et al., 2016). As such, in this study, we
adopt McAllister’s (1995) two-dimensional trust model of affective trust and cognitive trust,
as the theoretical basis to better understand the potential impact of trust in transformational
leadership on civil servants’ service performance. Specifically, we argue that affective trust
comes from subordinates’ perception of leaders’ sincere concern, while cognitive trust comes
from subordinates’ objective evaluation of leaders’ key characteristics, such as ability and
integrity (Dirks and ferrin, 2002). Generally speaking, affective trust is developed on the
basis of cognitive trust. Cognitive trust is more important at the beginning of the
relationship, while affective trust becomes more important when the relationship is closer. In
fact, transformational leadership is most likely to show the two dimensions of trust, because Transformational
followers notice and idealize their impact on leaders, and they establish an affective bond leadership
with each other (Altunolu et al., 2019).
Social exchange theory describes the reciprocal relationship between individuals and
explains how transformational leadership establishes a harmonious, trusting relationship,
and also proposes that when leaders treat their followers well, they will make greater efforts
on behalf of the organization in return (Blau, 1964). Based on the principle of mutual benefit
and fair social exchange, the relationship between transformational leaders and followers
219
represents a social exchange rather than economic exchange. The trust of civil servants in
leaders is that they are willing to devote themselves to service work, so that their interests
will not be damaged. From the perspective of social exchange, the relationship between
leaders and subordinates involves voluntary behavior based on future obligations. Social
exchange relationships are risky and uncertain because they are not based on some type of
prior agreement (Khan et al., 2019). Transformational leaders are positively correlated with
followers’ trust in leaders by showing support, encouragement and respect for employees
(Lei et al., 2019). They are more inclined to participate in different communication activities,
which is very helpful for building cognitive trust in sharing ideas with each other. In
this process, civil servants may leave a positive impression on the core features of cognitive
trust in leaders – reliability and integrity (Hussain et al., 2018). Meanwhile, transformational
leaders can share vision and goals with their followers, providing support, establishing high
service standards and expectations, stimulating employee’s intelligence by challenging
them to accomplish higher service goals and motivating them to provide better service for
their constituents, which in turn have the potential to strengthen the affective bond and
generate a higher level of affective trust. Thus, we predict:

H3a. Transformational leadership will be positively related to affective trust.

H3b. Transformational leadership will be positively related to cognitive trust.

Affective/cognitive trust and service performance

Civil servants directly serve the public and are most familiar with the social affairs
concerned by the public, who are the bridge and window for public departments to
communicate with the people. Their service performance is closely connected with the
government performance and greatly affects the public’s trust in the government. In
practice, people’s increasing demands have increased the expectations for the government’s
service performance, which is especially prominent in China where the Confucian culture is
dominant. Civil servants may be reluctant to trust their leaders when they feel that their
leaders do not care about their well-being or personal needs, thus reducing their
performance.
Unfortunately, there are still various differences in the previous research on the
relationship between trust and performance, showing positive (De Jong and Elfring, 2010),
negative (Langfred, 2004) or even no relationship (Aubert and Kelsey, 2003). Actually, for
the complex results of the relationship between trust and performance, many scholars still
insist that trust in the leader may be a more relevant predictor of performance (De Jong et al.,
2016). As such, we posit that higher levels of both affective trust and cognitive trust are
likely to have positive impacts on service performance for civil servants, as trust enables
leaders and followers to work together more effectively and exchange resources in a way
that helps promote service performance, while lack of trust may lead to focus more on
personal interests.
CMS Affective trust is based on personal affective participation and others’ real care for their
17,1 own welfare (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). If government leaders really care about the welfare of
civil servants, they should make their subordinates regard their service work as a pleasant
experience rather than a heavy burden, inspire them to maintain good interpersonal
relations, cooperate actively with each other and strive together toward the high-quality
service performance goal. Cognitive trust is based on individuals’ cognitive evaluation of the
220 reliability, integrity and ability of others (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Regard civil servants as
capable, strengthen their belief in the ability to improve service performance and encourage
them to engage in task-oriented service behavior, so as to achieve service performance
objectives. Thus, we predict:

H4a. Affective trust will be positively related to service performance.

H4b. Cognitive trust will be positively related to service performance.

Transformational leadership and service performance: the mediating role of

affective trust and cognitive trust
Within the context of the Chinese public service, we argue that when civil servants do not
feel the affective and cognitive trust toward their leader, even if they understand the people’s
personalized needs, they may not be able to provide good service. Therefore, civil servants’
affect trust and cognitive trust may be the most important bridge between transformational
leadership and service performance. The public service-oriented government encourages
civil servants to provide personalized services for the public creatively. Only when the
service personnel feel the work’s meaning and value, they can provide services for the
people from the heart and experience the realization of the value and significance of life in
the process of providing good services.
Social exchange theory can explain the mediating mechanism of transformational
leadership on service performance for civil servants. Social exchange to achieve goals
through interaction with others is usually based on power and authority. Power emphasizes
controlling imposed through negative sanctions, while authority is a willing obedience from
itself and social norms. In a government, the relationship between leaders and civil servants
is essentially the social exchange relationship established on the basis of power and
authority as Blau (1964) said. Leaders use the reasonable and legitimate power given by the
government to exercise command and order, and make civil servants follow and obey
voluntarily. Some insiders often get the trust and help from their leaders, in return, they are
more willing to help the leaders to solve their problems, make extra efforts on the basis of
completing their own work and show higher service performance.
While studies have shown that affective or cognitive trust mediated the relationship
between transformational leadership and job performance, there are still inconsistencies in
the previous results. For example, Hussain et al. (2018) found that affective trust and
cognitive trust both mediated negatively between transformational leadership and task
performance, as the development of high-level cognitive trust of transformational leaders
may lead to excessive dependence on their leaders, social idleness or reduce personal work
enthusiasm and motivation, and have a negative impact on their performance, while
Altunolu et al. (2019) confirmed that affective trust mediated the relationship between
transformational leadership and followers’ task performance. However, these two aspects of
trust in leader as mediators between transformational leadership and service performance
have not yet been examined. In this study, we argue that as transformational leadership
emphasizes sharing vision and goals with employees, providing good support for
employees, establishing high service standards, giving employees high expectations and Transformational
motivating employees to have good service spirit and service status, which are the premise leadership
of good service performance, they should guide civil servants to have greater trust in the
leader’s ability to guide and achieve the task effort. Civil servants face great challenges
when interacting with different people, which inevitably leads to heavy workload and long-
time job stress, thus reducing their service quality. If civil servants are not satisfied with
their leaders, they tend to be dissatisfied with the people in providing services (Hussain 221
et al., 2018). Ineffective leadership and lack of trust in leaders are the problems faced by civil
servants, leading to poor service performance. Transformational leadership can motivate
civil servants’ work motivation, establish a trustworthy climate, inspire their trust in leaders
and make them have a sense of belonging and pride, thus enhancing their service
performance. Therefore, the following hypotheses are put forward:

H5a. Affective trust will be a mediator between transformational leadership and service
performance.
H5b. Cognitive trust will be a mediator between transactional leadership and service
performance (Figure 1).

Methods
Sample and procedure
In the government, middle-level civil servants are the backbone of policy implementation
and administrative efficiency. Whether the middle-level civil servants can form strong
leadership and improve the service performance of their subordinates is very important for
the process of comprehensively deepening reform in China. Therefore, the leadership
construction of middle-level civil servants is an integral part of China’s public management
structural reform, and its importance in the reform process is increasingly prominent.
Supervisor - subordinate paired survey data was collected to reduce the influence of
common method variance. Therefore, we screened the samples according to the following
three criteria:

remove the samples whose direct subordinates are 0;

remove the samples whose total number of organizational members is less than 30;
and

Figure 1.
Conceptual model of
the impact of
transformational
leadership on service
performance for civil
servants
CMS
remove the samples whose organization has been established for less than 12
17,1 months.

Three-wave paired data, with a month between each wave, were collected from a total of 300
MPA students and their direct supervisors who are also civil servants from Qingdao,
Yantai, Weihai in China based on their voluntary participation. Paper-pencil tests were
hand-delivered to the civil servant respondents in classrooms. Participants were told that
222 this survey was voluntary and asked them to return it to the researcher at the address
attached to the survey in a week. Participants were assured that their individual results
would not be reported and were asked not to place their names anywhere on the survey to
ensure anonymity. Every civil servant will leave the contact information (telephone or email)
of their direct supervisor, our research team will contact their leaders and send the service
performance questionnaire through email.
In the first wave, 289 paired valid data were obtained (an 96.4% response rate), civil
servants rated their supervisors’ transformational leadership and demographic variables;
and in the second wave, supervisors evaluated their direct subordinates’ affective trust and
cognitive trust, and this resulted in 271 paired valid data; lastly in the third wave,
subordinates’ service performance was assessed by their direct supervisors via email,
yielding 265 supervisor–subordinate dyads (83 leaders and 268 direct subordinates). After
removing incomplete data, the respondents were mainly comprised of men (61.3%), had
completed a bachelor’s degree or higher (76.2%), had an average work tenure of 8.4 years;
mainly engaged in administrative management, human resource management, financial
accounting and information management functions. The average age of the respondents
was 33 years old, with an average of more than 8 years of work experience, with an average
leader-direct report relationship of 3 years.

Measures
As the items of transformational leadership, affective trust, cognitive trust and service
performance are mainly from Western contexts, our first task was to revise the items of
these scales in the context of the Chinese public service and verify the validity of each
concept. In the preliminary study, we carried out three tasks:
(1) two-way translation of the scale to determine the appropriate Chinese translation;
(2) conducting a pre-survey: 150 questionnaires were randomly delivered to MPA
students in class, and collected 137 valid data (91.33%), results show that the
reliability of the above four measures are 0.81, 0.94, 0.92 and 0.91, the exploratory
factor analysis (EFA) also indicates a good four-dimension construct validity
(KMO = 0.926, 61.75% of variance explained); and
(3) invited six experts who have worked for more than 10 years and who have held or
are now holding leadership positions, and grass-roots civil servants to discuss the
items of the questionnaire and the appropriateness of language expression.

A five-point scale was used to measure all items in the survey, ranging from “strongly
disagree” as 1 to “strongly agree” as 5, except for the control variables.
Transformational leadership was assessed by subordinates using a scale developed by
Podsakoff et al. (1990), which included six dimensions, such as identifying and articulation a
vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals, providing individualized support,
intellectual stimulation, providing an appropriate model high performance expectations
(a = 0.913). Sample items include “my leader respected my feeling” and “my leader
encouraged employees to be one of the team”. In line with prior research, we measured Transformational
transformational leadership as a unidimensional construct (Liao and Chuang, 2007). leadership
Affective trust and cognitive trust. We measured both affective trust and cognitive trust
as self-reported data from subordinates using McAllister’s (1995) affective trust (five items)
and cognitive trust (six items) scales (a = 0.884 and 0.903, respectively). Sample items
include “I completely believe my supervisor is honest” and “We can both freely share our
ideas, feelings and hopes”.
The service performance of civil servants was measured via their supervisors developed
223
by Liao and Chuang (2004), which has been previously tested in the service context (a =
0.947). In this study, we changed the self-assessment to leader-assessment and modify items
from the leader perspective. Sample items include “I am satisfied with his work” and “I has
high appraisal for him”.
Based on previous literature, we controlled for age (in years), gender, and work tenure as
they may influence service performance in testing our study’s hypotheses. Further, the
correlations, hierarchical regression and structure models among the four latent variables
were calculated with SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 22.0.

Results
Discriminant validity
As suggested by Podsakoff et al. (1990), we used CFA to evaluate the magnitude of common
method variance. That is, we conducted a one-factor model including transformational
leadership, affective trust, cognitive trust and service performance. As shown in Table 1,
one-factor model did not meet the statistical requirements (McDonald and Ho, 2002). Overall,
these results suggest there was no threat of common method variance. Table 1 shows the
confirmatory factor analysis of the key variables in this study. The results showed that the
fitting index of the four-factor model ( x 2 = 957.12, df = 473, x 2/df = 2.024, CFI = 0.89, IFI =
0.87, RMSEA = 0.06) is better than other alternative models. This shows that our four
variables in the study have good discrimination effect in terms of connotation and
measurement.

Descriptive statistics
Table 1 presents the means, standards, correlations, reliabilities, convergent validities and
discriminate validity of the variables included in our study. Transformational leadership
was positively related to affective trust (r = 0.54, p < 0.01), cognitive trust (r = 0.53, p <
0.01) and service performance (r = 0.51, p < 0.01); both affective and cognitive trust were
positively related to service performance (r = 0.53, p < 0.01; r = 0.46, p < 0.01). The

Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Transformational leadership (T1) 3.63 0.54 0.913 0.63

2. Affective trust (T2) 3.90 0.57 0.54** 0.884 0.69
3. Cognitive trust (T2) 4.03 0.63 0.53** 0.61** 0.907 0.62 Table 1.
4. Service performance (T3) 3.71 0.56 0.51** 0.53** 0.46** 0.947 0.73 Means, standards,
5. Gender (T1) 1.13 0.34 0.33* 0.23 0.17 0.35* – – correlations,
6. Age (T1) 3.46 1.04 0.15 0.02 0.09 0.28* 0.34* –
reliability,
7. Work tenure (T1) 3.28 1.11 0.08 0.11 0.01 0.36* 0.57* 0.74*
convergent validity
Notes: ‹ **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05. › Reliability coefficients are on the first diagonal (bold and italicized). fi and discriminant
AVE are on the last diagonal (italicized). fl 265 supervisor–subordinate dyads validity
CMS Cronbach’s alpha values are all above 0.70, which fit the statistical measurement (Nunnally,
17,1 1978). We mainly analyzed convergent validity and discriminant validity using average
variance extracted (AVE), the AVEs (0.63, 0.69, 0.62, 0.73) are all above 0.50 and are all no
less than correlation coefficients of every two variables, which show that the convergent
validity and discriminant validity can be accepted (Fornell and Larcker,1981). In addition,
we tested multicollinearity with variance inflation factor (VIF) to ensure the validity of
224 results, and there is no evidence for multicollinearity: VIFs for the correlation between
transformational leadership and trust ranged from 1.41 to 1.59, the highest VIF was 1.59,
less than 10 (Chatterjee et al., 2000).
Transformational leadership and service performance: The mediating role of affective
trust and cognitive trust
According to Baron and Kenny (1986), mediation is assumed if four criteria are met:
(1) the independent variable significantly relates to the mediator;
(2) the independent variable significantly relates to the dependent variable;
(3) the mediator significantly relates to the dependent variable; and
(4) When the independent variable and the mediating variable are added to the
equation at the same time, the effect of the independent variable weakens or
disappears, while the effect of the intermediate variable is still significant.

Table 2 summarizes our results for the Baron and Kenny (1986) mediation tests.
As shown in Table 2, beyond control variables, transformational leadership was
significantly related to affective trust ( b = 0.562, 4R2=0.246 and cognitive trust ( b = 0.455,
4R2=0.195), supporting H1a and H1b. Affective trust and cognitive trust were significantly
related to service performance ( b = 0.197) and cognitive trust ( b = 0.273), supporting H2a
and H2b. When considering transformational leadership and affective trust simultaneously,
affective trust still significantly related to service performance, while the relationship
between transformational leadership and service performance became weaker, offering a
partial mediating effect, thus supporting H3a, that transformational leadership was
positively related to affective trust. When considering transformational leadership and
cognitive trust simultaneously, cognitive trust also significantly related to service
performance, while the relationship between transformational leadership and service
performance became weaker, thus also a partial mediating role, and supporting H3b, that
transformational leadership was positively related to cognitive trust.
Also, this study uses bootstrapping analysis method to verify the mediating role of
affect trust and cognitive trust. Bootstrapping removes the hypothesis that indirect
effects between variables must follow normal distribution and is considered as a better
method to test mediating effects. According to this, if the confidence interval of the
indirect effect does not contain zero, it means that the indirect effect reaches a significant
level and there is a mediating effect. According to the suggestion of Edwards and
Lambert (2007), this study adopts the bootstrapping (5000) analysis method of bias
corrected. Results show that the indirect effect of transformational leadership on service
performance through affective trust and cognitive trust is 0.12 and 0.08, the 95% bias
corrected confidence interval was [0.07, 0.19] and [0.02, 0.08], respectively, excluding zero,
indicating that the indirect effect of transformational leadership on service performance
reached a significant level. Therefore, the mediating role of affective trust and cognitive
trust between transformational leadership and service performance has been verified.
H4a and H4b were further supported (Table 3).
 Affective trust/
Variables Cognitive trust (T2) Service performance (T3) Service performance (T3)

Gender (T1) 0.259/ 0.041/ 0.323 0.028 0.033 0.261 0.253 0.259
0.323 0.194
Age (T1) 0.118/ 0.020/ 0.013 0.069 0.022 0.013 0.016 0.014
0.013 0.040
Work tenure (T1) 0.060/0.162 0.082/ 0.162 0.331 0.359 0.139 0.147 0.152
0.288
Transformational leadership (T1) 0.562***/ 0.544*** 0.392** 0.291* 0.173*
0.455***
Affective trust (T2) 0.197*** 0.162**
Cognitive trust (T2) 0.273*** 0.182**
F 0.814/ 4.403***/6.465*** 3.359* 7.536*** 7.256*** 2.174* 1.814* 1.671*
3.359*
R2 0.055/ 0.300/ 0.197 0.430 0.482 0.335 0.302 0.297
0.197 0.393
2
4R 0.055/ 0.246***/0.195*** 0.197* 0.232*** 0.052*** 0.136*** 0.172*** 0.161***
0.197*

Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.01

cognitive trust
Transformational

the mediating role of

Transformational
Table 2.
leadership

affective trust and

leadership and
225

service performance–
CMS Discussion and conclusion
17,1 Theoretical implications
Although some studies have emphasized the importance of transformational leadership on
service performance, the reasons why leaders can enhance civil services’ performance are
not clear. Moreover, the existing literature ignores the simultaneous transmission effect of
both affective trust and cognitive trust. To fill these research gaps, this study aims to test
226 the relationship between transformational leadership and service performance in public
organizations and to explore the mediating role of affective trust and cognitive trust based
on the social exchange theory. Next, we will discuss the theoretical and practical
significance of the research results.
Our first contribution verifies the positive impact of transformational leadership on civil
servants’ service performance by taking leader - follower matched data and provides a new
explanation for public organization’s service performance from the perspective of
transformational leadership. This study supports that civil servants are more likely to show
reciprocity to their leaders and invest more efforts to meet people’s needs, as
transformational leaders can express the government’s vision in an inspiring way, provide
challenging work for civil servants, clarify the significance of serving the people, encourage
to actively participate in service activities and motivate civil servants’ service enthusiasm,
thus promoting their service performance.
Second, our study deepens our understanding of how transformational leadership
enhances civil servants’ service performance and also further supports a core mechanism of
followers’ trust in leaders (Zhu et al., 2013). Transformational leaders stimulate civil
servants’ high-level needs, care sincerely about their work and life, provide work support,
build affective trust with each other, urge them to put organizational interests above
personal interests and achieve service effects beyond preset expectations (Bass, 1985).
Specifically, when influenced by Confucian culture and collectivism culture, governments at
all levels in China regard “people’s interests first”, the willingness of transformational
leaders to put collective goals above personal interests helps to strengthen the affective bond
between leaders and followers and promotes a higher level of affective trust, thus improving
their service performance. As for the cognitive trust path, although government
transformational leaders do not directly participate in all department affairs, they can set an
example for civil servants through their own examples, make them follow voluntarily, keep
their words and deeds consistent. In this way, civil servants can perceive their leaders’
integrity and reliability, obtaining more cognitive trust, thus enhance their public service
motivation and improving service performance.
The third important contribution further enriches the social exchange theory holding
that social exchange relations encourage individuals to make extra efforts to complete tasks
and desire to exceed expectations (Blau, 1964), and provides a theoretical framework for
further understanding the mechanism of transformational leadership on service
performance for public organizations. According to the reciprocity principle of social
exchange theory, when civil servants obtain tangible and intangible benefits such as

Table 3.
Bootstrapping Variables Direct effect Indirect effect 95% CI
results for the Transformational leadership 0.526*** 0.12 [0.07, 0.19]
mediating effects of 0.08 [0.02, 0.08]
affective- and
cognitive- trust Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.01
resource support from their transformational leaders, they are willing to make more efforts Transformational
for leaders and their teams. On the one hand, transformational leaders can create more leadership
favorable service conditions and help civil servants finish service tasks, which is
conducive to their positive affective trust in leaders, increase work engagement and improve
service performance. On the other hand, transformational leaders can help civil servants
reshape consistent service values by establishing a vision, promoting them to better
understand the significance of organizational development and then improve their cognitive 227
trust in leaders, thus striving for more resources and improving service level. In China, civil
servants are public servants of the people, they should serve the people wholeheartedly, pay
more attention to interpersonal relationship, emphasize responsibility and loyalty. If civil
servants establish a good affective relationship with their superiors, or trust their superiors’
ability and credibility, they can perform tasks better.

Practical implications
Nowadays, China is experiencing the transformation from a management-oriented
government to a service-oriented government. These civil servants are the backbone of
public organizations, and they are also the most valuable resources of public organizations.
Their service performance is one of the most important sources for public organizations to
improve the efficiency of public services.
First, Chinese Government should cultivate transformational leadership behavior, and
induce higher level of affective trust and cognitive trust to have a positive impact on service
performance by virtue and example demonstration. Government leaders need to encourage
civil servants to take the initiative. For example, showing role model in the process of
achieving service goals, responsible in the service work for the government and people’s
interests regardless of personal gains and losses, making subordinates feel happy in the
process of service work and so on. When the work is not in place or mistakes, the civil
servants who affectively or cognitively trust their leaders can provide remedial services in
time, effectively eliminate the dissatisfaction of the masses, and improve the perceived
service performance of the masses. On the other hand, transformational leaders provide
personalized care and an appropriate service model, the spirit of the civil servants can be
sublimated from the tedious daily administrative affairs, so that they are constantly
stimulated, for example, conveying a sense of mission to employees, depicting an inspiring
future, talking passionately about tasks to be completed, and expressing the expectation of
pursuing perfection and high performance to employees. So the government should
effectively foster and train the transformational leaders, such as the implementation of
service-oriented human resource management practice, maintaining the fairness and
transparency of rewards and punishments, reasonable and scientific promotion mechanism,
regular vocational skills training, etc., all contribute to the realization of the public
management function requirements of government organs.
Second, vision casting is an important feature of transformational leadership, which in
turn inspires followers and engenders trust in leaders. The trust of civil servants in leaders
is based on the results of their organizational decisions, rather than their direct experience of
personality, words, and actions (Kloutsiniotis and Mihail, 2018). Transformational leaders
pay more attention to personalized care, especially their subordinates’ needs; striving to
nurture and meet their needs; teaching to solve current and potential problems in new ways,
these behaviors strengthen leaders’ commitment to followers and help build their trust to
leaders, civil servants should also work with an open mind and meet the needs of customers
from different angles, thus cultivating high trust in leaders. Those who trust their
CMS transformational leadership and organization will make more efforts and give more sincere
17,1 service.
Third, some performances of civil servants, such as agility, helpfulness, equal treatment
and compliance with rules and regulations, can be regarded as service performance. When
civil servants receive preferential treatment from organizations, they will respond by being
kind to people. That is, when civil servants trust leaders, they will provide better and more
228 satisfactory services. Some attributes of civil servants (such as corruption, serving personal
interests rather than citizens’ interests, inaccessibility and nepotism) can be regarded as
“hindering the process of service”. Transformational leaders urge civil servants to trust him,
reduce service obstacles and improve service quality.

Limitations and future directions

This study has inevitably some limitations:

The measurement of service performance adopts the evaluation of subordinates’
subjective evaluation of their direct leaders, future research may use objective
evaluation indicators of the service performance to improve the reliability and
validity.

Social exchange theory was used to reveal the mediating role of trust, while leader -
member exchange, developed from social exchange theory, represents the quality of
the exchange relationship between leaders and followers, due to leaders’ limited
time and energy, the quantity and quality of resources invested in dealing with
different followers are different (Graen and Uhl-bien, 1995), so next we can also use
other theories, such as LMX theory, to further explore the transmission mechanism
between transformational leadership and service performance. Moreover, in future,
it would be better if some situational variables or potential moderators were
explored to buffer their relationship.

All the data in this study are from Chinese cultural background, which may limit
the ecological validity. As we know, the transformational leadership has been
examined in many different cultures, while the trust in leaders is sensitive to
cultural differences, so it is worth further testing the differential effect in other (e.g.
Asian or Western) cultures.

A multi-level model can be constructed to explore how and when transformational
leadership improves team or organizational service performance.

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Corresponding author
Cailing Feng can be contacted at: china_clf@126.com

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