The role of perceived organizational culture in the link between leadership and organizational identification: a multilevel analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between transformational/transactional leadership and organizational identification as mediated by the cultivation of support, innovation, goal, and rules organizational values. Survey data were provided by 367 employees of a large public organization, who were nested in 30 different organizational units. Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM) was used to test the mediating effect that support and innovation values have in the link between transformational leadership and the two facets of organizational identification, and the mediating role of perceived goal and rules values in the relation between transactional contingent reward and affective identification. The MSEM results showed that transformational leadership was positively related only to cognitive identification, whereas transactional contingent reward was positively related to both facets of identification. Transformational leadership was found to be positively related to the subjective perception of organizational culture as supportive, innovative, goal-oriented, and rule-oriented, while transactional contingent reward was found to be positively related to perceived goal and support values. The findings also showed that a) innovation mediated the relation between transformational leadership and affective identification but, contrary to our hypothesis, innovation had a negative effect on affective identification, and b) the indirect effect of transformational leadership on cognitive identification via innovation values was not significant. Moreover, it was found that support values act as a mediator in the relation of transformational leadership with both dimensions of identification. These findings showed that leadership as a social influence process was related to members' identification with their work organization primarily via the cultivation of support organizational values. The practical applications from a human resource perspective in organizational contexts are also discussed.