Transformational behaviors: Increasing work engagement in multinational environments

  • Received April 23, 2021;
    Accepted June 24, 2021;
    Published July 6, 2021
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.19(2).2021.41
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2021, Issue #2, pp. 519-527
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The role of a leader is fundamental to increase organizational culture and facilitate employee engagement. However, organizations are not providing clear guidance on how to do it. This study aims to determine the relationship between leadership styles and employee engagement as well as to understand whether there is a correlation between an engaged employee and extra effort. The study uses a Multi-Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ-5x Rater Form) to measure employee perception of the leader styles and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-17) to determine employee engagement. The scope of the study is limited to a sample of 167 employees from 7 different multinational companies and 31 different nationalities.
Results show that all the transformational behaviors and, concretely the idealized behavior, are significantly positively related to work engagement in multinational environments. Results also reveal a strong correlation between employee engagement and extra effort. The study concludes that leaders or managers should use transformational behaviors if they want to increase engagement and extra effort with their teams. They should increase transformational behaviors like being transparent, consistent, and having a strong sense of purpose to catalyze a collective engagement. These results expand previous studies of transformational leadership and work engagement in multinational environments.

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    • Figure 1. Conceptual framework
    • Figure 2. Parallel Framework
    • Figure 3. Parallel Framework expansion
    • Table 1. Mean and SD analysis of transformational, transactional, passive-avoidance, work engagement, and extra effort
    • Table 2. Bivariate correlation analysis: leadership styles, extra effort and work engagement (N = 167)
    • Table 3. Regression analysis, R2 statistics (leadership styles and work engagement)
    • Table 4. Model fit results, ANOVAa (leadership styles and work engagement)
    • Table 5. Regressions coefficients (leadership styles and work engagement)
    • Table 6. Regression coefficients (extra effort and work engagement)
    • Table 7. Bivariate correlation analysis: transformational behaviors and work engagement (N = 167)
    • Conceptualization
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Data curation
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Formal Analysis
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Funding acquisition
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Investigation
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Methodology
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Project administration
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Resources
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Software
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Supervision
      Marc Valldeneu, Xavier Ferràs, Elisenda Tarrats-Pons
    • Validation
      Marc Valldeneu, Xavier Ferràs, Elisenda Tarrats-Pons
    • Visualization
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Writing – original draft
      Marc Valldeneu
    • Writing – review & editing
      Marc Valldeneu, Xavier Ferràs, Elisenda Tarrats-Pons