EFFECT OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOUR: AN APPLIED RESEARCH ON LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN TURKEY

Abstract

When the scientific literature on the leadership theories are examined, it is possible to see that the leadership concept has been the focus point of discussions since the past three decades. Partial reason for this is that the leadership concept and the leadership theory have been addressed within different contextual frameworks and different disciplines. Therefore the leadership concept has not one definition but many. For the purposes of this research, leadership is defined as the sum of the knowledge and skills that are needed to unite a group of people around clear objectives, as well as to affect and mobilize them towards achieving them. The development of leadership theory has also formed the basis for different schools of thought. Although there is a vast scholarly literature on the topic, the theories of leadership can be mainly grouped around three different schools of thought. First school thought emphasizes “transactional leadership” when the leader inspires his/her followers (House, 1977; Conger and Kanungo, 1998; Meindl, 1990). Second school of thought emphasizes “entrepreneurial leadership” and underlines the productivity and the practical and cultural change implementations towards enhancing the quality of the processes. The second school of thought is usually considered as the hybrid theory between the first and the third school of thought. (Peters and Austin, 1985; Hammer and Champy, 1993; Champy, 1995). The third school of thought advocating the “transformational leadership” accepts vision and organizational change as its main pillars. (Burns, 1978; Bass, 1985; Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Tichy and Devanna, 1986). In this article, the relation between transformational leadership, one of the three main schools of thought in leadership theory, and organizational citizenship behaviour are examined. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, is a model based on a future oriented strong vision which also underlines transformation as a compulsory function. Organizational citizenship behaviour is also a topic that has been subject to debate for a long time like the leadership theories, and its place in the literature was sustained by Organ and his colleagues by the end of the 1980s (Bateman and Organ, 1983: 587-595; Smith et al, 1983: 653-663; Organ,1988:1-14). In the period following that the organizational citizenship behaviour has been researched from a variety of theoretic and empirical perspectives by the scholars (George and Jones, 1997;155; Williams and Anderson, 1991;602; McNeely and Meglino, 1994;836-838; Schnake and Dumler, 2003;283; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine and Bachrach, 2000;513-563; Van Dyne, Cummings and McLean,1995;215-285; Blakely, Srivastava and Moorman, 2005;103-117), however, since these discussions are out of the scope of this article they have not been elaborated in detail. When the theoretical and empirical research on the organizational citizenship behaviour is considered, it is possible to group them in two main groups. The first group underlines studies on leadership and organizational commitment. The studies relevant to the second group, on the other hand, dwell on the organizational performance components. The organizational citizenship behaviour addressed within the context of the present article concerns the first group of studies. The relation between transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour are studied by different scholars, and most of the research conducted in this framework concluded that there is a positive correlation between the transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour. The leader should have a supportive style, behaving friendly, just, and honest towards subordinates and should be reassuring trust in a way to increase the levels of task awareness among the subordinates. The primary objective of this research is to determine the effect of leadership practices on formation of organizational citizenship behaviour that are defined as optional in the formation of individual behaviour and not covered explicitly by the formal reward system of organizations. The theoretical and empirical framework of the transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour coupled with the interaction scale between these theories forms the main pillar of the present article towards empirical analysis of the local governments in Turkey. In this context, the data covering municipalities are collected and analyzed. The main aim of the article is thus to analyze the effect of transformational leadership on organizational citizenship behaviour. It has been thought that the empirical research on the interaction of transformational leadership with organizational citizenship behaviour within the context of local governments and more specifically within in municipalities where human factor is effective would provide new insights for future research. In this context, Kouzes and Posner (1993) 's scale of five-dimensional transformational leadership together with the "Organizational Citizenship Behaviour," scale developed by Smith, Organ and Near (1983) and McNeely, Meglino (1994) and organized by Lee and Allen (2002) were used. The dimensions of leadership in this scale are defined as ; celebrating the achievements of employees, encouraging staff in selfdevelopment, forming an example, creating a shared vision and a querying process In this study, the first section presents the transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour separately and then the relation between these two theories is discussed. In th second section, the interactively used two scale models are introduced with reference to methodological framework of the empirical research conducted. Section three presents the results of the statistical analyses with reference to the data derived from the questionnaires. Finally, the results of the empirical work are analyzed and discussed with reference to the theories and methodology used. According to the findings of this research, the basic hypothesis of the study has been adopted as “there is a significant statistical relationship between transformational leadership practices organizational citizenship behaviour”. Accordingly, the municipal executives should be transformational leaders to be able to trigger organizational citizenship behaviour and this is getting more and more important given the weight of public services that are conducted through municipalities with a view to enhance the quality of the services. Accordingly, the leadership in the municipalities should encourage their subordinates, they should create a shared vision and further they should be able to take risks and exploit all the venues of success.

Keywords

• Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, Local Governments, Municipalities, Regression Analyses

DÖNÜŞÜMCÜ LİDERLİĞİN ÖRGÜTSEL VATANDAŞLIK DAVRANIŞINA ETKİSİ: TÜRKİYE’DE YEREL YÖNETİMLERE DAİR UYGULAMALI BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Abstract

Liderlik teorileri konusundaki bilimsel literatür incelendiğinde, liderlik kavramının yaklaşık olarak son otuz yıldır değişik tartışmaların odak noktası olduğunu görmek mümkündür. Bunun kısmi olarak nedeni liderlik tanımının ve teorisinin değişik kavramsal çerçevelerde ve değişik disiplinlerce ele alınmış olmasıdır. Dolayısıyla liderlik kavramının bir değil birçok tanımı bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışma kapsamında liderlik, bireyin bir grup insanı, belirli amaçlar etrafında toplayabilme ve bu amaçları gerçekleştirebilmek için onları hareket geçirmek ve etkileyebilmek için gerekli olan bilgi ve yeteneklerinin toplamı olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Bu çalışmanın teorik ve metodolojik temelini oluşturan dönüşümcü liderlik ve örgütsel vatandaşlık davranışı teorileri ve bu teorilerin birbirleriyle karşılıklı etkileşimi sonucu ortaya çıkan ölçek modeli ile Türkiye’de yerel yönetimlere dair uygulamalı bir araştırma yapılması amaçlanmıştır Bu doğrultuda belediyeleri içeren veriler toplanmış ve analiz edilmiştir. Araştırmanın genel amacı, dönüşümcü liderliğin örgütsel vatandaşlık davranışına etkisini analiz etmektir. Dönüşümcü liderliğin örgütsel vatandaşlık davranışının oluşumundaki etkisinin, özellikle insan faktörünün etkin olduğu hizmet kuruluşları kapsamında olan yerel yönetimlerin, yerel yönetimler dahilinde de belediyelerde incelenmesinin bilimsel literatür için önemli ve faydalı olacağı düşünülmüştür. Bu çerçevede, dönüşümcü liderlik ile örgütsel vatandaşlık davranışı arasındaki ilintiyi Türkiye’deki yerel yönetimler/belediyeler, kapsamında uygulamalı olarak incelemek bu çalışmanın temel amacını oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmada, Kouzes ve Posner (1993)’ın geliştirdikleri “Beş Boyutlu Dönüştürücü Liderlik” ölçeği ile Smith, Organ, Near (1983) ve McNeely, Meglino’nun (1994) geliştirdikleri, Lee ve Allen (2002) tarafından düzenlenen “Örgütsel Vatandaşlık Davranışı” ölçeği etkileşimli olarak kullanılmıştır. Söz konusu ölçekte belirlenen dönüşümcü liderlik boyutları; çalışanların başarılarını ödüllendirme / kutlama, personeli gelişimi konusunda cesaretlendirme, örnek olma, paylaşılan farklı bir vizyon yaratma ve süreci sorgulama olarak belirlenmiştir.

Keywords

• Liderlik, Dönüşümcü Liderlik, Örgütsel Vatandaşlık Davranışı, Yerel Yönetimler, Belediyeler,Regresyon Analizi