Leadership in a Changing Business World. A Multilevel Perspective on Connecting Employees to Organizational Goals
- In a dynamic business world, supervisors need to link employees to the organization. Yet, we know little about how leadership operates at different levels or boundary conditions for supervisors' effectiveness. I address these questions considering the alignment between the supervisor and the organizational context.
Chapter 2 explores the role of supervisors' psycho-social and career mentoring for organizational career management. I distinguish individual-level differentiated mentoring (i.e., deviation of individual perception from the average team perception) and group-level mentoring (i.e., average perception of all team members). Differentiated psycho-social mentoring enhances promotability via career motivation, and job satisfaction mediates the favorable effects of both differentiated mentoring functions on intentions to stay. In contrast to dyadically focused psycho-social mentoring, group-level career mentoring, which is aligned with more general organizational aspects, has contextual effects on both outcomes.
In Chapter 3, I find that nationality diversity is only positively related to diversity climate and team performance in interdependent teams when supervisors' cultural intelligence is high. However, the relationship is nonsignificant when the team is diverse in terms of age or gender, or when close cooperate is not needed. Thus, in order to be effective, supervisors' characteristics need to be aligned with the specific work group needs.
Chapter 4 explores the role of alignment between supervisor and the organization, represented by supervisors' cynicism about change. Supervisors' contingent reward leadership only attenuates employees' cynicism about change and enhances performance when supervisors' cynicism is low.
In sum, I shed light on the complex mechanism through which supervisors act as organizational sense-makers. By considering the implications of alignment, organizations can capitalize on supervisors' potential to manage contemporary careers, diversity, and change.
