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An examination of the relationships between leadership style, quality, and employee satisfaction in R&D versus administrative environments
Author(s) -
Berson Yair,
Linton Jonathan D.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
randd management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.253
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1467-9310
pISSN - 0033-6807
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2005.00371.x
Subject(s) - transformational leadership , transactional leadership , leadership style , quality (philosophy) , psychology , shared leadership , style (visual arts) , public relations , empirical research , social psychology , management , business , political science , economics , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology , statistics , archaeology , history
Academics and executives argue that effective leadership is a key predictor of R&D success as well as quality management. Recent research highlights transformational leadership as a highly effective style shown to predict performance in organizations. However, no study examined the role of transformational and transactional leadership in building quality climate in R&D versus non‐R&D settings. We examined the relationship between leadership style and the establishment of a quality environment in an R&D setting based on an empirical study of 511 research engineers and scientists. It is found that both transformational leadership and transactional contingent‐reward leadership are related to the establishment of a quality environment in the R&D part of a telecommunications firm. However, the impact of transactional contingent‐reward leadership ceases to be significant once both leadership styles are considered simultaneously using structural equations. A transformational leadership style was also found to be related to employee satisfaction.