ARTICLES' CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Articles' Critical Analysis



Articles' Critical Analysis

Article 1

The purpose of the current research was to better understand this relationship between transformational leadership and shared perceptions about organizational goals, and its association with critical outcomes-including individual attitudes and performance, as well as organizational performance.

By focusing on transformational leadership within top management teams (TMTs), we were able to examine CEO transformational leadership, the attitudes and performance of individual members of TMTs (typically vice presidents [VPs]), and organizational performance in the upper echelons of a multiorganization sample.

Thus, this study contributes to existing research in three key ways. First, we examine dyadic goal importance congruence between CEOs and VPs as an intervening mechanism by which CEO transformational leadership is related to VP attitudes and performance. We define dyadic goal importance congruence as the similarity between CEO and individual VP perceptions about the importance of specific goals to the organization. Unlike Berson and Avolio (2004), who collected qualitative accounts of the goals of a small sample of leaders and followers, we quantitatively assessed dyadic goal importance congruence in multiple organizations.

Specifically, we calculated dyadic goal importance congruence by comparing CEO and VP ratings of the importance of seven specific organizational goals, identified from a presurvey of CEOs as relevant for their industry. This approach is consistent with previous research on goal congruence (e.g., Vancouver & Schmitt, 1991; Witt, 1998), which has been described as an important type of personorganization fit (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman, & Johnson, 2005). Thus, a second contribution of our research comes from investigating transformational leadership as a possible antecedent to goal congruence.

As Kristof-Brown et al. (2005) noted, little is known about antecedents of person-organization fit in general. Our study is an attempt to fill this gap.

Finally, we extend previous research on transformational leadership to the organizational level of analysis. Although research has begun to examine a transformational leadership-organizational performance link (e.g., Waldman, Ramirez, House, & Puranam, 2001), little is known about the intervening mechanisms that help explain this relationship.

To fill this gap, research must move beyond the dyadic leader-follower relationship to examine how transformational CEOs relate to their top management teams as collectives (Dess, 1987; Katzenbach, 1997). As such, in this study, we examine

within-team goal importance congruence as a possible link between CEO transformational leadership and firm performance. We define within-team goal importance congruence as the similarity of perceptions about the importance of specific organizational goals among all members of a TMT (including the CEO). A combination of detailed survey data from upper echelon leaders and objective financial indicators of performance allowed us to better understand the relationship between transformational CEOs and firm performance.

Taken as a whole, these results provide compelling evidence of important links between leadership, goal importance congruence, and outcomes.

However, this is only a first step. David McClelland wrote, "Whatever the source of a leader's ideas, he cannot inspire his people unless he expresses vivid goals which in some sense they want" (1975: 260).

Yet most research on goal importance congruence, including the current study, focuses on whether people have similar perceptions ...