Global and local identities on the balance scale: Predicting transformational leadership and effectiveness in multicultural teams

The performance of multicultural teams depends, to a great extent, on the effectiveness of their leaders. Transformational leadership is thought to be effective across organizational contexts and national cultures; yet we know little about what shapes these leadership behaviors. This study argues that leaders' social identity configurations influence their transformational leadership behaviors and leadership effectiveness in multicultural settings. Building upon the global acculturation model, we test the effects of four identity configurations, based on the relative strength and balance of identification with the global and local cultures. We suggest that multicultural team leaders with balanced identity configurations, either glocal (high global, high local) or marginal (low global, low local), demonstrate more transformational leadership and consequently are more effective than leaders with unbalanced (dominant global or dominant local) configurations. Data were collected from 298 MBA students who worked on a four-week project in 77 multicultural teams. We used polynomial regression to capture how the discrepancy between the global and local components of leaders' identity configurations affects transformational leadership behaviors and effectiveness. The results generally support the theoretical model, showing that the most transformational and effective leaders are those with balanced identity configurations. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

How do Employees Adapt to Organizational Change? The Role of Meaning-making and Work Engagement

This multi-wave, multi-source study focuses on the benefits of work engagement for employee adaptation to organizational change. The change entailed the implementation of a flexible office design in an engineering firm, which caused radical change for employees. Building on conservation of resources (COR) theory and change transition models, we predict that work engagement trajectories during change are crucial for successful adaptation. The hypothesized process was that initial employee meaning-making will facilitate work engagement, which, in turn, predicts supervisor-rated adaptive performance (i.e. adaptive work-role performance and extra-role performance) via attitude-to-change. Attitude-to-change was modeled as reciprocally related to work engagement at different points in time. Weekly questionnaires were completed by 71 employees during the first five weeks of the change (296 observations). Latent growth trajectories using weekly engagement measures showed no overall growth, but did show significant variance around the slope of work engagement. Meaning-making and attitude-to-change at the onset were positively related to initial levels, but not to growth of work engagement. Meaning-making was indirectly related to short-term attitude-to-change via work engagement. Short-term attitude-to-change was predictive of supervisor-rated adaptive performance and long-term attitude-to-change. Finally, work engagement (slope) predicted long-term attitude-to-change and supervisor-rated extra-role performance via short-term attitude-to-change. Taken together, the study contributes to knowledge about micro-level transition processes of employee adaptation and the benefits of work engagement during change.