Does Perceived Societal Impact Moderate the Effect of Transformational Leadership on Value Congruence? Evidence from a Field Experiment

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12852
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Ulrich Thy Jensen

48 Public Administration Review • January | February 2018

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 1, pp. 48–57. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12852.

Ulrich Thy Jensen is assistant professor

in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona

State University. His research focuses on

the interplay between work motivation

and behaviors of public service providers

and how leadership shapes performance in

public organizations.

E-mail: ujensen@asu.edu

Ulrich Thy Jensen

Arizona State University

Does Perceived Societal Impact Moderate the Effect of

Transformational Leadership on Value Congruence? Evidence

from a Field Experiment

Abstract : Transformational leadership, it is argued, aligns employees ’ values with those of their organization.

Empirical research has found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence. Yet

studies rely predominantly on cross-sectional research designs that limit causal conclusions and have not uncovered the

potential contextual conditions of this argument. This article argues that transformational leadership positively affects

value congruence in public service organizations, but only when employees see that their jobs impact the well-being of

other people and society. To test the relationship between transformational leadership and value congruence and the

moderating effect of perceived societal impact, the article combines a field experiment on 79 managers of public service

organizations and a balanced survey panel of their 583 employees. Consistent with the expectation, results indicate

heterogeneous treatment effects, implying that employees ’ perceived societal impact is important to consider when

transformational leaders strive to align the values of individual employees and the organization.

Evidence for Practice

• Transformational leadership can offer a lever for managers to align employee and organizational values in

public service organizations.

• Value congruence is important because values entail conceptions of what the individual sees as desirable and

direct actions in the organizations toward this end state.

• Managers ’ ability to align values in public service organizations may depend on employees seeing that their

work impacts the well-being of other people and society.

A quintessential task for leaders and managers is

to motivate employees to achieve the goals of

the organization. In this respect, scholars have

ascribed particular importance to values because they

refer to “conceptions, explicit or implicit, distinctive

of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the

desirable which influences the selection from available

modes, means, and ends of action” (Kluckhohn

1951 , 395). Hence, motivating employees may be a

necessary but not sufficient condition for managers

to increase the performance of their organization.

If individual employees hold conceptions of the

desirable that are different from the values espoused

by the manager, fueling the motivation of employees

may be of little contribution to—or even detrimental

to—organizational performance (Gailmard

2010 ). Consequently, scholars have pointed to the

importance of aligning the values of the employee

and the organization (Paarlberg and Lavigna 2010 ),

and studies on value congruence show that public

sector workers perform better when their individual

values match those of the organization. Given that

value congruence is an important feature of successful

organizations, a lingering question is whether and

under what conditions managers can foster value

congruence in public service organizations.

According to theories of transformational leadership,

managers raise performance by engaging in behaviors

such as articulating a compelling vision, emphasizing

collective identities, and referencing core values (Bass

1985 ; Burns 1978 ; Shamir, House, and Arthur 1993 ).

Referencing Bass ’ s seminal work (1985), Jung and

Avolio assert that transformational leaders motivate

employees by “transforming followers ’ personal

values to support the collective goals/vision for their

organization” (2000, 950). Wright, Moynihan, and

Pandey argue that this link may be particularly salient

in public organizations because these organizations

have strong service- and community-oriented

visions (2012, 207), and people working in public

organizations value service to others and society (Perry

and Wise 1990 ). Therefore, a main expectation is that

transformational leadership increases value congruence

by articulating, sharing, and sustaining attention to

a vision that emphasizes collectivist norms such as

social responsibility, service, and altruism (Shamir and

Howell 1999 ) and infuse day-to-day work tasks with