How transformational leadership positively impacts organizational citizenship behavior in successful Chinese social work service organizations

• Author: Huan Zhang,Yean Wang,Ziyu Liu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21391
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Published date: 01 March 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

How transformational leadership positively impacts

organizational citizenship behavior in successful

Chinese social work service organizations

Huan Zhang

1

| Ziyu Liu

2

| Yean Wang

1

1

School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

2

Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong

Correspondence

Yean Wang, School of Social Development

and Public Policy, Beijing Normal

University, 19 Xinjiekou Wai Street,

Beijing 100875, China.

Email: echowang@bnu.edu.cn

Funding information

National Social Science Foundation of

China, Grant/Award Number: 18BSH154;

Youth Funds of Research for Humanities

and Social Sciences by the Ministry of

Education, China, Grant/Award Number:

17YJC840039

Abstract

Social work service organizations (SWSOs) have devel-

oped quickly, and there were nearly 8,000 of such organi-

zations throughout China in the end of 2017. However,

this rapid growth has brought both great opportunities and

challenges. Globally, leadership has received increasing

attention in the social work profession in the 21st century.

Among different types of leadership, transformational

leadership has been identified as a key issue in bringing

more innovation and motivating employees' organizational

citizenship behavior to overcome such challenges. There-

fore, this study aimed to focus on social workers from the

170 applicants of the “Top 100 Social Work Service Orga-

nizations of 2017”which could be seen as the more suc-

cessful SWSOs in China to examine how transformational

leadership impacts organizational citizenship behavior by

considering two mechanisms, workplace social capital and

professional autonomy, in different areas throughout

China. A two-step process analysis was employed. First, a

structural equation model was theoretically built, and it

examined the direct and indirect relationships among all

four latent variables, considering two mediation effects.

Second, multiple group (high social work developed area

group versus low social work developed area group) ana-

lyses tested the moderation effect. This study confirmed

Received: 1 April 2019 Revised: 12 August 2019 Accepted: 20 August 2019

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21391

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2020;30:467–485. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 467

the key role of transformational leadership in the success

of SWSOs and found workplace social capital as a full

mediator and professional autonomy as a partial mediator

in the relationship between transformational leadership

and organizational citizenship behavior. These findings

may shed light on the further development of SWSOs from

the perspective of enhancing social workers' organizational

citizenship behavior.

KEYWORDS

organizational citizenship behavior, professional autonomy, social work

service organization, transformational leadership, workplace social

capital

1|INTRODUCTION

Leadership has been paid increasing attention in the social work profession in the 21st century

(Peters, 2018) since the National Association of Social Workers and Council on Social Work Educa-

tion began to focus on leadership development (Rank & Hutchison, 2000). In addition, leadership

has become an indispensable management perspective in social work (Lawler & Bilson, 2013).Fur-

thermore, leadership plays a very important role in areas where social work as a profession is still

developing, such as China. In these areas social work is still in its beginning stages and where chal-

lenges from service clients, service providers, and service purchasers at the same time are being faced

(Liu, 2016). Leadership in the social work profession is more helpful and important for establishing

the innovation model of the human service delivery system in a changing and complex environment

(Rank & Hutchison, 2000).

It was not until 2003 that the first nonprofit social work service organization was established in

China. In 2009 and 2014, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China released two Opinions to promote

the development of a nonprofit social work service organization to undertake the government's social

service functions. One of the goals of the 2014 Opinion is to establish 80,000 nonprofit social work

service organizations before 2020. However, this goal seems too ambitious to reach. In the end of

2017, 7,511 nonprofit social work service organizations had been established throughout China after

several years of rapid growth (The Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2018). The rapid growth of social work

service organizations from almost scratch has brought great opportunities and challenges to the social

work profession in China. Leadership plays a key role in this kind of change. Only the organizations

with outstanding leadership could achieve more remarkable success in such a dramatically changing

social work profession. Therefore, a more interesting and important research question is how leader-

ship promotes social work service organizations more successfully in newly developing areas of

social work service.

This study adopted three strategies to answer the above research question. First, we paid more

attention to the more successful social work service organizations. The more successful organizations

play more critical roles in guiding the development direction of the social work service and profes-

sion. Therefore, this study was designed to survey social workers from the 235 applicants of “Top

468 ZHANG ET AL.