Leadership Matters, But So Do Co-Workers: A Study of the Relative Importance of Transformational Leadership and Team Relations for Employee Outcomes and User Satisfaction

• Author: Heidi Hesselberg Lauritzen,Caroline Howard Grøn,Anne Mette Kjeldsen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211011618
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X211011618

Review of Public Personnel Administration

2022, Vol. 42(4) 614 –640

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X211011618

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Article

Leadership Matters, But So

Do Co-Workers: A Study of

the Relative Importance of

Transformational Leadership

and Team Relations for

Employee Outcomes and

User Satisfaction

Heidi Hesselberg Lauritzen1,2 ,

Caroline Howard Grøn3,

and Anne Mette Kjeldsen3

Abstract

In recent decades, public administration has taken a great interest in leadership.

However, this interest has been met with concerns that the effects of leadership

are overestimated compared to other relevant organizational factors. In this

article, we explore the relative importance of formal, vertical leadership, specifically

transformational leadership, and horizontal relations, that is, the internal team

relations, for different employee outcomes and user satisfaction. We argue that

both factors may work through public service motivation (PSM). Based on survey

data collected in Danish nursing homes linked with a user satisfaction survey and

employee sickness absence data, we find that the internal team relations have the

strongest association with some outcome measures, whereas others are more

substantially related to vertical leadership. We further find that the relationship

between transformational leadership and these outcome measures is fully mediated

by PSM, whereas this is not the case with the internal team relations.

1University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science Research, Copenhagen, Denmark

3The Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership, Aarhus University, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Heidi Hesselberg Lauritzen, VIVE—The Danish Center for Social Science Research, Herluf Trolles

Gade 11, 1052 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

Email: hhl@vive.dk

1011618ROPXXX10.1177/0734371X211011618Review of Public Personnel AdministrationLauritzen et al.

research-article2021

Lauritzen et al. 615

Keywords

leadership, teams, job satisfaction, performance, public service motivation

Introduction

Research on leadership in the public sector centers on illustrating the performance-

enhancing effects of leadership (Orazi et al., 2013; Van Wart, 2013). While a 2003

literature review by Van Wart documented a limited scholarly interest in leadership in

the public sector, in the years since, the tables have turned (Van Wart, 2013), and the

literature on leadership in a public sector context has exploded. In particular, transfor-

mational leadership, in which leaders develop, share, and sustain an organizational

vision to inspire and motivate followers to transcend their self-interest and achieve

organizational goals, has been thoroughly studied (Andersen et al., 2018; Bellé, 2014;

Vogel & Masal, 2015). While originating in the generic managerial literature (Bass,

1985; Bass & Riggo, 2006), this form of leadership has now been extensively studied

in a public sector context, where it has been found to enhance employee and organiza-

tional outcomes (Bellé, 2014; Jacobsen & Andersen, 2015).

However, this leader-centric approach has recently been put under critical scrutiny.

Some have argued there is a general romanticization of the impact of (individual) lead-

ership (Nielsen & Moynihan, 2017; drawing on classical studies within the manage-

ment literature, Hartley, 2018; Salancik & Meindl, 1984). Hence, some have taken up

an interest in collective forms of leadership such as distributed leadership (Harris, 2008;

Jakobsen et al., 2016), while others have pointed to the importance of team relations

(e.g., Carson et al., 2007) and the relationship between co-workers. Just as formal hier-

archical leadership has been shown to affect motivation and performance, the public

management literature has demonstrated how supportive team relations are important

to motivation (Anderfuhren-Biget et al., 2010; Vandenabeele et al., 2004). Still, little is

known about the potential benefits of horizontal relations as opposed to vertical ones in

improving the performance and well-being of individual public service providers and

ultimately of public organizations. Nevertheless, we do know that team-based forms of

organizations, sometimes described as “post-bureaucratic structures” (Groeneveld &

Kuipers, 2014), are becoming increasingly dominant in complex public organizations,

and this should call for our increased attention (van der Hoek et al., 2016).

Against this background, this article explores the relative importance of leaders,

specifically using the transformational leadership approach, and the experience of

working in supportive and well-functioning team relations for various important out-

come measures such as job satisfaction, intention to quit, self-perceived performance,

sickness absence, and user satisfaction. Thus, our study contributes to the public

management and human resource management (HRM) knowledge base with a com-

parison of vertical and horizontal relations in enhancing different outcome measures

in public organizations.

While both leadership and team relations are relational phenomena, the literature

often argues that they work through individual drivers such as motivation, in particular