The relationship between leader behaviors and job satisfaction and collective efficacy

Organizations are changing their structures by transferring traditional hierarchical leadership responsibilities to workgroups and by moving towards greater levels of empowered and team focused work. At the same time, there is a lack of compelling research that leaders impact workgroup performance. Some theorists view the empowerment initiatives as reducing leader importance. The paradox is that the transition towards workgroups as a mean of achieving organizational objectives places increased importance on leaders to behave in ways that ultimately impact performance. One way to achieve this performance impact is through psychological empowerment, which is viewed by Conger and Kanungo (1988) as an intrinsic motivational construct strongly influenced by the efficacy enhancing behaviors of the leader.;A leadership model is proposed that integrates elements of the Social Cognitive Theory of Bandura (1977, 1986, 1997) with organizational applications by Conger and Kanungo (1988) through their Process Empowerment Model and by Thomas and Velthouse (1990) through their Cognitive Model of Empowerment. This research builds a model that focuses attention on what leaders do (specific efficacy increasing behaviors) that creates a context for how work is done (a workgroup feedback environment with few job related obstacles) which leads to important outcomes (job satisfaction and collective efficacy). The model is assessed using structural equation modeling methodology, using the SAS Institute, Inc. CALIS procedures on two separate data sets. A common model is developed that statistically fit the data and that explained over 70% of the variance in Job Satisfaction and almost 85% of the variance in Collective Efficacy.;This research extends the corpus of knowledge of leader behaviors in four areas: (1) the development of a feedback environment construct that adds usability and seeking sub-scales to the traditional availability scale, (2) the extension of the Conger and Kanungo's Process Empowerment Model (1988) by adding the Workgroup's Feedback Environment as a mediating variable, (3) the support to a limited body of workgroup level research on the leader's ability to influence Collective Efficacy, and (4) the development of a parsimonious leadership model that explains from 70% to 85% of the variance in outcome variables.;Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.