Group Leadership Climate and Individual Organizational Commitment

Transcription

1 Original Article Group Leadership Climate and Individual Organizational Commitment A Multilevel Analysis Birgit Schyns 1 and Marc J. P. M. Van Veldhoven 2 1 University of Portsmouth, UK, 2 Tilburg University, The Netherlands Abstract. Most research about the effects of leadership on employee work outcomes ignores the fact that the relationship between supervisor and employee is embedded within a group. In this article, we answer the questions what is the effect of group leadership climate strength, conceptualized as the variability in leadership climate within groups, on individual organizational commitment of employees, and how this adds to the effect of group leadership climate level, conceptualized as mean leadership climate within a group. Using data from 16,299 employees within 1,826 groups, we conducted multilevel analyses which showed that group leadership climate level and strength are related to individual organizational commitment after controlling for the influence of individual level leadership climate. In the discussion, the practical and scientific implications of these results are discussed. Keywords: leadership, organizational commitment, group leadership climate, multilevel analysis In early commitment research, Steers (1977) defined commitment as the relative strength of an individual s identification with and involvement in a particular organization (p. 46). Allen and Meyer (1990) think of organizational commitment as an employee outcome that expresses feelings of solidarity with the organization. Three recent meta-analyses explain why commitment continues to deserve attention in organizational research and practice. Jaramillo, Mulki, and Marshall (2005) found that commitment and job performance are related for salespersons; Riketta (2002) found an effect of commitment on general performance, and, most recently, Harrison, Newman, and Roth (2006) found commitment to be related to contextual (turnover, lateness, and absenteeism) as well as focal performance. Previous research has shown that leadership is an important factor in explaining commitment (Sherony & Green, 2002) and other work-related outcomes (Janssen & van Yperen, 2004; Liden & Maslyn, 1998). In this context, the relationship quality between a leader and a member is of special interest. Research on leader-member exchange (LMX, e.g., Gerstner & Day, 1997; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), one example of a relationship approach to leadership, has shown positive relationships between the leadermember relationship quality and commitment (Gerstner & Day, 1997), and OCB (Deluga, 1994) as well as performance (Gerstner & Day, 1997), and a negative relationship with intention to leave the organization (Griffeth, Hom, & Gaertner, 2000). However, these studies focus on a dyadic level of relationship quality between a leader and one follower. They, consequently, neglect that dyads are embedded within groups (Schyns, 2006; Sherony & Green, 2002). Yet, studying leadership at the group level would be important, as we know from early research on LMX that different members of work groups can indeed have a different relationship quality with their leader (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975). Recent climate research (e.g., Chen & Bliese, 2002) has shown the importance of examining the effects of grouplevel leadership, that is, taking into account the group means of, as well as group variation in, leadership. In line with research into organizational climate, we follow the terminology introduced by Schneider, Salvaggio, and Subirats (2002). Thus, the group mean is referred to as leadership climate level (the mean perception within a group) while low group variation of leadership is referred to as leadership climate strength (for a similar procedure, see Zohar & Luria, 2005). In our study, we concentrate on the effects of group-level leadership, specifically, the effects of leadership climate level and leadership climate strength on commitment and how these add to the effect of individual climate perception. Based on prior research outlined below, we focus on two different aspects of leadership climate, namely, support and atmosphere, on the one hand, and participation in decision making, on the other hand. Consequently, the Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68 DOI: / /a000005

2 58 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate research question in this paper is: What is the effect of group leadership climate on individual organizational commitment and how does climate strength add to the effect of climate level? The added value of this study is threefold: First, rather than sticking to the individual level of analysis, we include group-level variables in our study (level and strength of leadership climate). Second, we do not restrict our assessment of leadership climate to a single broad assessment of relationship quality but rather differentiate two aspects, good atmosphere and support as well as participation in decision making. Third, we employ a large, representative sample from the Dutch workforce to examine our hypotheses. Climate and Leadership The idea of shared views on leadership within groups is related to the conception of organizational climate (James & Jones, 1974; Jones & James, 1979; Schneider, 2000). Mainstream research on psychological and organizational climate has included leadership as one of the important dimensions of climate (James & James, 1989; Kopelman, Brief, & Guzzo, 1990). In addition, in a meta-analytic review of 121 independent samples studying the relationship between psychological climate perceptions and performance, Parker et al. (2003) found the leadership dimension within psychological climate to have stronger associations with performance than other climate dimensions. In the same study, the leadership dimension was among the dimensions showing highest correlations with job satisfaction and other job attitudes (including commitment). However, individual views on climate alone may not be enough to explain job attitudes. As Dragoni (2005) points out, while individual perceptions of climate provide cues for, for example, performance, shared perceptions add the knowledge of group expectation to this, making cues as to what is expected of the individual even stronger. As we have argued before that leadership is related to individual feelings of organizational commitment, in terms of the effect of leadership climate, we expect that shared perceptions serve as a stronger cue for organizational commitment than individual perceptions. We therefore hypothesize that group-level variables offer the possibility to explain further variance in individual outcome variables. Organizational climate is a composition variable that can be defined in different ways. Chan (1998) differentiates five basic forms of composition models, namely, additive, direct consensus, reference-shift consensus, dispersion and process composition. For our purposes direct consensus models and dispersion models are relevant. According to Chan (1998), in direct consensus models group members individual climate perceptions can be aggregated to group means that are taken to reflect a shared organizational climate, but only if sufficient agreement exists between the group members in their individual climate perceptions. In our study this implies that we first test for agreement in individual ratings that employees report for their own relationship quality with their leader, for example. If sufficient Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68 agreement exists, we interpret the mean score based on these individual climate ratings as an indicator for group leadership climate level, of the type relating to relationship quality. Without sufficient within-group agreement, aggregation to group leadership climate level would be technically possible, but it would not fit with a theory of group-level influences on individual organizational commitment, which we take as our theoretical starting point in this paper. A dispersion model of composition indicates the variance in individual level perceptions within a group. To continue our example, in this particular study this is represented by leadership climate strength as an indicator of low dispersion of the type relating to relationship quality. In our study, we included two types of assessment of leadership climate. This derives from a review of the literature in this research area, which falls into two streams. The first line of research is the separate investigation of the importance of leadership climate, apart from other climate dimensions. Gavin and Hofmann (2002) present such an approach of leadership climate as a group-level variable, assuming that group members are exposed to a similar leadership environment (p. 21). Bliese and Halverson (1996, see also, Bliese, Halverson, & Schriesheim, 2002) refer to leadership climate as a supportive (or unsupportive) environment, including aspects such as leader s interest in followers welfare, leading well, and interest in followers opinion. Following up on the work by Bliese and colleagues and this stream of research, good atmosphere and support (both actual and socio-emotional) can be thought of as the primary dimension of interest in leadership climate. The second line of research being of interest are studies of leadership in regular climate models. In these studies, not only a supportive atmosphere is important, but also the actual way decision making takes place under a certain leadership. As such, leadership is a factor facilitating interaction within groups and the attainment of group-relevant goals (James & James, 1989). Kopelman et al. (1990), in their organizational climate model, stress the importance of leadership in achieving a focus on goals and means in organizational groups. This very much relates to the actual process of decision making, organization, and division of labor in work groups. Parker et al. (2003) concur in categorizing these decisionmaking related aspects of leadership as important to the leadership dimension in psychological climate research. They also mention the importance of upward influence, for example, the way leaders allow group members to participate in group-relevant decisions. For our study, this means leadership climate is best conceptualized and operationalized not only along the lines of support and atmosphere, but also along the lines of the leeway leadership allows for worker participation in group-relevant goal setting, organization, and process. The first aspect refers to an affective component of the employment relationship (similar to the one proposed by Dienesch & Liden, 1986). The second one refers to the level of participation in decision-making processes (Graen & Cashman, 1975). This means that we can include an affective aspect of leadership climate as well as a more behavior-related aspect. As stated before, we will focus on the group level of these climate variables, namely, as stated above, the level Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

3 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate 59 and strength of group leadership climate and how these add information to individual level experiences of leadership. Group Leadership Climate Level Prior research on individual perceptions of leadership has shown positive effects of the two characteristics of leadership that we employ here, namely, atmosphere and support and participation, but different theoretical arguments apply. With respect to atmosphere and support, we can refer to LMX theory and research. Here, the positive relationship between overall LMX and commitment is well established (see the meta-analysis by Gerstner & Day, 1997). Atmosphere and support can be regarded as similar to the affective component of LMX introduced by Dienesch and Liden (1986). Schyns and Paul (2005) could show that this aspect of LMX is indeed positively related to affective commitment. However, Schyns (2006) did not find a significant correlation between LMX affect and affective commitment on a group level. Nevertheless, we assume that a shared positive affect toward the leader positively impacts on the attachment followers feel toward their organization (affective commitment). In organizations, the leader serves as a representative of the organization toward the employees, so that a good leadership climate also impacts on organizational commitment in these employees. In terms of participation, we can assume that employees, whom their leaders trust to have a say in decision making, will feel committed to the organization that provides them with possibilities for participation. Empirically, Bakan, Suseno, Pinnington, and Money (2004) found a positive relationship between participation in decision making and commitment. Focusing on the department level, Van Yperen, Van den Berg, and Willering (1999) also reported a positive relationship between participation in decision making and commitment. Given this prior research, testing a hypothesis referring to individual perceptions of atmosphere and support and participation would barely add to the existing research literature as research on LMX and climate has covered aspects of these variables and has shown leadership to be related to commitment (Gerstner & Day, 1997; Parker et al., 2003). However, we expect that the effect of the individual level of relationship quality will also be found on a group level and that group-level climate variables will add to the effect of individual climate perceptions. This means that the higher the mean relationship quality between a leader and the members of a work group, the higher the organizational commitment of individual members will be. As Schneider and Reichers (1983; see also Dragoni, 2005) point out, shared perceptions or climate is a result of group interactions. In our case, this means that leadership climate level is the result of group member interactions and consequent agreement about the leadership climate in their group. In line with Dragoni (2005), we argue that this will add to the social cues each individual perceives as to what is expected in a group, meaning that group-level leadership climate will add to influence individual commitment. One could argue that this reasoning is more relevant for team rather than organizational commitment; however, theoretical as well as empirical evidence supports the argument for a relationship between group-level leadership and organizational commitment. First, empirically, research has shown that team and organizational commitment are positively related (Bishop, Scott, & Burroughs, 2000; Yoon, 2003). Second, leaders represent the organization toward followers. This happens in several ways: leaders are often the only point of direct contact that followers have with the management of an organization. Also, leaders are increasingly given human resources tasks (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007) and thus represent organizational policies and practices toward followers. This means that organizational commitment develops via leader behaviors. Given the abovementioned theory and results we thus formulate our first hypothesis as follows: Hypothesis 1: Group leadership climate level has an effect on individual organizational commitment over and above the effects of individual leadership climate. Group Leadership Climate Strength Whereas concepts such as LMX are meant to assess the dyadic relationship between leader and member, we assume that these dyadic relationships are not independent of other dyadic relationships between employees and the leader within a specific group. It seems obvious that when different group members have different relationships with their leader, the relationship among group members will be affected and, consequently, so will their work attitudes and performance (for a theoretical approach on dyadic networks, see Graen & Scandura, 1987; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Recent research has argued that a low consensus can in some cases have positive outcomes, for example, when it is based on different but fair leadership behavior. For example, van Breukelen and Wesselius (2007; see also Liden, Erdogan, Wayne, & Sparrowe, 2006) have shown that when differentiated leader behavior is perceived as based on different abilities, team members accept different treatment and regard it as fair. Empirical results show, however, that consensus in one of the components of LMX, namely contribution, is positively related to commitment (Schyns, 2006). In the context of their study on leadership climate, Bliese and Halverson (1998) found that, after they controlled for units average climate scores (group climate level), climate strength showed a significant impact on units average psychological well-being. Similarly, Schneider et al. (2002) found the way leaders are able to generate service oriented behaviors in their team (as appraised by the team members) to be related to team commitment and attitude (as appraised by customers). Both the level and strength of these team appraisals of leadership were found to be important in the explanation of the outcome variables. A third study into climate strength is that by González-Romá, Peiró, and Tordera (2002). They directly report effects of climate level and Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68

4 60 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate strength on organizational commitment, but the climate variables researched pertain to the work unit rather than to leadership. Nevertheless, this study points in the direction that such effects may also be present for leadership climate. Again, going back to Dragoni s (2005) argument about social cues, we can assume that if group members agree on leadership climate, thus showing leadership climate strength, this will add to the effect of individual perceptions of climate and group leadership climate level on individual organizational commitment. We hypothesize the same effect for atmosphere and support and participation. This means that, although both tackle different aspects of leadership climate, we expect both atmosphere and support climate strength and participation climate strength to be related to commitment and add to the effect of individual perceptions of atmosphere and support and participation climate, and to atmosphere and support climate level and participation climate level, on commitment. Hypothesis 2: Group leadership climate strength has an effect on individual organizational commitment over and above the effects of individual leadership climate and group leadership climate level. Method To test our hypotheses, we need a dataset with as much heterogeneity as is available in the general workforce. Most studies on the workforce level are (random) samples of individual employees, but in this study we would rather need (random) samples of entire groups. Second it is important that we can make a priori selections as to the group size we want to investigate. It makes a big difference if one investigates climate within groups of a 1,000 people or within groups of only 10. Our preference in this paper would be to research small groups, as it is most likely with these group sizes that groups form coherent sets of employees that share the same location, type of job, and most importantly, leadership. Put in another way: the differentiation in types of jobs, locations, levels in the organization, etc. is larger between the groups than within the groups, when restricting the group size to a range fitting for small groups. Third, when researching climate and especially climate strength, it is important that the data show two somewhat contradictory characteristics: On the one hand, there has to be adequate between group variance as group climate differences are being researched. On the other hand, in order to achieve differences in group consensus impact, there also has to be some variability in the amount of within-group variance. At the same time, in order for group climate and climate consensus scores to be considered valid, adequate response rates have to be ensured (Lindell & Brandt, 2000; Schneider et al., 2002). Fortunately, a dataset meeting all of these criteria was available to the researchers. We analyze a dataset collected by occupational health services and personnel departments in the Netherlands in the context of ongoing practice Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68 research on psychosocial working conditions, work climate, job stress, and well-being at work. Research on this dataset was previously published by Van Veldhoven and Broersen (2003), Van Veldhoven, Taris, De Jonge, and Broersen (2005) and Bakker, Van Veldhoven, and Xanthopoulou (2010). Although no exact information on response rates is available for each of the separate projects contributing to the dataset, research experience shows that the typical response rate in these projects ranges between 60% and 80%. A selection was made of the data. Only those individuals were selected who comply with the following criteria: Data available for age, gender, leadership tasks (yes/no), and 14 relevant survey scales. Only the workers data were included in this study. Data are available concerning which worker belongs to which group within which organization. The selected data were derived from all major branches of industry. The combination of a wide diversity in organizations on the one hand, and available information on the nesting structure in the data on the other makes these data very suitable for the current research question. In this study, the term group is used in a broad sense: A group might be a department, a team, a functional group, or a location. For each separate project in the database, the grouping was done in a way that was most appropriate for the particular project at hand. This approach fits very well with the research in practice context that these data derive from. In our view this approach of groups of mixed nature adds to the ecological validity of the construct group in our study, as groups in practice are seldom purely hierarchical, local, or functional subsets within an organization. Usually a group fits one or more of these types of delineations from neighboring groups. Which (combination of) delineations are relevant differs very much from one organization to the next. Therefore, group coding has been done on an organization-to-organization basis in this study. To make sure that this study is focused on small groups and group size is not a confounder in this study, we only selected groups with at least 5 but no more than 15 responding workers. This results in a data selection of 16,299 employees in 1,826 groups, with an average group size of 8.9 responding workers. Instruments The scales used in this study are presented in Appendix A. Here we will introduce each of the individual measures. Leadership Climate Atmosphere and Support This subscale of leadership climate contains three types of questions, concerning atmosphere of the relationship, instrumental support from leader, and conflicts in the relationship. Conceptually, it is based upon social support literature dealing with job stress (Johnson and Hall, 1988; Karasek, 1985). This 9-item scale with four answering categories was recoded so that high scores indicate a high Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

5 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate 61 relationship quality with the supervisor (1 = never, 2=sometimes, 3=often, and4=always). This instrument was previously used by, for example, De Croon, Sluiter, Blonk, Broersen, and Frings-Dresen (2004), and Jansen, Kant, Kristensen, and Nijhuis (2003). Demaree, & Wolf, 1993). This shows that it makes sense to interpret our leadership climate level variable as a construct that represents shared experiences of the employees in the groups. Our data qualify for the intended analyses of our study. Participation in Decision Making This 8-item scale focuses on job control aspects at the organizational level (as opposed to the task level). The instrument comprises of different control aspects, such as ability to discuss problems with supervisor, amount of influence in work group, and role in decision making. The answering categories were again recoded to indicate high participation with high values. The categories now range from 1 = never to 4 = always. It was previously used by, for example, Sluiter, De Croon, Meijman, and Frings-Dresen (2003) and Van Yperen et al. (1999). Group Leadership Climate Level and Strength The group means of the two leadership climate subscales were used to assess group leadership climate level. The standard deviations of the two subscales were used to assess group leadership climate strength. This means that the lower the SD of the two subscales, the stronger the group leadership climate. Individual Organizational Commitment Individual organizational commitment was assessed using an 8-item scale with yes/no type of answering categories. In terms of content, it comprises affective, normative, and calculative aspects of organizational commitment. In order to check for one-dimensionality of the instrument, we conducted a factor analysis with a forced one-dimensional solution. All items loaded satisfactorily on this dimension. The scale was recoded so that high values indicate a high degree of commitment. Previously, this instrument has been used in research by, for example, Van Veldhoven et al. (2005) and Van Veldhoven, De Jonge, Broersen, Kompier, and Meijman (2002). Cronbach s alphas, aggregation characteristics (values of ICC1 and ICC2; Bliese, 2000), and within-group agreement (R wg ; James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984) were calculated for the three scales (see Appendix B). The Cronbach s alphas are satisfactory (>.70) for all three scales. The values of ICC1 are similar to those found in the research literature on work attitudes (e.g., values in the range of.05.15: Gelade & Ivery, 2003; Heck & Thomas, 2000; Snijders & Bosker, 1999; Van Veldhoven et al., 2002; Van Yperen & Snijders, 2000). A considerable amount of variance in organizational commitment is apparently attributable to our grouping variable, making a multilevel analysis viable. Values of ICC2 are all above.50, which is acceptable (Klein et al., 2000). We can therefore make reliable between-group comparisons in these data. Finally, median R wg values are above.70, which can be considered acceptable (James, Analysis Before analyzing the data, all scales were brought to a range of in order to make them comparable to each other and to prior research using this particular survey instrument. So far, we have discussed individuals and groups. However, data on the individuals and groups in this study were collected in organizational batches. All in all, 605 organizations were involved in the study (average of 3.02 groups and individuals per organization). The dataset therefore consists of employees nested within groups nested within organizations. These data can be conceptualized as a three-level data structure. Level 1 captures the information of the employees on both the dependent and independent variables. Level 2 captures the mean and variance within groups in the independent variables. We have measured no variables at Level 3, but it is important in correctly specifying the nested data structure investigated. In situations like this, it is appropriate to use a hierarchical three-level modeling approach (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992). The data were analyzed using the statistical package MLwiN V2.02. Our goal is to assess the combined effects of individual and group-level leadership climate on organizational commitment. However, individual and group-level climate variables ultimately derive from the same source: individual survey scale scores about leadership climate. In order to be able to separate the contributions of individual and group-level predictors, we used group mean centering rather than grand mean centering for the individual level variables, as discussed in Snijders and Bosker (1999). Group size is used as a control variable in all models. Results Means and standard deviations, along with correlations between study variables, are reported in Table 1 at the individual level and in Table 2 at the group level. Table 1. Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations of study variables at the individual level (N = 16,299) Variables Mean SD Organizational commitment Atmosphere and support ** 3. Participation **.58** *p <.05; **p <.01. Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68

6 62 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations of study variables at the group level (N = 1,826) Variables Mean SD Group size Means 2. Organizational commitment Atmosphere and support *.36** 4. Participation **.33**.64** Standard deviations 5. Atmosphere and support *.12**.49**.32** 6. Participation **.02.09** ** *p <.05; **p <.01. Table 3. Two-level analysis of individual organizational commitment in relation to group leadership climate level and strength Model 0 Model 1 Model 2 df = 16295/1822 df = 16293/1820 df = 16291/1818 Variables b SE t value b SE t value b SE t value 1. Group size Individual scores 2. Atmosphere and support ** ** ** 3. Participation ** ** ** Means 4. Atmosphere and support ** ** 5. Participation ** ** Standard deviations 6. Atmosphere and support ** 7. Participation Note. SE = standard error. *p <.05; **p <.01. Table 1 indicates that both group leadership climate variables are correlated positively with organizational commitment of individual employees. In addition, the independent variables show a considerable positive bivariate association, as could be expected. Nevertheless, this association is not high enough to suggest possible multicollinearity problems and/or conceptual redundancy. Table 2 shows that the group leadership climate level scores of both types have a slightly higher association than at the individual level. The coefficient is still not problematic in terms of multicollinearity and/or conceptual redundancy. The standard deviations of group leadership climate (indicating low group leadership climate strength) also correlate between the two types of variables. To a certain extent, patterns of dispersion within groups appear to be comparable for the two types of group leadership climate variables. Correlations between standard deviations (group leadership climate strength) and mean scores (group leadership climate level) are quite different for the standard deviation in atmosphere and support as opposed to the standard deviation in participation. The dispersion in atmosphere and support is especially low when mean scores in atmosphere and support as well participation Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68 are high. This phenomenon is absent for the dispersion in participation. Table 3 presents the results of the multilevel analyses. For each independent variable the effect size, standard error, and corresponding t value are reported. The analyses are performed in three consecutive steps. In step 1, group size and the individual climate scores are introduced into the equation. Step 2 adds group leadership climate level, and step 3 adds group leadership climate strength. We find that the individual climate scores have significant and consistent positive effects on organizational commitment in all three models. Similarly, group size has a small, consistent but negative effect. We find strong associations between group leadership climate level of both types and organizational commitment, and we also find that this effect is present with the individual climate perception variables in the model. Our first hypothesis is therefore fully supported. For participation we do not find a climate strength effect. But, climate strength in atmosphere and support proves to be a significant additional predictor of individual organizational commitment, even when group climate level and individual climate variables are in Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

7 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate 63 the model. The coefficient found for this effect is positive. This means that lower climate strength is associated with higher levels of commitment. We wanted to analyze this further in order to be able to interpret this outcome. We added the two standard deviations (for atmosphere and support and participation in decision making) as predictors to Model 1. This means we left group leadership climate out of the analysis. This showed an effect that was negative and strongly significant for atmosphere and support (b =.365; SE =.063;t = 5.79). The effect was positive, but not significant for participation (b =.103;SE =.062; t = 1.66). This implies that what we are seeing in Model 3 for atmosphere and support are two different effects: the climate level effect is slightly enhanced by including climate strength in the model, and the climate strength effect switches sign and is diminished by including climate level in the model. These two findings can both be interpreted by keeping in mind that the group mean and group SD are derived from the same survey scale, and are thus statistically related in a fixed way (Dickson, Resick, & Hanges, 2006; Lindell & Brandt, 2000). The enhanced effect of climate level can be interpreted as a small so-called negative (Conger, 1974) or net suppression (Cohen & Cohen, 1975) effect. This means that climate strength suppresses irrelevant variance in climate level and, therefore, including climate strength in the model slightly increases the effect of climate level on commitment. Maybe more interesting is the second effect we find, namely, the change in sign of atmosphere and support climate level strength. Looking into the relationship between climate strength and climate level at the group level for atmosphere and support, we find that there is virtually no group that has a low level of atmosphere and support, a situation which would have been accompanied by a low standard deviation. This is confirmed by our finding of a positive association between climate level and climate strength, or statistically speaking, our finding of a negative correlation of.49 between atmosphere and support mean and standard deviation (Table 2). Thus, most groups follow a pattern of increased climate level being accompanied by increased strength (diminished SD). What happens when we control for climate level in the model is that the effect of the standard deviation can only reflect that part of the distribution which does not follow this general pattern, for example, the groups where an increase in level is accompanied by a decrease in strength (higher SD). This happens only in groups with the lowest climate level scores in the distribution, reflecting bad atmosphere and support. In these groups the effect of the SD on commitment turns positive: In this score range, an increase in SD is indicative of better climate level, which is associated with better commitment. The correlation between the two climate levels is.64. Although this is not critically high, we decided to test the two types of climate in separate models. The results show that the effects for the individual and mean climate scores become more pronounced when entering only a single leadership climate type into the model. In the model with two leadership climate types, these variables each appear to capture different, unique parts of the variance. In terms of interpretation, the individual and mean scores are all very significant, either in separate or in combined analyses. For the standard deviations (strength), we find still no effect for participation, and a somewhat weaker effect for atmosphere and support in the separate analyses, when compared to the combined analysis. In terms of interpretation, again, only a small difference is found between the separate and combined analyses. All in all, these results seem to argue against the possible biasing effects of collinearity in our data. In the combined analyses reported in the paper, the two climate types each appear to capture important and unique amounts of variance. Our two hypotheses are based on direct, linear relationships. However, in the literature on climate, other types of relationships have been discussed (see Dawson, Gonzales- Romá, Davis, & West, 2008). Besides direct, linear relationships, moderating effects of climate strength on the relationship between climate level and outcomes have been assumed. However, there is only limited empirical support for this notion (Schneider et al., 2002; but see Gonzales- Romá, West, & Borril, 2002). Other researchers assumed and found curvilinear relationships between climate strength and outcomes (Gonzalez-Romá & West, 2005; Gonzalez-Romá et al., 2002). However, these refer mainly to outcomes such as innovation or creativity which benefit from a diversity of opinions within teams/groups. We do not expect to find this curvilinear relationship for organizational commitment, which should rather benefit from high levels of agreement. However, to complete our analyses, we explored these effects in our dataset. With respect to the curvilinear relationship, the results indicate that curvilinear effects do not add anything to explaining organizational commitment, but they do diminish the results somewhat for the atmosphere and support type of leadership climate strength. Including interaction effects in our analyses does not appear to change the results at all. Discussion The purpose of this article was to examine the effect of group leadership climate strength on individual organizational commitment and how it adds to the effect of group leadership climate level. In terms of leadership climate, we assessed two facets, namely, atmosphere and support and participation in decision making. Our results indicate that group leadership climate is an important predictor of individual organizational commitment over and above individual climate perceptions. Both facets contribute to the explanation of variance. In addition, group leadership climate strength is related to individual organizational commitment. Interestingly, we only found this effect for the affective component of leadership climate, namely atmosphere and support, but not for participation. Importantly, this effect is positive rather than negative. So, while we find a positive effect of mean atmosphere and support on individual organizational commitment and an effect of shared atmosphere and support, for participation, Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68

8 64 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate only the mean group effect is significant. A possible explanation for these results could be that atmosphere and support reflects an affective commitment to the leader, who often serves as a representative of the total organization for lower level followers. In contrast, participation is a more tangible behavior. Employees may appreciate that participation is influenced by other factors outside the control of the leader. One very common example of these other factors is the latitude that the leader him/herself has. If leaders do not have enough opportunity themselves to participate in decision making, they cannot share issues of decision making with their followers. This refers to the relationship the leader has with his/her next highest leader (Cashman, Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1976; Graen, Cashman, Ginsburg, & Schiemann, 1977). Besides, we can assume that formal structures can enhance or inhibit participation in decision making and the leader may be limited in his/her power to affect change in these structures. Where participation is concerned, national context may be relevant, too. In the Netherlands, participation may be taken for granted (see the leadership profiles obtained in the GLOBE study, Javidan, House, & Dorfman, 2004) and may, consequently, not enhance commitment (although commitment would likely lower if participation were not present). However, it is not the group mean participation score that fails to reach significant effects on organizational commitment but the shared perception of such participation in groups. This can be explained by issues in decision making, where leaders have to follow (a) the constraints set by the organization and (b) take into account the individual abilities of the followers. Consequently, followers may accept that leaders have to make distinctions with respect to whom they let participate in decision making (see van Breukelen & Wesselius, 2007; Liden et al., 2006, for similar results). This, in turn, may not affect their feelings of commitment to the organization. One last explanation that could be valid, namely that due to personal characteristics and independent from organizational commitment, employees perceive different levels of participation even if the leader behaves the same toward them. The relationship between atmosphere and support climate level/strength and commitment in our models led us to assume two different effects. Most importantly, including climate level in the equation changed the sign of climate strength from the expected negative to a positive sign. We explained the effect on the basis of the linkage between mean and SD in relation to the score range of our atmosphere and support variable. Our findings show different relationships for climate level and climate strength for atmosphere and support versus participation. While there is virtually no correlation between climate level and climate strength for participation, the correlation between climate level and climate strength for atmosphere and support and support is clearly negative. Looking into the distribution of groups as to the mean level for atmosphere and support, we can see there are no groups with a low level of atmosphere and support. From a possible range of 0 100, the lowest observed point of the group mean is 42 and the highest is 100. The mean of group means is 77. Thus, there is still considerable variance in atmosphere Journal of Personnel Psychology 2010; Vol. 9(2):57 68 and support between groups in the range from medium to high atmosphere and support. Therefore, under the condition of high SD, the mean of climate for atmosphere and support is always relatively high. This implies that when we control for the mean (climate level) in the regression analysis, the effects of the standard deviation become less pronounced and switch signs, reflecting the situation on the left side of the distribution of group means. The different relationships between climate level and climate strength for atmosphere and support and participation, respectively, as well as their different correlations with commitment, clearly indicate that participation and atmosphere and support are two distinct types of leadership climate. For participation, commitment can be high for low as well as high climate levels. For atmosphere and support, only high climate levels are associated with high commitment. This implies that employees understand and accept that under certain circumstances (e.g., a large span of control of their supervisors or indirect rather than direct participation rules), participation in decision making differs from employee to employee and this variation therefore does not affect organizational commitment. However, a high level of atmosphere and support seems crucial for commitment under any condition. Second, with respect to leadership climate strength regarding atmosphere and support, when entering it into the equation after climate level regarding atmosphere and support, we found a positive rather than the expected negative effect on commitment in the multilevel analysis. Given that we found a negative bivariate correlation between leadership climate strength regarding atmosphere and support and commitment, and a relatively high, negative bivariate correlation between the climate level and climate strength, we can safely assume that this positive regression weight constitutes a so-called negative (Conger, 1974) or net suppression (Cohen & Cohen, 1975). Limitations A strong point in our study, in addition to showing the importance of taking into account the group level when looking for effects of leadership climate, is that we were able to use a large dataset to examine our hypotheses. In large datasets, power problems are virtually nonexistent and the results can be generalized with more confidence. In addition, we were able to limit the variability of group size, which is often a factor generating unknown bias in group-level and multi-level research (Bliese, 2000). Despite this limitation in sampling variability, we found the expected effects, which adds to the strength of our study. However, we cannot rule out that effects may be different in larger groups, thus, strictly speaking, we cannot generalize our results to larger groups. A second limitation of our study is that we could only work with those group members who volunteered to partake in our study. We do not know, therefore, how other members of the groups view leadership climate. It is possible that participants who do not agree with their colleagues evaluation Ó 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

9 B. Schyns & M. J. P. M. Van Veldhoven: Leadership Climate 65 of their leader declined to take part in our study. This may have resulted in selection effects. Given the size of our sample and the relatively high response rates, such selection effects are of lesser concern, however. Another limitation refers to the relationship between climate strength and level regarding atmosphere and support: The positive correlation between these two indicators indicates that there are very few groups with a high climate strength and low climate level regarding atmosphere and support. This could explain why we did not find any interaction effects for these two indicators, although one might expect that the effect of climate strength is higher for high climate level. as the group level is a neglected issue in this approach but could be shown to add to the effectiveness of leadership climate. However, our study only focuses on one possible outcome of these shared perceptions, namely organizational commitment. It is therefore necessary for future research to examine different outcomes, also of other types than those examined with self-reports. Finally, in future research we need to strive toward understanding better, how exactly a shared perception can be established within groups. Referring back to theory, we can assume that leaders emphasizing group identity (in the sense of the social identity theory; Haslam, 2004) are taking important steps in this direction. Implications In line with empirical results by Schneider et al. (2002) and González-Romá et al. (2002), our study supports the notion that climate strength in groups can indeed be seen as a relevant predictor of employee outcomes in addition to climate level and that both climate level and strength add to the effect of individual climate perceptions. A consequence of this, in terms of leadership styles or training in leadership skills, is that organizations need to attend not only to whether or not individuals experience satisfying leadership climate conditions, but need to ensure also that entire groups agree in their positive assessment of leadership. This, to a certain extent, requires leaders not only to engage in dyadic leadership as the LMX approach suggests (e.g., Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995), but also to realize the importance of dyads being embedded in groups as recent LMX research suggests (Cogliser, Schriesheim, Scandura, & Gardner, 2009; Henderson, Wayne, Shore, Bommer, & Tetrick, 2008). Consequently, leaders may need to focus on their group as a whole in certain situations in order to prevent disagreement within their respective group of followers in terms of leadership climate as this may negatively affect commitment to the organization. The interesting question is how organizations can help leaders to achieve group consensus. A recent suggestion coming from LMX research conveys that leaders may not be able to uphold many positive LMX relationships and thus achieve consensus when the group they lead is rather large (Schyns & Blank, in press; Schyns, Paul, Mohr, & Blank, 2005; Schyns, Maslyn, & Weibler, in press). We can assume the same when it comes to climate. Specifically with regard to participation in decision making, leaders will have problems including all followers to the same extent in decision-making processes, whereas good atmosphere and support may be easier to achieve and uphold even in larger groups. In addition, in screening leadership climate perceptions for a possible intervention, the group level has to be assessed. Whereas individual climate perceptions have their merit, group-level variables should be included in screening, so that possible negative group climate levels or large disagreement within groups can be detected and tackled subsequently. Our results are also of importance for future leadership research, especially, when dyadic leadership is in the focus, References Allen, N. J., & Meyer, J. P. (1990). The measurement and antecedents of affective, continuance and normative commitment to the organization. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63, Bakan, I., Suseno, Y., Pinnington, A., & Money, A. (2004). The influence of financial participation and participation in decision-making on employee job attitudes. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 15, Bakker, A. B., Van Veldhoven, M., & Xanthopoulou, D. (2010). Beyond the demand-control model: Thriving on high job demands and resources. Journal of Personnel Psychology, 9, Bishop, J. W., Scott, K. D., & Burroughs, S. M. (2000). 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