The effect of personal values on attitudes toward leadership styles

Abstract

According to Human Values Theory, values are transituational goals that guide our lives. They can be organized in 10 motivational types: achievement, power, security, conformity, tradition, benevolence, universalism, self-direction, stimulation and hedonism. As abstract constructs, they can influence other more specific constructs, such as attitudes, which are psychological tendencies to evaluate a particular entity with some degree of favorability. This study aimed to measure the effect of values on attitudes toward transformational and transactional leadership styles. The primer consists in inspiring subordinates and stimulating them to go beyond self-interest in favor of organizational well-being. The latter focuses on negotiating exchanges and punishing performances above expectations. A sample of 324 professionals from the city of Brasilia has answered the questionnaire, 88,5% from public organizations, 76% male, with average age of 33,36 years (SD=8,67). Personal values were measured with the reduced version of the Portraits Questionnaire (PQ21), social desirability with Marlowe-Crowne scale and attitudes with the scale of attitudes toward leadership styles. Results indicate that the two types of attitude were positively related, although the one toward transformational style had more favorable responses. Attitude towards transformational style had a positive relationship with universalism, benevolence and self-direction and negative relationship with power, achievement and tradition. On the other hand, attitude toward transactional style related positively with self-direction and negatively with power, achievement and tradition. Hierarchical regression for transformational leadership showed that, after controlling for socio-demographic variables and social desirability, the inclusion of values caused an increase of 0,17 in the R2. Universalism, power, tradition and hedonism were significant predictors of this attitude. In contrast, for transactional leadership, R2 change was of 0,06. There was no significant contribution of any specific value. In general, results indicate that the attitude toward transformational leadership style is more influenced by values, pointing directions to managers interested in promoting this kind of leadership. We would recommend replicating this research in other contexts and including actual management behavior as a variable.