CEO leadership behaviors, organizational performance, and employees' attitudes

This study explores the links between CEO leadership behaviors, firm performance and employees' attitudes in a sample drawn from 125 firms in China. We first inductively identified categories of CEO leadership behaviors in the Chinese context. Through a factor analysis, we developed a six-dimen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Leadership quarterly 2011-02, Vol.22 (1), p.92-105
Main Authors: Wang, Hui, Tsui, Anne S., Xin, Katherine R.
Format: Article
Language:eng
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Summary:This study explores the links between CEO leadership behaviors, firm performance and employees' attitudes in a sample drawn from 125 firms in China. We first inductively identified categories of CEO leadership behaviors in the Chinese context. Through a factor analysis, we developed a six-dimension measure of CEO leadership behaviors, with three dimensions focused on tasks and three dimensions focused on relationships. Our hypotheses were tested on a matched data set including 739 middle managers and their supervisors (top managers) in the 125 firms. Results from the structural equation modeling analysis show that the CEO's task-focused behaviors are directly linked to firm performance. The CEO's relationship-focused behaviors are related to employees' attitudes and, through these attitudes, to firm performance. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.
ISSN:1048-9843
1873-3409