Information Handling Challenges in Complex Systems

ABSTRACT:

Even when leaders exhibit desirable leadership styles, the effectiveness of their behaviors on organizational outcomes may be influenced by the structural distance between them and their followers. Nonetheless, previous empirical research on the relationships between leadership styles and outcomes has largely ignored the role of leader distance in public administration. Using panel data drawn from the US federal government, this study explores how transformational and transactional leadership styles affect employee turnover behavior and how span of control as a proxy for leader distance moderates those relationships. The statistical results indicate that transformational leadership is negatively related to turnover behavior, whereas transactional leadership is positively related to turnover behavior. Further analysis shows that span of control significantly moderates the relationships between the two leadership styles and employee turnover behavior such that organizations benefit more from transformational leaders with a broad span of control than from those with a narrow span of control. Conversely, transactional leaders with a narrow span of control are better at reducing turnover than those with a broad span of control. The implications and contributions of these results for public administration are discussed.