Leadership Research Summary:
• This paper provides the first meta-analytic examination of the relationship between leadership and followers’ intrinsic motivation. In particular, the study examined 6 leadership variables (transformational, ethical, leader-member exchange, servant, empowering, and abusive supervision) using data from 50 independent samples and 21,873 participants.
• The study found that transformational leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant leadership, and empowering leadership were positively related to intrinsic motivation, whereas abusive supervision was negatively linked to intrinsic motivation. Although these leadership styles were associated with intrinsic motivation, they varied considerably in their relative importance.
• Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership emerged as the more important contributors to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. LMX showed a similar contribution with transformational leadership to intrinsic motivation. Effectiveness of leadership styles in relation to intrinsic motivation varied by power distance, publication year, and journal quality.
Leadership Research Findings:
- The current study also contributes to practice. Drawing on our findings, some management suggestions should be mentioned. First, managers should avoid using abusive supervision in the workplace. In the era of the knowledge economy, intrinsic motivation is very important to the employees’ performance quality. However, abusive supervision would undermine intrinsic motivation deeply as the current study finds a strong and negative association between abusive supervision.
- Second, the organization should provide leadership training programs to managers. In particular, drawing on our findings, ethical, servant, and empowering leadership positively relate to intrinsic motivation. However, many managers are still lacking systematic leadership training. They just manage their followers according to their experience. The human resource department should provide these leadership training programs to managers. Finally, leaders should provide an autonomy support climate to their followers, increasing their followers’ intrinsic motivation.
- Leadership is important for the followers’ intrinsic motivation. Although fruitful evidence has been accumulated, some unsolved issues still exist. To address these, the current study provides the first analysis between leadership and intrinsic motivation. Overall, positive leadership (e.g., transformational leadership and servant leadership) positively relate to intrinsic motivation, while abusive supervision negatively relates to intrinsic motivation.
- Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership explain a larger variance in intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. Power distance, publication year, and journal quality moderates the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. The research enriches the understanding of the relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation.