presented in Tables 4.8 and 4.9 respectively.
These results are not consistent with Hypotheses 4.5 and 4.6. We had anticipated the effects of transformational leadership on team cohesion and on team engagement to be weaker when leaders perceived their team’s demographic diversity as high, but this was not supported by the group analysis. However, transformational leadership does improve information elaboration, through its positive effect on team cohesion more in teams where the leader perceives demographic diversity to be high. It appears that leaders’ responses to demographic diversity do affect group processes in the sense that information elaboration is encouraged when a transformational leadership style succeeds in enhancing the team’s cohesiveness. As such, it is important to support team cohesion, as an affective group process, when demographic diversity is high.
Table 4.8: Standardized regression estimates demographic diverse teams (unconstrained)
Standardized Regression Weights Estimate S.E.
Team cohesion Transformational leadership .608*** .087
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .014ns .086
Information elaboration Team cohesion .572*** .092
Team engagement Team cohesion .244* .251
Team engagement Information elaboration .355** .330
Standardized total effects
Team cohesion Transformational leadership .608***
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .362***
Team engagement Transformational leadership .276***
Information elaboration Team cohesion .572**
Team engagement Team cohesion .447***
Team engagement Information elaboration .355**
Standardized Indirect Effects
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .348***
Team engagement Transformational leadership .276***
Team engagement Team cohesion .203**
R2 Team cohesion .369
Information elaboration .337
Team engagement .286
Table 4.9: Standardized regression estimates demographic homogeneous teams (unconstrained)
Standardized regression weights Estimate S.E.
Team cohesion Transformational leadership .463*** .113
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .358*** .088
Information elaboration Team cohesion .478*** .094
Team engagement Team cohesion .052ns .345
Team engagement Information elaboration .426** .394
Standardized total effects
Team cohesion Transformational leadership .464**
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .579***
Team engagement Transformational leadership .270***
Information elaboration Team cohesion .478***
Team engagement Team cohesion .255†
Team engagement Information elaboration .426**
Standardized Indirect Effects
Information elaboration Transformational leadership .221***
Team engagement Transformational leadership .270***
Team engagement Team cohesion .204**
R2
Team cohesion .214
Information elaboration .515
Team engagement .212
N = 128. † < .10; * <.05; **<.01; ***<.001. ns = not significant.
4.4.2.2 Leader’s perceptions of the team’s functional diversity
A second multiple group analysis was conducted to test the effect of leaders having different perceptions of their team’s functional diversity. The fits statistics comparing different models can be found in Tables 10 and 11. The ΔCFI values are ≤ .01, which supports equivalence between groups. A more constrained model thus more adequately fits the data. The pairwise parameter comparison of critical ratios found all the ratios to be statistically insignificant underlining the equivalence between groups. Our Hypotheses 4.7 and 4.8 on transformational leadership having different effects on team outcomes depending on whether the leader perceived the team to be functionally diverse or homogeneous are therefore rejected. That is leaders’ perception of their team’s functional diversity does not influence the positive effect of transformational leadership on cognitive and affective processes in teams, which in turn affects team engagement.
4
Table 4.10: Model fit statistics functional diversity
Model CMIN DF P CMIN/DF Delta1NFI rho2TLI CFI RMSEA
Unconstrained 4.548 2 .103 2.274 .965 .869 .978 .101 Structural weights 9.317 7 .231 1.331 .927 .966 .980 .051 Structural covariances 10.258 8 .247 1.282 .920 .971 .981 .047 Structural residuals 11.391 11 .411 1.036 .911 .996 .997 .017 Saturated model .000 0 1.000 1.000 Independence model 128.427 12 .000 10.702 .000 .000 .000 .277
Table 4.11: Model comparison functional diversity
Assuming model Unconstrained to be correct: DF CMIN P Delta-1NFI Delta-2IFI rho-1RFI rho2TLI
Structural weights 5 4.769 .445 .037 .038 -.088 -.097
Structural covariances 6 5.710 .456 .044 .045 -.093 -.102
Structural residuals 9 6.843 .653 .053 .054 -.116 -.128
Assuming model Structural weights to be correct:
Structural covariances 1 .941 .332 .007 .008 -.005 -.005
Structural residuals 4 2.074 .722 .016 .017 -.028 -.030
Assuming model Structural covariances to be correct:
Structural residuals 3 1.132 .769 .009 .009 -.023 -.025
4.5 discussion and conclusion
This study contributes to the literature on team leadership effectiveness and work group diversity by using the Categorization-Elaboration Model (CEM) to examine whether leaders’ perception of team diversity moderate transformational leadership’s effectiveness in supporting and encouraging necessary team processes to elevate the team’s engagement. Although the CEM focuses on employee responses to diversity and its effects, we argue that linking leader’s perceptions of diversity to leadership behaviour is particularly relevant since a leader’s behaviour could be influenced by a categorization tendency, which would then impact on team members’ attitudes and behaviours (Greer et al., 2012; Kunze et al., 2013). Therefore, in this study, several multiple group analyses were performed to examine whether leaders’ perception of their team’s diversity does affect transformational leadership’s impact on team processes and team engagement.
The results show that transformational leadership is indeed positively related to both information elaboration and team cohesion. Transformational leadership involves cognitive attributes that encourage followers to rethink perspectives and assumptions, while at the same time challenge employees to perform beyond expectations. In so
doing, transformational leaders stimulate the exchange, discussion and utilization of information boosting cognitive team processes. In addition, transformational leadership aims to transform individual goals and identities to a collective and shared identity, while at the same time supporting individual’s needs, which elevates affective team processes (Bass & Riggio, 2006; Zaccaro & Klimoski, 2002). By managing these cognitive and affective team processes, transformational leadership is successful in facilitating high quality interaction and the sharing of experiences among team members, which instigates a positive shared work-related psychological state of team engagement (Torrente et al., 2012).
Contrary to expectations based on previous studies, we found that leaders’ perception of their team’s demographic diversity did not negatively moderate transformational leadership’s impact on above mentioned team processes and team engagement. In other words, even if leaders perceive their team to be demographically diverse, transformational leadership still enhances information elaboration through supporting the team’s cohesiveness. As such, transformational leadership, by supporting affective processes, is able to improve cognitive team processes. Affective team processes are in this regard a necessary condition to stimulate cognitive team processes, which fits with the underlying rationale of the Categorization-Elaboration Model (Van Knippenberg & Van Ginkel, 2010).
On a note of caution, we were only able to examine the extent to which leaders perceive their team as diverse, and one would expect the effects of a leader’s categorization tendencies to be dependent on how they value diversity. For instance, the findings discussed could be related to the diversity beliefs of leaders: if leaders believe diversity adds value, and they perceive their own team as diverse, they would view this as a resource rather than as a threat. As a consequence, their leadership behaviour would then be aimed at supporting both cognitive and affective processes within the team so as to benefit from this diversity. In contrast, if leaders do not view diversity as adding value, their leadership behaviour will not be aimed at supporting diversity processes in diverse teams per se, which could result in less elaboration and cohesiveness. Although some emerging studies address leaders’ diversity beliefs and their impact on the team (Meeussen et al., 2014; Schölmerich, Schermuly, & Deller, 2016), future studies could more specifically examine how leaders’ diversity perceptions and beliefs influence their leadership behaviour when it comes to managing diverse employees.
Further, our study suggested that transformational leaders’ perceptions of functional diversity did not influence how they managed cognitive and affective processes. This might be because transformational leaders believe it is more important to put effort into managing affective processes within demographically diverse teams to develop a sense of collectiveness, since a lack of this could have a greater detrimental impact on team performance, than when functional diversity is high. A limitation here is that our measurement of functional diversity did not include the extent to which