Prof. Dr. Hayat Kabasakal danışmanlığındaki tezler
12 tez · Boğaziçi University
The effects of autocratic leadership on employee outcomes
Autocratic leadership, which is a directive style of leadership based on the conceptualization where leaders take all responsibility for decisions and subordinate performance, was a very popular topic within the leadership field after World War II. The main aim of this research is to explore the under-studied topic of Autocratic Leadership and its effects on emotional, cognitive and behavioral employee outcomes, and understand the boundary conditions in which these relationships operate. By collecting data from 202 leaders and 202 of their immediate subordinates, the effects of autocratic leadership on employee's emotional, cognitive and behavioral outcomes were measured. Contrary to the approach of the field in examining autocratic leadership by looking at the linear relationships, by utilizing social hierarchy theory, this study reveals the importance of investigating autocratic leadership from a curvilinear relationship standpoint. In this context, this research investigates the curvilinear relationships between autocratic leadership and employee outcomes, which provides the option to look at the outcomes for low, moderate, and high levels of autocratic leadership. The results show support for the idea that the outcomes of autocratic leadership change depending on the amount of autocratic leadership present in the situation, and support for the idea that the construct has different effects on emotional, cognitive and behavioral outcomes. The moderating effects of LMXSC and perceived organizational support on these relationships is also partially supported by the results.
The impact of leadership style on follower innovation: Mediating effect of idiosyncratic deals
This study aims to understand the leader-follower dynamics that lead to higher innovative work behavior. Drawing on social exchange theory, implicit leadership theory, conservation of resources theory and affective events theory, this study investigates the impact of leadership on innovative work behavior through three intertwined models: 1) Leading Innovation in Style: exploring impact of leadership style and cultural values; 2) Leading Innovation through Idiosyncratic Deals: exploring the impact of I-deals and LMXSC; 3) What is a Leader to Give and How Do you Make Me Feel?: exploring the impact of job resources and emotions. Utilizing quantitative data collected from 250 leaders and 250 direct reports sampled from various private sector firms in Turkey, this study demonstrates evidence for the positive effect of both paternalistic and transactional leadership styles on innovative work behavior. The study finds support for a moderated mediation relationship, in which LMXSC positively moderates the relationship of leadership styles and I-deals, which in turn influence innovative work behavior. While mediation holds true for both types of leadership and all types of I-deals, LMXSC moderation is found to be limited to task and work specific I-deals. Lastly, job resources are found to be significant mediators between I-deals and innovative work behavior, and this relationship is moderated by the negative emotions of the follower. Implications of these findings are discussed, as well as the study's theoretical contributions and practical implications.
The effect of leadership styles and emotional intelligence on employee job satisfaction & performance
While there is no one definition of leadership, there is no one set of characteristics that define an effective leader, as it can vary depending on the situation and context. However, a leader has a direct impact on employee work outcomes, making it crucial for organizations to search for effective leaders. To find the best leaders in recent times and conditions, this thesis aims to examine leadership qualities that influence positive employee outcomes. As a unique approach, the study includes the quality of relationship between leader and follower (LMX) as a moderator. The study aims to identify effective leadership traits in the Turkish business environment, which has experienced major political and economic changes recently. Several regression analyses were conducted on a group of employees and managers in Turkey, who were mostly highly educated and working on different industries. Results of the first stage of the research were consistent with many previous studies. We found that a higher transformational leadership style and transactional leadership style of a leader were positively related to employee satisfaction and performance, respectively. However, a higher emotional intelligence (EQ) of a leader was only partially related to employee performance. The results show that EQ is one aspect of leadership traits and is not sufficient on its own to influence positive employee work outcomes. The study also found that LMX plays a compensatory role for low transformational leadership. Overall, the results of this study can help organizations and leaders make informed decisions about leaders to influence positive employee outcomes.
The effect of overqualification on employee work outcomes
Overqualification is a dimension of underemployment that is defined as possessing more education, experience, and skills than the demands of present employment situation. Perceptions of possessing excessive qualification with respect to job requirements are associated with negative job attitudes in the overqualification literature due to feelings of relative deprivation experienced by employees. Relative deprivation theory (Crosby, 1976, 1984) suggests that when a person fails to meet the subjective standards that he/she feels entitled to, being deprived of these subjective standards result in frustration, which leads to poor job attitudes in the context of employment. Contemporary research on overqualification focus on identifying the conditions that inhibit the negative outcomes of overqualification (e.g., Erdogan & Bauer, 2009). In this study, we explore whether social exchange mechanisms in the work environment, namely leader-member exchange and organizational support, can moderate the negative relationship between overqualification and employee work attitudes, which are job satisfaction, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. A series of regression analyses were performed on a sample that consists mostly of highly educated service sector employees in Turkey. Results confirm the negative effect of perceived overqualification on work attitudes while providing no support for the hypothesized moderation effects of leader-member exchange and perceived organizational support. The theoretical implications of results were discussed and their implications for practice and future research were presented.
Working from home and work-life balance: Relationship and links to job satisfaction and organizational commitment
Balancing between professional and personal life became a challenge with social isolation and the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic. An almost overnight shift to working from home eliminated the physical boundaries between work and private life and altered the work-life balance of many. With the withdrawal of pandemic waves, companies have started adapting to the pandemic-free world. The person-environment fit theory emphasizes the fit between person and environment by indicating that ensuring a match between those is required for desirable outcomes, furthers that disruptions to the fit end up with a change in intention and necessity for parties. This study aimed to explore the relationship between work-life balance and working from home and how it influences job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The pragmatic paradigm framework combines survey and in-depth interview data to understand the participants' working from home experiences, work-life balance, and relationships. The results demonstrate that working from home improves work-life balance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Moreover, the positive influence of work-life balance on job satisfaction and organizational commitment is shown. The study also indicated that remote work causes more damaged work-life for women than men. While the centuries-old workplace habits are reshaping with the recovery from the pandemic, more research about remote work and work-life balance is needed to sustain fit in business life.
The transgenerational sustainability of family firms
Given the economic significance of family firms and their low rates of survival, understanding the factors that contribute to the transgenerational sustainability of family firms has been an important subject of research. In this dissertation, the topic of transgenerational sustainability of family firms is explored in light of three research studies conducted in Turkey. In Chapter 1, the significance of the topic is explained, and three research studies are introduced. In Chapter 2, the construct of commitment is explored in the context of next-generation members of the family firm. Based on in-depth interviews with 22 members of 17 long-lived family firms in Turkey, a model to explain the distinctive nature of commitment, as well as the roots of commitment in childhood and adolescence is developed. In Chapter 3, following an alternative approach to the study of transgenerational sustainability, the focus is on the entrepreneurial behavior of family firms. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the different ways in which long-lived family firms manage to be innovative while remaining firmly anchored to their traditions. In Chapter 4, through a survey among 252 owner-managers of family firms in Turkey, the effects of family social capital on owner manager's intention for transgenerational sustainability are investigated. In Chapter 5, findings of three research studies are integrated and conclusions are drawn. Through combining different research methods and alternative approaches to the research topic, this dissertation aims to enhance our understanding of the factors that contribute to the transgenerational sustainability of family firms.
Psychological empowerment: Antecedents, correlates and consequences
This study examines, with an integrative perspective, the effects of employees' perceptions about the empowering behavior of their immediate supervisor on employees' psychological empowerment, and the effects of employees' psychological empowerment on their job satisfaction, extrinsic reward satisfaction, affective commitment towards their organizations, turnover intentions; and task performance and organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, this study makes comparisons between the strength of some of the hypothesized relationships. The constructs of the study are examined with a preliminary qualitative study, which consists of 10 in-depth interviews, and the relationships among these constructs are investigated with a quantitative research that comprises a survey. Data are collected from 250 employees, and their (19) supervisors who work in 18 different firms from different industries operating in Istanbul, Turkey; and hypothesized relationships are analyzed with structural equation modeling procedure in AMOS18. The primary finding of the study is that there is a strong relationship between enhancing meaningfulness- providing autonomy dimension of empowering behavior of supervisors and employees' psychological empowerment. Another important finding is that there are positive relationships between empowering behavior of supervisors and employees' job satisfaction, extrinsic reward satisfaction, and affective commitment. The results also indicate that the impact of empowerment on job satisfaction is stronger than that on extrinsic reward satisfaction, and the impact of job satisfaction on turnover intention is stronger than that of extrinsic reward satisfaction. Finally, there are negative influences of empowerment on employees' task performance and organizational citizenship behavior.
Leader-member exchange (LMX) based relative deprivation and employee outcomes
Leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, based on the premise that a leader forms differentiated social exchange relationships with each follower, holds an important place in research for almost 40 years. The main aim of this research is exploring an under-researched topic of the effect of LMX on discrete employee emotions, and understanding the influence of this mediated effect on employee work attitudes, behaviors and performance. By collecting data from 320 employees and their 80 immediate team leaders, the effect of LMX evaluations on employee's feeling of relative deprivation is obtained directly by employee's own cognitive and affective state while the effect of this negative feeling on employee's work performance and behavior is validated by getting the leader's observation of employee performance and behavior. In contrast to ongoing approach of evaluating LMX as a separate dyadic relationship between a leader and a follower, by utilizing social comparison theory this study points to the importance of investigating LMX relationships being embedded in a broader context of work group. In this respect, the comparative effects of absolute and relative LMX evaluations on employee's attitudes, behaviors and performance through a cognitive and affective process of relative deprivation is tested by two separate structural equation models. The results show that employees' evaluations of relative LMX have more negative influence on their attitudes, behaviors and performance compared to absolute LMX through an affective mediating process. Individual's self-construal shapes the level of emotional reactions to LMX evaluations. The findings exhibit the importance of perceived organizational support and peer support, as well as positive future job expectations in mitigating the negative effects of LMX based relative deprivation feeling on work outcomes. For future research, this study provides the empirical evidence for the significance of investigating the effects of LMX on different employee emotions, as well as, the urgency in exploring solutions to mitigate the destructive effects of dark side of LMX, which has been overlooked up to date.
Entrepreneurial success: The role of social networks and human capital
Social capital theory suggests that a firm's external networks play a major role in contributing to its performance; hence start-ups, in order to succeed, are advised to pursue strategies that focus on the development of valuable networks, as they hold the set of resources, tangible or virtual, that may accrue to a corporate player through the player's social relationships across these networks, facilitating the attainment of entrepreneurial goals. Although a number of empirical studies suggest that social networks indeed have an influence on entrepreneurial success, evidence regarding the nature of the relationship is still equivocal. Further, the number of studies focusing on entrepreneurial success through a network perspective in Turkey is quite scarce. Combining the merits of both qualitative and quantitative research, the present dissertation attempts to contribute to the understanding of how social capital and structural elements of an entrepreneur's network are related with entrepreneurial success. Since there are conflicting and mixed results regarding these relationships in the literature, one additional aim is to introduce human capital in this relationship. First, in-depth interviews are used in the exploratory stage of the research providing in-depth understanding of the phenomenon under investigation within its context. Then, quantitative data, collected via survey administration to entrepreneurs of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from Istanbul, is used to test the hypotheses developed in light of the relevant literature and the qualitative insights. Results provided corroborative empirical evidence for the mediating effect of access to resources on the relationship between entrepreneurial success and its network related antecedents, while illuminating the moderating effect of human capital elements on this mediated relationship. It is shown that human capital (education and industry-specific work experience) indeed changes the nature of the relationships in the predictive model of entrepreneurial success.
Investigating the factors behind positive reactions to change: The role of affect and cognition
The concept of organizational change has never been more significant, given the business context of fierce competition, ever-changing requirements of globalization, and the pace of technological innovations. Although organizational change efforts are intended to create positive outcomes such as increased performance and productivity, most of the change initiatives fail, essentially due to neglecting the crucial human aspect of change. Yet, considering that change is carried out by individuals, how to obtain their support for change is an essential question that must be answered for success of the change. Individuals? commitment to and behavioral support for an organizational change depends on how they perceive and interpret it based on their affective and cognitive evaluations. At this point, a controversial issue emerges regarding the factors that influence affective and cognitive evaluations and to what extent these responses predict commitment to and behavioral support for change. This research investigates whether contextual and process related factors such as change implementation processes, perceptions of justice, leader-member exchange and leadership style during an organizational change appeal to employees? minds or hearts and the differential impact of these factors on employees? commitment to and support for change via emotions and rationality.
Loneliness at the top, its antecedents, and coping mechanisms in the sports sector
Given the increasing importance of sports clubs and the leaders in the sports sector, exploring the factors related to the loneliness of sports leaders has been an essential research topic. However, studies investigating the leaders in the sports sector have generally gathered information from amateur organizations and neglected professional clubs. This research aims to fill this gap by exploring leaders' loneliness in professional sports clubs with the study conducted in Turkey. After briefly presenting the topic's importance and three case studies, the following chapters examine in depth how top executives experienced loneliness at the top in professional team sports. By conducting in-depth interviews with the top executives of professional sports clubs in Turkey, the extent of loneliness at the top, its roots and coping mechanisms are investigated. In the last chapter, the findings were integrated, inter-case analyses were conducted, and conclusions were drawn. By linking various research contexts and alternative approaches to the research question, our recognition of the main factors contributing to leaders' loneliness in professional sports clubs, such as public pressure and crisis situations, and coping mechanisms, such as paternalistic leadership, is advanced.
Unveiling the influence of motivation type on organizational commitment, employee engagement, and intention to leave
The current research aims to determine the impact of motivation type on organizational commitment, intention to leave, and employee engagement. Employees, shaped by their organization dynamics, establish a hierarchy of values and preferences that are directly influenced by the motivators provided by the organization (Moy & Lee, 2022). Although there is a significant amount of research about the dichotomy of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and its influence on job outcomes in the existing literature, the changing trends necessitate newsworthy contributions in that area. This study has examined employees, concerning their individual assessment of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors within their current organization, as well as their levels of commitment to the organization, intention to leave, and engagement in work. An online survey has been distributed via online channels, and a final sample size of n = 130 has been reached. Analyses have been made using linear regression. Results indicate that employees who prioritize being intrinsically motivated tend to commit to their organizations and engage in their jobs; on the other hand, they have a relatively low intention to leave the organization. Furthermore, extrinsic motivation factors, in comparison to intrinsic motivation factors, have limited influence on job outcomes. This study offers both theoretical insights and practical applications about the influence of motivation type on employee-driven job outcomes.