University of Twente Student Theses
As of Friday, 8 August 2025, the current Student Theses repository is no longer available for thesis uploads. A new Student Theses repository will be available starting Friday, 15 August 2025.
How is commitment to change among start-up employees affected by transformational leadership? : The role of empowerment and perceived threat
Sautmann, Marius (2022) How is commitment to change among start-up employees affected by transformational leadership? : The role of empowerment and perceived threat.
|
PDF
695kB |
| Abstract: | The goal of the present study was to investigate the effect of transformational leadership on commitment to change in start-up companies. This was measured with the subscales affective, continuance, and normative commitment to change. Empowerment and perceived threat were investigated as moderating variables. A significant positive effect of transformational leadership on affective, normative, and continuance commitment to change was expected, yet results could not confirm this expectation. Furthermore, no interaction effects between transformational leadership and empowerment or perceived threat were found. A significant positive effect of transformational leadership on empowerment was observed. A reason for the unexpected results could be that in start-ups, there is a tendency that all members should develop leadership capacities, whereas in most other companies there are rather strict hierarchies, and not all members should develop leadership capacities (Prommer, Tiberius & Kraus, 2020). As leaders tend to develop change initiatives and try to spread them (Oreg & Berson, 2019), it might be that it is not the perceived transformational leadership that impacts their commitment to change, but their own perceived leadership capabilities that make start-up members committed to a change initiative. The results should be interpreted with caution due to the minimalistic sample size. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology BSc (56604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/92021 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
Show download statistics for this publication
Show download statistics for this publicationRepository Staff Only: item control page