High involvement management practices as leadership enhancers

Abstract

Purpose

Based on the high-involvement management model and the Substitutes for Leadership theory, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderating role of high-involvement management practices on the relation between managers’ transformational leadership and employees’ affective organizational commitment.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from employees of a large Canadian financial firm. Questionnaires were sent out and 219 received, representing a response rate of 63.3 percent. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regressions analysis with moderation effects.

Findings

The results show three statistically significant interactions between transformational leadership and high-involvement management practices. More specifically, information sharing and power sharing practices acted as leadership enhancers, while skill development practices served as a leadership substitute.

Practical implications

The results of this research could help immediate supervisors adjust their leadership strategies to their organizations’ HRM practices, and also guide top managers in choosing practices that can support these supervisors.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the literature on leadership by considering how contextual factors may affect the influence of transformational leadership and by integrating HRM practices within the substitutes for leadership framework.

Citation

Doucet, O., Lapalme, M.-È., Simard, G. and Tremblay, M. (2015), "High involvement management practices as leadership enhancers", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 36 No. 7, pp. 1058-1071. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-10-2013-0243