Intervention for supervisors, based on social skills and leadership, in order to improve organizational climate perception and organizational performance outcomes

Abstract

Purpose

Interventions to develop leadership have attracted the interest of both the professional world and academia. The latter through review papers has highlighted the need to incorporate organizational performance outcomes when evaluating the effectiveness of programs for leadership development, because they have been particularly scarce. Keeping this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at direct supervisors, on the basis of social skills and transformational/transactional leadership, in order to improve organizational climate (OC) perception and objective outcomes of organizational performance.

Design/methodology/approach

A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used, with no quasi-control group. Intervention was applied to all direct supervisors (n=8) of a private company in the industrial sector, with national implementation. The intervention covered a period of two months, with a total of eight sessions. The frequency of the intervention was a weekly session of 90 minutes each. The impact was measured in their direct subordinates (n=34). The outcome variables were OC perception and various indicators of organizational performance.

Findings

The results showed a statistically significant increase, moderate-to-high magnitude (d_MR=0.38-1.21), in most sub-dimensions of OC. The various organizational performance indicators (e.g. volume of sales, positioning of the company, etc.) also showed improvements.

Practical implications

Results suggest that the authors’ intervention program, based on social skills and leadership, aimed to develop leadership, has an effect on organizational efficacy outcomes, such as OC perception and organizational performance. The implications of this study’s findings for HR managers are that there is a direct relation between improvement in outcomes associated with organizational effectiveness and the training of direct supervisors; this is because the leadership in the levels that deal directly with workers is responsible for carrying out the main tasks of the organization.

Originality/value

The overall objective of this research was to analyze the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at direct supervisors, on the basis of social skills and transformational/transactional leadership, in order to improve OC perception and objective outcomes of organizational performance.

Citation

Cuadra-Peralta, A.A., Veloso-Besio, C., Iribaren, J. and Pinto, R. (2017), "Intervention for supervisors, based on social skills and leadership, in order to improve organizational climate perception and organizational performance outcomes", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 281-292. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-10-2016-0205