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Unconventional Leader Behavior, Subordinate Satisfaction, Effort and Perception of Leader Effectiveness

August 26, 2004 

"Charismatic leadership theory suggests that when followers observe certain leader behaviors they make attributions of extraordinary leadership abilities (Conger & Kanungo, 1987, 1988, 1998; Berger, 1963; Weber, 1947; Shamir, 1992).  These attributions are believed to be a result of, among other things, a leader's display of unconventional behavior.  Some examples of such behavior are singing the company mission statement, wearing your clothes backwards, or hanging from the Walt Whitman Bridge if you team wins a game (as Pat Croce, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers offered to do).  In additional to creating these attributions, theorists assert that unconventional behavior also leads to the development of trust (Conger & Kanungo, 1988).

 If unconventional behavior produces these positive results, why, then, a) has it not been considered through the lenses of other theories and b) has it not been examined as an area of study per se?  What can we learn by studying the impact of unconventional behavior alone, as a construct separate from the theory of charismatic leadership?  This empirical examination of the construct of unconventional behavior is the first of its kind and is intended to reveal whether further and more specific investigation into unconventional behavior is warranted.

 Unconventional leader behavior is important for research to consider because there is no place in current leadership theory, for example, that addresses a leader who behaves in an unconventional fashion but does not exhibit the other tenets of an established leadership style. In order to move this construct forward in the literature and to empirically measure it, we define unconventional leader behavior as a leader's behavior that is perceived as novel and surprising by followers. 

 Two caveats exist when conceptualizing unconventional behavior.  First, the contextual relevance of what constitutes 'novel' cannot be overlooked.  'Unconventional' is inherently tied to situational standards and organizational history that define what 'ordinary' represents.  Second, unconventional behavior as conceptualized in this research, reflects a positive, unconventional delivery of a leadership style.  Moving forward from the definition of unconventional leader behavior, we turn to differentiating unconventional leader behavior from other leader behaviors.  Most leader behaviors captured by the literature thus far are considered as part of one style or another.

 A leader with a transformational leadership style can intellectually stimulate followers in a fashion that has been done time and time again within his/her company.  Or, that same transformational leader can intellectually stimulate followers in some way that has never been experienced by this company.  Similarly, consider the leader who is transactional in nature, consistently focusing his or her followers on the rewards they will receive if they meet their expected goals.  Or, that same leader could outline those rewards and standards in an unconventional way, perhaps by appealing to other senses of the employees.

 In order to further our understanding of the impact unconventional leader behavior may have on followers, we explore the relationship between unconventional behavior of leaders and follower outcomes and test our hypotheses with data collected in an experimental setting.  We examine the effects of leaders' unconventional behavior, taking in consideration different leadership styles, and test whether unconventional leader behavior produces any follower outcomes over and above those associated with a particular leadership style.

 Hypothesis 1.  Leadership that is delivered in an unconventional rather than conventional fashion is positively related to greater follower satisfaction, above and beyond effects related to the leader's transformational or transactional style.

 Hypothesis 2.  Leadership that is delivered in an unconventional rather than conventional fashion is positively related to follower ratings of leader effectiveness, above and beyond effects related to the leader's transformational or transactional styles.

 Hypothesis 3.  Leadership that is delivered in an unconventional rather than conventional fashion enhances the willingness of followers to exert effort, above and beyond effects related to a leader's transformational or transactional leadership style.

 An experimental approach was taken to test our hypotheses using students at a large northeastern (U.S.) public university.  Because the nature of the investigation was to examine the utility of the construct of unconventional behavior for the first time, an experimental setting allowed for control and consistency regarding the leaders' behavior, experimental task, and context.  The experiment consisted of 182 subjects, divided into 39 groups, and the man age of the participants was 20.77 years.  57.69% of the subjects were female.  All subjects were either juniors or seniors in college and most were business majors at the university.

 There were four possible conditions in t his experiment are effected by a two-by-two experimental design (i.e., transformational versus transactional leadership style and conventional delivery of leadership versus unconventional delivery of leadership).  Subjects were led by a conventionally behaving transactional leader, an unconventionally behaving transactional leader, a conventionally behaving transformational leader, or an unconventailityy behaving transformational leader.  Leadership style was manipulated via having the groups led by trained confederated leaders exhibiting transactional or transformational leadership.  Unconventional leader behavior was manipulated by scripts instructing the leader to delive3r his either transactional or transformational leadership in a conventional usual fashion or in the unconventional manner.

 In each session five subjects engaged in a voluntary, extra credit one-hour group exercise in which they were informed of a controversial issue in education (the abolition of grades), asked to develop and present arguments for the abolition of grades in undergraduate education.  The leader was introduced at the beginning of the session as the leader for the activity.  Each experimental session lasted about one hour and had sever phases (following a leadership script) including introductions and a delivery of task instructions, leader facilitation of idea generation and argument formulation, and presentation of arguments and conclusions by participants.  Groups aimed at presenting the best two arguments for the abolition of grades, as judged by an expert panel, that could be presented to administration on behalf of the student body.

 Participants were told that the exercise was examining group processes, and thus were not primed for leadership observations.  The transformational and transactional scripts were written according to items (as guidelines) associated with each style found in the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass & Avolio, 1997).  The leader scripts also specified a specific, observable manner in which confederates delivered (enacted) either transactional or transformational leadership.  Scripts were written using items (as guidelines) from the conventional behavior scale included in Conger and Kanungo's (1998) charismatic leadership scale that taps the extent to which the leader behaved in unique, novel, and unexpected ways. 

 In order to investigate the effects of unconventional behavior about and beyond any leadership style, we measured leadership style (transactional vs. transformational) and unconventional enactment of that style.  In an effort to confirm that follower perceptions of the unconventionality of the leader were accurately represented by the leadership scripts, a manipulation check was conducted whereby supporting validation for the conditions was obtained by surveying study participants using Conger and Kanungo's (1998) unconventional behavior scale and the transformational leadership scale from Bass & Avolio's (1997) MLQ 5x. 

 Results indicated preliminary support of our overarching premise that unconventional behavior warrant further investigation.  Unconventional behavior was significantly correlated with satisfaction the exercise and leader effectiveness.  Due to the intercorrelation among the dependent variables, a one-way MANOVA was conducted with follower satisfaction with the experience, follower ratings of leader effectiveness, and follower level of effort expended as the dependent variables, and leadership style (transformational or transactional) and delivery (unconventional or conventional) as the independent variables. 

 In order to obtain a slightly different picture than the MANOVA results provided and to test our specific hypotheses about the effects of unconventional behavior above and beyond transformational/transactional leadership style, we conducted hierarchical regressions. 

 This research is the first to consider unconventional behavior as a construct in and of itself, and is the first to clearly define the boundary conditions of context relevance and positive overture, as well as the elements (novel and surprising) of unconventional behavior.  Moreover, it is the first attempt to isolate and understand the effects of unconventional leader behavior through an experimental setting.  Through correlational analysis, MANOVA, and hierarchical regression, the results of this exploration of unconventional behavior suggest that it is a promising construct worthy of further consideration and research.  Our results suggest support for the addition of unconventional behaviors to a leader's repertoire, as the use of these behaviors can increase follower satisfaction and perceptions of leader effectiveness above and beyond conventional forms of transformational and transactional leadership.  Our results hold across two different leadership styles (transformational and transactional), suggesting that unconventional delivery makes a contribution above and beyond that of a particular style. 

 We investigated three outcomes that have been well documented in the leadership literature (Bass, 1990).  Employee satisfaction and leader effectiveness are critical to sustained organizational success, as these factors can lead to other positive outcomes.  Our finding of unconventionally behaving leaders positively related to follower satisfaction with their experience is particularly interesting.  Our results are noteworthy in that they fit with recent brain research that found unexpected circumstances activate pleasure centers in the brain to a greater degree than expected circumstances (Malick, 2001).  We found it interesting that unconventional behaviors did not increase a follower's willingness to exert effort.  We were able to gather a rather broad picture supporting the utility of unconventional leader behavior by using the three different analyses.

 There are several limitations of this research.  First, since the data were generated in an experimental setting, it is possible that the effects of unconventional behavior may or may not be similar in organizations.  Also, both of our confederate leaders were male; and because of this we do not know if there are different attributions that may be generated if the confederates were female.  Third, since our sample was from a very narrow age group, there could be a lack of generalizabilty across other age groups.  Additionally, there may be unexplained variables such as individual differences that are unaccounted for in this study affecting the relationships. 

 Future research should investigate the impact of a particular task environment on the relationship between unconventional leader behavior and follower outcomes.  As indicated earlier, the construct of unconventional leader behavior is inherently context dependent.  Thus, future research should also consider the organizational context (e.g., culture), as it may impact the strength of the relationships suggested by our research.

 Regardless of which of the above avenues is selected, it is clear that further exploration of the impact of unconventional leader behavior holds great promise.  Our hope is that with a clear definition and supportive experimental findings, researchers will continue to explore this construct more fully (Jaussi, & Dionne, 2004, p. 16-26)."

Reference:  Jaussi, K.S., & Dionne, S.D.  (2004). Unconventional leader behavior, subordinate satisfaction, effort and perception of leader effectiveness.  Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2004, 10, (3).

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Created: 2007-11-13, Updated: 2009-02-17