The dispositional and contextual determinants and outcomes of self-leadership

Abstract

Self-leadership has emerged as an important theory to substitute for designated leaders. Current business environment requires organizations to be more flexible and adaptive towards change. Self-leadership offers an opportunity for organizations to become more responsive via utilizing the potential of every single employee. Studies that investigate the antecedents of self-leadership have generally gathered around dispositional factors and neglected the contextual influences. This research aims to fill this gap by conducting two sequential studies. The quantitative part focuses on transformational leadership and high-performance work systems as situational antecedents and on proactive personality as a dispositional antecedent of self-leadership. As outcomes, work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior are investigated. At the second part, in-depth interviews are conducted to broaden the set of possible antecedents and consequences of self-leadership. The results show that transformational leadership, high-performance work systems and proactive personality contribute significantly to self-leadership whereas self-leadership contributes to work engagement and organizational citizenship behavior via the mediating effect of self-efficacy. In the second study, it is also seen that in contexts that offer autonomy, recognition, trust, competition and distributive justice, the exertion of self-leadership strategies is facilitated. Also, increased productivity and self-confidence, and more effective time/ stress management are stated as other outcomes of self-leadership.