Master Thesis: ‘Team performance within the context of sports; the influence of transformational leadership on team performance and the mediating role of team commitment’ Student: Djordi van Beek Student Nr: S759248 Adress: Demer 41A, 5611AP Eindhoven Contact: 0621491804 / [email protected] Faculty: Social and Behavioural Sciences Master Topic: Team Obligations and Performance Period: January 2010 – January 2011 1st Supervisor: R. Schalk 2nd Supervisor: A. Vossen 759248HRS.pdf I Preface This Master Thesis represents the final step in the process of becoming a Master of Science in Human Resource Studies. While studying at Tilburg University, I’ve come across numerous aspects of Human Resources of which the relationship between HRM and the commercial aspects (profit) in organizations has been a major aspect of interest. During the study I’ve realized that the department of Human Resources in an organization often has difficulties of becoming a full strategic partner, as the commercial aspects (profit) usually have priority for the organization. As a healthy environment for employees might be a key determinant for an organization’s success, the opportunity of studying this topic has stimulated me while accomplishing this study. Also the possibility of studying this topic in a sports setting has been beneficial as sport has always been a very important aspect of my personal life and limited research has been conducted for the domain of sports. First of all, I would like to express my appreciation to my supervisor Rene Schalk for his time, guidance and support throughout the process of this thesis. In addition, I would like to thank my co-students for their support and pleasant cooperation while conducting the data necessary to finalize this study. Finally, when reflecting on the process of this thesis, I would like to thank my family and my friends for their support and encouragement not only while conducting this thesis, but throughout the entire program of HRS. 2 II Abstract This study intends to clarify a model in a sports setting, in which transformational leadership influences team performance directly and indirectly through the mediating effect of team commitment. More specifically, on the basis of relevant literature this model proposes that team performance will be higher when a leader is perceived as more transformational by the team members. In addition, the model also proposes that this relationship is mediated by the team member’s commitment to the team. Cross-sectional survey research has been conducted among 122 football players playing for respectively 10 teams registered in District Zuid I of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond [KNVB] (2010). Both a subjective measure, perceived team performance by team members, as well as an objective measure, mean number of points earned per game [PPG], has been used for measuring team performance. The results of this study indicate that transformational leadership is indeed a good predictor for team performance, as the effect of transformational leadership was found to be significant on both measures for team performance. This indicates that team performance will be higher when a leader is perceived as more transformational. Moreover, mixed results were found for the expected mediation effect in which team commitment mediates the positive relationship between transformational leadership and team performance. Path analysis and Sobel tests were used to test the mediation effect and subsequently, team commitment was found to partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and the subjective measure for team performance. However, a similar mediation effect of team commitment on the relationship between transformational leadership and the objective measure for team performance (PPG) could not be confirmed. Keywords: Transformational leadership, team commitment, team performance. 3 III Table of Contents I Preface 2 II Abstract 3 III Table of Contents 4 1. Introduction 5 2. Theoretical Background 7 2.1 Transformational Leadership and Team Performance 7 2.2 Team Commitment and Team Performance 9 2.3 Transformational Leadership and Team Commitment 11 2.4 Transformational Leadership, Team Commitment and Team Performance 12 3. Method 13 3.1 Procedure 13 3.2 Population, Sample and Response 14 3.3 Statistical analyses 16 3.4 Instruments 19 4. Results 24 4.1 Correlation analysis 24 4.2 Regression analyses 26 5. Conclusion / Discussion 33 5.1 Findings 33 5.2 Limitations 35 5.3 Future Research 36 5.4 Practical Recommendations 37 5.5 Concluding Remark 38 6. References 39 Appendix I: Scales 43 Appendix II: Questionnaire 45 Appendix III: Factor Analyses 49 4 1 Introduction On Wednesday the 23 of September 2009, approximately two hundred directors, managers, entrepreneurs and coaches from the business and sports industry gathered for a congress concerning ‘teams’ in the prestigious Porsche Centre in Leusden. Special guest speaker at this event was Guus Hiddink, master of managing teams in international football. Like no other, he has managed to lead various and diverse football teams to numerous successes. Hiddink has obtained unexpected high results with the national football teams of consecutively South Korea, Australia and Russia. Especially his success with the national team of South Korea is being seen as extraordinary, as Hiddink reached the semi-finals with this qualitative insignificant team during the World Cup of 2002 and defeated amongst others football giant Brazil. In his biography is stated that Hiddink is always able to create a carefully aligned individual approach to each team member’s needs (Meijer, 2010). Successful leaders, such as Hiddink, are able to create a team that achieves higher performance than the sum of individuals are capable of. By stimulating, amongst other aspects, team commitment, Hiddink’s teams have been able to defeat qualitative better opponents and obtain exceptional high team results. According to Bass et al. (2003) transformational leaders inspire their team members in order to become more effective in pursuing collective goals and to exceed performance expectations. Transformational leaders translate their ambition into challenging collective goals and encourage team members to accept them. The literature on testing transformational leadership theory has provided general support for the relationships between transformational leadership and performance (Bass, 1998; Avolio, 1999). For example, research has demonstrated that perceived transformational leadership is associated with increased performance in various work settings, such as the Navy (Yammarino & Bass, 1990), banks (Howell & Avolio, 1993) and other organizational settings. In addition, transformational leadership theory has received most empirical attention within organizational settings. Therefore it might be interesting to see whether this model could be shown to be valid in other contexts, such as sports. Transformational leadership to date has mainly focused on direct effects, however other research suggests that transformational leadership affects performance indirectly through several mediating variables. In this study, we try to identify a mediating effect and predict that transformational leadership affects team performance indirectly through team commitment. According to Becker & Billings (1993) team commitment is defined as the perceived level of commitment by members of a team towards the team of which they are a part. According to research, commitment has seemed to decrease in both societal and organizational contexts over the last 5 couple of years (Schalk, Den Hartog & van der Velde, 2002). Although some have questioned the relevance of commitment in an era of downsizing (Baruch, 1998), most researchers believe that commitment has always been a meaningful concept to study. In addition, the use of work teams has increased in organizational settings and the focus within organizations has been more and more on work teams and performance on team level (Bishop & Scott, 2000). Moreover, several studies have found that specific team commitment correlated positively with team performance (Bishop & Scott, 1997; Scott & Townsend, 1994). However, the process by which transformational leaders can exert their influence, through mediating variables, on follower’s team performance has not been adequately addressed in the literature (Bono & Judge, 2003; Yukl, 1998, in Givens, 2007). Clearly there is a need for better understanding how transformational leadership influences work-related attitudes such as team commitment in order to develop a more complete understanding of the workings of transformational leadership (Bass, 1999). The main objective of the present study is to propose and test a model in a sports setting in which transformational leadership affects team performance indirectly, through the mediating effect of team commitment. Research on transformational leadership has been widely investigated across a broad range of organizations and causal links to several measures of commitment and performance have been hypothesized. However, limited research has been conducted for the domain of sports. In addition, this research is intended to contribute to the existing literature into the context of sports and contribute new knowledge and understanding of these relationships. Although there are differences between organizational teams and sport teams, understanding these relationships in a sports context might be useful for research and practice in HR, given the