Journal article review

Bommer, WH, Rich, GA & Rubin, RS 2005, 'Changing attitudes about change:
longitudinal effects of transformational leader behavior on employee cynicism about
organizational change', Journal of Organizational Behavior, vol. 26, pp. 733-753.
Organizational change has been an important area of study for management researches
for years, providing information to managers and organizations about how to implement
change process. However, nowadays many change implementers which are responsible
to execute this process still face enormous barriers to conclude successfully this task.
One of these barriers is the resistance for changing. In this context, the employees'
cynicism about organizational change (CAOC) can be considered a relevant factor.
According to Bateman (1997), the high levels of employee cynicism are results of
various factors such as layoffs, struggling economy and different levels of wage
between high qualified and low level workers. Thus, employees who experience
cynicism at work are characterized among other factors by loss of faith in those who are
responsible for the changes, which may result in many negative effects within the
organization such as increasing in absenteeism levels, less efforts to help organizational
change, lower performance and commitment levels and so on.
In light of this, many change implementers are adopting leadership influence as
a way to reduce these negatives impacts in organizations. There are several approaches
in this context, however, the authors focused on the transformational leadership which
are linked with the concept that effective leaders have power to transform or change the
basic values, beliefs as well the attitudes of their followers. Thus, transformational
leadership has the capacity to make individual employees more receptive to as well to
develop the necessary structure to achieve the organizational change. Based in this
principle, the transformational leadership behavior (TLB) focus on the employees' need,
encouraging them to become more engaged and committed with the change process by
giving to them examples. Furthermore, the authors have mentioned that TLB is
associate with increase in employee satisfaction, satisfaction in supervision, extra efforts
and overall employee performance
The presence of transformational leadership behavior within organization also is
associated with the overcome of resistances presented by employees CAOC, in other
words, it is likely that TLB could decrease the impacts of employees' cynicism about
organizational change. Based on the information provided about TLB and CAOC, the
authors elaborated two hypotheses related to the topics discussed. Firstly, by utilizing
the overall concept of transformational leadership behavior which is based on its six
dimensions (which are: articulating a vision of the future, fostering the acceptance of
group goals, communicating high performance expectations, providing intellectual
simulation, modeling appropriate behavior and displaying supportive leader behavior),
the authors intend to verify whether transformational leadership behavior is a relevant
factor to reduce employees' cynicism about organizational change. Secondly, based in
the context of reverse causality, which may be a significant issue in the relationship
between TLB and CAOC, the authors want to test whether or not reverse causality is
present by verifying whether the effects of TLB will be more significant upon CAOC
than CAOC upon TLB. In other words, the authors seek to prove whether
transformational leadership behavior is related to decrease in employee cynicism about
organizational change.
The hypotheses were tested by collecting data through surveys directed to
employees in three different companies. These companies have presented good
performance, stable levels of financial health and the relationship between the

employees and the management in each company is considered very cordial. Moreover,
the employees who made part of this study were designated to do routine activities
within the company. The data was collected in two different moments. At first, 877
employees participated providing useful information. In the second moment, also
known as time 2 which occurred nine months after the first data collection, 561
employees answered the survey. The procedures utilized to collect each group data were
identical.
The researchers were authorized to differentiate employees who remained with
the same supervisor in both periods (N=372) from those who had changed (N=189).
The reasons for the change normally were associated with the movement among the
supervisors and not exactly related to employees promotion, transfer and so on. The
research was tested using the data provided from the employees which did not remain
with their supervisors during the both periods. Moreover, it was collected demographic
information about the employees as a way to verify that there is no significant
difference between the employees which remained with their supervisor or not.
To measure the data collected about TLB, they utilized the Podsakoff et al.'s
(1990) transformational behavior inventory, making however, some changes. Choosing
among a number of options, the researchers opted to use the Reichers et al.'s (1997)
scale to measure the data related to CAOC. In addition to the variables of interest in this
study, they also included three variables to control other effects that were not described
by the hypothesized variables but may present other approaches of leader behavior. The
variables used were: employee organization's status (line employees and high level
employees) and noncontigent punishment.
By analyzing the results obtained in this study was possible to the authors
conclude that when employees are experiencing transformational treatment their levels
of CAOC decreased. Furthermore, they could prove statically that the effects of TLB
upon CAOC are more significant than CAOC upon TLB. In light of this, the authors
also could conclude that TLB can be linked with decrease in CAOC. The authors also
found practical implications. First, the use of TLB tools can be an effective mean to
reduce employee cynicism as well to decrease the CAOC' levels. Moreover, CAOC can
help organizations to create employees more opened and committed with change
processes. However, it is important highlight that just providing training is not the
solution to implement effectively TLB in organizations. More than this, it is necessary
to establish a cultural environment that will supports TLB. Second, whether leaders are
interested to reduce CAOC by implementing TLB tools, it will be most effective
execute this by influencing the employees to act according to the organization's
expectation and then, may decrease their intention to act by themselves.
The authors also point out some limitations faced by them in this study, such as
difficult to generalize the results found to non-manufacturing environments, it does not
describe which TLB was responsible for change in employee cynicism and being unable
to identify whether attributions of leader behavior or real behavior changes by the leader
were the aspects which contributed for the findings in this study. Lastly, the authors
suggest other approaches for future research such as more focus on the influence of
TLB on CAOC and the relationship between TLB and outcomes such as organizational
commitment and participation in team-based activities