Émergence des comportements de leadership transformationnel : examen de l’apport d’une approche basée sur les composites de personnalité et d’une perspective interactionniste

Understanding what can influence a leader to demonstrate transformational leadership behaviours has intrigued researchers and practitioners for several years (Bommer, Rubin, & Baldwin, 2004; Bono & Judge, 2004; Shamir & Howell, 1999; Stogdill, 1948; Yukl, 1999). Yet, until now, these factors were little researched and poorly understood in comparison to the consequences of this type of leadership. Along these lines, this thesis answers to numerous issues raised by authors on this topic (Dinh & Lord, 2012; Zaccaro, 2007) by seeking to clarify the role of different individual and situational antecedents of transformational leadership. This objective is pursued through the adoption of an interactionist perspective which integrates individual and contextual antecedents to the assessment of personality supported by a criterion-centric personality model (compound variable).  This thesis is composed of three articles that pursue the following objectives: 1) Review empirical literature on individual and contextual antecedents of transformational leadership; 2) Validate the empirical links between a new personality model (i.e. compound variable) and transformational leadership; 3) Test empirically the correlations between personality and contextual variables to predict transformational leadership.  The first article aims to review and organize the current empirical knowledge from more than forty articles regarding transformational leadership indicators. The article is built on three major themes: the individual personality factors, the contextual elements and the study of the interaction between both. Multiple findings and research leads are discussed and set the stage for the following articles.    In turn, the second article investigates the explanatory potential of a criterion-centric personality model to predict leadership. Specifically, the Great Eight model, put forward by Bartram (2005) is leveraged to understand the relationships between behaviours tied to transformational and transactional leadership. Results from a survey of 113 managers and their 799 subordinates provide little support for the explanatory value of this model, but indicate that some personality traits are associated with leadership. Further analysis allows us to put the results in perspective with the academic literature and provide some insights regarding the potential for some personality trait groupings to predict leadership behaviours.   The third article builds on the traits activation theory (Tett & Burnett, 2003) to validate the combined effects of a manager’s personality and the context in which he or she operates to predict transformational leadership. The results ((nmanagers = 89; nsubordinates = 643) offer limited support to the rationale underlying the traits activation theory. Yet, it appears a manager’s relational traits (operationalized by the personality compound variable “supporting and cooperating”) are correlated to demonstrations of transformational leadership, when contextual factors (organizational consideration, decision latitude) are perceived positively by the manager. As a result, this research sheds some light on an element of variability put forth in previous studies regarding a manager’s relational inclinations by highlighting its sensitivity to positive contextual factors.

Keyphrases: Great Eight, Interaction, Transformational leadersip, Antecedents, Personality, Great Eight, Context, Interaction, Moderation, Trait activation theory