Effects of Transformational & Shared Leadership on Diversity Attitude and Employees’ Behaviors: Moderating Effects of Non-Differential Treatment
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Moon-Joo , Hong Gye-Hoon 
Published: June 2018

In this empirical study of Korean firms, we examine the effect of transformational leadership and shared leadership on diversity attitude and employees’ behaviors and also find out possible moderating effect of non-differential treatment in this relationship. A growing body on diversity research has focused the positive or negative effects of objective diversity using heterogeneity index on team performance and examined how diversity itself affected result variables and focused in how such causality was changed and by which factors. However, in spite of this effort, previous studies have shown conflicting result for the effect of diversity. Because people tend to behave positively or negatively according to their perception and awareness towards difference not to diversity per se. Even in a team whose members objectively vary greatly in their attributes, the effect of diversity can vary depending on how the team members respond to the presence of diversity. In this vein, we test and compare the effect of transformational leadership and shared leadership as an important antecedent of diversity attitude. And we also test the moderating effect of non-differential treatment which is formed by a collective attitude of a team where non-discriminating treatment for the characteristics of a colleague’s different background rather than their actions. In a team where an tolerant attitude towards diversity is displayed, this attitude would positively affect individual’s diversity attitude. We adopt multi-level analysis using hierarchical linear modeling in order to verify the effect of two leaderships on diversity attitude and employees’ behaviors at individual level and the moderating effect of non-differential treatment at team level respectively. A total of 761 members in 121 teams who work in several industries constituted the sample of this study. Findings of our analysis showed that only shared leaderships had a positive effect on positive diversity attitude. However, we found the significant moderation effect of team’s non-differential treatment by transformational leadership on diversity attitude. The finding also indicated that diversity attitude had a positive effect on extra-role behavior and a negative effect on counter-productive work behavior. Based on these findings, we recommend that team based organizations should work on providing the substantial support of various realistic diversity training related to employees’ attitude towards diversity. It is also advisable for organizations to encourage in-house social programs, aside from official training programs, so that the employees can accept diversity more naturally. And it is worthwhile to check team-level perceptions of diversity for proactive management in practice because the capabilities for sustainable management and success ultimately come from human resource. Lastly we recommended to find another antecedent of positive diversity attitude and another convergent mechanism that could boost the effect of leadership on diversity attitude. We discussed managerial and practical implications of our findings in details.