A META-ANALYSIS ON THE MULTIFACTOR LEADERSHIP QUESTIONNAIRE (MLQ)

Abstract

The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) is one of the most commonly used measures for evaluating a subordinate's perceptions of his/her supervisor's transformational, transactional, and passive leadership behaviors (Avolio, 1995; Bass, 1998; 1997; Bass and Avolio,1995; Dumdum, Lowe, Avolio, 2002; Lowe, Kroeck, and Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Since its original development (Bass, 1985), the MLQ has been regularly used in organizational research, appearing in over 6,000 publications. Although there have been several previously conducted meta-analyses on the MLQ (Leong and Fischer, 2011; Ilies, Nahrgang, and Morgeson, 2007; Harms and Credeʹ, 2010; Kuopplala, 2008), it has been almost 10 years since the last review. Subsequently, the present study sought to update the literature with a novel meta-analysis of the relevant research studies that have been published during the past ten years. Specifically, this study examined the relationship between the MLQ and critical organizational variables such as leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship. Overall, for followers of transformational leadership was positively related to organizational citizenship behaviors, leadership effectiveness, job satisfaction and organizational commitment whereas, for followers of transactional leadership the results were mixed with the organizational outcomes.