showing high Supportive leadership and Personal recognition behaviors tend to show high Client
centricity and Operational efficiency behaviors. And in contrast, those individuals showing high
Vision and Intellectual stimulation tended to show high degrees of Organizational creativity and
Business development behaviors. In line with the second-factor analysis, Organizational creativity,
Business development, Vision and Intellectual stimulation correlated highly with one another and so
did Client centricity and Operational efficiency.
Organizational level was a significant predictor for all strategic leadership dimensions and for Vision.
Regarding the latter, Antonakis and Atwater (2002) aUJXHG³WKHUROHRIWRS-level leaders is to use
their vision and values to ensure that organi]DWLRQDOUHVRXUFHVDUHXVHGWRDFKLHYHWKHRUJDQL]DWLRQ¶V
LQWHQGHGREMHFWLYHV«$WORZHUKLHUDUFKLFDOOHYHOVYDOXHVDQGYLVLRQDOVRSOD\DUROHEXWGLIIHUHQW
instUXPHQWDO OHDGHU EHKDYLRUV«ZLOO FRQWULEXWH WR RUJDQL]DWLRQDO SHUIRUPDQFH ́ (p.697).
Organizational level, however was no strong predictor for the other four transformational sub-
dimensions in contrast to the findings of Antonakis and Atwater (2002). In line with Zaccaro (2001)
who pleaded that managers at all levels must carry out the direct leadership roles involved in
interpersonal influence, the manifestation of Inspirational communication, Intellectual stimulation,
Supportive leadership and Personal recognition behaviors did not differ across organizational levels.
These findings are similar to the findings of Bruch and Walter (2007). They hypothesized and found
that visionary behaviors were more prominently displayed by top-level managers than middle
managers. Although they had expected top-level managers to also perform intellectually stimulating
behaviors to a greater extent than middle managers they found no significant hierarchical differences
in the occurrence of intellectual stimulation. Nor did they find significant differences for
individualized consideration and recognition (yet this was in line with their expectations). Middle and
top-level managers seemed to be able to perform such leadership behaviors to a similar extent.
Likewise the findings of this study demonstrate that the manifestation of supervisory leadership is
independent of organizational level.
The results for strategic leadership largely supported the continuity perspective where top-level
managers expand their behavioral repertoire when moving from middle management to top-level
management and the same holds for middle managers who move up from lower-level management to
middle management. Especially in terms of Organizational creativity behavior, there is a significant
difference between top-level managers and lower-level managers. One may assume that managers
adopt these behaviors more and more as they climb the corporate ladder. Hence, despite the plea that
leaders at all levels of the organization should develop strategic leadership (Hitt & Ireland, 2002), this