located. Accordingly, the new construct is interpreted as Employee Positive
Attitudes (EPA)^15.
The new hypotheses can now be expressed as follows:
H 21 (ML→EPA): as employees experience greater levels of Motivational
Leadership they will also experience greater levels of Positive Attitudes.
H 22 (EPA→JP): as employees experience greater levels of Positive Attitudes they
will also report greater levels of Job Performance.
Regarding theoretical support for hypothesis H 21 (ML→EPA), the rationale and
justifications for the original ML→ME, ML→JS and ML→AOC are articulated in
Section 4.4. The new construct, EPA, contains components of Work Meaning, Job
Satisfaction and Affective Organisational Commitment, albeit now combined to
form a broader ‘positive attitude’ construct. Because EPA is a new construct,
there is no specific empirical precedent for how a combined ‘Employee Positive
Attitude’ will relate to motivational leadership and job performance. However, in
the transformational leadership theory literature, there are various discussions of
where transformational and inspirational leadership can positively influence
employees’ attitudes (examples include Avolio et al. 1991: 15; Bass and Riggio
2006: 32; Avolio and Bass 2004: 19).
Regarding theoretical support for hypothesis H 22 (EPA→JP), this is supported
broadly by the values→attitudes→behaviour (V→A→B) hierarchy described by
Homer and Kahle (1988: 638-639). In more specific terms, each component of
the new construct (ME, JS and AOC) has theoretical and/or empirical support as
outlined in Section 4.4
Estimating SEM 3b
Figure 7 - 14 illustrates the parameter estimates and model fit diagnostics for SEM
3b. The model fits well according to all of the indicators and all of the structural
coefficients are statistically significant.
15
Positive Employee Attitudes (PEA) was considered, but dropped, as there is no
theoretical basis for a leguminous covariate of motivational leadership.