Leader Affective Presence and Innovation in Teams

Leader Affective Presence and Innovation in Teams

Supplemental Materials

Leader Affective Presence and Innovation in Teams

by H. P. Madrid et al., 2016, Journal of Applied Psychology

In addition to the analyses presented in the paper, we conducted a series of multilevel confirmatory analyses, using data from Study 1, to determine the divergent and convergent validity of team leader affective presence. Affective presence is a novel construct in personality research in general and in organizational psychology in particular; thus, testing the validity of affective presence relative to other similar constructs is relevant for the conceptual and empirical robustness of this construct. Leader affective presence is defined as the positive or negative feelings that leaders consistently elicit in their team members. Regarding divergent validity, leader affective presence should be related to, but different than, team member work-related affect, because team members’ affect might be explained in part by leader affective presence and in part by affective traits of team members and work events unfolding within teams. Similarly, leader affective presence should be related to, but different than, leader work-related affect. In addition, in terms of convergent validity, team member ratings of leader affective presence should be substantially correlated to leaders’ self-reported affective presence. If the above criteria for divergent and convergent validity are satisfied, strong validity would be inferred for the leader affective presence construct.

In the team member survey, team member work-related affect was measured with three items for positive affect (enthusiastic, joyful, inspired; α = .89) and three items for negative affect (nervous, anxious, tense; α = .85) (Madrid & Patterson, 2014; Warr, Bindl, Parker, and Inceoglu, 2013). The question frame for the affect measures was “during the last month working in your team, how often have you felt…? [1: never/almost never – 5: always/almost always]. In the team leader survey, team leaders rated their work-related affect, using the same measures adopted with team members (positive affect α = .71; negative affect α = .61). Furthermore, leaders rated their own affective presence using the same measures utilized with team members (happy, enthusiastic and inspired for positive affective presence (α = .73); stressed, tense and worried for negative affective presence (α = .70)). In this case, the measure was framed as “when interacting with the members of your team, to what extent do you usually make them feel…? [1: not at all – 5: a great extent].”

We conducted the multilevel confirmatory factor analyses by fixing the first loading of each factor equal to 1.0 (marker variable) and evaluating the goodness-of-fit of the models tested with model chi-squared (χ2) and approximate fit indices (i.e., RMSEA≤ .05, SRMR≤ .08, CFI ≥ .95and TLI≥ .95) (Kline, 2011). Results of those analyses were as follows. First, a four-factor model in which team members’ ratings of their leader’s positive and negative affective presence were included alongside team member positive and negative affect showed a very good goodness-of-fit (χ2 = 236.88, df = 105, p = .67; RMSEA = .06; SRMR = .05; CFI = .95; TLI = .94; latent correlation between positive affective presence and positive affect ρ =.75, and between negative affective presence and negative affect ρ =.73). In this model, residual variance of an item of positive affect was constrained to zero, because it showed a negative value at the team level – a Heywood case – which is typically observed when estimating multilevel confirmatory factor analyses with a small number of observations at the upper level (Byrne, 2012).These results supported team leader affective presence and team member affect as related but distinct constructs.

Second, afour-factor model that included self-ratings of positive and negative leader affective presence and self-ratings of positive and negative leader affect showed excellent goodness-of-fit (χ2 = 48.73, df = 48, p = .95; RMSEA = .01; SRMR = .00; CFI = .99; TLI = .99; latent correlation between positive affective presence and positive affect ρ = .82, and between negative affective presence and negative affect ρ =.44). Therefore, leader affective presence and leader affect were supported as related but distinct constructs. Taken together, the above results are supportive of divergent validity for leader affective presence.

Third,the analyses showed positive latent correlations between ratings of positive affective presence provided by team members and team leaders (ρ = .59), and between ratings of negative affective presence provided by team members and team leaders (ρ = .70). This provides evidence for convergent validity, suggesting that team members and team leaders rated leader affective presence in a congruent way.

References

Madrid, H. P., & Patterson, M. G. (2014). Measuring affect at work based on the valence and arousal circumplex model. Spanish Journal of Psychology, 17, 1–12. doi:10.1017/sjp.2014.54

Warr, P., Bindl, U., Parker, S. K., &Inceoglu, I. (2013). Four-quadrant investigation of job-related affects and behaviours. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 23(3), 342-363.doi:10.1080/1359432X.2012.744449