Employability and social innovation The importance of and interplay between transformational leadership and personality

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to draw attention to employability being an important social innovation that potentially thrives with transformational leadership, partly depending on certain personal characteristics such as managerial role and personality.

Methodology/approach: The study was carried out among pairs of employees (314) and immediate supervisors (334) working at a large Dutch company that produces building materials. We made use of Linear Regression and Structural Equation Modeling to test our hypothesis and explore our assumptions with regard to the research model.

Findings: We have found that transformational leadership is positively related to employee and supervisor ratings of employability. Furthermore, there is some indication that transformational leadership enhances employability in some situations, demonstrating differences between categories of workers with and without a managerial function. Moreover, it appeared that after controlling for personality, only the positive relationship between transformational leadership and supervisor ratings of employability, remained for the workers not having a managerial function.

Research limitations/implications: Our study design comprised a cross-sectional approach and therefore future longitudinal research is necessary to investigate causal relationships between transformational leadership, personality, and employability.

Practical implications: In terms of individual career development practices, our outcomes should be translated into increased attention for aligning leadership style to meet the requirements of all types of employees across the life-span.

Social implications: By providing more insight into the increased importance of transformational leadership for certain groups of workers, this contribution is intended to come up with opportunities for increasing the employability for different types of workers. 

Originality/value: This chapter draws attention to the fact that transformational leadership can be a useful tool for stimulating employability of workers. Worker characteristics such as personality, work role (e.g., managerial role) and other lifespan factors always have to be taken into account for a customized approach, given the uniqueness of each and every employee.