Does Leadership Matter? A Multilevel Investigation of the Moderators for the Relationship Between Openness and Change-Oriented Behavior

Abstract

We present a theoretical study to investigate a special type of organizational citizenship behavior, namely change-oriented behavior. The status quo concerning the association between personality traits and change-oriented behavior reveals that although openness is a stronger predictor of change-oriented behavior than the other four personality traits, results for the relationship between openness and change-oriented behavior are still mixed. To clarify the ambiguities in the literature, we examine how transformational leadership, leader trustworthiness, subordinate propensity to trust, and subordinate unit tenure moderate the relationship between openness and change-oriented behavior.