This study explores the links between CEO leadership behaviors firm performance and employees' attitudes in a sample drawn from 125 firms in China.
We first inductively identified categories of CEO leadership behaviors in the Chinese context. Through a factor analysis we developed a six-dimension measure of CEO leadership behaviors with three dimensions focused on tasks and three dimensions focused on relationships.
Our hypotheses were tested on amatched data set including 739 middle managers and their supervisors (top managers) in the 125 firms.
Results from the structural equation modeling analysis show that the CEO's task-focused behaviors are directly linked to firm performance. The CEO's relationship-focused behaviors are related to employees' attitudes and through these attitudes to firm performance. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.