The mediating influence of leadership style and moderating impact of national culture and organisational size on the culture-effectiveness relationship: the case of Iran

Abstract

Organisational effectiveness has always been researchers’ main concern and interest over a long period of the time. Also, organisational culture as the main contributor of organisational effectiveness and its impact has attracted many scholars in different disciplines including organisational studies. While there is an extensive body of literature on the relationship between organisational culture and organisational effectiveness, many of the previous studies in this field have explored the direct relationship between specific culture domains and specific effectiveness measures and researchers have paid inadequate attention to mediators and moderators of the link between organizational culture and effectiveness. In fact, there is an absence of a comprehensive conceptual model of the culture-effectiveness relationship in the literature that includes the impact of mediators such as leadership style or moderators such as national culture and organisational size. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the mediating influence of leadership style and the moderating impact of national culture and organisational size on the culture-effectiveness relationship in private sector organisations in Iran. In order to achieve the research aim and objectives this study is preceded by a systematic review of the relevant literature that leads to the development of a comprehensive conceptual model. Data collected from different management levels of 40 private sector organisations in Iran by using a survey questionnaire with a design based on previous studies, and analysed using the statistical package for social sciences, SPSS V.18. A convenience sample of 1,000 respondents from various management levels of the organisations was established, in which 353 were returned on time to the researcher that create the response rate of 35.3 percent. This research in nature is quantitative, positivist and deductive and uses survey method by self-administered questionnaire because of its obvious advantages when it comes to versatility and speed. The results of this study show that there is a strong relationship between organisational culture, leadership style and organisational effectiveness and, in fact, leadership style is a partial mediator between all four organisational culture types and organisational effectiveness apart from the adhocracy culture type. Moreover, the findings of this study confirm the importance and major impact of national culture and organisational size as moderators on the relationship between organisational culture, leadership style and organisational effectiveness. This study makes several contributions one of which is the presentation of a comprehensive framework that that explains the importance and impact of leadership style as a mediator and national culture and organisational size as moderators on the culture-effectiveness relationship. Moreover, this study provides a novel contribution to the growing literature on the culture-effectiveness relationship in private sector organisations, particularly for developing countries such as Iran. Furthermore, the result of this study provides meaningful managerial implications and can be used as a guide for implementing organisational change including cultural or managerial styles to improve organisational effectiveness.