Followers' Perception of Distant Leaders’ Transformational Leadership

In the context of a ‘distant’ leader-follower relationship, this study explores how followers’ personality and positive or negative affect influence their perception of transformational leadership, and how the level of followers’ affective commitment to the organization moderates the relationship. Through a web-based survey, we found that (a) followers’ positive affect increased their perception of transformational leadership, even after controlling for the effect of follower personality, and that (b) follower’s affective organizational commitment moderated the relationship between negative affect and perception of transformational leadership. Our study sheds light on the process of social construction of leadership with an emphasis on followers’ affect as an important factor in understanding distant leadership.