Manager recognition: impact of employee citizenship behaviors and perceptions of transformational leadership

This study examined how manager recognition of employees impacts employees' perception of the leader and employees' extra role behaviors. Manager recognition data provided through an organization-wide recognition program were gathered from a midsized global technology company. Company employees completed an organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) scale and a transformational leadership scale. The results show that extra role behaviors were significantly positively related to transformational leadership (r = .329) but that recognition comments were not significantly correlated with transformational leadership. The results do suggest, however, that the personalization and specificity of non-monetary recognition by managers moderates the relationship between employees' perception of their leaders as transformational and whether they perform extra role behaviors (AR2 = .122, p .05).