How Can Emails from Different Types of Leaders Influence Employees?

How can different types of emails be perceived by readers as different leadership styles? Is email content understood as a part of leadership? How can emails develop or destroy the e-leadership? This research tries to answer these questions. It studies the influence on what work and their involvement in their job represents for employees through the different kinds of e-communications used by supervisors. Three scenarios that represent three different kinds of e-commu‐ nications sent by email from a direct supervisor were designed to relate to Trans‐ formational, Transactional and Laissez-Faire leadership styles. A questionnaire measuring (a) motivation to succeed on a project, (b) emotional commitment to superior, (c) perceived performance and (d) perceived interpersonal justice were associated with the three scenarios. Scenarios and questionnaires were submitted to 51 employees. They had to put in the state of mind of the employee who receives the three kinds of e-communication, then they had to answer the questionnaire. The results show that there are real differences in the perception of leadership. Emails sketching characteristics of transactional and transformational leaderships had significantly higher scores than emails drawing on a “Laissez-faire” type leadership; i.e. (a) motivation to achieve and succeed in a project, (b) emotional commitment, (c) perceived performance of the employee, and (d) perceived inter‐ personal justice become higher when the emails seem to be more related to trans‐ actional and transformational e-leaderships. Hence, this paper underlines the important effect of leaders’ e-communication on the subordinates’ perceptions about their own work through the measurement of perceived performance and motivation, but also their hierarchical relationship through their perceived inter‐ personal justice and their emotional commitment.