Examining the relationship of leadership and physical distance with business unit performance

Measures of transformational and transactional contingent reward leadership and physical distance were used to predict the business unit performance of 101 managers. Results revealed that transformational leadership positively predicted unit performance, while contingent reward leadership was not related to performance. Physical distance between leaders and followers negatively moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and unit performance, and positively moderated the relationship between contingent reward leadership and performance. Implications for future work on leadership at a distance are discussed.