Embodying who we are: Leader group prototypicality and leadership effectiveness

Leadership is a process enacted in the context of a shared group membership, and leadership effectiveness is contingent on followers' perceptions of the leader as a group member. Addressing this role of group membership, the social identity theory of leadership puts leader group prototypicality, the extent to which the leader is perceived to embody group identity, center-stage in leadership effectiveness. I review empirical research in leader group prototypicality, concluding there is a robust empirical basis for the key propositions of the social identity theory of leadership. I also identify newer developments that extend and enrich the social identity analysis of leadership, including attention to the roles of uncertainty, leader fairness, leader–follower relationship, leader self-perceived prototypicality, and leadership of creativity and innovation.     

Self–other agreement in empowering leadership: Relationships with leader effectiveness and subordinates' job satisfaction and turnover intention

We investigated the effect of self–other agreement in empowering leadership on leader effectiveness, job satisfaction, and turnover intention using a sample of 50 Norwegian municipal leaders (46 for leader effectiveness) and 168 (158) of their subordinates. The findings indicated that considering both self and subordinate ratings of empowering leadership was useful in predicting the outcome variables. In particular, subordinates of over-estimators reported lower job satisfaction and higher turnover intention. Moreover, leaders who underestimated their leadership were perceived as more effective by their superiors. For agreement (i.e., leader's self-ratings were in agreement with subordinates' ratings) the relationship between empowering leadership and leader effectiveness was curvilinear with an inverted U shape. Agreement in ratings of empowering leadership was not found to be related to subordinates' job satisfaction and turnover intention. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Job stress and employee strain in Indian executives

Abstract

This paper reports a study which examined: the effects of job stress on strain, the pattern of stress and strain in three different work groups, and differences in the levels of job stress and strain due to occupational level The respondents consisted of ‘executives’ from a large steel manufacturing organization. Regression analyses indicated that job future ambiguity had a significant negative effect on job satisfaction in each group of executives. Further, role overload (in the case of production executives) and role ambiguity (in the case of data processing executives) had negative effects on job satisfaction. Role overload accounted for fatigue among the personnel as well as among production executives. The data indicated that the patterns of stress and strain were different in the three groups of employees. The examination of differences due to occupational level indicated that the employees of middle levels had more role ambiguity than those at the higher levels. No significant differences were observed on other dimensions. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Research into leadership effectiveness has largely overlooked the implications of the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership, where leaders, as group members, ask followers, as group members, to exert themselves on behalf of the collective. In contrast, the social identity model of organizational leadership, proposed here, emphasizes the characteristics of the leader as a group member, and the leader’s ability to speak to followers as group members. In salient groups with which group members identify, leadership effectiveness rests on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group (i.e. representative of the group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behavior (i.e. behavior perceived to benefit the group). Explicating the added value of our model and going beyond contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness, we discuss how our model extends, and may be integrated with, three major contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness (charismatic leadership theories, Leader-Member Exchange theory, and leadership categorization theories). In addition, we outline how our model provides a viable framework to integrate future developments in research on leadership such as a growing attention to leader fairness and the role of emotions in leadership effectiveness.     

Leadership as social identity management: Introducing the Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI) to assess and validate a four-dimensional model

Although nearly two decades of research have provided support for the social identity approach to leadership, most previous work has focused on leaders' identity prototypicality while neglecting the assessment of other equally important dimensions of social identity management. However, recent theoretical developments have argued that in order to mobilize and direct followers' energies, leaders need not only to ‘be one of us’ (identity prototypicality), but also to ‘do it for us’ (identity advancement), to ‘craft a sense of us’ (identity entrepreneurship), and to ‘embed a sense of us’ (identity impresarioship). In the present research we develop and validate an Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI) that assesses these dimensions in different contexts and with diverse samples from the US, China, and Belgium. Study 1 demonstrates that the scale has content validity such that the items meaningfully differentiate between the four dimensions. Studies 2, 3, and 4 provide evidence for the scale's construct validity (distinguishing between dimensions), discriminant validity (distinguishing identity leadership from authentic leadership, leaders' charisma, and perceived leader quality), and criterion validity (relating the ILI to key leadership outcomes). We conclude that by assessing multiple facets of leaders' social identity management the ILI has significant utility for both theory and practice.     

A Matter of Reputation and Pride: Associations between Perceived External Reputation,Pride in Membership,Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intentions

This study investigates how job satisfaction and turnover intentions are related to external reputation as perceived by employees and their pride in membership. Based on a cross‐sectional survey including 439 employees, it also provides insights into external reputation as a possible source of collective pride. Study results indicate that, in agreement with social identity theory, outsiders' views of the organization are closely associated with employees' pride in organizational membership as well as job satisfaction. Both pride and job satisfaction mediate the relationship between perceived external reputation and turnover intentions. Hence, a favourable reputation matters in managing turnover intentions and is closely related to employee pride and satisfaction. Tenure of employees is positively associated with pride while intensive customer contact is negatively related to perceived external reputation and pride. Implications pinpoint the need for alignment of reputation management and human resources management. Furthermore, managers need to focus on new staff and employees with frequent customer contact and should implement pride‐building strategies according to the tenure of employees and intensity of customer contact.     

Leader’s morality,prototypicality, and followers’ reactions

We examine the effects of moral (vs. competent) leadership on followers' leader evaluations and endorsement. In Study 1 (N = 157), followers evaluated a leader more negatively and endorsed them less when they failed on morality than competence. An indirect effect from leader morality to leader evaluation, through perceived group prototypicality emerged, demonstrating the identity-basis of this evaluation. In Studies 2 (N = 150), 3 (N = 297), and 4 (N = 192) participants considered incongruous situations in which the leader failed on morality but succeed on competence, or vice-versa. Followers expressed more negative evaluations and less endorsement of an immoral but competent leader than of a moral but incompetent leader, through group prototypicality. In Study 4, we manipulated group prototypicality. A leader considered prototypical of the group received worse evaluations when they behaved immorally, irrespective of their competence. Results contribute to the understanding of leader-followers dynamics.     

License to fail? How leader group prototypicality moderates the effects of leader performance on perceptions of leadership effectiveness

Leadership often serves as an explanatory category for performance outcomes (i.e., failure and success). This process can strengthen or weaken leadership effectiveness, because contingent on their performance leaders may gain or lose follower endorsement — the basis of leadership. Drawing on the social identity analysis of leadership, we hypothesized that leader group prototypicality and performance information interact to predict followers' perceptions of leadership effectiveness. Because group prototypical leaders are more trusted by their followers, we hypothesized that group prototypical leaders are evaluated as more effective after failure information than non-prototypical leaders. In contrast, we predicted that both prototypical and non-prototypical leaders should receive similar evaluations of leadership effectiveness after success. We found support for our predictions in a scenario experiment, a cross-sectional field study, and a laboratory experiment.     

公仆型领导、员工集体和个人的工作态度对服务质量的影响

作者在13家宾馆和餐馆进行了一次实证研究,探讨饭店管理人员的公仆型领导风格、员工集体和个人的工作态度对员工的服务质量的影响。多层次线性模型分析结果表明,部门的公仆型领导氛围会直接影响员工集体的工作满意感,并通过集体情感性归属感,间接影响员工的服务质量。部门的公仆型领导氛围会调节员工感知的部门负责人的公仆型领导风格对他们的服务质量的影响;员工集体的情感性归属感会调节员工个人的工作满意感和情感性归属感对服务质量的影响。     

Exemplifying “Us”: Integrating social identity theory of leadership with cognitive models of categorization

Identity leadership theorizing suggests that leadership effectiveness derives from a potential leader’s perceived ability to create, embody, promote, and embed a shared group identity. However, little is known about how people integrate this information to form a judgment of a leader. We use cognitive modeling to operationalize leadership judgments as exemplar-and prototype-based categorization processes. Analysis of attribute rating data for 80 highly recognizable Americans revealed that leadership judgments were well-characterized by an exemplar-based model. Judgments were based overwhelmingly on promoting shared collective interests and embedding group identity. The pattern of attribute weightings was consistent for judgments of a general leadership role (i.e., as a competent leader) as well as judgments for a specific leadership role (i.e., as an effective US president). We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of identity leadership as well as for integrated social-cognitive models of individuals’ judgements of and responses to leaders.     

Organizational violence and aggression: Development of the three-factor Violence Climate Survey

The aim of this study is to examine the concept of health-specific leadership, differentiate it from sound general leadership and identify whether it has an impact on employee strain, alongside general sound leadership practices. Health-specific leadership is conceptualized as the leader's explicit consideration of and engagement in employee health. The study is based on research in the field of leadership impact on employee strain, health and well-being, extended by recent findings of the importance of domain-specific leadership constructs. As indicated by previous relevant studies, we include psychological climate for health, role ambiguity and job satisfaction as mediating variables. Using structural equation modelling, a sample of 1027 employees of the German tax administration was examined. The results show differential effects for health-specific and general sound leadership. While neither of these two aspects of leadership exhibited a direct association with employee strain, general sound leadership practices were significantly related to lower employee strain through lower levels of role ambiguity, better psychological climate for health and higher job satisfaction. Health-specific leadership was associated with higher levels of psychological climate for health, but also higher role ambiguity.     

Leadership and Affect: Moving the Hearts and Minds of Followers

We provide an integrative review of the empirical literature on leadership and affect (emotion, mood, and affective dispositions), which is first and foremost a literature on leader displays of affect. We conclude that the influence of leader affective displays can be understood through the mediation paths of emotional contagion and cognitive interpretation of affect in combination with the first- and second-stage moderators of these paths. We also conclude that the common yet overly simplistic notion that leader displays of positive affect are more effective than leader displays of negative affect can in important part be attributed to an overreliance on subjective ratings as indicators of leadership effectiveness, whereas behavioral indicators of leadership effectiveness suggest a more contingent view of the effectiveness of positive and negative affective displays. We propose that to bolster and further develop these conclusions, we need (a) more research focusing on moderation in dual-path mediation; (b) development of theory about cognitive interpretations following leader affective displays; and (c) more sophisticated models of the difference amongst different affective states to better capture the complexity of their effects. We also outline how evidence regarding the role of follower affect in response to leadership more generally points to the potential for integration of affective and non-affective models of leadership.     

Does valuing androgyny and femininity lead to a female advantage? The relationship between gender-role,transformational leadership and identification

The notion of ‘think manager–think male’ has been demonstrated in many studies. The current study examines whether leaders are perceived as more effective when they have ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ or ‘androgynous’ characteristics, and how this relates to the leader's and followers' sex. Using carefully matched samples of 930 employees of 76 bank managers, we studied the relationship between managers' gender-role identity (perceived ‘femininity’, ‘masculinity’ and ‘androgyny’) and how this relates to leadership effectiveness in terms of transformational leadership and personal identification with the leader. Our findings show that among both male and female leaders, ‘androgyny’ was more strongly related to transformational leadership and followers' identification than ‘non-androgyny’, and that leaders' ‘femininity’ was more strongly related to leadership effectiveness than ‘masculinity’. Furthermore, the results show that women paid a higher penalty for not being perceived as ‘androgynous’ (mixing ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’), in comparison to men with regard to personal identification. When examining same- versus cross-sex relationships, we found that ‘non-androgynous’ male managers were rated higher by their male employees than by their female employees. Our findings suggest that women and men who are interested in being perceived as effective leaders may be well advised to blend ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ behaviors, and even more so when they are in situations of non-congruency (i.e., women in leadership roles and leading in cross-sex relationships). We discuss the implications of these findings for both theory and practice.     

Developmental stability and leadership effectiveness

Developmental stability is the degree to which we can withstand environmental or genetic stressors during development. Fluctuating asymmetry (FA), concerns the extent to which the right and left side of the body is asymmetrical and is one way to measure developmental stability. Two studies were carried out that examined both the predictive value of leader FA with leadership behaviors and its role in facilitating group performance. The first study examined the hypothesis that a leader's FA is correlated with scores on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The results revealed individuals with a more asymmetrical morphology scored higher on the transformational, but not transactional, dimensions of leadership behavior. A second study examined the hypothesis that asymmetrical morphology and leadership effectiveness would share a positive relationship. In this study participants who led a business game exercise, revealed a positive relationship between FA and self-reported well-being and task satisfaction. Importantly, there was also a positive correlation between the leader's FA score and group performance. The role that developmental stability may play in leadership effectiveness is discussed in the wider context of evolutionary psychology.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction*

The social identity approach is a powerful theoretical framework for the understanding of individuals' behaviour. The main argument is that individuals think and act on behalf of the group they belong to because this group membership adds to their social identity, which partly determines one's self‐esteem. In the organizational world, social identity and self‐categorization theories state that a strong organizational identification is associated with low turnover intentions. Because identification is the more general perception of shared fate between employee and organization, we propose that the relationship between identification and turnover will be mediated by job satisfaction as the more specific evaluation of one's task and working conditions. In four samples we found organizational identification feeding into job satisfaction, which in turn predicts turnover intentions.     

How leader role identity influences the process of leader emergence: A social network analysis

Contemporary theories on leadership development emphasize the importance of having a leader identity in building leadership skills and functioning effectively as leaders. We build on this approach by unpacking the role leader identity plays in the leader emergence process. Taking the perspective that leadership is a dynamic social process between group members, we propose a social network-based process model whereby leader role identity predicts network centrality (i.e., betweenness and indegree), which then contributes to leader emergence. We test our model using a sample of 88 cadets participating in a leadership development training course. In support of our model, cadets who possess a stronger leader role identity at the beginning of the course were more likely to emerge as leaders. However this relationship was only mediated by one form of network centrality, indegree centrality, reflecting one's ability to build relationships within one's group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Revisiting followership through a social identity perspective: The role of collective follower emotion and action

We review the concept of followership, with a specific focus on how followers actively influence leadership outcomes. We examine in particular research from four key areas: social identity perspectives on leadership, intergroup emotion theory, collective action, and reciprocal affect within leader–follower interactions. Our central proposition is that followers engage in actions, driven by both cognitive and affective-based processes, which affect leadership outcomes. Moreover, because leaders are part of the groups they lead and therefore embedded within the social context of a group, we propose that any action that affirms or threatens the salient group will trigger both cognitive and emotional responses from followers towards leaders. These include the extent to which a leader engages in actions that are perceived as (1) self-sacrificial, (2) procedurally fair, and (3) expressing emotions congruent with that of their group. We also propose that the extent to which followers translate their perceptions and emotions towards collective action towards their leaders will be moderated by individual-level group identification and group-level shared identity. To conclude, we highlight theoretical implications in light of these propositions and suggest areas for further research on followership.     

Work motivation, organisational identification, and well-being in call centre work

Previous work has not considered the interplay of motivational forces linked to the task with those linked to the social identity of employees. The aim of the present study is to combine these approaches. Two studies with call centre agents (N=211, N=161) were conducted in which the relationships of objective working conditions (e.g., inbound vs. outbound work), subjective measures of motivating potential of work, and organisational identification were analysed. Job satisfaction, turnover intentions, organisational citizenship behavior (OCB), health complaints, and burnout were assessed as indicators of the agents' work motivation and well-being. In both studies it was found that objective working conditions substantially correlated with subjective measures of work motivation. Moreover, employees experiencing a high motivating potential at work reported more OCB, higher job satisfaction, and less turnover intentions. As hypothesized, organisational identification was a further independent predictor of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, OCB, and well-being. Highly organisationally identified employees report higher work motivation and more well-being. Additionally, interactions between the motivating potential and organisational identification were found. However, all the results indicate that interventions seeking to enhance work motivation and well-being in call centres should improve both the motivating potential of the job and organisational identification. These two factors combined in an additive way across both studies.     

Leadership and followership identity processes: A multilevel review

A growing body of leadership literature focuses on leader and follower identity dynamics, levels, processes of development and outcomes. Despite the importance of the phenomena, there has been surprisingly little effort to systematically review the widely dispersed literature on leader and follower identity. In this review we map existing studies on a multilevel framework that integrates levels-of-the self (individual, relational and collective) with the levels-of-analysis (intrapersonal, interpersonal and group) on which leader or follower identity work takes place. We also synthesize work from multiple research paradigms, such as social psychology experimental studies, narrative accounts of leaders' identity work and field studies on antecedents, outcomes, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions. Finally, we outline implications for leadership development and call attention to key themes we see ripe for future research.