The Link between Leadership and Followership: How Affirming Social Identity Translates Vision into Action

Two experiments test the hypothesis that support for leaders is enhanced when their decisions affirm a distinct social identity that is shared with followers. In Experiment 1, participants showed less support for a leader who favored ingroup members who were relatively sympathetic to an outgroup position than for one who favored ingroup members who opposed an outgroup position. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that this pattern extended to support for the leader’s novel plans. Although participants indicated that they supported a leader who behaved evenhandedly toward all ingroup members as much as one whose behavior was identity-affirming, they were unwilling to back up the evenhanded leader with written comments and arguments. These data suggest that leaders’ capacity to engender active followership is contingent on their ability to promote collective interests associated with a shared ingroup identity.

[1]  David De Cremer,et al.  Charismatic Leadership and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: A Matter of Transforming Motives?1 , 2002 .

[2]  J. Turner,et al.  Social Identity and the Romance of Leadership: The Importance of being Seen to be ‘Doing it for Us’ , 2001 .

[3]  D. Cremer,et al.  Psychology in organizations: The social identity approach , 2001 .

[4]  Clifford Stott,et al.  A model of crowd prototypes and crowd leadership , 2001 .

[5]  John C. Turner,et al.  Social Identity, Organizations, and Leadership , 2001 .

[6]  Walter R. Nord,et al.  Managing Power , 2001, IEEE Des. Test Comput..

[7]  John C. Turner,et al.  Social Identity, Self-categorization, and Work Motivation: Rethinking the Contribution of the Group to Positive and Sustainable Organisational Outcomes , 2000 .

[8]  M. Platow,et al.  The effects of social context, source fairness, and perceived self-source similarity on social influence: a self-categorisation analysis , 2000 .

[9]  J. Turner,et al.  When are we better than them and they worse than us? A closer look at social discrimination in positive and negative domains. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[10]  Kelly S. Fielding,et al.  Leaders and Subgroups: One of Us or One of them? , 1999 .

[11]  Tom R. Tyler,et al.  Why people cooperate with organizations: An identity-based perspective. , 1999 .

[12]  Michael A. Hogg,et al.  Identification and leadership in small groups: Salience, frame of reference, and leader stereotypicality effects on leader evaluations. , 1998 .

[13]  S. Reid,et al.  Leadership Endorsement: The Role of Distributive and Procedural Behavior in Interpersonal and Intergroup Contexts , 1998 .

[14]  C. McGarty,et al.  Inspecting the emperor's clothes: Evidence that random selection of leaders can enhance group performance. , 1998 .

[15]  S. Reid,et al.  Endorsement of distributively fair and unfair leaders in interpersonal and intergroup situations. , 1997 .

[16]  유화자.  기독교 사역과 Leadership , 1997 .

[17]  D. Alaphilippe,et al.  Introduction à la psychologie sociale , 1996 .

[18]  Neil Anderson,et al.  Innovation and Change in Organizations , 1995 .

[19]  Tom R. Tyler,et al.  Psychological models of the justice motive: Antecedents of distributive and procedural justice. , 1994 .

[20]  John C. Turner,et al.  Self and Collective: Cognition and Social Context , 1994 .

[21]  John C. Turner,et al.  Stereotyping and Social Reality , 1994 .

[22]  John C. Turner,et al.  Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 2: The relationship between frame of reference, self‐categorization and accentuation , 1992 .

[23]  R. J. House,et al.  Personality and Charisma in the U.S. Presidency: A Psychological Theory of Leader Effectiveness , 1991 .

[24]  David A. Nadler,et al.  Beyond the Charismatic Leader: Leadership and Organizational Change , 1990 .

[25]  M. Hogg,et al.  Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. , 1989 .

[26]  R. Bies,et al.  Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Good Soldier Syndrome , 1989 .

[27]  H. Wilke,et al.  Subordinates' endorsement of an allocating leader in a commons dilemma : An equity theoretical approach , 1988 .

[28]  Sanford B. Ehrlich,et al.  The Romance of Leadership and The Evaluation of Organizational Performance , 1987 .

[29]  H. Tajfel,et al.  An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. , 1979 .

[30]  F. Fiedler.  The Contingency Model and the Dynamics of the Leadership Process1 , 1978 .

[31]  H. Tajfel,et al.  Social categorization and intergroup behaviour , 1971 .

[32]  Edwin A. Fleishman,et al.  INTERPERSONAL VALUES, LEADERSHIP ATTITUDES, AND MANAGERIAL “SUCCESS” , 1962 .