Examining the Role of Personal Identification With the Leader in Leadership Effectiveness

Abstract

Although much research has been done on employee collective identification with the organization and the work unit, the role of followers’ personal identification with the leader in followers’ work outcomes has not been fully examined. Drawing on research on transformational leadership and social identity theory, the authors examined a partial nomological network of personal identification with the leader and its mediating effects. Results show that transformational leadership was positively related to personal identification with the leader, which was significantly associated with followers’ innovativeness, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention. In addition, personal identification with the leader significantly mediated the relationships of transformational leadership with followers’ affective organizational commitment and turnover intention. Although personal identification with the leader did not significantly mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and followers’ work outcomes, transformational leaders might indirectly increase followers’ innovativeness through gaining followers’ personal identification.

Transformational leadership and employee voice behavior: A Pygmalion mechanism

“…Therefore, followers tend to form strong personal identification with transformational leaders, that is, their beliefs about transformational leaders become self‐referential and self‐defining. Empirically, a positive association between transformational leadership and employees' personal identification has been reported in studies (e.g., Kark et al, ; Liu et al, ; Zhu, Wang, Zheng, Liu, & Miao, ).…”

“I Identify with Her,” “I Identify with Him”: Unpacking the Dynamics of Personal Identification in Organizations

“…Further, we speculate that opportunityfocused PI represents the majority of what leadership studies employing the PI construct have implicitly tapped into. For instance, studies showing positive associations between PI and transformational leadership (e.g., Kark et al, 2003;Wang & Howell, 2012;Zhu, Wang, Zhen, Liu, & Miao, 2013), androgynous leadership (where leaders blend stereotypically agentic-masculine and communal-feminine behaviors; Kark et al, 2012), and the leader matching one's ideal leader prototype (van Quaquebeke, Graf, & Eckloff, 2014) may have captured contexts where followers wish to emulate the desirable attributes modeled by their leaders.…”

The impact of leadership on organizational ambidexterity and employee psychological safety in the global acquisitions of emerging market multinationals

“…Bass (1985) identified four dimensions of this style leadership; these include idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration towards individual followers. Charismatic leadership is closely associated with followers' personally identifying with their leaders and has a great impact on the followers' affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions (Zhu, Wang, Zheng, Liu & Miao, 2013). Also, charismatic leadership has been seen to impact team and organizational level performances (Gang Wang, Oh, Courtright & Colbert, 2011).…”