Is Charismatic Leadership Effective When Workers Are Pressured To Be Good Citizens?

Abstract

Prior research has explored how employees' perceptions of their leaders impact their work attitudes and behaviors. Studies have shown that charismatic leaders motivate individuals to be more engaged and to exhibit more organizational citizenship behaviors. This study considers how a moderator, citizenship pressure, affects how charismatic leaders might inspire their followers to go above and beyond and be more engaged in their work. Using a sample of 243 workers, this study's findings show that charismatic leadership has a stronger positive effect on job engagement when employees perceive less citizenship pressure. Citizenship pressure did not moderate the relationship between charismatic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Implications of this study include an examination of the moderating influence of citizenship pressure, a relatively new construct. Practically, the implications may shed some light on leadership factors that encourage increased effort from employees and greater employee engagement. More specifically, findings suggest that persons are motivated to exhibit more OCBs to meet high expectations of charismatic leaders. However, when seeking engagement, feeling pressure to perform these OCBs has a reverse effect as more job engagement results with less citizenship pressure. Future research suggestions and limitations are discussed.

Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance

“…For example, employees may feel helping pressure if helping is believed to enhance job security or benefit the organization, if managers expect employees to be good citizens, or if coworkers frequently enact helping behaviors (e.g., Bolino et al., ). Although helping pressure does not necessarily lead to helping behavior, the constructs are often (Bolino et al., ; Horn et al., ), but not always (Lin et al., ), positively correlated.…”

“…To date, this research has definitively shown that some employees do indeed experience pressure to engage in acts of citizenship. When employees experience this pressure, it tends to exacerbate the fatigue‐inducing nature of citizenship behavior, interfere with the beneficial effects of charismatic leadership, and sensitize employees to the consequences of helping behavior for need satisfaction (Bolino et al., ; Horn et al., ; Lin et al., ). In addition, although citizenship pressure does generally increase the enactment of citizenship behaviors, it can also induce stress and work–family conflict (Bolino et al., ; Liu, Zhao, & Sheard, ).…”

“…The paucity of research on citizenship pressure implies that scholars may feel further investigation into its mechanisms, consequences, and/or boundary conditions is unimportant. Indeed, most research on citizenship pressure has positioned it as a moderator of other hypothesized relationships (e.g., Bolino, Hsiung, Harvey, & LePine, ; Horn, Mathis, Robinson, & Randle, ; Lin, Savani, & Ilies, ; Yam et al., ). However, we submit that such a perspective is limited.…”

Leaders restorying power to reshape workplace inclusion : an IPA study examining African American professional women's identity development as they aspire to attain leadership roles in a southeastern community college system

“…Charismatic leadership is based on the perceptions that followers have about their leader. Studies have shown that charismatic leaders inspire persons to be involved and to display more structural actions (Horn, Mathis, Robinson, & Randle, 2015).…”

“…Charismatic leaders can cause individuals to be involved and show more organizational citizenship behaviors. Horn et al (2015) wrote:…”