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The Relationship Between Leaders’ Group-Oriented Values and Follower Identification with and Endorsement of Leaders: The Moderating Role of Leaders’ Group Membership

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Abstract

In this article, we hypothesize that leaders who display group-oriented values (i.e., values that focus on the welfare of the group rather than on the self-interest of the leader) will be evaluated more positively by their followers than leaders who do not display group-oriented values. Importantly, we expected these effects to be more pronounced for leaders who are ingroup members (i.e., stemming from the same social group as their followers) than for leaders who are outgroup members (i.e., leaders stemming from a different social group than their followers). We tested our hypotheses in two studies. Results of a field study (N = 95) showed the expected relationship between leaders’ group-oriented values and followers’ identification with their leaders. A scenario study (N = 137) replicated the results and extended it to followers’ endorsement of their leaders. Overall, these findings suggest that displaying group-oriented values pays off more for ingroup than for outgroup leaders.

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Notes

  1. To ensure consistency between the two studies of the present research, we recalculated our analysis in Study 1. To this end, we used a measure of leader group oriented values based exclusively on the two items used in Study 2. We found the same pattern of results as reported above. More specifically, we found that leader group orientedness (β = .39, p < .01) and leader group membership (β = .33, p < .01) predicted identification with the leader, supporting Hypotheses 1a and 1b. Additionally, we found a significant effect of the expected interaction between leader group orientedness and leader group membership (β = .19, p < .05), which provided support for Hypothesis 3a. Simple slopes analysis showed that the relationship between leader group orientedness and identification with the leader was stronger for ingroup leaders (β = .61, p < .01) than for outgroup leaders (β = .24, p < .05). Taken together, this pattern of results is fully consistent with the results reported above and speaks for the robustness of the hypothesized effect.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kienbaum Management Consultants GmbH, Potsdamer Platz 8, 10117, Berlin, Germany

    Matthias M. Graf

  2. Psychology Department, Goethe University Frankfurt, Kettenhofweg 128, 60054, Frankfurt, Germany

    Matthias M. Graf, Sebastian C. Schuh & Rolf van Dick

  3. Management Department, Kuehne Logistics University—The KLU, Brooktorkai 20, 20457, Hamburg, Germany

    Niels Van Quaquebeke

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  1. Matthias M. Graf
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  2. Sebastian C. Schuh
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  4. Rolf van Dick
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Correspondence to Matthias M. Graf.

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The first two authors contributed equally to this research.

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Graf, M.M., Schuh, S.C., Van Quaquebeke, N. et al. The Relationship Between Leaders’ Group-Oriented Values and Follower Identification with and Endorsement of Leaders: The Moderating Role of Leaders’ Group Membership. J Bus Ethics 106, 301–311 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-011-0997-4

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