Promoting the underestimated: A vignette study on the importance of the need for affiliation to successful leadership
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Promoting the underestimated: A vignette study on the importance of the need for affiliation to successful leadership Barbara Steinmann1 · Anne Kleinert1,2 · Günter W. Maier1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Research on the relationship of implicit motives and effective leadership emphasises the importance of a socialised need for power, whereas high levels of the need for affiliation are assumed to thwart a leader’s success. In our study, we experimentally analysed the impact of leaders’ socialised need for power and their need for affiliation on perceptions of transformational leadership and various success indicators. Using paper-people vignettes, we contrasted leaders characterised by either motive with those concerned with personalised power or achievement. Results based on N = 80 employees show that leaders high in socialised power were rated more successful and elicited more identification and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in followers, and that in most cases this effect was mediated by perceptions of transformational leadership. For all outcomes but OCB, findings remained unchanged when affiliation-motivated leaders were considered. Exploratory analyses contrasting socialised power-motivated and affiliation-motivated leaders show that with regard to attitudinal outcomes affiliation-motivated leaders were, on average, as effective as socialised power-motivated ones. Keywords Implicit motives · Socialised power motive · Need for affiliation · Transformational leadership · Vignette study
Introduction Personality is among the longest studied antecedents of leadership emergence and effectiveness (Yukl 2012). One trait-like individual difference which faces a resurgence of scientific interest is a leader’s implicit motives (Schultheiss and Pang 2007). Implicit motives are enduring dispositions to seek pleasure from certain incentives that orient, select, and energise behaviour (McClelland 1985a). Scholars have been particularly concerned with the implicit need for power (nPow). McClelland (1985a) reasoned that people high in nPow are non-consciously motivated to influence others, but remain socially distinct from subordinates which justifies Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09833-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Barbara Steinmann barbara.steinmann@uni‑bielefeld.de 1
Department of Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology, Bielefeld University, PO Box 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany
CP Consultingpartner AG, Cologne, Germany
2
their predominance in leadership roles. Work environments have, however, notably changed since scholars first studied implicit motives and successful leadership (e.g., McClelland and Burnham 1976). Today, leaders have to collaborate with various stakeholders and high-quality leader-followerinteractions foster positive attitudes and organisational goalattainment (Dulebohn et al. 2012). Behaviours energised by the need for affilia
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