The Effect of Motive-Trait Interaction on Satisfaction of the Implicit Need for Affiliation Among German and Cameroonian Adults

Explicit and Implicit Basic Human Motives, and Public Service Motivation

This article contributes to the literature on the roots of Public Service Motivation (PSM) by turning to the psychological theory of basic human motives. The study explores the differential associations of explicit and implicit basic human motives with PSM, Attraction to Policy-Making (APM), Commitment to the Public Interest (CPI), Compassion (COM), and Self-Sacrifice (SS). Methodologically, the research contributes to the literature by introducing a measurement instrument new to Public Administration: the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT). The BIAT is an easy-to-use and flexible tool to probe into the human unconsciousness, offering ample opportunities for further research in Public Administration and Management.

Promoting the underestimated: A vignette study on the importance of the need for affiliation to successful leadership

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.