Need for Affiliation as a Motivational Add-On for Leadership Behaviors and Managerial Success

Responses to Actual, Perceived and Imagined Scarcities

Making more money is the most dominant response to cope with actual, perceived or imagined scarcities. For the poor, it is a means to survive in extremely adverse conditions and to struggle to cross over the poverty line into the lower middle class; for the affluent middle class, it is a way to catch up with and overtake friends, relatives and neighbours by being able to have more expensive possessions and exciting experiences; and for the super-rich, it is a show of arrogance and a response to the imagined sense of still not having enough for an endless chase of unbridled ambitions. Money is a leading physical resource for building human resources by widening access to good education, adequate health care and sustainable livelihood as well as showing off one’s superiority. It has a curvilinear relationship with social resources where having too much or too little money erodes social sensitivity and bonding. The article makes a number of conjectures to stimulate research in future.

Implicit motives as the missing link between visionary leadership, approach and avoidance motivation, and vision pursuit

An unresolved question in visionary leadership research is, why must visions be high in imagery to cause affective reactions and be motivationally effective? Research in motivation psychology has shown that pictorial cues arouse implicit motives. Thus, pictorial cues from vision-induced imagery should arouse a follower’s implicit motives just like a real image. Hence, our fundamental proposition is that follower implicit motives and follower approach motivation serially mediate the relationship between leader vision and followers’ vision pursuit. We also examine the case of negative leader visions, with the central propositions that a negative leader vision arouses a follower’s implicit fear motives and that the follower’s implicit fear motives and follower avoidance motivation serially mediate the relationship between negative leader vision and the follower’s fear-related behaviors. Lastly, we assert that multiple implicit follower motives aroused by a multithematic leader vision exert additive as well as interaction effects on the follower’s vision pursuit. Plain Language Summary An unresolved question in leader vision research concerns why visions need to be high in imagery in order to elicit affective reactions in followers and be motivationally effective? Research in motivation psychology has shown that pictorial cues can arouse a person's implicit motives. It would thus be reasonable to expect that pictorial cues from leader vision-induced imagery arouse a follower's implicit motives just like a real image. Based on this reasoning, our key proposition is that follower implicit motives and follower approach motivation serially mediate the relationship between leader vision and followers' vision pursuit. We also integrate the special case of negative leader visions into our theorizing, with the central propositions that a negative leader vision arouses a follower's implicit fear motives, and that the follower's implicit fear motives and follower avoidance motivation serially mediate the relationship between negative leader vision and the follower's fear-related behaviors. Lastly, based on the distinction between mono- and multithematic visions, the latter of which with the potential to arouse more than one implicit motive simultaneously, we assert that multiple implicit follower motives aroused by a multithematic leader vision exert additive as well as interaction effects on the follower's vision pursuit.

Das LEaD-Kompetenzmodell – wirksam Führen im Kontext der digitalen Transformation

Dieser Beitrag der Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation. (GIO) stellt die Entwicklung, empirische Validierung und Anwendung des LEaD-Modells©1 (Leadership Effectiveness and Development) der Führung im Rahmen der digitalen Transformation vor. Die Auswahl und Entwicklung von Führungskräften und die dazu erforderliche evidenzbasierte Diagnostik von Führungskompetenzen stellen zentrale Herausforderungen einer modernen HR-Strategie dar, wie z. B. beidhändige Führung im Kontext der digitalen Transformation und entwicklungsorientierte Diagnostik. Im Kontext des digitalen Wandels ist „LEaD“ ein Instrument für Führungskräfte und HR-Spezialist*innen, um Transformationsprozesse durch gezieltes Kompetenzmanagement erfolgreich zu bewältigen und eine neue Führungskultur zu etablieren. Praktische Anwendungsbereiche des LEaD-Modells in Organisationen sind sowohl auf individueller (z. B. als Führungsfeedback mit Selbst- und Fremdeinschätzung) als auch organisationaler Ebene (z. B. Messung der Führungseffektivität) möglich.

Dieser Beitrag beschreibt das LEaD-Modell der Führung als einen evidenzbasierten Handlungsrahmen für Führungskräfte, der Diagnose- und Interventionsmaßnahmen bietet und damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zu einer nachhaltigen und lohnenswerten Investition in Führung leistet.

Motives and Laterality: Exploring the Links

Objectives

We explored associations between the needs for power, achievement, and affiliation and functional cerebral asymmetries (FCAs), guided by three established hypotheses about the nature of these associations.

Methods

One-hundred-and-seven participants completed picture-story measures of dispositional motives and activity inhibition (AI), a frequent moderator of motive-behavior associations, tasks measuring FCAs (line bisection, chimeric emotional face judgments, turning bias, perceptual and response asymmetries on the Poffenberger task), self-reported laterality preferences (handedness, footedness, ear and eye preference), and interhemispheric interaction (crossed-uncrossed difference). They also completed an experiment manipulating hand contractions (left, right, both, neither) while they worked on a second picture-story motive measure.

Results

Dispositional power motivation was associated with stronger rightward asymmetry and less interhemispheric transfer in high-AI and stronger leftward asymmetry and more interhemispheric transfer in low-AI individuals. For the affiliation motive, findings were fewer and in the opposite direction of those for the power motive. These findings emerged for men, but not for women. Left- or right-hand contractions led to increases in power and achievement motivation, but not affiliation motivation. Only left-hand contractions led to decreased AI.

Conclusions

We discuss these findings in the context of sex-dimorphic organizing and activating effects of steroids on motives and laterality.

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.

Motives relate to cooperation in social dilemmas but have an inconsistent association with leadership evaluation

A common assumption is that good leaders are driven by a power motive that motivates them to influence others. However, leaders need to restrain themselves in social dilemmas where cooperation maximizes collective outcomes. We theorize that in social dilemmas, a desire for positive relationships (affiliation motive) is more beneficial than a power motive because it draws attention away from short-term self-interest towards understanding others. In a game of Settlers of Catan in the laboratory, we find that a functional variant of the affiliation motive relates to verbal encouragement of cooperation, to fewer occurrences of oil spills, to higher ratings of transformational leadership and, in a field survey, to fewer selfish business decisions. Furthermore, a dysfunctional variant of the power motive relates to two of three indicators of selfishness. Group members perceive selfish individuals as assuming leadership roles which indirectly relates to slightly higher ratings of transformational leadership. This pattern of evaluation may privilege men who, on average, show more selfish behaviour which can be partially attributed to their motives. Mere awareness of gender-based discrimination does not enable raters to circumvent this pattern of evaluation. This work suggests a need for interventions that increase appreciation of cooperative leaders.

Relationships among structural empowerment, innovative behaviour, self-efficacy, and career success in nursing field in mainland China

AIM

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationships among structural empowerment, innovative behaviour, self-efficacy, and career success by nurses in mainland China.

METHOD

A cross-sectional study was designed, and participants were recruited from 6 tertiary hospitals in Tianjin, China. The study used an anonymous questionnaire, filled voluntarily by 460 nurses in spring 2017. Structural equation modelling analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

The results reveal that innovative behaviour is positively associated with career success and self-efficacy, which, in turn, mediates the relationship between structural empowerment and career success. Structural empowerment is positively associated with innovative behaviour and career success. Self-efficacy is positively associated with career success and mediates the relationship between innovative behaviour and career success.

CONCLUSION

Higher perceived structural empowerment, innovative behaviour, and self-efficacy can increase career success of Chinese nurses.

Implicit Motives as Determinants of Networking Behaviors

In today's world of work, networking behaviors are an important and viable strategy to enhance success in work and career domains. Concerning personality as an antecedent of networking behaviors, prior studies have exclusively relied on trait perspectives that focus on how people feel, think, and act. Adopting a motivational perspective on personality, we enlarge this focus and argue that beyond traits predominantly tapping social content, motives shed further light on instrumental aspects of networking - or why people network. We use McClelland's implicit motives framework of need for power (nPow), need for achievement (nAch), and need for affiliation (nAff) to examine instrumental determinants of networking. Using a facet theoretical approach to networking behaviors, we predict differential relations of these three motives with facets of (1) internal vs. external networking and (2) building, maintaining, and using contacts. We conducted an online study, in which we temporally separate measures (N = 539 employed individuals) to examine our hypotheses. Using multivariate latent regression, we show that nAch is related to networking in general. In line with theoretical differences between networking facets, we find that nAff is positively related to building contacts, whereas nPow is positively related to using internal contacts. In sum, this study shows that networking is not only driven by social factors (i.e., nAff), but instead the achievement motive is the most important driver of networking behaviors.