Research On The Formation And Effect Of Self-Sacrificial Leadership

It's a very important problem that how to motivate followers to cooperate closely with leaders and pursue organizational goals and interests. Recently, the self-sacrificial leadership that can inspire effectively followers going beyond their in-role obligations to contribute more or make sacrifices to the collective welfares have attracted much attention from scholars. Although lots of domestic and overseas scholars had made the empirical research about the self-sacrificial leadership, there are some questions that must been solved. This aim of the study is to investigate the formation and effect of self-sacrificial leadership from different perspectives.This study finded the deficiency of existing research on the self-sacrificial leadership through reviewing the concept connotation, measurement method, previous res studies, theoretical basis of self-sacrificial leadership. Firstly, there are very few scholars who investigage the formation of self-sacrificial leadership. As far as is know, there is only one study on formation of self-sacrificial leadership. Secondly, there are obvious deficiencies about the study of the effectiveness of self-sacrificial leadership in three aspects.(1)There isn't attention had been devoted to examine self-sacrificial leadership from a distance or from a level or two above the immediate supervisor.(2) There is a lack of investigation of self-sacrificial leadership on team level. (3) There isn't attention had been devoted to examine the effect of self-sacrificial leadership on the followers'negative behavior. Four sub studies from four different perspectives had been carried out to expand and extend the study on formation factor and effect of self-sacrificial leadershp.Sub study one investigaged the formation factor of self-sacrificial leadership from the perspectives of leader's personality and cultural values. This sub study examined the hypotheses with effective matched-pairs data collected from 76 teams leaders and 329 subordinates in 17 companies in Hubei Province in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test these hypotheses. The results revealed that leader's personality with agreeableness and conscientiousness and leader's cultural values with collectivism and long-term orientation had positive impact on self-sacrificial leadership. Moreover, leader's self-sacrifice role conceptualization play a mediation effect and the environmental uncertainty play a moderating effect.When the environmental uncertainty was higher, the relationship between self-sacrifice role conceptualization and self-sacrificial leadership was more positive.Sub study two examined the relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and employees'self-sacrifice and organizational citizenship behavior from the perspectives of employees'distal top managers.These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 435 frontline employees,102 frontline supervisors, and 26 top managers in 26 organizations in Hubei and Jiangsu Province in China. The three-level hierarchical linear modelling results supported the current study's hypotheses. The results proved that top managers'self-sacrificial leadership was positively related to frontline employees'self-sacrifice and organizational citizenship behavior. Further, the top managers'self-sacrificial leadership had an affect on employees'self-sacrifice and organizational citizenship behavior through two mediation paths. The first pathway was a trickle-down effect of leadership behaviours from top managers to first-line supervisors, whose self-sacrificial leadership then enhances employees'self-sacrifice and organizational citizenship behavior. The second pathway was a bypass effect that improved directly employee's organization based self-esteem, bypassing the influence of employees' immediate supervisor. The relationship between top managers'self-sacrificial leadership and employees'organization based self-esteem was moderated by the employees' collectivistic orientation. The above relationship was more positive when the employees'collectivistic orientation was higher.Sub study three examined the relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and team performance. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 76 teams leaders and 329 team members in 17 companies in Hubei Province in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test these hypotheses.The results revealed that self-sacrificial leadership was positively related to team performance. The relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and team performance was mediated by team cohesiveness. Further, leaders' psychological capital played a moderating effect. When the leaders'psychological capital was higher, The mediation effect of team cohesiveness was more stronger.Sub study four investigaged the relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and employees counterproductive behavior. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 366 employees of 83 work groups in 23 companies in Hubei and Jiangsu Province in China. The results using the method of hierarchical linear model indicated that self-sacrificial leadership had inhibitory effect on the employees counterproductive behavior. The negative relationship between self-sacrificial leadership and employees counterproductive behavior was mediated by employees' leader identification. Further, Employees'psychological entitlement played a moderating effect. The mediation effect of leader identification was significant among the employees with lower psychological entitlement orientation and wasn't significant among the employees with higher psychological entitlement orientation.Finally, the main findings and limitations, as well as the future research directions, of this dissertation were concluded.