The impact of supportive leadership on employee outcomes during organizational mergers: An organizational-level field study.

Past merger and acquisition research has reported mixed findings on the impact of mergers on workforces. To address these ambiguities and advance merger research at the organizational level of analysis, we present a natural quasi-experiment focusing on mergers in the English National Health Service. Building on organizational support theory and conservation of resources theory, we propose that merger events represent environmental stressors, with negative implications for employees' subjective (job satisfaction) and objective (absenteeism) outcomes. However, extending previous theorizing, we argue that by increasing their supportive leadership, midlevel management can compensate for the resource losses incurred during mergers, and in doing so, minimize the adverse impact on their workforces. We test our predictions in the context of multiple primary care trust mergers, which took place in 2006. We analyzed the annual staff surveys, combined with objective information on employee absenteeism, and compared merging organizations with nonmerging organizations before (2005) and after (2007) the mergers. As expected, employees of merging (vs. not merging) organizations showed stronger decreases in job satisfaction, and these decreases in subjective outcomes were associated with increases in absenteeism over the course of the merger process. However, consistent with our propositions, we found that increases in supportive leadership during the merger period served to mitigate these negative outcomes. Our results highlight the organizational-level implications of mergers and the role that midlevel management can play in compensating for the losses experienced during (stressful) merger events. We discuss the implications for dynamic models of merger integration and leadership during change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Identity Leadership, Employee Burnout and the Mediating Role of Team Identification: Evidence from the Global Identity Leadership Development Project.

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burnout. We tested this model with unique datasets from the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project with participants from all inhabited continents. We compared two datasets from 2016/2017 (n = 5290; 20 countries) and 2020/2021 (n = 7294; 28 countries) and found very similar levels of identity leadership, team identification and burnout across the five years. An inspection of the 2020/2021 data at the onset of and later in the COVID-19 pandemic showed stable identity leadership levels and slightly higher levels of both burnout and team identification. Supporting our hypotheses, we found almost identical indirect effects (2016/2017, b = -0.132; 2020/2021, b = -0.133) across the five-year span in both datasets. Using a subset of n = 111 German participants surveyed over two waves, we found the indirect effect confirmed over time with identity leadership (at T1) predicting team identification and, in turn, burnout, three months later. Finally, we explored whether there could be a "too-much-of-a-good-thing" effect for identity leadership. Speaking against this, we found a u-shaped quadratic effect whereby ratings of identity leadership at the upper end of the distribution were related to even stronger team identification and a stronger indirect effect on reduced burnout.

Between a Rock and Hard Place: Combined Effects of Authentic Leadership, Organizational Identification, and Team Prototypicality on Managerial Prohibitive Voice.

Managers are installed by the organization's stakeholders and shareholders to increase the organization's value; at the same time, they depend on their subordinates' acceptance to fulfill this leadership role. If the interest of the organization collides with the interest of their team, some managers act in the interest of their followers accepting potential disadvantages for their organizations and/or external stakeholders. In two experimental studies comprised mainly of German (N = 111) and US (N = 323) managers, we examined combined effects of authentic leadership, organizational identification, and self-perceived team prototypicality on managerial integrity operationalized as expressing work-related concerns to prevent organizations from harm (i.e., managerial voice). Our results show direct effects of authentic leadership and organizational identification on voice behavior across both studies. Furthermore, organizational identification increased voice for managers' low in authentic leadership pointing at a compensation effect. Finally, leader team prototypicality decreased the effect of identification on voice for managers high in authentic leadership but increased voice for managers low in authentic leadership, but only if these managers identified with their organization. In sum, our findings complement prior research that focused mainly on safety and instrumentality concerns by emphasizing the relevance of self-related antecedents of managerial voice.

They (Don't) Need Us: Functional Indispensability Impacts Perceptions of Representativeness and Commitment When Lower-Status Groups Go Through an Intergroup Merger.

Intergroup changes occur often between subgroups who are asymmetric in status (e.g., size, power, prestige), with important consequences for social identification, especially among the members of lower-status groups. Mergers offer an example of such changes, when subgroups (merger partners) merge into a common, superordinate group (post-merger group). Lower-status subgroups frequently perceive they are less represented in the post-merger group, therefore committing less to the changes a merger implies. Five studies offered an intergroup relations' perspective on mergers (N's = 479, 150, 266, 113, and 229, respectively), examining how functional indispensability (instrumental contribution of the ingroup) positively influences perceptions of representativeness in the post-merger group (relative ingroup prototypicality), which, in turn, affect post-merger identification and, finally, change commitment. Additionally, the role of cognitive information processing (heuristic vs. systematic) on prototypicality was explored. Results suggest that functional indispensability impacts relative ingroup prototypicality (Studies 1-5), and this may be moderated by information processing (Study 2). Moreover, prototypicality and identification with the superordinate post-merged group mediated the effect of functional indispensability on change commitment (Studies 1-3). These findings provide important theoretical insights into prototypicality perceptions held by lower-status merger partners and minority groups in general, by identifying functional indispensability as a source of prototypicality other than relative status. In addition, by proposing a functional approach to the relations between social groups, these findings suggest better practices for managing structural changes, such as combining sources of strategic/functional and identity fit when announcing an intergroup change.

Between a rock and hard place: combined effects of authentic leadership, organizational identification, and team prototypicality on managerial prohibitive voice

Managers are installed by the organization's stakeholders and shareholders to increase the organization's value; at the same time, they depend on their subordinates' acceptance to fulfill this leadership role. If the interest of the organization collides with the interest of their team, some managers act in the interest of their followers accepting potential disadvantages for their organizations and/or external stakeholders. In two experimental studies comprised mainly of German (N = 111) and US (N = 323) managers, we examined combined effects of authentic leadership, organizational identification, and self-perceived team prototypicality on managerial integrity operationalized as expressing work-related concerns to prevent organizations from harm (i.e., managerial voice). Our results show direct effects of authentic leadership and organizational identification on voice behavior across both studies. Furthermore, organizational identification increased voice for managers' low in authentic leadership pointing at a compensation effect. Finally, leader team prototypicality decreased the effect of identification on voice for managers high in authentic leadership but increased voice for managers low in authentic leadership, but only if these managers identified with their organization. In sum, our findings complement prior research that focused mainly on safety and instrumentality concerns by emphasizing the relevance of self-related antecedents of managerial voice

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Change commitment in low-status merger partners: The role of information processing, relative ingroup prototypicality, and merger patterns.

Merger announcements cause stress among employees, often leading to low change commitment, especially among employees from the lower-status merger partner. Such stress influences how deeply employees process merger-relevant information. Previous research examined how merger patterns that preserve versus change status differences impact merger support, but did not address how employees' information processing may influence this relationship. The current research addresses this gap through a scenario experiment, focusing on the low-status merger partner. The interplay between merger patterns and information processing was examined regarding employees' prototypicality claims in relation to merger support. Results suggest that an integration-equality merger pattern increases change commitment via prototypicality claims in the new organization, conditional to employees' systematic information processing.

In the moral eye of the beholder: the interactive effects of leader and follower moral identity on perceptions of ethical leadership and LMX quality.

Previous research indicated that leader moral identity (MI; i.e., leaders' self-definition in terms of moral attributes) predicts to what extent followers perceive their leader as ethical (i.e., demonstrating and promoting ethical conduct in the organization). Leadership, however, is a relational process that involves leaders and followers. Building on this understanding, we hypothesized that follower and leader MI (a) interact in predicting whether followers will perceive their leaders as ethical and, as a result, (b) influence followers' perceptions of leader-follower relationship quality. A dyadic field study (N = 101) shows that leader MI is a stronger predictor of followers' perceptions of ethical leadership for followers who are high (vs. low) in MI. Perceptions of ethical leadership in turn predict how the quality of the relationship will be perceived. Hence, whether leader MI translates to perceptions of ethical leadership and of better relationship quality depends on the MI of followers.

Team-oriented leadership: the interactive effects of leader group prototypicality, accountability, and team identification.

We examined the interactive effects of leader group prototypicality, accountability, and team identification on team-oriented behavior of leaders, thus extending the social identity perspective on leadership to the study of leader behavior. An experimental study (N = 152) supported our hypothesis that leader accountability relates more strongly to team-oriented behavior for group nonprototypical leaders than for group prototypical leaders. A multisource field study with leaders (N = 64) and their followers (N = 209) indicated that this interactive effect is more pronounced for leaders who identify more strongly with their team. We discuss how these findings further develop the social identity analysis of leadership.

Mighty metaphors: behavioral and ERP evidence that power shifts attention on a vertical dimension.

Thinking about the abstract concept power may automatically activate the spatial up-down image schema (powerful up; powerless down) and consequently direct spatial attention to the image schema-congruent location. Participants indicated whether a word represented a powerful or powerless person (e.g. 'king' or 'servant'). Following each decision, they identified a target at the top or bottom of the visual field. In Experiment 1 participants identified the target faster when their spatial position was congruent with the perceived power of the preceding word than when it was incongruent. In Experiment 2 ERPs showed a higher N1 amplitude for congruent spatial positions. These results support the view that attention is driven to the image schema congruent location of a power word. Thus, power is partially understood in terms of vertical space, which demonstrates that abstract concepts are grounded in sensory-motor processing.

How embodied cognitions affect judgments: height-related attribution bias in football foul calls.

Many fouls committed in football (called soccer in some countries) are ambiguous, and there is no objective way of determining who is the "true" perpetrator or the "true" victim. Consequently, fans as well as referees often rely on a variety of decision cues when judging such foul situations. Based on embodiment research, which links perceptions of height to concepts of strength, power, and aggression, we argue that height is going to be one of the decision cues used. As a result, people are more likely to attribute a foul in an ambiguous tackle situation to the taller of two players. We find consistent support for our hypothesis, not only in field data spanning the last seven UEFA Champions League and German Bundesliga seasons, as well as the last three FIFA World Cups, but also in two experimental studies. The resulting dilemma for refereeing in practice is discussed.

The challenge of merging: merger patterns, premerger status, and merger support.

Employees of merging organizations often show resistance to the merger. The employees' support depends on the companies' premerger status and on the merger pattern. Based on an intergroup perspective, three studies were conducted to investigate the influence of premerger status (high, low) and merger pattern (assimilation, integration-equality, integration-proportionality, transformation) on participants' support for a pending organizational merger. Students (Study 1) and employees (Study 2) had to take the perspective of employees of a fictitious merging organization. Study 3 investigated students' perceptions of a potentially pending university merger using a 2 (status) x 3 (merger pattern: assimilation, integration-equality, integration-proportionality) design. Across all studies, the low-status group favored integration-equality and transformation whereas the high-status group preferred integration-proportionality and assimilation. Perceived threat mediated the effects. Legitimacy was a stronger mediator for effects of the low-status group.