A social identity theory of leadership

A social identity theory of leadership is described that views leadership as a group process generated by social categorization and prototype-based depersonalization processes associated with social identity. Group identification, as self-categorization, constructs an intragroup prototypicality gradient that invests the most prototypical member with the appearance of having influence; the appearance arises because members cognitively and behaviorally conform to the prototype. The appearance of influence becomes a reality through depersonalized social attraction processes that make followers agree and comply with the leader's ideas and suggestions. Consensual social attraction also imbues the leader with apparent status and creates a status-based structural differentiation within the group into leader(s) and followers, which has characteristics of unequal status intergroup relations. In addition, a fundamental attribution process constructs a charismatic leadership personality for the leader, which further empowers the leader and sharpens the leader-follower status differential. Empirical support for the theory is reviewed and a range of implications discussed, including intergroup dimensions, uncertainty reduction and extremism, power, and pitfalls of prototype-based leadership.

Examining the effects of work externalization through the lens of social identity theory

This study examines whether dissimilarity among employees that is based on their work status (i.e., whether they are temporary or internal workers) influences their organization-based self-esteem, their trust in and attraction toward their peers, and their altruism. A model that is based on social identity theory posits that work-status dissimilarity negatively influences each outcome variable and that the strength of this relationship varies depending on whether employees have temporary or internal status and the composition of their work groups. Results that are based on a survey of 326 employees (189 internal and 137 temporary) from 34 work groups, belonging to 2 organizations, indicate that work-status dissimilarity has a systematic negative effect only on outcomes related to internal workers when they work in temporary-worker-dominated groups.

Individual and societal bases of national identity - A comparative multi-level analysis

In a previous study (Jones and Smith, 1999) we established that much the same core pattern of national identity characterizes many developed countries. Using the national identity module from the 1995 International Social Survey Programme, we identified two dimensions of national identity: an ascriptive dimension resembling the concept of ethnic identity described in the historical and theoretical literature, and a voluntarist dimension closer to the notion of civic identity. Some writers view these dimensions in terms of a historical sequence but we find that both constructs coexist in the minds of individual respondents in the nations we examine (we exclude Bulgaria and the Philippines from the present but not the earlier analysis). The dataset used for the multilevel analyses reported here consists of 28 589 respondents in the remaining 21 countries included in the national identity database for the 1995 round of surveys. The macrosociological literature on national identity does not offer well-defined predictions about what precise patterns of national identification we might expect to find among the masses of the developed countries. There are, however, recurring themes from which one can construct plausible hypotheses about how countries might differ according to their level of development, broadly conceived. Thus, we hypothesize that forces such as post-industrialism and globalization tend to favour the more open voluntaristic form of national identity over the more restrictive ascribed form. We develop different multi-level models in order to evaluate specific hypotheses pertaining to such issues, by simultaneously relating individual and societal characteristics to the relative strength of individual commitment to these different types of national identity.