نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسندگان English
Purpose: Leader self-sacrifice is generally regarded as a constructive leadership behavior because leaders who voluntarily relinquish personal benefits, privileges, or comfort for collective interests can signal commitment to the group and encourage favorable employee responses. Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that the consequences of leader self-sacrifice are not uniformly positive and may depend on the psychological mechanisms through which employees interpret and respond to such behavior. Accordingly, the present study aimed to explain the effectiveness of leader self-sacrifice by simultaneously examining three complementary psychological mechanisms—trust in the leader, follower self-esteem, and collective identity—and the potential boundary role of perceived leader hypocrisy in predicting two distinct employee work outcomes: job performance and organizational citizenship behavior. More specifically, the study sought to determine whether leader self-sacrifice directly improves work outcomes, the psychological mechanisms through which it operates, and whether perceived leader hypocrisy weakens the relationship between leader self-sacrifice and employee outcomes. By integrating these mediating and moderating mechanisms within a single structural model, the study also attempted to address inconsistencies in previous findings and provide a more differentiated explanation of how leader self-sacrifice translates into in-role and extra-role employee behaviors.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The study was applied in terms of purpose and employed a descriptive-survey design. The statistical population consisted of employees of Fars Province Gas Company, and the minimum sample size was estimated using G*Power, resulting in 400 distributed questionnaires. Of the 342 returned questionnaires, three were excluded due to unrealistic response patterns, leaving 339 usable questionnaires. Data were collected using standardized five-point Likert-type measures, and structural equation modeling was conducted in AMOS version 20. The analytical procedure consisted of four stages: confirmatory factor analysis, examination of direct structural relationships, testing two moderation hypotheses, and bootstrapping six indirect effects. The measurement model demonstrated acceptable fit (χ²/df=1.935, CFI=.932, TLI=.924, IFI=.932, RMSEA=.053, PClose=.189).
Findings: The findings demonstrated that leader self-sacrifice did not produce a uniform effect across employee work outcomes. Its direct effect on job performance was positive and significant (β=.178, p=.030), whereas its direct effect on organizational citizenship behavior was not significant (β=.082, p=.301). The interaction between leader self-sacrifice and perceived leader hypocrisy was not significant for either outcome, and therefore the two moderation hypotheses were not supported. However, perceived leader hypocrisy had a significant negative main effect on job performance (β=-.131, p=.007). Bootstrapping results revealed differentiated mediation patterns: trust in leader mediated both outcomes, follower self-esteem mediated only organizational citizenship behavior (β=.186, p=.001), and collective identity mediated only job performance (β=.187, p=.001).
Discussion and Conclusion: The findings challenge the assumption that self-sacrificial leadership automatically generates uniformly positive employee responses. Leader self-sacrifice appears more directly relevant to formal task performance, whereas its influence on organizational citizenship behavior depends more on employees' psychological interpretation of the leader's behavior. Trust in the leader emerged as the most robust explanatory mechanism, supporting the logic of social exchange, while follower self-esteem was specifically associated with organizational citizenship behavior and collective identity with job performance. The nonsignificant moderating effects of perceived leader hypocrisy suggest that hypocrisy did not operate as the hypothesized boundary condition, although its negative direct association with job performance remains important. Overall, the study demonstrates that the effectiveness of leader self-sacrifice is mechanism-specific rather than uniformly direct. From a managerial perspective, symbolic sacrifice alone is insufficient; leaders should simultaneously cultivate trust, reinforce employees’ sense of personal worth, and strengthen collective identity. The study contributes theoretically by integrating social exchange, self-concept, social identity, and attribution perspectives in a single model and by demonstrating that job performance and organizational citizenship behavior represent psychologically distinct outcomes of self-sacrificial leadership.
کلیدواژهها English
