Two Lighthouses to Navigate: Effects of Ideal and Counter-Ideal Values on Follower Identification and Satisfaction with their Leaders

Niels van Quaquebeke, Rudolf Kerschreiter, Alice Buxton and Rolf van Dick

ERIM Report Series Research in Management from Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about, what they strive for, and what they want to be affiliated with. Transferring this to a leader-follower analysis, our first Study (N = 306) confirms that followers’ identification and satisfaction with their leaders are stronger, the more leaders match followers’ ideal leader values. Study 2 (N = 244) extends the perspective by introducing the novel concept of counter-ideals (i.e., how an ideal leader should not be) as a second, non-redundant point of reference. Results confirm that a leader’s match on ideal and on counter-ideal values have independent effects in that both explain unique variance in followers’ identification and satisfaction with their leader. Study 3 (N = 136) replicates the previous results in an experimental scenario study and provides evidence for the proposed causal direction of the underlying process. We conclude that counter-ideal values might be an additional point of reference that people use to triangulate targets above and beyond ideal values and discuss the implications of our findings for value research and management.

Keywords: fit; followership; ideals; identification; leadership; positive and negative forces; satisfaction; values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 M M10 M12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-01-05
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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