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

Rolf van Dick, Berrit L. Cordes, Jérémy E. Lemoine, Niklas K. Steffens, S. Alexander Haslam, Serap Arslan Akfirat, Christine Joy A. Ballada, Tahir Bazarov, John Jamir Benzon R. Aruta, Lorenzo Avanzi, Ali Ahmad Bodla, Aldijana Bunjak, Matej Černe, Kitty B. Dumont, Charlotte M. Edelmann, Olga Epitropaki, Katrien Fransen, Cristina García-Ael, Steffen Giessner, Ilka H. Gleibs, Dorota Godlewska-Werner, Roberto González, Ronit Kark, Ana Laguia Gonzalez, Hodar Lam, Jukka Lipponen, Anna Lupina-Wegener, Yannis Markovits, Mazlan Maskor, Fernando Molero, Lucas Monzani, Juan A. Moriano Leon, Pedro Neves, Gábor Orosz, Diwakar Pandey, Sylwiusz Retowski, Christine Roland-Lévy, Adil Samekin, Sebastian Schuh, Tomoki Sekiguchi, Lynda Jiwen Song, Joana Story, Jeroen Stouten, Lilia Sultanova, Srinivasan Tatachari, Daniel Valdenegro, Lisanne van Bunderen, Dina Van Dijk, Sut I. Wong, Farida Youssef, Xin-an Zhang and Rudolf Kerschreiter
Additional contact information
Rolf van Dick: Institute of Psychology, Goethe University, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany
Berrit L. Cordes: Institute of Psychology, Goethe University, 60323 Frankfurt, Germany
Jérémy E. Lemoine: School of Psychology, University of East London, London E15 4LZ, UK
Niklas K. Steffens: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
S. Alexander Haslam: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
Serap Arslan Akfirat: Psychology Department, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir 35390, Turkey
Christine Joy A. Ballada: Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, De La Salle University, Manila 1004, Philippines
Tahir Bazarov: Department of Social Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 125009 Moscow, Russia
John Jamir Benzon R. Aruta: Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, De La Salle University, Manila 1004, Philippines
Lorenzo Avanzi: Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
Ali Ahmad Bodla: Faculty of Business and Management, Information Technology University, Lahore 54700, Pakistan
Aldijana Bunjak: Institute for Leadership and HRM, University of St. Gallen, 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland
Matej Černe: School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Kitty B. Dumont: Department of Psychology, University of South Africa, Pretoria 0003, South Africa
Charlotte M. Edelmann: Department of Movement Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Olga Epitropaki: Durham University Business School, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LB, UK
Katrien Fransen: Department of Movement Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Cristina García-Ael: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Steffen Giessner: Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, 3062PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Ilka H. Gleibs: Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics, London WC2 2AE, UK
Dorota Godlewska-Werner: Institute of Psychology, University of Gdańsk, 80-309 Gdańsk, Poland
Roberto González: School of Psychology, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 7820436, Chile
Ronit Kark: Department of Psychology and the Graduate Gender Studies Program, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel
Ana Laguia Gonzalez: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Hodar Lam: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1001 NK Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jukka Lipponen: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland
Anna Lupina-Wegener: School of Engineering and Management Vaud, HES-SO, 1401 Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Yannis Markovits: Independent Authority of Public Revenue, 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece
Mazlan Maskor: School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St Lucia 4072, Australia
Fernando Molero: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Lucas Monzani: Ivey Business School, Western University, London, ON N6G 0N1, Canada
Juan A. Moriano Leon: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Pedro Neves: Nova School of Business & Economics, Carcavelos, 2775-405 Lisbon, Portugal
Gábor Orosz: Pluridisciplinary Research Unit: Sport, Health and Society (URL), Sherpas, Universite Artois, 62800 Lievin, France
Diwakar Pandey: Faculty of Management, Bhairahawa Multiple Campus, Tribhuvan University, Rupandehi 32900, Nepal
Sylwiusz Retowski: Faculty of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, 81-745 Sopot, Poland
Christine Roland-Lévy: Department of Psychology, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, 51097 Reims, France
Adil Samekin: School of Liberal Arts, M. Narikbayev KAZGUU University, Nur-Sultan 010000, Kazakhstan
Sebastian Schuh: Department of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai 201206, China
Tomoki Sekiguchi: Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
Lynda Jiwen Song: Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Joana Story: Sao Paulo School of Business Administration, Fundação Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo 01313-902, Brazil
Jeroen Stouten: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Lilia Sultanova: Department of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Branch of Tashkent, Tashkent 100060, Uzbekistan
Srinivasan Tatachari: Human Resources, Organizational Behaviour and Communications Area, T A Pai Management Institute, Karnataka 5761004, India
Daniel Valdenegro: School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
Lisanne van Bunderen: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1001 NK Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Dina Van Dijk: Department of Health Policy and Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er Sheva 8410501, Israel
Sut I. Wong: Department of Communication and Culture, BI Norwegian Business School, 0484 Oslo, Norway
Farida Youssef: Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Science, Giza 12311, Egypt
Xin-an Zhang: Antai College of Economics and Management, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China
Rudolf Kerschreiter: Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 22, 1-24

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: burnout; exhaustion; identity leadership; team identification; cross-cultural study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12081/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/22/12081/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:22:p:12081-:d:681289

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().