Why Employees Help Teammates When Their Leader Looks Powerful: A Multilevel Investigation

Abstract

We extend prior research on leader power by examining why and when leader referent and expert powers influence team members’ organizational citizenship behaviors directed at other individuals (OCBI) from the multilevel perspective. We propose that leader referent and expert power perceptions operate at both individual and team levels and lead to OCBI through distinct motivational mechanisms. Drawing upon social identity theory, we suggest that team-level leader referent and expert powers facilitate social identification as salient team features and in turn promote team members’ OCBI through collective team identification. On the other hand, at the individual level, leader referent and expert powers are experienced discretionarily and affect members’ OCBI through dyadic exchange relationships with a leader–member exchange (LMX) based on the reciprocity norm. Furthermore, collective team identification is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between LMX and OCBI. Findings from 465 employees in 80 teams show that team-level leader referent power enhances collective team identification and OCBI beyond expert power but not vice versa. At the individual level, both referent and expert powers have positive indirect impact on OCBI via LMX. The moderating effect of collective team identification is supported in that team members convert high-quality LMX into OCBI only when collective team identification is higher. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.