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Although nowadays more women occupy leadership roles, they still are a minority. Because aspiration is a precursor of advancement, examining conditions fostering female leadership aspiration is important. A neglected perspective is the impact of organizational identification. Identification can be argued to foster leadership aspiration because the essence of leadership is the pursuit of collective interests, and identification motivates such pursuits. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A cross-sectional survey design with an n=400 fulltime employed men and women, working for various organizations was selected.

The initial prediction was that identification is more important to women’s leadership aspiration to the extent that gender is associated with communal orientation, because women tend to have stronger communal orientation with associated greater affiliation needs, and organizational identification can be expected to cater to those needs. The communal orientation by organizational identification interactive influence on leadership aspiration was supported. Also, the indirect effect of gender on leadership aspiration via this interactive influence of communal orientation and organizational identification was supported.

Due to the selected survey approach the data are correlational and as a result no reference to matters of causality can be made. Thus (field) experimental data is needed to confirm these findings.

Within the paper the discussion focuses on the importance of creating an environment that is more conducive to organizational identification and as such speaks to the communal orientation – being more pronounced among women – to act in favor of the organization by aspiring leadership positions.

The presented results depict an important step toward understanding how organizational identification and communal orientation interact and how they interact with women’s leadership aspiration.

The purpose of this paper is to address two of the major questions in the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and leadership effectiveness: does EI conceptualized and assessed as an ability influence leadership effectiveness when controlling for cognitive intelligence and Big Five personality traits? And, what are mediating processes in this relationship?

Ability test data for EI for 84 leaders in an assessment center were used to predict unobtrusive observations of leader responses to subordinate’s emotions in a role play, and expert ratings of leadership effectiveness, controlling for cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits.

EI predicted the appropriateness of leader responses to subordinate’s emotions, and these responses mediated the relationships of EI and leadership effectiveness, controlling for cognitive ability and Big Five personality traits.

The assessment center context represents a relatively artificial environment and follow-up research in field settings would be particularly valuable.

EI can be assessed as a selection tool for leadership positions. Leadership development programs can also focus on developing the skills associated with EI.

The study provides stronger evidence for the relationship between EI and leadership effectiveness than previous research, bolstering the confidence in conclusions regarding this relationship. The study also contributes to the development of process models of the influence of EI on leadership effectiveness by providing evidence regarding mediation.

To examine the psychological processes underlying the effect of leaders' self‐sacrifice on follower cooperation, that is, trust and collective identification.

The main effect of leader self‐sacrifice was tested on people's willingness to cooperate. In addition, people's perceptions of trust and collective identification were assessed. These effects were tested using a public good experiment, and a cross‐sectional survey in a German multinational company.

The findings from both the experimental study and the cross‐sectional survey showed that leader self‐sacrifice has a positive effect on cooperation (measured by contributions in a public good dilemma and organizational citizenship behavior in the survey). Moreover, perceptions of trust in the leader and feelings of collective identification mediated this effect of self‐sacrifice.

The present finding indicates that organizations need to focus on and implement leadership styles based on self‐sacrifice. It is suggested that one possible way to do this is to train managers more effectively in how they can clearly communicate the goals that they personally value and for the achievement of which they are willing to engage in sacrificial behavior.

This research identifies important mediators of a leadership style considered to be effective in organizations. In addition, the findings of this research also show the usefulness of both experimental paradigms and survey studies to examine the issue of leader self‐sacrifice.

Paradoxical leadership (PL) is an emerging perspective to understand how leaders help followers deal with paradoxical demands. Recently, the positive relationship between PL and follower performance was established. This paper builds on and extends this research by interpreting PL as sensegiving and developing theory about mediation in the relationship between PL and adaptive and proactive performance.

The paper develops a new measure for PL as sensegiving and provides a test of the mediation model with data from two different sources and two measurement times in a German company.

Multilevel mediation analysis (N = 154) supports the mediation model.

The paper presents sensegiving about paradox as a core element of PL, which informs the choice of change-readiness as mediator. This study also develops and validates a scale to measure PL in future research.

The presumed financial benefits of mergers & acquisitions (M&As) often do not materialize. At the same time, M&As are reported to create a host of negative reactions on the part of the employees involved. In recent years, these circumstances have led many scholars to use the social identity approach (SIA) in order to better understand the group psychology of M&As. This paper reviews recent M&A research inspired by the SIA and derives three general lessons that are explained in some detail: First, post-merger identification is important for M&As integration and success. Second, M&As pose a threat to organizational identification. Therefore, and third, if you have to merge – merge right.

By adopting the dictum that all knowledge is knowledge from a point of view, educators can arrange the literature on leadership into nine categories from three conceptually distinct points of view, namely the Leader, the Follower, and the Investigator. Students who come to appreciate and account for point of view not only increase their understanding of leadership, but also prepare to compensate, if not transcend their own point of view – a skill that successful participants in leadership will increasingly require.

This experiment examined the effects of motivational orientation (prosocial versus egoistic) on interpersonal trust, negotiation behavior, amount of impasses, and joint outcomes in three‐person negotiations. Students participated in a joint venture negotiation, in which motivational orientation was manipulated by allocating individual incentives (egoistic motive) vs. team incentives (prosocial motive). Results indicated that prosocially motivated negotiators achieved more integrative agreements and fewer impasses, and reported higher trust, more problem solving, and less contending behavior than egoistically motivated negotiators. Hierarchical regression suggested that the finding that prosocial groups achieved higher joint outcomes can be explained by higher levels of trust, more problem solving behavior, and less contending behavior in prosocial groups.