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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.

Respect is an important indicator of intragroup status, and it can influence within-group behavior. Being respected by other group members indicates a positive standing within the group that is relevant to two important identity concerns: belongingness and social reputation. Belongingness refers to the extent to which a person feels included in the group, and social reputation refers to how other in-group members evaluate a person. We review a series of studies that show that respect indeed communicates information relevant to these identity concerns, and as such influences a person's sense of affiliation, self-esteem, and cooperation (all variables considered to be important for the viability of groups). In addition, we also discuss whether the source of respect (i.e., peers vs. authority), culture, and group size matter in influencing these group-related variables. Finally, some implications for research on groups are discussed.

A common way to promote cooperative and collectively beneficial behavior in organizations is to sanction self-interested and collectively harmful behavior. Social science researchers recently focus more and more on the negative effects of sanctions. In particular, it is argued that sanctioning noncooperative behavior can undermine people's personal motives to behave cooperatively. In this chapter we argue that, in the decision to behave cooperatively, or in one's own self-interest, perceptions of other people's motives play an important role. In this chapter we discuss research on sanctioning systems in social dilemmas which shows that sanctioning noncooperative behavior undermines trust in others being motivated to cooperate. In a series of studies we show that the undermining of trust may lead to a general increase of noncooperation. Moreover, the newly developed “social trilemma” paradigm demonstrated that it may induce people to show self-interested behaviors they had not considered before. These negative effects of a sanctioning system are moderated by the trust people initially may have in their fellow group members’ cooperative intentions, in the sanctioning authority and by the way people regard authorities in general. Implications of these results for organizations are discussed.

This study examined the interactive effect of distributive justice and leader self‐sacrifice on employees' organizational commitment and autocratic leadership perceptions (ALP). We propose that positive leadership styles like self‐sacrifice will have a stronger impact on employees' attitudes and judgments when organizational outcomes are perceived and experienced as unfavorable or more negative. One such outcome that may turn out unfavorable is distributive justice. Findings indeed showed that leader self‐sacrifice positively influenced organizational commitment and negatively ALP, but only when distributive justice was low (i.e. perceptions of unfair outcomes).

The purpose of the research was to test whether the widely known interaction between procedural and distributive justice influences cooperation, but only when employees’ identification with the organization is strong.

A survey study was conducted in a company, including scales assessing distributive justice, procedural justice, employees’ sense of organizational identification and willingness to cooperate.

The results showed that this interaction effect was only found among those with a strong sense of organizational identification. However, the pattern of this interaction was different from the pattern found in previous studies, that is, both high procedural and distributive justice was required to best predict cooperation.

These findings identify yet another important moderator of the interaction between distributive justice and procedural justice, but also show that because of the cognitive content of the measure of organizational identification, the shape of the interaction is different than the one predicted by prior research.

This study aims to examine the effect of leader's use of procedural justice on followers' sense of organizational identification (OID), affect‐based trust and cognition‐based trust.

A survey study was conducted to examine the relationship between the proposed constructs. Regression analysis was used to analyze the data.

It was found that leaders enacting procedural justice positively affect OID and both types of trust. Further, only affect‐based trust (and not cognition‐based trust) mediated the relationship between procedural justice and OID.

The present findings reveal important new insights with respect to how procedural justice impacts upon followers' sense of OID. In fact, contrary to predictions based on theoretical reviews the results show that the cognitive concept of OID is mediated by an affective construct.

The present research presents a perspective of looking at procedural justice as a tool that leaders can use in organizations to promote followers' sense of OID. At the same time, it also explores the role of another important psychological process relevant to the well‐functioning of an organization, that is, trust in the leader.