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In this chapter, we integrate recent theories on followers’ self-concept and transformational leadership theory in order to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the exceptional and diverse effects transformational leaders may have on their followers. We propose that transformational leaders may influence two levels of followers’ self-concept: the relational and the collective self thus fostering personal identification with the leader and social identification with the organizational unit. Specific leader behaviors that prime different aspects of followers’ self-concepts are identified, and their possible effects on different aspects of followers’ perceptions and behaviors are discussed.

While organizationally relevant outcomes of charismatic leadership have been studied more extensively, we do not know as much about when and why followers attribute charisma to leaders. Drawing on the self-concept based motivational theory of charisma developed by Boas Shamir and colleagues, we propose that congruence between leaders and followers on a core characteristic, namely organizational identification plays an important role. When leaders are high on identification with the organization, they embody and communicate the values of the organization more strongly in their vision and behaviors, which is likely to affect the attribution of charisma to these leaders, but only for followers who themselves strongly identify with the organization. In contrast, those leaders low on organizational identification are more likely to communicate messages that appeal to followers who are similarly low on identification. A multi-source study in the healthcare sector largely supports our model as congruence between organizational identification levels of leaders and followers is positively linked to perceived charisma and, in turn, charisma relates to followers’ organizational citizenship behavior.

This study aims to explore the domain of leader’s creativity and suggests that leader’s creativity can be present as both worker-role creativity and manager-role creativity. Then, the study examines the influence of leader’s worker-role creativity and manager-role creativity on employees’ creativity and team creativity. As a contextual factor, the identification with leader is taken as a moderator at both the individual and team levels.

With data that was collected from 229 employees and 32 team leaders in entrepreneurial and R&D teams of China, hierarchical regression is conducted to test the hypotheses at individual and team levels separately.

The results show that leader identification plays a different role in moderating the effects of worker-role creativity and manager-role creativity on employees’ and team creativity. For the relationships between worker-role creativity and employees’ and team creativity, they are positive when leader identification is high and negative when it is low. For the relationships between manager-role creativity and team creativity, it is stronger when leader identification is higher rather than lower.

This study answers the call for studying the roles of creative role models and provides new evidence of the leader as a role model. The exploration of the domain of leader’s creativity and the different effects on creative outcome brings an interesting perspective on creativity and leadership research.

The present study draws on the advance to develop the content of leader’s creativity. Then, the moderating role of identification with leader between leader’s creativity and employees’ creativity and team creativity is comprehensively examined.

With the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.

To test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.

The results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.

The key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.

This study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.

This study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

Geographically dispersed teams have become common in many industries and organizations. Yet previous research on distanced leadership often is done from the perspective of the leader, not the team members. This study examines identification with team leader among distanced and proximate employees in geographically dispersed teams. Through survey research, the study examines the relationship between members' identification with their team leader and four other relevant variables – trust, isolation, accessibility, and information equity. Specifically, the study finds that identification and trust are closely related constructs in both distanced and proximate settings; that perceived isolation is inversely related with leader identification in proximate settings, but not in distanced ones; that accessibility is positively related to identification with leader in both distanced and proximate settings; and that perceived information equity is positively related with leader identification in distanced and proximate settings. Implications for leadership in distanced settings are discussed.

Customer service is crucial for organizations' survival and competitiveness in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this study is to examine how and when servant leadership affects extra-role customer service.

The hypotheses were tested with a sample of 302 employees from a passenger transport company in China.

Results demonstrate that servant leadership was positively related to extra-role customer service and that this relation was mediated by relational identification. In addition, the mediating effect of relational identification in the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service was contingent on prosocial motivation.

The study is the first to explore the relation between servant leadership and extra-role customer service from the perspective of relational identification and the moderating role of prosocial motivation.

Drawing upon the social identity approach, this research examines whether and how leader–subordinate congruence at high levels of proactive personality facilitates subordinate creativity.

Two different data sets (Study 1: N = 205; Study 2: N = 222) were collected from leader–subordinate dyads in China to provide stronger empirical evidence regarding our hypotheses. Polynomial regression and response surface analyses were used to test our predictions.

Subordinate creativity in the scenario in which the leader and subordinate shared a highly proactive personality (i.e. high–high congruence) was higher than that in the incongruence or low–low congruence scenario. The subordinate's identification with the leader mediated the above relationships such that the indirect relationship between leader–subordinate proactive personality and subordinate creativity via identification with the leader was maximized in the high–high congruence scenario.

The findings suggest that organizations should consider selecting both highly proactive leaders and highly proactive subordinates to facilitate the subordinates' identification and subsequent creativity.

This research highlights the crucial role of leader–subordinate congruence in strong proactive personality for the promotion of creativity and reveals that identification with the leader accounts for the above relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to prove the importance of both cluster leadership and identification on cluster innovation.

The case studies presented in this study involve a cluster by micro-enterprises in Yilan, Taiwan. Data collected during interviews, observations and secondary data provide understanding and practices for the impact of cluster identification on cluster innovation.

This study proved: first, the importance of cluster identification on innovation by representing the need of consensus and collaboration of the members in conducting innovation actions; and second, the cluster identification is influenced by the cluster leadership by showing high satisfaction of the leader, close interaction between the members and high identification with the cluster.

This study predicts the ongoing cluster innovation activities will be achieved due to the transformational leadership and high cluster identification.

This study enriches the factors of cluster innovation accomplishment and proposes the important of cluster identification, which has not been discussed much in the past.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of humble leadership on employee proactive behavior. The authors propose that such effect is mediated by psychological empowerment, and identification with leader moderates the intervening role of psychological empowerment in the humble leadership-employee proactive behavior relationship.

Data were collected from 286 subordinate-supervisor dyads from 4 industries in Northern China. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were applied to test the research model.

Humble leadership has a significantly positive effect on employee proactive behavior, and this effect is mediated by psychological empowerment. Furthermore, the identification with leader moderates the mediated relationships between humble leadership and employee proactive behavior via psychological empowerment.

One limitation is that the data were collected cross-sectionally. Further research could conduct longitudinal research to retest the hypotheses. The present research has a number of implications. First, the authors extend humble leadership research. Second, the authors also contribute to humble leadership literature by addressing the lack of attention paid to the explanatory mechanism linking humble leader behavior to follower outcomes. Third, the authors provide a new insight into the boundary condition of humble leadership.

Managers should demonstrate more humble behaviors in their leading process to influence employees’ psychological empowerment and proactive behavior. In addition, managers should provide employees with sincere care in relation to work and life issues to produce employees’ identification with leader.

Humility is a modifiable trait that individuals can increase dramatically by practice. Humble behavior is more accessible and easier to cultivate, contrary to the stable trait of humility. Besides, our results confirmed the individuals with the virtue of humility are most likely to succeed. Thus, humble behaviors should be highly advocated and encouraged in our society.

This research extends humble leadership research by constructing and verifying the theoretical model of humble leader behavior and employee proactive behavior and by demonstrating the value of humble leader behavior in a non-Western context, and identifies the different roles of psychological empowerment and identification with leader on employee proactive behavior.

Drawing on the social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between a leader’s behavioral integrity and employee acquiescent silence. Specifically, the authors take a relational approach by introducing employee’s relational identification as the mediator. The moderating role of employee political skill, in the relationship between behavioral integrity and employee acquiescent silence, is also considered.

The data of this study encompass 913 front-line nurses from 13 university hospitals in Turkey. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the proposed model.

The results of this study support the negative effect of behavioral integrity on employee’s acquiescent silence, as well as the mediating effect of employee’s relational identification. Moreover, when the level of employee political skill is low, the relationship between behavioral integrity and acquiescent silence is strong, whereas the effect is weak when the level of political skill is high.

The findings of this study suggest that healthcare administrators’ words and deeds should be consistent while interacting with their subordinates, as it leads to positive interpersonal relationship, which, in turn, lowers employee silence. Moreover, healthcare administrators should pay more attention to the buffering role of employee political skill for those subordinates with low relational identification and higher workplace silence.

This study contributes to the literature on workplace silence by revealing the relational mechanism between behavioral integrity and employee silence. This paper also offers a practical assistance to employees in the healthcare industry and their administrators interested in building trust and high-quality manager–employee relationship, as well as lowering workplace silence.