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Volunteer organizations, where there is no employment relationship between the member and the organization, represent an interesting context in which to explore the effects of leadership and organizational commitment. We present the results from a study of 212 Canadian volunteer leaders from an international social/charitable organization. Volunteer leaders were more psychologically involved and committed to their organization than comparable leaders from a trade union. The volunteer leaders rated higher than their union counterparts in transformational leadership and socialization. Union leaders were more transactional and held stronger Marxist work beliefs. Both volunteer and union leaders reported similar humanistic views on work. There were no differences with respect to inter‐role conflict that both types of leaders experienced. Discussion of the results focuses on application of these findings to changing organizational environments and their interaction of work and non‐work issues.

As the employment marketplace changes, the meaning of leadership evolves. The question of whether emotional intelligence (EI) is required for leaders has attracted broad interest. This paper seeks to examine the role of EI and motivation to lead (MTL) in predicting leadership.

In study 1, students (n=309) first completed surveys and then, one week later (n=264), they engaged in leaderless group discussions where their levels of leader emergence were rated. In study 2, the participants were 115 students who undertook 14‐week class projects. They completed surveys including evaluations of members' leader emergence after they finished the projects.

The results suggest that participants who were high in affective‐identity MTL became leaders in leaderless discussions, while high social‐normative MTL individuals assumed leadership roles in long‐term project teams. Both studies found that use of emotions, which is a component of EI, was positively related to affective‐identity and social‐normative MTL and indirectly related to leader emergence.

This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between EI and MTL, as well as between MTL and leadership emergence.

Volume 7 Number 7 of this journal includes four useful articles. The first by Val Hammond, is entitled “Opportunity 2000: A Culture Change Approach to Equal Opportunity.”

In this chapter, we examine employee prosocial rule breaking as a response to organizations’ unfair treatment of customers. Drawing on the deontic perspective and research on third-party reactions to unfairness, we suggest employees engage in customer-directed prosocial rule breaking when they believe their organizations’ policies treat customers unfairly. Additionally, we consider employee, customer, and situational characteristics that enhance or inhibit the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational policy unfairness and customer-directed prosocial rule breaking.