MOTIVATION TO LEAD, MOTIVATION TO FOLLOW: THE …in.bgu.ac.il/en/fom/Documents/Van Dijk Kark2007.pdf · motivation to lead, motivation to follow: the role of the self-regulatory focus

MOTIVATION TO LEAD, MOTIVATION TOFOLLOW: THE ROLE OF THE SELF-

REGULATORY FOCUS IN LEADERSHIPPROCESSES

RONIT KARKBar-Ilan University

DINA VAN DIJKBen-Gurion University of the Negev

In this paper we integrate recent theories of motivation and leadership. Drawing onthe self-regulatory focus theory and on self-concept based theories of leadership, wedevelop a conceptual framework proposing that leaders’ chronic self-regulatory focus(promotion versus prevention), in conjunction with their values, influences their mo-tivation to lead and, subsequently, their leadership behavior. We further suggest thatleaders may influence the motivational self-regulatory foci of their followers, whichwill mediate different follower outcomes at the individual and group level.

In the last two decades, evidence has accumu-lated that transformational and charismaticleadership is an influential mode of leadershipthat is associated with high levels of individualand organizational performance (e.g., Dvir,Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002; Lowe, Kroeck, &Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Leadership effective-ness is critically contingent on, and often de-fined in terms of, leaders’ ability to motivatefollowers toward collective goals or a collectivemission or vision (Shamir, Zakay, Breinin, & Pop-per, 1998). Scholars who have investigatedtransformational and charismatic leadershiphave, in many cases, discussed motivationalconstructs as central components in their frame-works (e.g., Bass, 1985; Shamir, House, & Arthur,1993). In fact, researchers have explicitly definedtransformational leadership in terms of the mo-tivational effects it has on followers (Bass, 1985;Burns, 1978).

Although recent work has stressed the impor-tance of motivation to leadership processes (e.g.,Yukl, 1998), the leadership literature, in general,has paid limited attention to the underlying psy-

chological processes and mechanisms throughwhich leaders motivate followers. Recent devel-opments in motivation theory stress the impor-tance of people’s self-regulatory focus as a cen-tral component shaping their motivations andbehavior (Higgins, 1997, 1998). This theoreticaldevelopment may be helpful in attempting tounderstand the ability of leaders to influenceand motivate followers by arousing differentself-regulatory foci of followers.

Our goal here is to draw from transforma-tional and charismatic leadership theory (e.g.,Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999; Conger & Kanungo,1998) and from identity and self-concept-basedtheories of leadership (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002;Lord & Brown, 2004; Lord, Brown, & Freiberg,1999; Shamir et. al., 1993; van Knippenberg &Hogg, 2003), as well as from the theory of regu-latory focus (Higgins, 1997, 1998), to develop aconceptual framework to advance further stud-ies on the underlying mechanisms that enableleaders to behave in a transformational/charis-matic manner and to influence followers’ moti-vation and, ultimately, their behaviors and or-ganizational-related outcomes.

Thus, our aim here is twofold. First, we aim tounderstand how leaders’ self-regulatory foci(chronic and situational) and leaders’ values,which serve as strong regulatory guides(Schwartz, 1992), affect leaders’ motivation tolead (MTL) and their subsequent behavior (i.e.,

We thank Elizabeth Mannix and three anonymous AMRreviewers for their constructive and helpful feedback, andwe appreciate the comments of Ahron Bizman and LeahRabinovits on an earlier version of this paper. The Interna-tional Leadership Association awarded this paper the BestPaper Prize (runner-up) at the ILA conference in Amsterdam,2005.

� Academy of Management Review2007, Vol. 32, No. 2, 500–528.

Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may notbe copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without thecopyright holder’s express written permission. Users may print, download, or emailarticles for individual use only.

500

leadership style). Second, we aim to decipherhow different leadership behaviors affect fol-lowers’ motivation and performance by primingdifferent modes of followers’ self-regulatory foci(i.e., promotion or prevention). By focusing onboth leaders’ and followers’ motivations, we de-velop a theoretical framework that traces a fullcourse of the workings of motivation in the lead-ership process—starting from the exploration ofleaders’ inner self and the way it influencestheir leadership style and proceeding throughan exploration of how this leadership style af-fects followers’ aspects of the self and, ulti-mately, their behavior and organizational out-comes.

In the following, we define and review theliterature on transformational/charismatic lead-ership and on identity and self-concept- basedtheories of leadership, as well as the literatureon self-regulatory focus theory. We then presenta framework for understanding leaders’ and fol-lowers’ motivation, using Higgins’ (1997, 1998)theory of the self-regulatory focus. This frame-work focuses first on leaders’ motivations, ex-ploring the role of leaders’ self-regulatory fociand their value structure in determining theirMTL and the effect of these motivations on theirbehavior. We then focus on the followers’ moti-vations, discussing the role of regulatory focusas mediating between leaders’ behavior and fol-lower outcomes. We develop propositions thatdifferentiate between various leadership behav-iors that prime different aspects of followers’self-regulatory foci. Finally, we investigate var-ious possible individual- and group-level out-comes of the leaders’ activation of followers’promotion or prevention foci. We conclude withimplications and future directions for research.

SELF-IDENTITY AND LEADERSHIP THEORIES

Recently, there has been growing interest inunderstanding the influence of charismatic andtransformational leadership on followers as aprocess that is related to followers’ identity andself-concept (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002; Lord &Brown, 2004; Lord et al., 1999). However, scholarshave given little attention to the question ofwhat characterizes transformational and charis-matic leaders’ MTL and what underlying mech-anisms enable transformational leaders to af-fect followers and to arouse different types ofmotivation among their followers. In this paper

we propose that leaders’ and followers’ self-regulatory focus plays a central role in deter-mining their respective motivations.

Transformational and charismatic leadershiphas been portrayed in the literature as differentfrom transactional or monitoring types of lead-ership. While transactional and monitoringleadership has been defined as an exchange ofrewards for compliance, transformational andcharismatic leadership has been defined on thebasis of its effects—transforming the values andpriorities of followers and motivating them toperform beyond their expectations (Yukl, 1998).Bass and Avolio (1994) proposed that transfor-mational leadership behaviors include fourcomponents: inspirational motivation, idealizedinfluence, individualized consideration, and in-tellectual stimulation. Inspirational motivationincludes the creation and presentation of an at-tractive vision of the future, the use of symbolsand emotional arguments, and the demonstra-tion of optimism and enthusiasm. Idealized in-fluence includes such behaviors as sacrificingfor the benefit of the group, setting a personalexample, and demonstrating high ethical stan-dards. Individualized consideration includesproviding support, encouragement, and coach-ing to followers. Finally, intellectual stimulationinvolves behaviors that increase awareness ofproblems and challenge followers to view prob-lems from new perspectives. Previous researchhas shown that these behaviors are related toleadership effectiveness and high employeeperformance (Lowe et al., 1996).

Similarly, charismatic leadership behaviorsand attributes have also been found to be asso-ciated with effective follower performance andpositive follower attitudes (e.g., Conger & Ka-nungo, 1998; Yukl, 1998). Recent theory and re-search suggest that charismatic leaders are dis-tinguished by a number of characteristics andbehaviors. According to Ehrhart and Klein’s(2001) review of the charismatic leadership liter-ature, four leadership behaviors were repeat-edly identified as “charismatic”: (1) communi-cating high performance expectations, (2)exhibiting confidence in followers’ ability toreach goals, (3) taking calculated risks that op-pose the status quo, and (4) articulating a value-based vision of the future.

Engendering motivation among followers re-cently has been understood in terms of leader-ship theories that are focused on followers’ self-

2007 501Kark and Van Dijk

concept (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002; Lord et al.,1999; van Knippenberg & Hogg, 2003). Thisframework for understanding leadership andthe self promotes a view of the self-concept asdynamic and multifaceted (Lord & Brown, 2004).According to this conceptualization, people’sself-perception is composed of different aspects.Forces at various levels of analysis (e.g., person-ality traits, dyadic relationships, organizationalculture) can influence the cognitive accessibilityof a given self-concept, leading to the activationof a particular identity level at a given point intime (Brickson, 2000). Thus, different situationsmay bring different aspects of the self to thefore, and the self-concept may change throughexposure to various external stimuli, amongthem the influence and behavior of leaders(Kark & Shamir, 2002; Lord & Brown, 2004). Thisdynamic enables leaders to play a major role inthe activation of the various levels and aspectsof the self. Thus, leaders may affect which as-pects of the self are salient by acting in waysthat prime various self-concepts. For example,by emphasizing similarities among workers,leaders can increase activation of collectiveidentities and, at the same time, inhibit individ-ual-level identities.

Research on leadership and the self hasmostly focused on different levels of the self-concept: the relational self and the collectiveself (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002; Kark, Shamir, &Chen, 2003; Lord & Brown, 2004). In a recent ex-tensive review of the leadership and the selfliterature, van Knippenberg, van Knippenberg,De Cermer, and Hogg (2004) conclude by remark-ing that it is important to develop a theory thatconsiders different aspects of follower self-concept that have not yet been considered. Ac-cording to these authors, one promising direc-tion for future development of the theory of“leadership and the self” is Higgins’ (1987) the-ory of possible selves. In this paper we draw onHiggins’ (1997) theory of possible selves and reg-ulatory focus in order to understand leaders’MTL and their behavior, as well as to explorepossible ways in which leaders can influencefollowers, affecting the salience of followers’ dif-ferent self-regulatory foci.

In this regard, we note that our aim is not tounderstand how self-regulatory focus affectswhich particular individuals will emerge asleaders but, rather, to focus on individuals inpositions of authority and leadership roles in

order to understand the underlying motivationalprocesses that shape their behavior.

REGULATORY FOCUS THEORY

Higgins (1997, 1998) developed the regulatoryfocus theory, which describes important differ-ences in the processes through which peopleapproach pleasure and avoid pain. Self-regula-tion refers to the process by which people seekto align themselves (i.e., their behaviors andself-conceptions) with appropriate goals or stan-dards (Brockner & Higgins, 2001). Specifically,Higgins (1997) proposed that people have twobasic self-regulation systems. One regulates theachievement of rewards and focuses individu-als on promotion goals, while the other regu-lates the avoidance of punishments and focusesindividuals on prevention goals. Promotiongoals represent the “ideal self” and includehopes, wishes, and aspirations, whereas pre-vention goals represent the “ought self” and in-clude duties, obligations, and responsibilities.

Each regulatory focus has different conse-quences for perception, decision making, andemotions, as well as for individuals’ behaviorand performance (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Individu-als who operate primarily within the promotionfocus are more concerned with accomplish-ments and aspirations, are likely to be sensitiveto the presence or absence of rewards, use ap-proach as a goal attainment strategy, are morecreative in problem-solving processes, showmore willingness to take risks, and experienceemotions ranging from elation and happiness todejection (e.g., Brockner & Higgins, 2001; Crowe& Higgins, 1997; Friedman & Forster, 2001). Incontrast, individuals who operate primarilywithin the prevention focus are more concernedwith duties and obligations, are likely to be sen-sitive to the presence or absence of punish-ments, use avoidance as a goal attainmentstrategy, and experience emotions ranging fromagitation or anxiety to quiescence or calmness.The regulatory focus is determined both by sit-uational and chronic factors (Higgins, 1997,1998).

Recent studies on prevention-promotion ef-fects have suggested that the regulatory foci canbe thought of as rich syndromes that differ fromeach other on multiple variables (Kluger,Stephan, Ganzach, & Hershkovitz, 2004; Van Dijk& Kluger, 2004). The basic motivations that un-

502 AprilAcademy of Management Review

derlie these two syndromes are two conflictingmotivations: the motivation for stability versusthe motivation for change. Both motivations areimportant for survival of the human being(Levontin, Kluger, & Van Dijk, 2004). According tothis notion, the purpose of the prevention focusis to assure one’s safety and security, to main-tain routines, and to preserve the status quo. Incontrast, the purpose of the promotion focus is topursue development and change and to explorethe advantage of creative and novel behaviors.

Researchers have used regulatory focus the-ory to study goal attainment (e.g., Forster, Hig-gins, & Idson, 1998; Shah, Higgins, & Friedman,1998), decision making (e.g., Crowe & Higgins,1997), creativity (Friedman & Forster, 2001), infor-mation processing and persuasion (Aaker & Lee,2001), and feedback and motivation (Forster,Grant, Idson, & Higgins, 2001; Van Dijk & Kluger,2004). However, the theory has not been appliedto the study of leadership.

Regulatory focus theory can be thought of asone of the most comprehensive motivation the-ories, since its constructs seem to comprise aprimary element of human motivation. Support-ing physiological evidence for this premise canbe found in the work of Shah et al. (1998), whoshowed that differences between a chronic pre-vention or promotion focus are associated withasymmetrical frontal cortical activity (as mea-sured by EEG). Specifically, the promotion reg-ulatory focus is associated with greater left fron-tal activity, while the prevention regulatoryfocus is associated with greater right frontalactivity.

This work extends previous psychobiology in-vestigations (e.g., Gray, 1982; Sutton & Davidson,1997) focusing on individual differences in ap-proach-related versus avoidance-related emo-tions. In contrast to the approach-avoidance lit-erature (e.g., Gray, 1982), regulatory focus theorysuggests that there are different pathways toachieve different desired end states (Higgins,1997). Since leadership focuses on bringingabout desired end states, this theory is particu-larly appropriate for analyzing the different pos-sible outcomes of leadership influence. The useof regulatory foci and the exploration of theirrole in eliciting different leadership outcomesalso prevent us from taking a one-sided view in(over)valuing transformational leadership and apromotion focus over transactional leadershipand a prevention focus. Rather, it enables us to

understand the unique positive outcomes alongwith the possible limitations of each mode ofleadership (e.g., a promotion focus can lead to alack of attention to detail, whereas a preventionfocus can lead to greater accuracy).

We propose that the regulatory focus playstwo important roles in the leadership arena.First, the more chronic component of the regula-tory foci, in conjunction with a situational regu-latory focus, can partially determine individualMTL and leadership behavior (i.e., leadershipstyle). Second, leaders, through the manipula-tion of work context, can affect the situationalfactors of the regulatory focus, priming follow-ers’ promotion or prevention focus and shapingtheir motivations. We next present a frameworkfor understanding leaders’ and followers’ moti-vation, following Higgins’ (1997, 1998) theory ofthe self-regulatory focus.

LEADERS’ MOTIVATIONS AND THEIREFFECTS ON LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR

In this section we explore the relationshipsbetween determinants of leaders’ motivations(i.e., leaders’ regulatory focus, values, andMTL) and their leadership behavior. We firstexplore the relationship between leaders’ val-ues and their regulatory focus. We then sug-gest how these variables affect leaders’ MTL.We conclude this section by considering howleaders’ MTL can mediate the relationshipsbetween the regulatory focus and values andbetween leaders’ behaviors. We acknowledgethat other determinants may also mediate thisrelationship (e.g., emotions), but we focus onthe MTL since our major interest here is todecipher the motivational processes underly-ing leadership processes. The framework pro-posed in this section is shown in Figure 1 andsummarized in Table 1.

The Relationship Between Leaders’ Values andLeaders’ Chronic Regulatory Focus

Individuals, including leaders, hold differentvalues and give prominence to certain values overothers. Various researchers have asserted that thevalues held by leaders are related to their behav-iors and effectiveness (Thomas, Dickson, & Bliese,2001). Ghiselli’s (1968) review of earlier researchshowed a consistent relationship between the per-sonal values of managers and several criteria of


managerial effectiveness. More recent work byTrow and Smith (1983) showed that leaders holdthe values of the groups they lead more strongly

than do the followers in those groups so that fol-lowers have a model on which they can focus andto which they can aspire.

FIGURE 1Leaders’ Motivation to Lead As Mediating Among Leaders’ Regulatory Focus, Values, and

Leadership Behavior

aP5—the mediation hypothesis.

TABLE 1The Effect of Leaders’ Motivations on Leadership Behavior

Regulatory Focus Leaders’ ValuesLeaders’ Motivationto Lead

Work ContextCharacteristicsa

Leaders’ Behaviors(Leadership Style)

Promotion Openness to change Affective • Dynamic • Transformational(self-direction and • Change oriented • Charismaticstimulation) • Organic

• Clan mode ofgovernance

Prevention Conservation Social normative • Stable • Monitoring(safety, • Noncreative • Transactional (managementconformity, and • Mechanistic by exception active)tradition) • Bureaucratic

a These characteristics are related to the situational self-regulatory focus.


Values and identities are internal to leadersand can be viewed as relatively enduring crite-ria used in generating and evaluating behavior,cognitions, and affect (Lord & Brown, 2001). Val-ues serve as strong regulatory guides and playan important role in influencing leaders’ andsubordinates’ motivational, affective, and cogni-tive processes (Lord & Brown, 2001). Schwartzdefines values as “desirable states, objects,goals, or behaviors transcending specific situa-tions and applied as normative standards tojudge and to choose among alternative modes ofbehavior” (1992: 2). This definition of values im-plies that they can affect leaders’ MTL, as wellas their behavior (i.e., leadership style), two ef-fects we discuss in this paper. Although valuesare likely to be central in defining who willbecome a charismatic/transformational leader,and in which ways their followers will be af-fected, this issue has not been widely re-searched. In our discussion of leadership andmotivation, we assert that values will have aneffect—in relation to and in conjunction with theregulatory focus—on shaping leaders’ motiva-tions.

There is evidence that values show a clearpattern of organization across different nationalcultures (e.g., Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000; Schwartz,1999). Schwartz (1992) presented a value mapwith ten values organized as a circle: hedonism,achievement, power, security, conformity, tradi-tion, benevolence, universalism, self-direction,and stimulation. The value circle is organizedby two sets of higher-order values that are inconflict: change versus conservation (self-direction and stimulation versus security, con-formity, and tradition) and self-enhancementversus self-transcendence (power, achievement,and hedonism versus benevolence and univer-salism).

In recent work on leadership, self, and values,Lord and Brown (2001) focused on the latter di-mension of self-enhancement versus self-transcendence, which corresponds to indepen-dent versus interdependent views of the self(Markus & Kitayama, 1991) and to individual ver-sus collective identities (Lord & Brown, 2001).Here we wish to focus on the second higher-level dimension of values, which has receivedlimited attention in the study of leadership andvalues—that of openness to change versus con-servation. This dimension of values would ap-pear to be related to the prevention-promotion

focus. Recently, Kluger et al. (2004) suggestedthat the structure of human values is similar tothe structure of human motivation. Specifically,Kluger argues that the conservation–opennessto change dimension of values is equivalent tothe security–self-actualization dimension ofneeds and to the prevention-promotion foci.There is also some empirical evidence (e.g.,Liberman, Idson, Camacho, & Higgins, 1999)showing that prevention-promotion regulatoryfoci are connected to values of conservation–openness to change. Specifically, Liberman etal. (1999) show that individuals in a preventionfocus are more inclined than individuals in apromotion focus to resume an interrupted taskthan do a substitute task, and they exhibit areluctance to exchange currently or previouslypossessed objects. Consistent with Liberman’sfindings, Van Dijk and Kluger (2004) show thatpeople who hold security and conformity valuesare more motivated by negative feedback (a pat-tern that characterizes prevention-focused peo-ple), whereas people who hold self-directionand stimulation values are more motivated bypositive feedback (a pattern that characterizespromotion-focused people).

In conclusion, the difference between preven-tion and promotion chronic foci can emerge in aperson’s values profile. Specifically, people (i.e.,leaders) who hold security, tradition, and con-formity values tend to have a chronic preventionfocus, whereas people who hold self-directionand stimulation values tend to have a chronicpromotion focus. Based on the relationships sug-gested between values and regulatory focus,Van Dijk and Kluger (2004) have used values asa proxy measure of the chronic regulatory focus.Hence, we could expect to find a relationshipbetween leaders’ values and their regulatoryfocus in a manner in which leaders’ values andtheir self-regulatory focus are likely to have aneffect on leaders’ motivation and their subse-quent behavior.

Proposition 1: A relationship will befound between leaders’ chronic regu-latory focus and their values.

Proposition 1a: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ promo-tion focus and values of openness tochange (self-direction and stimula-tion).


Proposition 1b: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ pre-vention focus and values of conserva-tion (safety, conformity, and tradition).

The Effect of the Chronic Regulatory FocusSystem on MTL

The importance of individual differences hasbeen recognized by researchers as a centralcomponent in their attempts to explain leader-ship behavior (e.g., House & Howell, 1992; Lord &Hall, 1992). As a part of this stream, Chan andhis coauthors (Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Chan,Rounds, & Drasgow, 2000) have developed a con-struct for understanding individuals’ MTL. Ac-cording to their conception, noncognitive abilityconstructs such as personality and values relateto leader behaviors through the individual’sMTL, which, in turn, affects the individual’s par-ticipation in leadership roles and activities. Asthey state, “It is through such activities that theindividual acquires the social skills and knowl-edge required for leading . . . and possibly his orher leadership style” (Chan & Drasgow, 2001:481).

Chan and Drasgow (2001) define MTL as anindividual-differences construct that affects thedecision of individuals aspiring to leadershiproles; leaders’ decisions to assume leadershiptraining, roles, and responsibilities; their persis-tence as leaders; and the extent of their efforts tolead. MTL refers to a type of motivation, ratherthan the amount or level of motivation. One ofthese authors’ key assumptions is that individ-ual differences in MTL are relatively stable overtime, although they can change to some extentin a learning process as leaders acquire expe-rience and training.

According to Chan and Drasgow’s definitionand findings, there are three related but distinctcomponents underlying individual differencesin MTL. These include, first, affective MTL, inwhich individuals are motivated to lead be-cause they like to lead others. People who scorehigh on this dimension enjoy leading and seethemselves as leaders. The second motivationalcomponent is social normative MTL, which im-plies leading out of a sense of duty or responsi-bility. Individuals scoring high on the social nor-mative MTL dimension are motivated by a senseof social duty and obligation. The third compo-nent is noncalculative MTL, which is a motiva-

tion of individuals who do not take into accountthe costs of leading relative to the benefits. Thislast component is based on the assumption thatleadership usually involves certain responsibil-ities or costs, and the less calculative one isabout leading others, the less one would wish toavoid leadership roles.

In their attempts to define and understand thenew concept of MTL, Chan and Drasgow (2001)studied the antecedents of MTL. They proposevarious constructs as possible antecedents toMTL, among them personality constructs, gen-eral cognitive ability, and sociocultural values,as well as leadership experience and leader-ship self-efficacy. Here we suggest another re-lated construct—namely, the self-regulatory fo-cus (e.g., Higgins, 1998)—as a possibleantecedent to MTL.

The self-regulatory focus is a fundamentalmotivational principle influencing multiple hu-man activities (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Therefore, itis reasonable to assume that, among leaders, amore domain-specific motivation, leaders’ MTL,is likely to be affected by this basic motivationalmechanism. At first glance, it seems that MTL isderived from the promotion system, becauseMTL stems from the desire to make change, toinfluence, and to achieve power or success.However, a careful examination of MTL revealsa more complex picture, suggesting that MTLcould stem from various motives and, in someinstances, could be aroused by the wish to dowhat “one ought to do,” to fulfill the expecta-tions of others, or to avoid criticism. Followingthe self-regulatory focus theory, it can be as-serted that different regulatory foci might bemanifested in different types of MTL. Thus, lead-ers characterized by different chronic regulatoryfoci are likely to be driven to lead by differentunderlying types of motivations.

Promotion-focused individuals are motivatedmainly by internal motives like growth, devel-opment, and self-actualization. They seek to dothings because they want to, not because theyhave to (Van Dijk & Kluger, 2004), and they wishto actualize their ideal self (aspirations andhopes). Therefore, in the context of MTL, they aremore likely to be characterized by an affectiveMTL—namely, leading out of enjoyment.

Prevention-focused individuals, in contrast,are motivated mainly by external motives likesocial pressures, obligations, and social respon-sibilities (Aaker & Lee, 2001). They do things out


of neccessity, because they have to. Therefore,in terms of their MTL, they are more likely to becharacterized by the social normative MTL.

Noncalculative MTL seems to be unrelated tothe prevention-promotion modes of motivation.It is possible that it relates to values of benevo-lence, altruism, or collectivism. The willingnessto lead without calculations of cost can be influ-enced either by a promotional motive (i.e., be-cause one truly wants to lead) or by a preventionmotive (i.e., because one feels obligated to lead).Therefore, we will not specify a proposition re-garding the association between noncalculativeMTL and regulatory focus. Hence, we suggestthe following propositions.

Proposition 2: The type of MTL amongleaders and individuals in positions ofauthority will be related to (and pos-sibly determined by) their regulatoryfocus.

Proposition 2a: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ promo-tion focus and affective MTL.

Proposition 2b: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ pre-vention focus and normative socialMTL.

The Effect of Leaders’ Values on MTL

Values are conceptualized as being latentconstructs involved in evaluating activities oroutcomes—as having a general nature, ratherthan a person-, object-, or task-specific nature(Lord & Brown, 2001; Roe & Ester, 1999). Maio andOlson (1998), for example, conclude that valuesare truisms that lack cognitive support and canbe applied in an automatic unquestioned man-ner, suggesting that values reflect fundamental,rather than surface, differences among individ-uals (Schein, 1992). MTL, however, has a morefocused, task-specific nature.

According to Chan and Drasgow (2001), non-cognitive ability constructs such as personalityand values relate to leader behaviors throughthe individual’s domain-specific MTL. Thus,they suggest that values are distal antecedentsto MTL. Chan and Drasgow (2001) measuredtheir participants’ values using a conceptualiza-tion of values and a measurement designed bySingelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, and Gelfand (1995),

which focuses on two fundamental dimensionsof social behavior: individualism versus collec-tivism and vertical or hierarchical versus hori-zontal aspects of social behavior. According tothis conceptualization, people high in horizontalindividualism can be assumed to value theirindividuality and uniqueness, whereas peoplehigh in vertical individualism tend to beachievement oriented and competitive. In con-trast, high vertical collectivism people acceptsocial hierarchies and tend to subordinate theirgoals to the majority, whereas high horizontalcollectivism people value collective harmonyand equality (Chan et al., 2000). Using this con-ceptualization of values, Chan and Drasgow(2001) show that people who score high on thedimension of affective MTL value competitionand achievement (i.e., are vertical individual-ists), and individuals high on the social norma-tive MTL dimension value social hierarchies(i.e., vertical collectivists) yet reject social equal-ity (i.e., score low on horizontal collectivism).

In the theoretical framework we develop inthis paper, we draw on the value theory ofSchwartz (1992, 1999). According to this concep-tion, we focus on the dimension of openness tochange versus conservation. Considering thedifferent aspects of MTL in conjunction with thisdimension of values, it seems reasonable to as-sert that leaders motivated to lead by the affec-tive MTL, who value competition and achieve-ment, will also hold values of self-direction andstimulation, scoring high on openness tochange. In contrast, leaders who are motivatedby the social normative MTL, who tend to valuesocial hierarchies and to subordinate theirgoals to the majority or to authorities, are morelikely to hold values of conservation (i.e., safety,conformity, and tradition). Thus, we hypothesizethe following.

Proposition 3: A relationship will befound between leaders’ values andtheir MTL.

Proposition 3a: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ valuesof openness to change (self-directionand stimulation) and affective MTL.

Proposition 3b: A positive relationshipwill be found between leaders’ valuesof conservatism (safety, conformity,


and tradition) and social normativeMTL.

The Relationship Among Leadership Style,Chronic Regulatory Focus, and Values, and theRole of MTL As a Mediator of ThisRelationship

Recently, researchers who have dealt with theprevention-promotion focus have mentioned thepossible connection between these two motiva-tions and leadership (Brockner & Higgins, 2001;Van Dijk & Kluger, 2004). It seems that the con-cern of those characterized by a promotion focuswith change, and with the pursuit of ideals andaspirations, could be related to charismatic ortransformational leadership, whereas the con-cern of prevention-focused people with stability,and with meeting obligation and duties, couldbe related to monitoring or transactional lead-ership. The literature on the full-range leader-ship model distinguishes among three leader-ship styles: transformational, transactional, andlaissez-faire (Avolio et al., 1999; Bass & Avolio,1994). In this paper we focus on transformationaland charismatic leadership versus monitoringand transactional leadership.

Theories of transformational and charismaticleadership suggest that there is a significantrelationship among leadership, organizationalchange, and entrepreneurship. Transforma-tional and charismatic leaders have been oftenassociated with an innovation and change ori-entation (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998;House, 1977; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Howell &Higgins, 1990). Charismatic leaders, accordingto Conger and Kanungo, “are by nature entre-preneurial and change oriented” (1998: 133).Transformational leadership, as is evident fromits name, has been broadly defined as resultingin the transformation of individual followers orof entire organizations (Yukl, 1998).

According to the behaviors specified above,we suggest that transformational and charis-matic leaders may be motivated by a promotionfocus, which is more concerned with accom-plishments and aspirations. Individuals whoare promotion focused show more willingness totake risks, use approach as a behavioral strat-egy, and are more likely to explore the advan-tage of novel directions of behaviors. This pro-motion focus, which we asserted above to berelated to values of openness to change, is likely

to be evident in behaviors that characterizetransformational and charismatic leaders (e.g.,envision a hopeful and different future, leadchanges, question traditional ways of thinking,etc.).

Furthermore, we assert that the relationshipamong a promotion focus, values of openness tochange, and leadership behavior (i.e., transfor-mational and/or charismatic leadership) islikely to be mediated by an affective MTL. Thus,a person who is promotion focused will be mo-tivated to lead out of his or her desire to lead,enjoyment and pleasure in leading, and a needfor personal development and growth (i.e., affec-tive MTL). Consequently, he or she will present atransformational/charismatic leadership style(for the full mediation model, see Figure 1). Re-search on leadership personality also providessome reason to believe that affective MTLamong leaders will be related to transforma-tional and charismatic behaviors. More specifi-cally, Chan and Drasgow (2001) found that ex-traverted people like to lead and see themselvesas having leadership qualities (affective MTL),whereas studies on transformational and char-ismatic leadership show that such leadershipbehaviors are also positively associated withextraversion (e.g., Bono & Judge, 2004; Judge &Bono, 2000; Lim & Ployhart, 2004). This supportsour assertion that it is likely that leaders moti-vated by an affective MTL will employ a trans-formational or charismatic style.

Transactional leadership is a second majorstyle identified in the literature. It involves anexchange process between the leader and thefollowers, intended to increase followers’ com-pliance to the leader and to the organizationalrules (Yukl, 1998). Leaders who maintain tightlogistical control by emphasizing compliancewith regulations, by checking on the progressand quality of work, and by evaluating the per-formance of individuals and the work unit willrate high in transactional and monitoring be-haviors (Quinn, 1988; Spreitzer, Janasz, & Quinn,1999).

Transactional and monitoring behaviors areoften linked to the concept of “management” (incontrast to “leadership”). In the controversy inthe literature over how to distinguish managersfrom leaders, researchers suggest that manage-ment is stability oriented, whereas leadership isinnovation oriented (e.g., Bennis & Nanus, 1985;Yukl, 1998; Zaleznik, 1977). Monitoring implies


behaviors aimed at controlling others in order topreserve stability in the workplace (Bass, 1985;Kotter, 1990) or, at best, advocacy of incrementalchanges to organizational systems in an effort tomake the existing processes more efficient. Eyaland Kark (2004) found that monitoring leader-ship (mostly with regard to the transactionalleadership component of management by ex-ception active) is related to moderate to lowlevels of leaders’ entrepreneurship.

With these assumptions in mind, we arguethat monitoring or transactional leadership isrelated to the prevention focus, which is moreconcerned with deviations, details, duties andobligations, safety and security, and the main-tenance of routines and the status quo. Somesupport for this proposition comes from prelim-inary findings from an empirical study of 153managers (Friman, 2001), testing the relation-ship between different leadership behaviorsand Schwartz’s theory of values. According tothis study, transactional leadership is related tovalues of security and conformity. Transforma-tional leadership was found to be negativelyrelated to values of tradition. Furthermore, wesuggest that prevention-focused individualswill be motivated to lead out of a sense of dutyor responsibility and based on reasoning of con-formity and need for security (i.e., social norma-tive MTL). This social normative MTL will sub-sequently affect leaders’ behaviors and will beevident in a monitoring leadership style. Thus,we hypothesize that social normative MTL willmediate the relationship among leaders’ pre-vention focus, values of conservation, and mon-itoring/transactional behaviors.

Proposition 4: A relationship will befound between (1) leaders’ regulatoryfocus and their leadership behaviorsand (2) leaders’ values and their lead-ership behaviors.

Proposition 4a: A positive relationshipwill be found between (1) leaders’ pro-motion focus and a transformational/charismatic leadership style and (2)leaders’ values of openness to changeand a transformational/charismaticleadership style.

Proposition 4b: A positive relationshipwill be found between (1) leaders’ pre-vention focus and a transactional/

monitoring leadership style and (2)leaders’ values of conservation and atransactional/monitoring leadershipstyle.

Based on all of the hypotheses above, the fullmediation model, as presented in Figure 1 andTable 1, suggests the following.

Proposition 5: Leaders’ MTL will medi-ate the relationship between (1) lead-ers’ regulatory focus and leaders’ be-haviors and (2) leaders’ values andleaders’ behaviors.

Proposition 5a: Leaders’ affective MTLwill mediate the relationship between(1) leaders’ promotion focus and acharismatic/transformational leader-ship style and (2) leaders’ values ofopenness to change and a charismat-ic/transformational leadership style.

Proposition 5b: Leaders’ social norma-tive MTL will mediate the relationshipbetween (1) leaders’ prevention focusand a transactional/monitoring lead-ership style and (2) leaders’ values ofconservation and a transactional/monitoring leadership style.

Situational Regulatory Focus As a Moderatorof the Relationship Between Leaders’ ChronicRegulatory Focus and Their Behavior

Above, we discussed the effect of a leader’schronic regulatory focus (and other personal at-tributes—values and MTL) on the leadershipstyle displayed by the leader. According to reg-ulatory focus theory, the behavior of individualsis affected by the chronic and the situationalregulatory foci simultaneously (Shah et al.,1998). Therefore, in this section we further ex-plore the effect of leaders’ situational self-regulatory focus on leadership style, contendingthat the relationship between the personal char-acteristics of a leader (i.e., chronic regulatoryfocus) and leadership style could be moderatedby the leader’s situational regulatory focus.

Findings from regulatory focus theory showthat contextual cues can affect an individual’ssituational regulatory focus (e.g., the framing ofthe rewards system, the priming of hopes orduties; Higgins, 2000). In the case of leadership,this implies that leaders’ situational regulatory


focus is likely to be affected by the organization-al context and environment. According to vari-ous writers in the leadership field (e.g., Hunt,1991; Pawar & Eastman, 1997; Shamir & Howell,1999; Tosi, 1991), the macro-organizational leveland the organizational context play importantroles in determining leadership processes. Herewe offer an explanation as to the psychologicalmechanism that underlies the influence of theorganizational context on leadership style. Wecontend that different characteristics of the or-ganizational context affect individuals’ leader-ship style because they promote the salience ofleaders’ situational prevention or promotion fo-cus. Thus, the different regulatory foci that areprimed (by the organizational context) can par-tially determine leadership style.

Shamir and Howell (1999) offer a variety ofcontextual characteristics that can affect theemergence of charismatic and transformationalleadership: dynamic organizational environ-ments (that require and enable the introductionof new strategies, markets, products, and tech-nologies), ambiguity (when performance goalsare not clarified and extrinsic rewards cannotbe strongly linked to performance), organic or-ganizations (loosely structured, flexible and in-novative, less formalized, and with few hierar-chical distinctions), and a clan mode ofgovernance (the use of shared values, beliefs,and commitments to control behavior). In com-parison, exchange-based leadership (e.g., trans-actional and monitoring leadership), which re-lies on clear specification of duties and rewards,is more likely to emerge in stable environmentsoperating under routine and standardized con-ditions, in mechanistic organizations (organiza-tions that tend to be strictly controlled, highlyformalized, and mechanized), and in bureau-cratic organizations, which have elaboraterules, policies, and a hierarchical distribution ofauthority, status, and rewards (for reviews, seePawar & Eastman, 1997, and Shamir & Howell,1999).

Drawing on self-regulatory focus theory andapplying it to the leadership field enables us tofurther develop the works presented above (e.g.,Pawar & Eastman, 1997; Shamir & Howell, 1999)and to explain why, in certain environments,leaders tend to display a charismatic or trans-formational leadership style and tend to displaya monitoring or transactional leadership style inothers. We contend that organizational settings

that are dynamic, change oriented, organic, andcharacterized by a clan mode of governanceform a promotion-oriented context and, thus, arelikely to prime leaders’ situational promotionfocus. Because of the facilitation of a promotionfocus among leaders, they are more likely todisplay charismatic or transformational behav-iors. In contrast, organizational environmentsand structures that are characterized by a mech-anistic and bureaucratic structure that stressesthe importance of rules, regulations, stability,and standardization form a prevention-orientedcontext. Such a work context is likely to elicitleaders’ situational prevention focus, thus en-hancing their tendency to use exchange-basedleadership behaviors, leading to the enactmentof a transactional or monitoring leadershipstyle.

Shah et al. (1998) found that greater person-environment regulatory fit heightens work moti-vation, meaning that congruence between thechronic and the situational regulatory focusleads to better performance. They found thatchronic prevention is positively correlated withperformance under prevention-induced situa-tions, and negatively correlated with perfor-mance under promotion-induced situations.These findings suggest that the situational andchronic regulatory foci interact in their effect onbehavior such that the positive relation betweenleaders’ promotion focus and their transforma-tional or charismatic style will increase underan organizational context that elicits a promo-tion focus. In addition, the positive relation be-tween the prevention focus and leaders’ trans-actional or monitoring style will increase underan organizational context that induces preven-tion focus. Based on the above, we hypothesizethe following.

Proposition 6: Organizational contextcharacteristics will elicit leaders’ situ-ational regulatory focus, moderatingthe effect of the leaders’ chronic self-regulatory focus on their leadershipstyle.

Proposition 6a: Organizational con-texts that are dynamic, change ori-ented, organic, and characterized by aclan mode of governance will elicitleaders’ situational promotion focus.


Proposition 6b: Organizational con-texts that are stable, noncreative,mechanistic, and bureaucratic willelicit leaders’ situational preventionfocus.

Proposition 6c: Congruence betweenthe situational regulatory focus elic-ited by the organizational context andthe leaders’ chronic regulatory focuswill moderate the relationship be-tween the chronic self-regulatory fo-cus and leadership style, leading to astronger relationship between lead-ers’ self-regulatory focus and leader-ship behavior.

It should be further noted that the situationalregulatory focus can also affect the relationshipbetween MTL and the enacted leadership styleby moderating the effect of MTL on the dis-played behavior.

FOLLOWERS’ MOTIVATION: PRIMINGFOLLOWERS’ REGULATORY FOCUS

There is accumulating evidence that transfor-mational and charismatic leadership substan-tially influences employee motivation and per-formance very differently from transactionaland monitoring leadership (e.g., Dvir et al., 2002;Lowe et al., 1996). However, only recently havetransformational and charismatic leadership re-searchers attempted to reveal the processes bywhich transformational leadership exerts its in-fluence on followers. Here we suggest that oneof the mechanisms by which transformationaland/or charismatic leaders exert their influenceon followers, and differ from transactionaland/or monitoring leaders, is by eliciting a pro-motion focus among their followers.

Priming Followers’ Regulatory Focus at theIndividual Level

Following the self-concept-based motiva-tional theory of charismatic leadership (Shamiret al., 1993, 1998) and the followers’ levels ofself-concept theory (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002;Lord & Brown, 2004; van Knippenberg & Hogg,2003), scholars have proposed that leaders exerttheir effects by strongly engaging different as-pects of self-concept. According to these theo-ries, the self is regarded as dynamic in nature,

meaning that the content of the self-concept isdependent partially on the situation, context,and external cues. As such, the self may be seenas a collection of more modular processingstructures (self-schemas) that are elicited in dif-ferent contexts and have specific cognitive, af-fective, and behavioral consequences on the in-dividual (e.g., Lord et al., 1999). One aspect offollowers’ self-concept that has barely receivedattention in the research field of leadership isthe self-regulatory focus.

Brockner and Higgins (2001) first suggestedthat leaders, as “makers of meaning,” may in-fluence followers’ regulatory focus through theuse of language and symbols. The more the rhet-oric of leaders focuses on ideals, the more likelyfollowers’ promotion focus will be activated. Themore the rhetoric focuses on responsibilities, ob-ligations, and accuracy, the more likely follow-ers will adopt a prevention focus. This reason-ing suggests that transformational andcharismatic leaders may elicit more of a promo-tion focus in their followers, whereas transac-tional and monitoring leaders may elicit more ofa prevention focus in their followers.

Transformational and charismatic leaderspersuade their followers through inspirationaland visionary messages (e.g., Burns, 1978; Con-ger & Kanungo, 1988; Gardner & Avolio, 1998).One way they do so is by appealing to theirfollowers’ higher values, ideological goals, andideal notions of how the organization, society, orworld could be. Another way is by engaging inimage-based rhetoric, motivating followers by“painting” a verbal picture of what can ideallybe accomplished with their help (e.g., Emrich,Brower, Feldman, & Garland, 2001). When lead-ers’ behavior focuses followers’ attention on theideal self, followers are likely to have a promo-tion focus. That is, they concentrate on whatthey aspire to be as they work on tasks theywant to work on, attempting to achieve goalsthat they perceive they have set for themselves.

A promotion focus is also primed through theframing of the situation in terms of gain or non-gain. Transformational and charismatic leaderstend to articulate what the followers and theorganization can gain and what they can de-velop into. Furthermore, the promotion focus canbe activated by focusing on nurturance needs(Higgins, 1998). Thus, transformational leaders,who bring forth the behavioral component of“individualized consideration” and who nurture


the growth and development of their followers(e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002), are likely to elicit apromotion focus among their followers. Last,leaders can influence their followers’ regulatoryfoci by providing a behavioral role model.Shamir et al. (1993) posit role modeling as one ofthe major processes by which charismatic lead-ers influence followers. Role modeling implies aprocess by which followers mold their beliefs,feelings, and behavior according to those of theleader. Thus, if transformational and charis-matic behaviors mirror the promotion focus thatis likely to characterize these leaders (see Prop-osition 4a), they will provide a role model forpromotion. This is likely to elicit a promotionfocus among their followers.

Transactional and monitoring leaders, how-ever, are more practical and less idealistic.Their work is centered more on the implementa-tion of change and not as much on the articula-tion or formulation of change. Monitoring im-plies behaviors aimed at controlling others inorder to preserve stability and security in theworkplace (Bass, 1985; Kotter, 1990) or, at best,advocacy of incremental changes to organiza-tional systems in an effort to make the existingprocesses more efficient (e.g., Eyal & Kark, 2004).In essence, transactional and monitoring lead-ers clarify to their followers what they need todo in order to enable the task to move in acertain decided direction, and how to detect de-viations.

To the extent that followers perceive theirwork in terms of responsibilities, obligations, orthings they ought to do, they are likely to focuson their ought self. This implies that they will beattuned to what others (i.e., the leader) expectthem to be, as they work on tasks they are sup-posed to, or forced to, work on. Leaders whodraw followers’ attention to these aspects ofwork are likely to elicit the adoption of a pre-vention focus (Brockner & Higgins, 2001).

Furthermore, monitoring leaders (e.g., leadersapplying the styles of management-by-excep-tion) are active mostly when followers are notworking as required and there are mishaps, ex-ceptions, and irregularities. Thus, the leaderspoint to possible organizational losses and arelikely to frame the situation in terms of loss ornonloss. In such cases they can react towardtheir followers in a negative or punishing man-ner (Bass & Avolio, 1994). This behavior is likelyto put followers in a mode in which they concen-

trate on security needs, strong obligations, andavoidance of failure. This framing is likely toprime followers’ prevention focus. Moreover, ifleaders who apply a transactional and monitor-ing leadership style are motivated by a self-regulatory prevention focus (see Proposition 4b),they are likely to act in ways that highlight aprevention mode (e.g., focus in their job on theirresponsibilities, regulations, deadlines, possi-ble losses). Thus, they provide their followerswith a preventive role model. This, in turn, canelicit a prevention focus among their followers.

Therefore, we propose that different leader-ship behaviors can prime different self-regula-tory foci among followers in the following man-ner.

Proposition 7: Leadership behaviorswill prime followers’ regulatory focus.

Proposition 7a: Charismatic and trans-formational leadership will prime fol-lowers’ promotion motivational focus.

Proposition 7b: Monitoring and trans-actional leadership will prime follow-ers’ prevention motivational focus.

Priming Followers’ Regulatory Focus at theGroup Level

Apart from leaders’ influence on the motiva-tion of individual followers, it is important tonote that leaders are likely to influence motiva-tions at the group and organizational levels.Recent interest in levels of leadership and lev-els of analysis has raised the issue of whethertransformational and charismatic leadership isprimarily a group-level phenomenon or a dyadicphenomenon. According to Yukl (1998), transfor-mational leadership theories tend to describeleadership using a dyadic perspective. Withinthis perspective, it can be seen that some leaderbehaviors (e.g., individualized consideration)are directed toward individual followers andemphasize the distinctiveness of each follower,as well as the unique relationship between theleader and the individual follower (e.g., Danse-reau et al., 1998; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Thesebehaviors are likely to affect followers at thedyadic level.

In contrast, however, there are leader behav-iors that represent “ambient” behaviors directedtoward the entire group of followers. These be-


haviors do not differentiate between followers,portraying them as a large collective or group.Therefore, these behaviors are likely to operateat the group or unit level (Kark & Shamir, 2002).Within the conceptual framework suggested inthis paper, we maintain that a leadership stylethat primes a promotion or prevention focusamong followers can also be evident at thegroup level. The effects at the group level are ofinterest since they can lead to important out-comes at the organizational level.

Initial support for the effect of prevention/promotion on group level comes from the regu-latory focus literature. Levine, Higgins, and Choi(1998) investigated how groups develop sharedreality concerning the strategic orientations ofrisk and conservatism. They found that groupstrategies orientation for solving a problem hadconverged as a result of priming the promotionor prevention focus. This convergence was asso-ciated with a directional bias in strategic orien-tation (i.e., promotion groups took more work-associated risks than prevention groups). Thisfinding suggests that the situational regulatoryfocus affects behavior not only at the individuallevel but also at the group level.

Although the self-regulatory focus is a psy-chological characteristic of the individual fol-lower, we believe that there are different waysin which leaders can elicit a shared regulatoryfocus among a group of followers (i.e., the work-group). First, since a leader is often seen as arepresentative character who embodies a unit’sidentity and values (Shamir et al., 1998), certainbehaviors of leaders may increase not only theregulatory focus of a limited number of individ-uals but can influence the group as a whole.Thus, a leader behaving in a transformational(or transactional) manner, enacting a promotion(or prevention) orientation, can provide thegroup as a whole with an emulative role modelfor promotion (or prevention).

Furthermore, various researchers assert thatleaders’ (e.g., CEOs’) personalities and relatedbehaviors play a major role in determining thegroup dynamics among their group of followers(e.g., top management teams, organizationalunits, organizations; e.g., Hambrick & Finkel-stein, 1987; Peterson, Smith, Martorana, &Owens, 2003). Kets de Vries and associates (Ketsde Vries, 1984; Miller, Kets de Vries, & Toulouse,1982) have suggested that the executive’s per-sonality pervades many aspects of the organi-

zation, affecting its strategy, structure, and cul-ture. They contend, for instance, that depressiveexecutives will breed cultures of helplessness.Thus, if transformational and charismatic lead-ers are characterized by a chronic promotionfocus (as suggested in Proposition 4a), this per-sonal characteristic of the leader is likely toinfluence not only the individual followers butalso possibly the group and organizationallevel, leading to the formation of a climate in thegroup, unit, or organization that is focused onpromotion. In contrast, a transactional and mon-itoring leader, characterized by a prevention fo-cus, is likely to determine different types ofgroup dynamics and related outcomes.

Second, leaders can give rise to a promotionor prevention focus at the group level by engag-ing in various symbolic, verbal, and performa-tive acts aimed at the collective. A skillful use ofslogans and symbols (e.g., flags, tags, logos),rituals (e.g., singing the organizational songs),labels, metaphors, and ceremonies (Ashforth &Mael, 1989; Shamir et al., 1998) and the creationof attractive organizational images (Dutton,Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994) can affect not onlythe individual but also the shared group regu-latory orientation. A leader may enhance theregulatory foci at the group level by emphasiz-ing common ground, stressing shared valuesand ideology, and connecting followers’ per-sonal goals to the group’s interests. If this isdone stressing a promotion focus (e.g., framingchange as a desired challenge) or using a pre-vention focus (e.g., focusing on ceremonies thathighlight tradition and conformity), it is likelythat the relevant regulatory focus will be en-hanced among the group of followers.

Another major mechanism by which a leadercan affect motivational foci at the group level isthrough leader-follower emotional contagionprocesses. Various researchers have describedhow leaders, by creating a certain emotionalenvironment, can affect followers (e.g., Dasbor-ough & Ashkanasy, 2003; Goleman, Boyatzis, &McKee, 2002). Fredrickson (2003) suggests thatthe emotions expressed by leaders may be es-pecially contagious because of their position ofpower. Several recent empirical studies haveexamined the mood contagion process in work-groups, documenting the spread of emotionsfrom leaders to followers and among groupmembers (e.g., Barsade, 2002; Cherulnik et al.,2001). This may imply that leaders exhibiting


emotions that have been found to relate to apromotion focus (i.e., happiness and dejection)may affect the transfer of emotions and prime apromotion focus, whereas leaders expressingemotions of quiescence or anxiety may prime aprevention focus among group members. Theseprocesses may be reinforced at the group levelowing to group emotional contagion processes(Barsade, 2002), as well as more general pro-cesses of social contagion among followers(Meindl, 1990).

Last, leaders can also give rise to followers’shared sense of regulatory foci at the grouplevel by shaping the work context (e.g., choice oftasks for the workgroup, task structure, alloca-tion of rewards). For example, leaders canchoose to reward followers’ innovative ideas orfollowers’ conformity or loyalty to the organiza-tion. Each mode of reward is likely to elicit at thegroup level a different shared motivational ori-entation (i.e., promotion versus prevention, ac-cordingly). Thus we reinforce Proposition 7(aand b) by further stressing the following.

Proposition 8: Leadership behaviorswill prime a shared regulatory focusorientation among workgroup mem-bers.

Proposition 8a: Charismatic and trans-formational leadership will prime ashared promotion motivational orien-tation among members of the work-group.

Proposition 8b: Monitoring and trans-actional leadership will prime ashared prevention motivational orien-tation among members of the work-group.

OUTCOMES OF PRIMING FOLLOWERS’PREVENTION OR PROMOTION FOCUS

Different levels of possible selves and differ-ent regulatory foci are important because theyhave perceptual, motivational, emotional, andbehavioral consequences (e.g., Brockner & Hig-gins, 2001; Crowe & Higgins, 1997; Forster, Hig-gins, & Idson, 2003; Higgins, 1997, 1998; Libermanet al., 1999). As Brewer postulates, “When thedefinition of self changes, the meaning of self-interest and self-serving motivations alsochanges significantly” (1991: 476). Transforma-

tional and charismatic leadership theory sug-gests that such leadership is likely to result in awide range of outcomes that differ from the out-comes of transactional and monitoring leader-ship. In this section we suggest that these out-comes are mediated by identity shifts and thepriming of certain self-perceptions, specificallythe regulatory focus.

Higgins and colleagues’ empirical studiesshow a variety of outcomes derived from the tworegulatory foci (e.g., Crowe & Higgins, 1997; For-ster et al., 2003; Friedman & Forster, 2001; Hig-gins, 1997, 1998, 2000; Liberman et al., 1999; Shahet al., 1998). This variety of outcomes includesbehavioral tendencies, emotions, cognitions, de-cision-making styles, and problem-solving strat-egies. To manipulate the situational regulatoryfocus, Higgins and his colleagues usually usedmanipulations of framing situations or priming(e.g., Forster et al., 1998; Higgins, 2000). For ex-ample, one of the most common manipulationsof framing the situational promotion focus is totell participants that they can either gain some-thing (i.e., money, doing a desirable task) or notgain it, depending on their task performance.The manipulation of the situational preventionfocus is to inform the participants that they caneither lose something (i.e., money, doing an un-desirable task) or not lose it, depending on theirperformance (e.g., Crowe & Higgins, 1997). An-other way to manipulate the situational regula-tory focus is by priming the ideal self or theought self. For example Higgins, Roney, Crowe,and Hymes (1994) asked participants to thinkabout their ideals, hopes, and aspirations in or-der to prime the ideal self and to think abouttheir obligations, duties, and responsibilities inorder to prime their ought self. In the followingsection we explore possible cognitive, emo-tional, and task behavior outcomes of primingfollowers’ different regulatory foci by leaders(see Figure 2 for the framework we suggest andTable 2 for a summary of the outcomes we ex-plore).

Followers’ Cognitive Strategies

Sensitivity to positive outcomes versus nega-tive outcomes. One of the consequences of theregulatory foci is sensitivity to positive out-comes versus negative outcomes. Higgins andTykocinski (1992) found that promotion-focusedsubjects remembered more positive events from


a person’s biography, whereas prevention-focused subjects remembered more negativeevents from the same biography. Furthermore,Van Dijk and Kluger (2004) found that promotion-focused people are more attentive to positivefeedback, whereas prevention-focused peopleare more attentive to negative feedback.

Research has shown that transformationalleaders are more optimistic, have strong posi-tive perceptions, and have a positive currentand future outlook in comparison to other lead-ers (e.g., Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000). Thus, if trans-formational and charismatic leaders can pro-vide a vision of an optimistic or ideal future and

FIGURE 2Followers’ Regulatory Focus As Mediating Between Leaders’ Behaviors and Followers’ Outcomes

TABLE 2The Effect of Leaders on Followers’ Situational Regulatory Focus and Outcomes

LeadershipBehavior

Followers’Regulatory FocusPrimed

Followers’CognitiveStrategies

Followers’ TaskBehavior

Followers’Emotions

OrganizationalCulture

Charismatic/transformational

Promotion focus • Attentiveness topositiveoutcomes

• Openness tochange

• Creativity• Eagerness• Speed• Risk taking

• Positiveaffectivity

• Affectivecommitment

Innovation-oriented culture

Monitoring/transactional

Prevention focus • Attentiveness tonegativeoutcomes

• Preference forstability

• Noncreativerepetitiveness

• Vigilance• Accuracy• Risk averse

• Negativeaffectivity

• Normativecommitment

• Continuancecommitment

• Quality-orientedculture

• Efficiency-oriented culture


prime followers’ promotion focus, then their fol-lowers are likely to become more sensitive topositive outcomes and positive feedback. Moni-toring and transactional leadership, which ismore attentive to exceptions and deviations, ismore likely to prime the followers’ preventionfocus and, thus, to elicit among followers sensi-tivity to negative outcomes and responsivenessto negative feedback.

Change preference versus stability prefer-ence. Liberman and her associates (1999) exam-ined individual preferences for stability versuschange in two kinds of tasks: task substitution,which deals with choosing between resumingan interrupted activity and doing a substituteactivity, and endowment, which deals withchoosing between a possessed object and analternative new object. The researchers found,in five experiments, that individuals in a pre-vention focus were more inclined than individ-uals in a promotion focus to resume an inter-rupted task rather than do a new and differentsubstitute task. Moreover, unlike the promotion-focused individuals, the prevention-focused in-dividuals exhibited a reluctance to exchangecurrently possessed objects. These findingsshow that a promotion focus is associated withopenness to change, whereas a prevention focusis associated with preference for stability.

Theories of transformational and charismaticleadership suggest that there is a significantrelationship between this type of leadershipand the promotion of change and innovation inorganizations (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo,1998; Howell & Avolio, 1993; Howell & Higgins,1990). Furthermore, charismatic leadership hasbeen suggested to be of greater prominence(e.g., Beyer, 1999; Emrich et al., 2001; Shamir etal., 1993) and more effective (e.g., Flynn & Staw,2004; Shamir & Howell, 1999) in times of turbu-lence and crisis, during which change isneeded, compared to times of stability.

Followers’ Emotions

Positive and negative affectivity. Regulatoryfoci seem to be associated with emotionality(Brockner & Higgins, 2001; Higgins, 1997). Regu-latory focus theory suggests that when promo-tion goals are salient, success and failure leadto emotions of elation and dejection, respec-tively. These emotions belong to the positiveaffectivity (PA) dimension (e.g., Watson, Wiese,

Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999). Similarly, when pre-vention goals are salient, success and failurelead to quiescence and agitation, respectively.These emotions belong to the negative affectiv-ity (NA) dimension. Thus, it seems that the PAsystem is the emotional monitoring system ofthe success or failure of promotion goals,whereas the NA system is the emotional moni-toring system of the success or failure of preven-tion goals (Carver, Sutton, & Scheier, 2000).

According to the leadership literature, charis-matic and transformational leaders have astrong emotional influence on their followers,shaping the affective events that determine em-ployees’ attitudes and behaviors in the work-place (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2003). Fried-man, Riggio, and Caselia (1988) found thatcharismatic leadership involves the ability toenhance group members’ feelings of positiveemotion and reduce unpleasant feelings. Fur-thermore, when leaders acted in a controllingand monitoring style, or employees felt theywere being forced to perform work activities, theemployees became annoyed and frustrated(Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2003). Thus, we sug-gest that leaders may affect and shape theirfollowers’ emotions by giving prominence to dif-ferent components of the self-regulatory focus.When priming a promotion focus, they will giverise to PA, whereas when priming the preven-tion focus, they will enhance NA.

Organizational commitment. Commitment isa force that binds an individual to a course ofaction that is of relevance to a particular target(Meyer & Herscovitch, 2001). Meyer and Allen(1991) suggest a three-component model of or-ganizational commitment. The main differencesamong the three components are in the mind-sets presumed to characterize the commitment.These mindsets reflect three distinguishablethemes: affective attachment to the organiza-tion—affective commitment; obligation to re-main—normative commitment; and perceivedcost of leaving— continuance commitment(Meyer, Becker, & Vandenberghe, 2004). The rea-son for distinguishing the three organizationalcommitment types is that they have differentimplications for behavior (Allen & Meyer, 1996;Meyer & Allen, 1991). For example, affectivecommitment has the strongest positive correla-tion with job performance.

Recently, researchers asserted that the differ-ent types of commitment could be related to


different regulatory foci (Meyer et al., 2004; VanDijk & Kluger, 2004). Specifically, they suggestedthat a promotion focus is related to affectivecommitment, while a prevention focus is likelyto be related to normative and continuance com-mitment. Promotion-focused individuals are in-trinsically motivated and are mostly guided bytheir inner ideals and not by external forces.Thus, they are likely to be committed to theorganization in an autonomous form (affectivecommitment). In contrast, prevention-focused in-dividuals are more influenced by external orsocial pressure and attempt to fulfill obligationsand avoid losses. Thus, they are more likely tobe committed to the organization out of a senseof obligation or necessity (normative or contin-uance commitment).

Prior studies have shown that transforma-tional leadership is positively related to follow-ers’ affective commitment to the organization,and management by exception is more stronglyrelated to continuance commitment (e.g., Bycio,Hackett, & Allen, 1995; Dvir et al., 2002). Usingour framework, we suggest that one of the mech-anisms through which transformational andcharismatic leaders elicit affective commitmentis by priming the followers’ promotion focus.Monitoring leaders are more likely to elicit anormative or continuance commitment by prim-ing followers’ prevention focus.

Followers’ Task Behavior

Risk-taking tendency versus risk avoidancetendency. Crowe and Higgins (1997) showed thatfor individuals engaged in a signal detectiontask requiring them to decide whether they didor did not detect a signal, those in a promotionfocus had a “risky” response bias (said “yes”even when they were not sure), and those in aprevention focus had a “conservative” response(said “no” when they were not sure). Later, thesefindings were expanded by Friedman and For-ster (2001), who showed that promotion cues, rel-ative to prevention cues, produce a risky re-sponse bias. This suggests that followers whosepromotion focus is primed by their leaders (i.e.,charismatic or transformational) are more likelyto take risks, experiment, and try new directionsin their work, even at the expense of possiblymaking a mistake. Followers whose preventionfocus is primed are more prone to “play on thesafe side” and “work by the book,” adhering to

leaders’ instructions and organizational regula-tions without taking risks.

In line with this assertion, recent findings sug-gest that charismatic leadership convinces in-vestors to take greater investment risks in firmsmanaged by such leaders, when under difficulteconomic circumstances (Flynn & Staw, 2004).Based on our assertions, it is possible that char-ismatic leaders achieve this outcome by behav-ing in ways that prime the promotion focus ofthe investors, leading them to accept largerrisks.

Creativity versus noncreativity and repetitive-ness. Crowe and Higgins (1997) indicate that apromotion focus is associated with enhancedcreativity relative to a prevention focus. In aninitial experiment, they manipulated the situa-tional regulatory focus and subsequently ad-ministered a sorting task that gauged the abilityto generate alternatives. As predicted, promo-tion-focused participants generated more sub-groups than those with a prevention focus.Those with a prevention focus were more repet-itive and persevering in their selection of sort-ing criteria. Higgins (1997) interpreted this asindicating greater “abstract thinking” or “cre-ativity” under a promotion focus.

Recently, Friedman and Forster (2001) showedthat promotion cues bolster both creative insightand creative generation relative to preventioncues. Prior studies have shown that transforma-tional leadership is more strongly related to fol-lowers’ creativity in comparison to transactionalleadership (e.g., Jung, 2001; Rickards, Chen, &Moger, 2001; Sosik, Kahai, & Avolio, 1998). Ac-cording to the findings regarding the regulatoryfocus theory, we suggest that leaders’ behaviors(e.g., transformational or charismatic) that primefollowers’ promotion focus will enhance theircreativity. Leaders’ behaviors that prime follow-ers’ prevention focus (e.g., monitoring behaviors)are likely to induce preservation and repetitivebehaviors among followers.

Speed versus accuracy in task performance.Forster et al. (2003) have shown that a promotionfocus leads to faster performance and less accu-racy in a simple drawing task, compared to aprevention focus. In another experiment theyshowed that, in a proofreading task, an inducedpromotion focus led to faster proofreading com-pared to a prevention focus, whereas an inducedprevention focus led to higher accuracy in de-tecting more difficult errors than did a promo-


tion focus. These findings suggest that, under aprevention focus, people are more vigilant, cau-tious, and attentive to details, whereas under apromotion focus, people are more eager, enthu-siastic, fast, and pay less attention to details.

This suggests that charismatic and transfor-mational leadership behavior, which is likely tofocus followers on their ideal self and encour-age a promotion focus among followers, willresult in followers’ eagerness and enthusiasmtoward their work and a faster task performancewith less attention to detail. A monitoring lead-ership style that highlights exceptions and de-viations is likely to make salient followers’ought self and prevention focus, resulting intask behavior that is more vigilant and attentiveto details, leading to followers’ higher task ac-curacy. On the basis of these considerations, weoffer the following propositions, summarized inTable 2.

Proposition 9: The more a leader en-gages in transformational and charis-matic behaviors that make salient theideal self and elicit followers’ situa-tional promotion focus, the higher thelevel of followers’ sensitivity to posi-tive outcomes, preference for change,risk-taking behavior, creativity, speedin task performance, PA, and affectivecommitment.

Proposition 10: The more leaders en-gage in monitoring behaviors thatgive salience to the ought self andelicit followers’ situational preventionfocus, the higher the level of followers’sensitivity to negative outcomes, pref-erence for stability and vigilance, riskavoidance behavior, noncreativityand repetitiveness, accuracy and at-tention to details in task behavior, NA,and normative and continuance com-mitment.

Followers’ Chronic Regulatory Focus As aModerator of the Relationship Between PrimedRegulatory Focus and Followers’ Individual-Level Outcomes

In the above propositions we focused on theeffect of the primed regulatory focus of followers(elicited by the leader’s behavior) on the follow-ers’ outcomes. However, we did not take into

consideration how differences in followers’ ini-tial chronic self-regulatory focus may influencethis dynamic. Studies of charismatic and trans-formational leadership (e.g., Ehrhart & Klein,2001; Yammarino, Dubinsky, Comer, & Jolson,1997) have shown significant individual differ-ences in subordinates’ reactions to the sameleader. This can be attributed to personal differ-ences among followers. According to regulatoryfocus theory, the behavior of individuals islikely to be affected by an interaction betweenthe chronic and the situational regulatory foci(Shah et al., 1998). As noted earlier in this paper,congruency between the situational and thechronic regulatory focus is likely to lead tohigher levels of performance (Shah et al., 1998).

Therefore, we suggest that the effect of theprimed situational regulatory focus of followerson followers’ outcome will be stronger whenthere is congruency between their aroused situ-ational focus and chronic regulatory focus. Thisinteraction effect implies that the relationshipbetween followers’ primed promotion regulatoryfocus (elicited by transformational leadership)and the related outcomes (e.g. risk taking, cre-ativity) will be at its highest levels among fol-lowers who are characterized by a chronic pro-motion regulatory focus.

Proposition 11: Followers’ chronic reg-ulatory focus will moderate the rela-tionship between followers’ situa-tional regulatory focus (elicited by theleaders’ behavior) and related out-comes.

Proposition 11a: The effect of the situ-ational promotion focus (elicited bytransformational or charismatic lead-ership styles) on followers’ related out-comes will be stronger when the fol-lowers are characterized by a chronicpromotion focus, compared to whenthe followers are characterized by achronic prevention focus.

Proposition 11b: The effect of a situa-tional prevention focus (elicited bytransactional or monitoring leader-ship styles) on followers’ related out-comes will be stronger when the fol-lowers are characterized by a chronicprevention focus, compared to when


the followers are characterized by achronic promotion focus.

Group-Level Outcomes

Research on organizational culture providesinsights into the dynamics of transformationalleadership and the process by which a leader’scharisma can be institutionalized (Yukl, 1998).Within the conceptual framework suggested inthis paper, we maintain that leader behaviorsthat prime a promotion or prevention focusamong followers can also be evident at thegroup level, affecting the organizational culture.According to Trice and Beyer (1993), leaders canmake changes in the organizational culture orestablish a new organization with a differentculture, but they can also maintain and rein-force an existing organizational culture. Leaderscan influence the culture of organizations in avariety of ways (Yukl, 1998). According to Schein(1992), there are various mechanisms leaderscan use to shape culture, among them the com-munication of priorities and values, the reactionto a crisis situation, role modeling, allocation ofrewards, and criteria for selection and dis-missal.

Organizational culture is a set of assump-tions, beliefs, and values shared by members ofthe same organization that influence their be-haviors (Schein, 1996, 1999). It reflects a commonmode of thinking, which drives a commonality ofperforming work in the work unit or organization(Miron, Erez, & Naveh, 2004). Organizational cul-ture is an important component in the competi-tive advantage of companies since it cannot becopied easily (Barney, 1988). Here we focus onthree central cultural features: innovation, qual-ity performance, and efficiency, which tend toappear repeatedly as measures of organization-al culture (e.g., Miron et al., 2004; O’Reilly, Chat-man, & Caldwell, 1991; Rousseau, 1990).

Innovation-oriented culture. Scholars have re-cently conducted extensive research on the cul-ture of innovation. Dimensions such as high au-tonomy, risk taking, tolerance of mistakes, andlow bureaucracy were found to be the most prev-alent characteristics of a culture of innovation(e.g., Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998; Van de Ven, Pol-ley, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999). Innovationcan be both incremental and transformational(Weick, 2000). An innovative culture reflects alearning orientation that facilitates inventive-

ness, combined with the pursuit of new and pro-spective knowledge (Miron et al., 2004). Innova-tive performance outcomes are more likely tooccur when innovative behavior is supportedand rewarded (West, 2002).

Theories of transformational and charismaticleadership suggest that there is a significantrelationship between these types of leadershipand organizational innovativeness (Conger &Kanungo, 1998). Transformational leadershiphas been linked to the promotion of change andinnovation in organizations (Eyal & Kark, 2004;Howell & Avolio, 1993; Howell & Higgins, 1990).Accordingly, charismatic leadership has beenassociated with innovation (Conger & Kanungo,1998; House, 1977). We suggest that one of theunderlying psychological mechanisms that en-able transformational and charismatic leadersto promote an innovative culture is the primingof a promotion focus. Leaders’ behaviors, whichare aimed at the entire group and are likely toarouse a promotion focus among group mem-bers, are likely to result in the embeddedness orreinforcement of a culture of innovation.

As suggested above, various leader behaviorscan arouse a promotion focus at the group level.For example, charismatic and transformationalleaders are likely to inspire their followers byarticulating a vision of exceptional and innova-tive achievements (e.g., Ehrhart & Klein, 2001).Such a vision, presented to the group as awhole, is likely to arouse the followers’ promo-tion focus and reinforce organizational innova-tion. Apart from a vision, transformational orcharismatic leaders can make use of slogans,symbols, rituals, and ceremonies in ways thatgive salience to the group’s ideals, wishes, andaspirations, eliciting a shared sense of promo-tion orientation among group members and con-tributing to the formation of an innovation-oriented culture. Another example of howcharismatic and transformational leaders canreinforce a culture of innovation is by the waythey shape incentives. If transformational lead-ers design an organizational incentive structurethat benefits risk taking and creativity and en-courages implementation of new ideas, they arelikely to promote the group’s promotion focusand to foster an environment of innovation.

Quality-oriented culture. Emphasis on thequality of products and services has increasedwith the establishment of the ISO 9000 qualitystandard. The major requirements of ISO 9000


are that organizations develop and implement aset of routines and procedures for product de-sign, manufacturing, delivery, and service.Standardization ensures that all customers getthe same product or service as promised (e.g.,Cole, 1999). A culture that supports quality im-plementation is one that emphasizes standard-ization, reliability, conformity to rules and pro-cedures, and attention to detail (Miron et al.,2004).

Efficiency-focused culture. Organizational ef-ficiency is often measured by meeting budgetand time constraints. A culture that emphasizesefficiency and productivity is outcome oriented,stressing goals, feedback, and incentives(O’Reilly et al., 1991). This organizational cultureemphasizes the importance of getting thingsdone, on-time delivery of products and services,and maintenance of a pace faster than that ofcompetitors, while simultaneously controllingoperation costs (e.g., Amabile, Hadley, &Kramer, 2002).

Both quality and efficiency cultures empha-size conforming to routines and procedures andavoiding errors. A monitoring leadership stylethat highlights organizational goals of main-taining the existing order, rewarding the avoid-ance of exceptions, or punishing subordinatesfor their mistakes is likely to make salient forthe entire group or for a large portion of thefollowers their ought self. Furthermore, a leaderwho behaves in a vigilant manner, adhering torules and procedures, focusing on error detec-tion, avoiding risks, meeting deadlines, and fo-cusing on the details, may put forth a role modelfor follower emulation—one that elicits a pre-vention focus among the group of followers.Thus, monitoring and transactional leadershipemphasizing a prevention focus targeted towardthe group as a whole is likely to result in aworkgroup culture of quality and/or efficiency.

Proposition 12: The more a leader en-gages in transformational and charis-matic behaviors that give salience tothe ideal self and that elicit the fol-lowers’ promotion focus, the higherthe group and organizational level ofinnovation (innovative culture).

Proposition 13: The more a leader en-gages in monitoring behaviors thatgive salience to the ought self andthat elicit the followers’ prevention fo-

cus, the higher the group and organi-zational level of attention to detail(quality culture) and outcome orienta-tion (efficiency culture).

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FORRESEARCH

The conceptualization of leadership and lead-ership influence presented here and summa-rized in Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 1 and 2portrays leadership as deeply tied to individu-als’ (both leaders’ and followers’) internal moti-vational systems of the situational and chronicself-regulatory focus. Focusing on the leaders’self, the theoretical framework we offer first sug-gests that leaders with a chronic promotion fo-cus and values of openness to change are likelyto have an affective MTL and will enact trans-formational or charismatic leadership styles. Incontrast, leaders with a prevention focus, hold-ing values of conservation, are most likely tolead based on a social normative MTL, and thiswill be evident in a transactional or monitoringleadership style. Furthermore, contextual char-acteristics of the organization are likely to affectthe leaders’ situational regulatory focus, thusmoderating the effect of the chronic regulatoryfocus on leaders’ behavior.

Focusing on the dynamics of leadership influ-ence on followers, the framework outlined inthis paper further suggests that leaders can af-fect followers by highlighting different aspectsof followers’ self-concept and their self-regula-tory foci (i.e., prevention or promotion), and pos-sibly changing their regulatory focus from onelevel to the other. This is likely to influencewhether followers view themselves primarily interms of their ideals, hopes, wishes, and aspira-tions or in terms of their duties, obligations, andresponsibilities. We suggest that different lead-ership behaviors can partially account for prim-ing these distinct aspects of followers’ regula-tory focus at both the individual and the groupor organizational level.

Moreover, the different forms of leadership in-fluence suggested above are important becausethey can lead to different outcomes. A promotionfocus can result in followers’ creativity, eager-ness, attentiveness to positive outcomes, risktaking, willingness to make change, PA, affec-tive commitment, and an innovative organiza-tional or unit culture. A prevention focus can


result in followers’ preference for stability, ten-dency for accuracy, risk aversion behavior, at-tentiveness to negative outcomes, NA, norma-tive or continuance commitment, and a culturethat values quality and efficiency.

The theoretical framework we suggest in thispaper begins to shed light on the processes bywhich leaders’ regulatory focus (chronic and sit-uational), values, and MTL contribute to the for-mulation of leadership behavior, and on thecomplex ways in which leadership can affectdiverse aspects of followers’ perceptions andbehaviors, resulting in followers’ motivationand organizational effectiveness. Up until now,most leadership theories of the self have fo-cused mainly on followers’ self-identity, over-looking leaders’ self-identity (e.g., Kark &Shamir, 2002; Lord & Brown, 2004; Shamir et al.,1993). A main contribution of this paper is theattempt to simultaneously explore aspects ofboth leaders’ and followers’ self-construct (self-regulatory focus). This enables us to gain abroader understanding of the leadership pro-cess and its workings by tracing the elusivepath of leaders’ influence as a process that orig-inates within the leaders’ inner self and motiva-tions, affecting their behavior (leadership style)and, in turn, affecting transformation of the fol-lowers’ inner self and behavior. Charting a morecomprehensive leadership process, we gain in-sight into a sequence by which a leader’s self-regulatory focus is translated into action,thereby affecting leadership style and subse-quently affecting aspects of followers’ self-regulatory foci, impinging on followers’ behav-ior (e.g., willingness to take risks, creativity, andcommitment), and ultimately affecting outcomesat the organizational level.

Furthermore, this paper addresses the effectsof both the situational and chronic regulatoryfocus of leaders and followers, and it exploreshow they interact to influence the behavior ofleaders and followers. This allows us to con-sider the effects of the more stable characteris-tics of the leader and follower on the leadershipprocess, as well as to explore the more transi-tional aspects of this process, a direction notoften pursued in the leadership literature. Apartfrom considering the effects of the stable andmore situational aspects of leaders’ and follow-ers’ self-regulatory foci, we address here differ-ent levels of the possible effects leaders canexert on the regulatory focus at the individual

and group levels. This allows us a more complex(multilevel) understanding of the variety ofways in which leaders can assert their power toinfluence.

Another contribution of this paper lies inweaving and integrating concepts and insightsfrom regulatory focus theory with leadershiptheory. The field of regulatory focus is a widelyresearched field (for reviews, see Higgins, 1998,2000). Drawing on findings from the regulatoryfocus literature enables us to reach a deeperunderstanding of the psychological processesunderlying prior findings in the leadership field.For example, leaders’ ability to prime their fol-lowers’ promotion focus helps us understandwhy transformational and charismatic leader-ship has been found, in prior works, to be posi-tively related to followers’ affective commitmentand to organizational innovation.

Drawing on findings from research on the self-regulatory focus not only allows us to betterexplain prior findings in the leadership field butalso enables us to offer new predictions. Forexample, as noted above, prior research on theeffect of positive versus negative feedbackshows that relatively high levels of motivationare induced either by failure under the preven-tion focus—failure to meet obligations—or bysuccess under the promotion focus—fulfilling adesire (Van Dijk & Kluger, 2004). Therefore, whenpeople are in promotion focus, positive feedbackseems to increase their motivation more thannegative feedback. However, when people arein prevention focus, negative feedback seems toincrease their motivation more than positivefeedback.

Thus, following the theoretical frameworksuggested here, if leaders, using a transforma-tional or charismatic leadership style, are moti-vated by a chronic promotion self-regulatory fo-cus, positive feedback (e.g., organizationalsuccess, followers’ display of enthusiasm, orcustomer satisfaction) will likely increase theirmotivation. If, however, they experience nega-tive feedback (e.g., organizational loss, follow-ers’ resistance, or customer dissatisfaction), thiswill likely reduce their motivation. In the case ofleaders who enact a monitoring style, the re-verse can be expected. Thus, linking regulatoryfocus theory with leadership theory enables usto think of novel predictions in the leadershipfield.


We have offered a series of propositions thatmay contribute to guiding further research onleadership processes. In addition, we haveraised some issues that merit attention in futurestudies. Four qualifications should be added atthis point. First, while we maintain that leaderscan affect followers’ regulatory foci, we do notimply that leaders can always consciously con-trol this influence. Affective and emotional pro-cesses related to motivational foci may be par-ticularly difficult to manage consciously andmay occur without the leader’s awareness.

Second, although we maintain that differentleadership behaviors can prime different as-pects of identity, effective leaders use transfor-mational and transactional behaviors togetherto augment their ability to influence followers(Avolio et al., 1999). Therefore, it is possible thatthe same leader, while enacting different lead-ership styles, will be able to prime both preven-tion and promotion foci among his or her follow-ers at different points in time. It is also possiblethat the same leader will prime different regu-latory foci among different groups of followers.According to leader-member exchange theory(Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995; Uhl-Bien & Arnaud,2001) and the conception of Klein and House(1995) on heterogeneous charismatic effects, it ispossible that the same leader will be able tobehave differently toward different followerswho have different motivational needs. Thus,the leader can improve his or her influence andeffectiveness by enhancing the congruency be-tween his or her behavior and followers’ chronicself-regulatory foci.

Moreover, leaders’ abilities to prime both pre-vention and promotion foci among their follow-ers at different points in time, or among differentsubgroups of followers, are likely to explain thearray of different outcomes that leaders can pro-mote. The outcomes proposed in the frameworkat the individual level (e.g., creativity versusattention to details) and organizational or unitlevel (a culture of innovation versus a culture ofquality and efficiency), although seemingly con-tradictory, are not mutually exclusive. Accord-ing to the findings of Miron and coauthors (2004),employees have the ability to both be creativeand pay attention to detail, and they suggestthat an innovative culture does not necessarilycompete with a culture of quality and efficiency.These findings are in line with the approacharguing that the competitive advantage of orga-

nizations depends on their preservation of exist-ing knowledge—for example, existing rules andstandards—and on exploration—for example,the creation of novel knowledge (Levinthal &March, 1993; Miron et al., 2004). Thus, under-standing the possibility of a leader to arouse, atdifferent points in time, a prevention or a pro-motion focus among followers enables us to bet-ter understand how leaders can promote the sur-vival of the organization by balancing differentrequirements of innovation, quality, and effi-ciency.

Third, although we suggest that leaders candirectly affect followers’ self-regulatory focus atboth the individual level and the group level, itis premature for us to specify how these differ-ent levels of analysis are likely to interact. It ismore than likely that if leaders prime followers’self-regulatory focus at the individual level, thiswill further affect, indirectly, the self-regulatoryfocus at the group level (e.g., through the pro-cess of contagion among followers). Further-more, it is likely that when leaders affect theirfollowers’ self-regulatory focus as a group, thiscan influence the self-regulatory focus at theindividual level. The mechanisms by whichthese processes interact, interrelate, and affecteach other, in direct and indirect pathways,need to be further elucidated.

Fourth, we do not contend that one type offocus with its related outcomes is superior ormore effective than the other. Rather, we believethat the relative effectiveness of each focus ac-tivated is contingent on the circumstances andthe various attributes of the context (e.g., fol-lower group composition, task characteristics,situation of the economic markets).

Finally, although the framework we offer ex-plores both leaders’ and followers’ chronic self-regulatory focus, we have not taken into consid-eration the possibility of an interaction betweenthe chronic self-regulatory focus of leaders andtheir followers. The self-regulatory focus theorystresses the importance of congruence, or fit,between the salient regulation focus and type ofsituational stimuli (Higgins, 2000; Van Dijk &Kluger, 2004), contending that congruence willcontribute to higher motivation. Lockwood, Jor-dan, and Kunda (2002) found one example of thecongruency effect. They demonstrated that indi-viduals are motivated by role models who en-courage strategies that fit their chronic regula-tory focus. Specifically, promotion-focused


individuals are most inspired by positive rolemodels, who have succeeded and thus highlightstrategies for achieving success. In contrast,prevention-focused individuals are mostly moti-vated by negative role models, who have failedand thus highlight the risk of failure, motivatingthe prevention-focused individuals to behave inways that will enable them to avoid failure.

Applying the reasoning of congruence raisedabove to the leader-follower relationship sug-gests that congruence or fit between followers’chronic regulatory focus and leaders’ regulatoryfocus will possibly result in higher satisfactionand motivation among followers, as well asmore effective outcomes on their behalf (e.g.,followers with a promotion focus will be moremotivated, effective, satisfied, and attracted to aleader with a promotion-focused leadershipstyle—that is, transformational or charismatic).The ways in which the congruency effect islikely to interact with the priming effect sug-gested in the theoretical framework we haveoffered should be the focus of future studies.

Future research should address some of theseissues raised and should study the dynamic ofleader and followers shifting from one self-regulatory focus to another and the ways inwhich a leader can influence these shifts amongfollowers. Several questions arise in this regard.What other variables can mediate the relation-ship among leaders’ values, self-regulatory foci,and their behavior? Can the same leader acti-vate a prevention and a promotion focus at dif-ferent points in time, or even simultaneously, orare there negative relations among differentidentity components such that activating onelevel inhibits the other, as Lord and coauthors(1999) suggest? Can leaders consciously manip-ulate these shifts of identity? Can leaders betrained to emphasize certain behaviors in orderto prime a certain level of followers’ regulatoryfocus?

The framework suggested above has focusedon leaders’ behaviors and their effects on fol-lowers. However, the followers are also likely tocontribute to the dynamics suggested in thispaper. According to the work of Shamir andHowell (2000; Howell & Shamir, 2005), leadershipand followership may both play an active role informing mutual relationships. Dvir and Shamir(2003) further demonstrate that follower charac-teristics are likely to contribute to the shaping ofleaders’ transformational leadership. Here we

argue that leaders can influence followers byaffecting their regulatory focus. However, basedon the above perspectives, it is also possiblethat this is a bidirectional influence in whichfollowers can also play a role, activating a cer-tain regulatory focus among leaders, thus affect-ing their leadership style and behavior. For ex-ample, highly inspirational and empoweredfollowers who enjoy their work may elicit lead-ers’ situational promotion focus.

This suggested reciprocal dynamic in follower-leader relationships may serve as a focus offuture research in the field. Future researchneeds to address whether different contextualfactors, both those that can be shaped by theleader and those that are not within a leader’scontrol, can foster different identities and mod-erate the leader’s influence. Van Dijk and Kluger(2004), for example, found that employees fromdifferent professions are motivated by a differ-ent chronic regulatory focus (e.g., accountantsby a prevention focus and artists by a promotionfocus). However, the ways in which this can in-teract with leadership still need to be examined.

Furthermore, the effect of national culture onthe perceptions of charismatic and transforma-tional leadership has been demonstrated in theGLOBE study (e.g., House, Javidan, Hanges, &Dorfman, 2002). However, the effect of nationalculture on chronic and situational regulatoryfoci, and on leadership style in conjunction, stillneeds to be explored further. Such an explora-tion can, for example, test if national culturesthat are more focused on details and accuracy(possibly more prevention focused) will elicithigher levels of monitoring leadership in com-parison with more promotion-focused nationalcultures.

In conclusion, it should be acknowledged thatwe do not know the extent to which leaders’ MTLand behavior are affected by their regulatoryfocus and values, nor the extent to which lead-ers’ influence on their followers is mediated bythe self-regulatory focus and the dynamics dis-cussed above. However, the strong evidence forthe effects of transformational and charismaticleadership, on the one hand, and the lack ofsufficient understanding of the mechanisms bywhich these leadership styles are shaped, onthe other, suggest that theoretical frameworkssuch as the one proposed in this paper areneeded at this stage in the development of lead-ership theory. We believe that because the con-


ceptual framework proposed rests on a rela-tively strong theoretical rationale and issupported by empirical evidence from the fieldof the regulatory focus theory, it deserves aplace on the agenda of future research on lead-ership.

REFERENCES

Aaker, J. L., & Lee, A. Y. 2001. “I” seek pleasures and “we”avoid pains: The role of self-regulatory goals in infor-mation processing and persuasion. Journal of ConsumerResearch, 28: 33–49.

Allen, N. J., & Meyer, J. P. 1996, Affective, continuance, andnormative commitment to the organization: An exami-nation of construct validity. Journal of Vocational Behav-ior, 49: 252–276.

Amabile, T. M., Hadley, C. N., & Kramer, S. J. 2002. Creativityunder the gun. Harvard Business Review, 80(8): 52–61.

Ashforth, B. E., & Mael, F. 1989. Social identity theory and theorganization. Academy of Management Review, 14: 20–39.

Ashkanasy, N. M., & Tse, B. 2000. Transformational leader-ship as management of emotion: A conceptual review.In N. M. Ashkanasy, & C. E. Haertel (Eds.), Emotions inthe workplace: Research, theory and practice, 221–235.Westport, CT: Quorum.

Avolio, B. J., Bass, B. M., & Jung, D. I. 1999. Reexamining thecomponents of transformational and transactional lead-ership using the multifactor leadership questionnaire.Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychol-ogy, 72: 441–462.

Barney, J. B. 1988. Organizational culture: Can it be a sourceof sustained competitive advantage? Academy of Man-agement Review, 11: 656–665.

Barsade, S. G. 2002. The ripple effect: Emotional contagionand its influence on group behavior. Administrative Sci-ence Quarterly, 47: 644–675.

Bass, B. M. 1985. Leadership and performance beyond expec-tation. New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. 1994. Improving organizationaleffectiveness through transformational leadership.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bennis, W. G., & Nanus, B. 1985. Leaders: The strategies fortaking charge. New York: Harper & Row.

Beyer J. M. 1999 Taming and promoting charisma to changeorganizations. Leadership Quarterly, 10: 307–330.

Bono, J. E., & Judge, T. A. 2004. Personality and transforma-tional and transactional leadership: A meta-analysis.Journal of Applied Psychology, 89: 901–910.

Brewer, M. B. 1991. The social self: On being the same anddifferent at the same time. Personality and Social Psy-chology Bulletin, 17: 475–482.

Brickson, S. 2000. The impact of identity orientation on indi-vidual and organizational outcomes in demographically

diverse settings. Academy of Management Review, 25:82–101.

Brockner, J., & Higgins, E. T. 2001. Regulatory focus theory:Implications for the study of emotions at work. Organi-zational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86:35–66.

Brown, S. L., & Eisenhardt, K. M. 1998. Competing on the edge:Strategy as structured chaos. Boston: Harvard BusinessSchool Press.

Burns, J. M. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Bycio, P., Hackett, R. D., & Allen, J. S. 1995. Further assess-ments of Bass’s (1985) conceptualization of transactionaland transformational leadership. Journal of AppliedPsychology, 80: 468–478.

Carver, C. S., Sutton, S. K., & Scheier, M. F. 2000. Action,emotion, and personality: Emerging conceptual integra-tion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26: 741–751.

Chan, K. Y., & Drasgow, F. 2001. Toward a theory of individ-ual differences and leadership: Understanding the mo-tivation to lead. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 481–498.

Chan, K. Y., Rounds, J., & Drasgow, F. 2000. The relationbetween vocational interests and the motivation to lead.Journal of Vocational Behavior, 57: 226–245.

Cherulnik, P. D., Donley, K. A., Wiewel, T. S., & Miller, S. R.2001. Charisma is contagious: The effects of leader’scharisma on observers’ affect. Journal of Applied SocialPsychology, 31: 2149–2159.

Cole, E. R. 1999. Managing quality fads. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

Conger, J. A., & Kanungo, R. N. 1998. Charismatic leadershipin organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Crowe, E., & Higgins, E. T. 1997. Regulatory focus and stra-tegic inclinations: Promotion and prevention in deci-sion-making. Organizational Behavior and Human De-cision Processes, 69: 117–132.

Dansereau, F., Yammarino, F. J., Markham, S. E., Alutto, J. A.,Newman, J., Dumas, M., Nachman, S., Naughton, T., Kim,K., Al-Kelabi, S., Lee, S., & Keller, T. 1998. Individualizedleadership: A new multiple level approach. In F. Danse-reau & F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Leadership: The multiple-level approaches: 363–405. Stamford, CT: JAI Press.

Dasborough, M. T., & Ashkanasy, N. M. 2003. A qualitativestudy of cognitive asymmetry in employee affective re-actions to leadership behaviors. Paper presented at theannual meeting of the Academy of Management, Seat-tle.

Dutton, J. E., Dukerich, J. M., & Harquail, C. V. 1994. Organi-zational images and member identification. Administra-tive Science Quarterly, 39: 239–263.

Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. 2002. Impact oftransformational leadership on follower developmentand performance: A field study. Academy of Manage-ment Journal, 45: 735–744.

Dvir, T., & Shamir, B. 2003. Follower developmental charac-


teristics as predicting transformational leadership: Lon-gitudinal field study. Leadership Quarterly, 14: 327–344.

Ehrhart, M. G., & Klein, K. J. 2001. Predicting followers’ pref-erences for charismatic leadership: The influence of fol-lower values and personality. Leadership Quarterly, 12:153–179.

Emrich, C. G., Brower, H. H., Feldman, J. M., & Garland, H.2001. Images in words: Presidential rhetoric, charisma,and greatness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46:527–557.

Eyal, O., & Kark, R. 2004. How do transformational leaderstransform organizations? A study of the relationship be-tween leadership and entrepreneurship. Leadershipand Policy in Schools, 3: 209–233.

Flynn, F. J., & Staw, B. M. 2004. Lend me your wallets: Theeffects of charismatic leadership on external support foran organization. Strategic Management Journal, 25: 309–330.

Forster, J., Grant, H., Idson, L. C., & Higgins, E. T. 2001. Suc-cess/failure feedback, expectancies, and approach/avoidance motivation: How regulatory focus moderatesclassic relations. Journal of Experimental Social Psy-chology, 37: 253–260.

Forster, J., Higgins, E. T., & Bianco, T. A. 2003. Speed/accuracydecisions in task performance: Built-in trade-off or sep-arate strategic concerns? Organizational Behavior andHuman Decision Processes, 90: 148–164.

Forster, J., Higgins, E. T., & Idson, L. C. 1998. Approach andavoidance strength during goal attainment: Regulatoryfocus and the “goal looms larger” effect. Journal of Per-sonality and Social Psychology, 75: 1115–1131.

Fredrickson, B. L. 2003. Positive emotions and upward spiralsin organizations. In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E.Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship: 163–175. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Friedman, H. S., Riggio, R. E., & Casella, D. F. 1988. Nonverbalskill, personal charisma, and initial attraction. Person-ality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 14: 203–211.

Friedman, R. S., & Forster, J. 2001. The effects of promotionand prevention cues on creativity. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 81: 1001–1013.

Friman, T. 2001. The relationship between leadership styleand values. Unpublished MA thesis, Hebrew Universityof Jerusalem.

Gardner, W. L., & Avolio, B. J. 1998. The charismatic relation-ship: A dramaturgical perspective. Academy of Manage-ment Review, 23: 31–58.

Ghiselli, E. E. 1968. Interaction of traits and motivationalfactors in the determination of the success of managers.Journal of Applied Psychology, 52: 480–483.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. 2002. Primal leader-ship: Learning to lead with emotional intelligence. Bos-ton: Harvard Business School Press.

Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. 1995. Relationship based ap-proach to leadership: Development of leader-memberexchange (LMX) theory of leadership over 25 years: Ap-

plying a multi-level multi-domain perspective. Leader-ship Quarterly, 6: 219–247.

Gray, J. A. 1982. The neuropsychology of anxiety: An enquiryinto the functions of the septo-hippocampal system. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Hambrick, D. C., & Finkelstein, S. 1987. Managerial discre-tion: A bridge between polar views of organizationaloutcomes. Research in Organizational Behavior, 9: 369–406.

Higgins, E. T. 1987. Self-discrepancy: A theory relating selfand affect. Psychological Review, 94: 319–340.

Higgins, E. T. 1997. Beyond pleasure and pain. AmericanPsychologist, 52: 1280–1300.

Higgins, E. T. 1998. Promotion and prevention: Regulatoryfocus as a motivational principle. Advances in Experi-mental Social Psychology, 30: 1–46.

Higgins, E. T. 2000. Making a good decision: Value from fit.American Psychologist, 55: 1217–1230.

Higgins, E. T., Roney, C. J. R., Crowe, E., & Hymes, C. 1994.Ideal versus ought predilections for approach andavoidance: Distinct self regulatory systems. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 66: 276–286.

Higgins, E. T., & Tykocinski, O. 1992. Self-discrepancies andbiographical memory: Personality and cognition at thelevel of psychological situation. Personality and SocialPsychology Bulletin, 18: 527–535.

House, R. J. 1977. Theory of charismatic leadership. In J. G.Hunt & L. L. Larson (Eds.), Leadership: The cutting edge:189–207. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

House, R. J., & Aditya, R. N. 1997. The social scientific study ofleadership: Quo vadis? Journal of Management, 23: 409–473.

House, R. J., & Howell, J. M. 1992. Personality and charismaticleadership. Leadership Quarterly, 3: 81–108.

House, R., Javidan, M., Hanges, P., & Dorfman, P. 2002. Un-derstanding cultures and implicit leadership theoriesacross the globe: An introduction to project GLOBE. Jour-nal of World Business, 37: 3–10.

Howell, J. M., & Avolio, B. J. 1993. Transformational leader-ship, transactional leadership, loss of control, and sup-port for innovation: Key predictors of consolidated busi-ness unit performance. Journal of Applied Psychology,78: 891–902.

Howell, J. M., & Higgins, C. A. 1990. Champions of technolog-ical innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35:317–341.

Howell, J. M., & Shamir, B. 2005. The role of followers in thecharismatic process: Relationships and their conse-quences. Academy of Management Review, 30: 96–112.

Hunt, J. G. 1991. Leadership: A new synthesis. Newbury Park,CA: Sage.

Judge, T. A., & Bono, J. E. 2000. Five factor model of person-ality and transformational leadership. Journal of Ap-plied Psychology, 85: 751–765.

Jung, D. I. 2001. Transformational and transactional leader-


ship and their effects on creativity in groups. CreativityResearch Journal, 13: 185–195.

Kark, R., & Shamir, B. 2002. The dual effect of transforma-tional leadership: Priming relational and collectiveselves and further effects on followers. In B. J. Avolio &F. J. Yammarino (Eds.), Transformational and charis-matic leadership: The road ahead, vol. 2: 67–91. Amster-dam: JA1 Press.

Kark, R., Shamir, B., & Chen, G. 2003. The two faces of trans-formational leadership: Dependence and empower-ment. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 243–255.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. 1984. The irrational executive: Psycho-analytic explorations in management. New York: Inter-national Universities Press.

Klein, K. J., & House, R. J. 1995. On fire: Charismatic leader-ship and levels of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 6:183–198.

Kluger, A. N., Stephan, E., Ganzach, Y., & Hershkovitz, M.2004. The effect of regulatory focus on the shape of prob-ability-weighting function: Evidence from a cross-modality matching method. Organizational Behaviorand Human Decision Processes, 95: 113–135.

Kotter, J. 1990. What leaders really do? Harvard BusinessReview, 68(3): 103–111.

Levine, J. M., Higgins, E. T., & Choi, S. H. 2000. Developmentof strategic norms in groups. Organization Behavior andHuman Decision Processes, 82: 88–101.

Levontin, L., Kluger, A., & Van Dijk, D. 2004. Goal-orientationtheory and regulatory-focus theory: The “conflicting” ef-fects of feedback-sign. Working paper, Hebrew Univer-sity of Jerusalem.

Liberman, N., Idson, L. C., Camacho, C. J., & Higgins, T. E.1999. Promotion and prevention choices between stabil-ity and change. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 77: 1135–1145.

Lim, B. C., & Ployhart, R. E. 2004. Transformational leader-ship: Relations to the five-factor model and performancein typical and maximum contexts. Journal of AppliedPsychology, 89: 610–621.

Lockwood, P., Jordan, C. H., & Kunda, Z. 2002. Motivation bypositive or negative role models: Regulatory focus de-termines who will best inspire us. Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 83: 854–864.

Lord, R. G., & Brown, D. J. 2001. Leadership, values, andsubordinate self-concepts. Leadership Quarterly, 12:133–152.

Lord, R. G., & Brown, D. J. 2004. Leadership processes andfollower identity. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Asso-ciates.

Lord, R. G., Brown, D. J., & Feiberg, S. J. 1999. Understandingthe dynamics of leadership: The role of follower self-concepts in the leader/follower relationship. Organiza-tional Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 78: 167–203.

Lord, R. G., & Hall, R. J. 1992. Contemporary views of leader-ship and individual differences. Leadership Quarterly,3: 137–157.

Lowe, K. B., Kroeck, K. G., & Sivasubramaniam, N. 1996.Effectiveness of correlates of transformational andtransactional leadership: A meta-analytic review of theMLQ literature. Leadership Quarterly, 7: 385–425.

Maio, G. R., & Olson, J. M. 1998. Values as truisms: Evidenceand implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology 74: 294–311.

Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. 1991. Culture and the self: Impli-cations for cognitions, emotion and motivation. Psycho-logical Review, 98: 224–252.

Meindl, J. R. 1990. On leadership: An alternative to the con-ventional wisdom. Research in Organizational Behav-ior, 12: 159–203.

Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. 1991. A three-component conceptu-alization of organizational commitment. Human Re-source Management Review, 1: 61–89.

Meyer, J. P., Becker, T. E., & Vandenberghe, C. 2004. Employeecommitment and motivation: A conceptual analysis andintegrative model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89:991–1007.

Meyer, J. P., & Herscovitch, L. 2001. Commitment in the work-place: Toward a general model. Human Resource Man-agement Review, 11: 299–326.

Miller, D., Kets de Vries, M. F. R., & Toulouse, J. M. 1982. Topexecutive locus of control and its relationship to strate-gy-making, structure and environment. Academy ofManagement Journal, 25: 237–253.

Miron, E., Erez, M., & Naveh, E. 2004. Do personal character-istics and cultural values that promote innovation, qual-ity and efficiency compete or complement each other?Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25: 175–199.

O’Reilly, C. A., III, Chatman, J., & Caldwell, D. F. 1991. Peopleand organizational culture: A profile comparison ap-proach to assessing person-organization fit. Academy ofManagement Journal, 14: 487–516.

Pawar, B. S., & Eastman, K. K. 1997. The nature and implica-tions of contextual influences on transformational lead-ership: A conceptual examination. Academy of Manage-ment Review, 22: 80–109.

Peterson, R. S., Smith, D. B., Martorana, P. V., & Owens, P. D.2003. The impact of chief executive officer personality ontop management team dynamics: One mechanism bywhich leadership affects organizational performance.Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 795–808.

Quinn, R. E. 1988. Beyond rational management. San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rickards, T., Chen, M. H., & Moger, S. 2001. Development of aself-report instrument for exploring team factor, leader-ship and performance relationships. British Journal ofManagement, 12: 243–250.

Roe, R., & Ester, P. 1999. Values and work: Empirical findingsand theoretical perspectives. Applied Psychology: AnInternational Review, 48: 1–21.

Rousseau, D. M. 1990. Assessing organizational culture: Thecase for multiple methods. In B. Schneider (Ed.), Orga-nizational climate and culture: 153–192. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.


Sagiv, L., & Schwartz, S. H. 2000. A new look at nationalculture: Illustrative applications to role stress and rolebehavior. In N. Ashkenasy, M. Peterson, & C. Wilderom(Eds.), Handbook of organizational culture and climate:417–437. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schein, E. 1992. Organizational culture and leadership (2nded.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Schein, E. 1996. Culture: The missing concept in organizationstudies. Administrative Science Quarterly. 41: 229–241.

Schein, E. 1999. The corporate culture survival guide: Senseand nonsense about culture change. San Francisco: Jos-sey-Bass.

Schwartz, S. H. 1992. Universals in the content and structureof values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychol-ogy, 25: 1–65.

Schwartz, S. H. 1999. A theory of cultural values and someimplications for work. Applied Psychology: An Interna-tional Review, 48: 23–47.

Shah, J., Higgins, E. T., & Friedman, R. S. 1998. Performanceincentives and means: How regulatory focus influencesgoal attainment. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 74: 285–293.

Shamir, B., & Howell, J. M. 1999. Organizational and contex-tual influences on the emergence and effectiveness ofcharismatic leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 10: 257–283.

Shamir, B., & Howell, J. M. 2000. The role of followers in thecharismatic leadership process: Susceptibility, socialconstruction, and leader empowerment. Paper pre-sented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Man-agement, Toronto.

Shamir, B., House, R. J., & Arthur, M. B. 1993. The motivationaleffects of charismatic leadership: A self concept basedtheory. Organization Science, 4: 577–593.

Shamir, B., Zakay, E., Breinin E. B., & Popper, M. 1998. Corre-lates of charismatic leader behavior in military units:Subordinates’ attitudes, unit characteristics, and supe-riors’ appraisals of leader performance. Academy ofManagement Journal, 41: 387–409.

Singelis, T. M., Triandis, H. C., Bhawuk, D., & Gelfand, M. J.1995. Horizontal and vertical dimensions of individual-ism and collectivism: A theoretical and measurementrefinement. Cross-Cultural Research: The Journal ofComparative Social Science, 29: 240–275.

Sosik, J. J., Kahai, S. S., & Avolio, B. J. 1998. Transformationalleadership and dimensions of creativity: Motivatingidea generation in computer-mediated groups. Creativ-ity Research Journal, 11: 111–121.

Spreitzer, G. M., Janasz, S. C., & Quinn, R. E. 1999. Empoweredto lead: The role of psychological empowerment in lead-ership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20: 511–526.

Sutton, S. K, & Davidson, R. J. 1997. Prefrontal brain asym-metry: A biological substrate of the behavioral approachand inhibition systems. Psychological Science, 8: 204–210.

Thomas, J. L., Dickson, M. W., & Bliese, P. D. 2001. Valuespredicting leader performance in the U.S. Army Reserveofficer training corps assignment center: Evidence forpersonality-mediated model. Leadership Quarterly, 12:181–196.

Tosi, H. L. 1991. The organization as a context for leadershiptheory: A multilevel approach. Leadership Quarterly, 2:205–228.

Trice, H. M., & Beyer, J. M. 1993. The cultures of work organi-zations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Trow, D. B., & Smith, D. H. 1983. Correlates of volunteering inadvocacy planning: Testing a theory. In D. H. Smith &J. Van Til (Eds.), International perspectives on voluntaryaction research: 95–104. Washington, DC: UniversityPress of America.

Uhl-Bien, M., & Arnaud, A. 2001. Comparing and contrastingLMX with transformational and neo-charismatic leader-ship approaches: How might these literatures speak toone another? Paper presented at the Festscrift for Dr.Bernard M. Bass, Center for Leadership Studies, Bing-hamton, NY.

Van de Ven, A. H., Polley, E. D., Garud, R., & Venkataraman,S. 1999. The innovation journey. New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press.

Van Dijk, D., & Kluger, A. N. 2004. Feedback sign effect onmotivation: Is it moderated by regulatory focus? AppliedPsychology: An International Review, 53: 113–135.

van Knippenberg, D., & Hogg, M. A. 2003. A social identitymodel of leadership effectiveness in organizations. Re-search in Organizational Behavior, 25: 245–297.

van Knippenberg, D., van Knippenberg, B., De Cermer, D., &Hogg, M. A. 2004. Leadership, self, and identity: A reviewand research agenda. Leadership Quarterly, 15: 825–856.

Watson, D., Wiese, D., Vaidya, J., & Tellegen, A. 1999. The twogeneral activation systems of affect: Structural findings,evolutionary considerations, and psychobiological evi-dence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76:820–838.

Weick, K. E. 2000. Quality improvement: A sensemaking per-spective. In E. R. Colle & W. R. Scott (Eds.), The qualitymovement and organization theory: 105–172. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

West, M. A. 2002. Sparkling fountains or stagnant ponds: Anintegrative model of creativity and innovation imple-mentation in work groups. Applied Psychology: An In-ternational Review, 51: 355–386.

Yammarino, F. J., Dubinsky, A. J., Comer, L. B., & Jolson, M. A.1997. Women and transformational and contingent re-ward leadership: A multiple-levels-of-analysis perspec-tive. Academy of Management Journal, 40: 205–222.

Yukl, G. 1998. Leadership in organizations. Englewood,Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Zaleznik, A. 1977. Managers and leaders: Are they different?Harvard Business Review, 55(5): 67–80.


Ronit Kark ([email protected]) is a lecturer (assistant professor) of organizationalstudies in the Departments of Psychology and Sociology, Bar-Ilan University. Shereceived her Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current researchinterests include leadership, mentoring relationships, identity and identification pro-cesses, emotions, and gender in organizations.

Dina Van Dijk ([email protected]) is a lecturer (assistant professor) of organi-zational behavior in the Health Systems Management Department, Ben-Gurion Uni-versity of the Negev. She received her Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Her current research interests are work motivation, regulatory focus, and values.
