http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/13606/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26583/ 2011-06-01T00:00:00Z Corporate mergers require proper human resources management to reach their financial and strategic objectives and minimize negative consequences for employee well-being. Understanding the antecedents of employees' identification with the merged organization during the corporate merger is crucial, because stronger post-merger identification results in less conflict and higher levels of motivation. Unfortunately, employees often identify more strongly with their pre-merger organizations than with the merged organization. One influential approach to understanding the processes underlying organizational identification is the social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Research applying this perspective to organizational mergers shows that levels of identification with the merged organization are partly explained by status and dominance differences of the involved organizations, by motivational threats and uncertainties during the merger, and by the representation of the post-merger identity. Leaders and managers of corporate mergers are able to influence these processes and, thus, to provide a path for successful merger integration. © 2011 The Authors. Social and Personality Psychology Compass http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22758/ 2011-03-01T00:00:00Z Management and businesses in general are constantly facing important ethical challenges. In the current special issue, we identify the widespread emergence of unethical decision-making and behaviour in management as an important topic for a future research agenda. Specifically, we promote the use of a behavioural business ethics approach to better understand when management, leaders and businesses are inclined to act unethically and why this is the case. A behavioural business ethics approach which relies on important insights from psychology should be a necessary addition and complementary to the traditional normative approaches used in business ethics. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17937/ 2010-05-01T00:00:00Z Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about, what they strive for, and what they want to be affiliated with. Transferring this to a leader-follower analysis, our first study (n = 306) confirms that followers' identification and satisfaction with their leaders are stronger, the more leaders match followers' ideal leader values. Study 2 (n = 244) extends the perspective by introducing the novel concept of counter-ideals (i.e., how an ideal leader should not be) as a second, non-redundant point of reference. Results confirm that a leader's match on ideal and on counter-ideal values have independent effects in that both explain unique variance in followers' identification and satisfaction with their leader. Study 3 (n = 136) replicates the previous results in an experimental scenario study and provides evidence for the proposed causal direction of the underlying process. We conclude that counter-ideal values might be an additional point of reference that people use to triangulate targets above and beyond ideal values and discuss the implications of our findings for value research and management. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17702/ 2010-01-05T00:00:00Z Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about, what they strive for, and what they want to be affiliated with. Transferring this to a leader-follower analysis, our first Study (N = 306) confirms that followers’ identification and satisfaction with their leaders are stronger, the more leaders match followers’ ideal leader values. Study 2 (N = 244) extends the perspective by introducing the novel concept of counter-ideals (i.e., how an ideal leader should not be) as a second, non-redundant point of reference. Results confirm that a leader’s match on ideal and on counter-ideal values have independent effects in that both explain unique variance in followers’ identification and satisfaction with their leader. Study 3 (N = 136) replicates the previous results in an experimental scenario study and provides evidence for the proposed causal direction of the underlying process. We conclude that counter-ideal values might be an additional point of reference that people use to triangulate targets above and beyond ideal values and discuss the implications of our findings for value research and management. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/17583/ 2009-09-01T00:00:00Z This research uses a social identity analysis to predict employee creativity. We hypothesized that team identification leads to greater employee creative performance, mediated by the individual's creative effort. We hypothesized that leader inspirational motivation as well as leader team prototypicality would moderate the relationship between identification and creative effort. Consistent with these predictions, data based on 115 matched pairs of employee-leader ratings in a research and development context showed an indirect relationship between team identification and creative performance mediated by creative effort. The analyses also confirmed the expected moderated relationships. Leader inspirational motivation enhanced the positive association between identification and creative effort, especially when leader prototypicality was high. We discuss the value of social identity analyses of employee creativity and of the integration of social identity and transformational leadership analyses. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/13932/ 2008-10-01T00:00:00Z Research on diversity in teams and organizations has revealed ambiguous results regarding the effects of group composition on workgroup performance. The categorization—elaboration model (van Knippenberg et al., 2004) accounts for this variety and proposes two different underlying processes. On the one hand diversity may bring about intergroup bias which leads to less group identification, which in turn is followed by more conflict and decreased workgroup performance. On the other hand, the information processing approach proposes positive effects of diversity because of a more elaborate processing of information brought about by a wider pool and variety of perspectives in more diverse groups. We propose that the former process is contingent on individual team members' beliefs that diversity is good or bad for achieving the team's aims. We predict that the relationship between subjective diversity and identification is more positive in ethnically diverse project teams when group members hold beliefs that are pro-diversity. Results of two longitudinal studies involving postgraduate students working in project teams confirm this hypothesis. Analyses further reveal that group identification is positively related to students' desire to stay in their groups and to their information elaboration. Finally, we found evidence for the expected moderated mediation model with indirect effects of subjective diversity on elaboration and the desire to stay, mediated through group identification, moderated by diversity beliefs. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/13565/ 2008-06-01T00:00:00Z Past research has focused on the differential relationships of organizational and work group identification with attitudes and behavior. However, no systematic effort has been undertaken yet to explore interactive effects between these foci of identification. We predicted that in cases of positive overlap of identifications (i.e. high work group and organizational identification) identifications are more strongly associated with employee job satisfaction and extra-role behavior than when only one of the identifications is high—that is, the one identification augments the influence of the other. These hypotheses were tested and supported with data from two samples of bank employees (N = 358) and travel agency employees (N = 308). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/8497/ 2005-06-15T00:00:00Z Integrating insights from the social exchange perspective and the social identity perspective on the psychological relationship between the individual and the organization, we propose that evaluations of the support received from the organization and its representatives, and organizational identification interact in predicting withdrawal from the job. Specifically, the relationship of support with withdrawal is proposed to be weaker the stronger employees identify with the organization. This prediction was confirmed in two samples focusing on different operationalizations of support and withdrawal. Sample 1 concerned the interaction of organizational support and organizational identification in predicting turnover intentions, Sample 2 concerned the prediction of absenteeism from supervisor support and organizational identification. We conclude that the present study yields promising first evidence that may lay the basis for further integration of social exchange and social identity analyses of organizational behavior.