The Impact Of Leader’s Downward Ingratiation On Employee’s Interpersonal Citizenship Behavior

To achieve management function,supervisors in organizations use various tactics such as ingratiation,rational persuasion,pressure,and exchange to influence employees’ attitudes and behaviors so as to gain the support of subordinates and motivate them to implement supervisors’ decisions.Among them,ingratiation(i.e.,uses praise and flattery before or during an attempt to influence the target person to carry out a request or support a proposal)is very common in management practice,and has been received increasing attention from scholars of organizational behavior.Previous research has mainly explored employees’resistance or commitment reaction to leaders’ downward ingratiation and the impact of ingratiation on supervisor’s effectiveness.Leader’s ingratiation is social information from both leader and coworker at workplace,thus may have an impact on observers.However,the existing literature has not paid attention to third party’s perspective,thus our understanding of the influence of downward ingratiation is limited.To explore the influence of leader’s downward ingratiation on observer employee has important theoretical and practical significance as it can not only broaden the academic understanding of ingratiation,but also help managers better understand ingratiation tactic and make full use of it.Attribution theory suggests that people make sense of people’s behavior through their perceptions of the other’s intentions.Employee’s attribution of leader’s intentions will affect employee’s interpretation and evaluation of leader’s influence attempts.Followers’ affective and behavioral reactions to perceived leader behaviors are determined in part by attributions as to whether the leader is motivated by manipulative motives that are likely to be detrimental to the organization,or sincere motives that are more likely to benefit the organization.Before the research model was formally put forward,this study implemented a semi-structured interview to investigate employee’s attitudes towards leader’s ingratiation towards coworker.After analyzing the text data of 108 employees,we found that observer employees had two different views on leaders’ downward ingratiation-Some employees thought that leader’s ingratiation towards coworker was motivated by sincere motives and was heartfelt praise and encouragement to coworker,while others thought that leader’s praise was a tool to manipulate coworker to accept and accomplish tasks.Meanwhile,the pilot study showed that observers mainly felt sympathy and admiration towards the ingratiated coworker.Combined with the related literature,we put forward the research model of this paper,pointing out that observers’attribution of leader manipulative and sincere intentionality of leader downward ingratiation serve as a trigger to influence observers recognitive and affective responses,which respectively trigger observers’ sympathy and admiration towards their coworkers.Additionally,this paper introduced interpersonal citizenship behavior as the outcome variable,suggesting that sympathy and admiration can both enhance observers’ interpersonal citizenship behavior towards the ingratiated coworker.Our pilot study provided a realistic basis for the research model of this study,we further conducted a scenario experiment to test our research hypotheses.After statistical analysis of the experimental data of 253 subjects,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)When employees attribute leader ingratiation to manipulative intentions,they will feel sympathy for the ingratiated coworkers.(2)When employees attribute leader ingratiation to sincere intentions,they will feel admiration for the ingratiated coworkers.(3)The positive predictive effect of employee sympathy on interpersonal citizenship behavior is not significant.(4)The positive predictive effect of employee admiration on interpersonal citizenship behavior is significant.(5)Sympathy’s mediating role between manipulative intention attribution of ingratiation and interpersonal citizenship behavior is not significant.(6)Admiration’s mediating rote between sincere intention attribution of ingratiation and interpersonal citizenship behavior is significant.This research has important theoretical and practical implications.Theoretically,from an observer’s perspective,this study enriches the literature on ingratiation behavior and leadership.Secondly,this study expands the antecedents of social situational factors of interpersonal citizenship behavior.Thirdly,based on attribution theory,this paper reveals the mechanism and boundary conditions of the relationship of observed leader downward ingratiation and interpersonal citizenship behavior.Practically,this study is helpful for managers to deepen their understanding and rational use of ingratiation tactic,motivate them to be sincere and act in the interests of the organization.At the same time,the conclusion of this study provides enlightenment for promoting employees’ interpersonal citizenship behavior.