How the Two Faces of Charismatic Leadership Affect Subordinates ' Citizenship Fatigue: Exploring the Mechanisms

Liu Xiaoyu, Fu Jingyu, Liu Jun

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (5) : 1114-1122.

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (5) : 1114-1122. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230511
Social,Personality & Organizational Psychology

How the Two Faces of Charismatic Leadership Affect Subordinates ' Citizenship Fatigue: Exploring the Mechanisms

  • Liu Xiaoyu1, Fu Jingyu1, Liu Jun2,3
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Abstract

Because organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) contribute substantially to organizational progress, managers encourage employees to engage in OCBs. However, an overemphasis on OCBs can potentially lead to a state known as ‘citizenship fatigue' among employees. This condition, characterized by feelings of exhaustion, edginess, or fatigue directly linked to OCB engagement, may ultimately result in diminished work engagement and reduced job performance. Citizenship fatigue has received a great deal of attention from scholars and practitioners. Despite that theoretical perspectives have proposed predictors of citizenship fatigue, there remains a noticeable gap in the literature regarding the effect of leadership style on subordinates' citizenship fatigue.
Over the past three decades, charismatic leadership has been hailed as one of the most efficacious leadership styles, attracting considerable scholarly attention. Yet, it's a misconception to equate charismatic leadership directly with ‘effective leadership'. Unfortunately, current understanding of its potential downsides remains limited. As recent investigations have started probing into the negative effects of charismatic leadership, the present study aims to delve deeper, exploring how charismatic leadership affects employees' citizenship fatigue. Based on Howell's framework of the two faces of charismatic leadership, this study distinguishes between socialized and personalized charismatic leadership from different power motivations.
The Self-determination Theory (SDT) offers a comprehensive paradigm for deciphering the factors that either foster or hamper intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, as well as the innate psychological needs that propagate these mechanisms. As a theory that scrutinizes individual motivation, the SDT is inherently well-suited to elucidate how the two faces of charismatic leadership affect employees' work motivation and behavior. Furthermore, the SDT underlines the profound influence of environmental factors on the genesis of individual motivation. Within an organizational context, citizenship pressure is a significant environmental determinant that shapes employee motivation. Therefore, drawing on Howell's framework of the two faces of charismatic leadership and the SDT, this study investigated the influential mechanism of socialized charismatic leadership and personalized charismatic leadership on subordinates' citizenship fatigue through the mediating mechanism of the OCB motivation and the moderating effect of citizenship pressure based on the three-wave data from 320 employees.
The results indicated that: (1) Socialized charismatic leadership diminished subordinates' citizenship fatigue, while personalized charismatic leadership amplified it. (2) Socialized charismatic leadership heightened subordinates' prosocial value motives and impression management motives. (3) Citizenship pressure moderated the relationship between prosocial value motives/impression management motives and citizenship fatigue. As citizenship pressure escalated, the mitigating effect of prosocial value motives on citizenship fatigue intensified, while the exacerbating effect of impression management motives on citizenship fatigue attenuated. (4) Citizenship pressure strengthened the indirect relationship between socialized charismatic leadership and subordinates' citizenship fatigue through prosocial value motives. Conversely, citizenship pressure mitigated the indirect relationship between both socialized and personalized charismatic leadership and subordinates' citizenship fatigue through impression management motives.
This study provides several significant theoretical contributions. First, the exploration of the effects of socialized and personalized charismatic leadership on citizenship fatigue deepens our understanding of this phenomenon and enriches the antecedents of OCB motives. Second, this study extends the research on the effectiveness of charismatic leadership by revealing the “black box” between charismatic leadership and citizenship fatigue. This aids in a more profound comprehension of ‘how' and ‘under what circumstances' charismatic leadership influences citizenship fatigue. Finally, this study extends the application of SDT in the workplace context through its exploration of both socialized and personalized charismatic leadership. Simultaneously, this study offers several managerial implications. First, organizations should adopt a dialectical approach to charismatic leadership, to discern the concealed socialized or personalized motives behind a leader's charisma. Second, leaders ought to judiciously advocate for OCBs to avert excessive citizenship pressure and citizenship fatigue among subordinates. Finally, organizations should also focus on nurturing and preserving employees' prosocial value motives, as these are the most advantageous to both the organizations and the employees themselves.

Key words

charismatic leadership / prosocial values motives / impression management motives / citizenship fatigue / citizenship pressure

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Liu Xiaoyu, Fu Jingyu, Liu Jun. How the Two Faces of Charismatic Leadership Affect Subordinates ' Citizenship Fatigue: Exploring the Mechanisms[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2023, 46(5): 1114-1122 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20230511

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