Research Summary
Research Summary
Lead-by-Help with Professor Jeff Polzer
Description
This study examines if and under which conditions "lead-by-help," defined here as the extent to which leaders anticipatorily act to assist subordinates in completing their work, may not be viewed as favorable as would rationally be expected. In both laboratory and field settings we investigate if and when such help contributes to subordinates' perception of their work as more meaningful, thus leading them to affectively commit to work, put in higher effort, and achieving better work performance. The condition being investigated is the level of leaders' pro-social values (low self-oriented and high other-oriented values), which may signal to subordinates the type of motives behind lead-by-help. We draw on attribution theory and proposes that 1) unsolicited lead-by-help (leaders anticipatorily offer assistance rather than responding to requests) leads to higher effort and better performance 2) by enhancing subordinates' perceived meaning of their work, and that 3) the relationships hold so long as subordinates view leaders as possessing pro-social values, thus attributing leaders' helping behaviors to benevolent motives.