When Charismatic Leadership Loses its Luster: Examining the Interactive Effect of Charismatic Leadership and Abusive Supervision on Follower Prosocial Motivation and Citizenship Behavior

Abstract

We develop a multilevel framework that examines the simultaneous co-occurrence of charismatic leadership and abusive supervision and how they jointly diminish followers’ prosocial motivation. Furthermore, we tested a mediated moderation model to examine whether followers’ prosocial motivation mediates the link between charismatic leadership and followers’ citizenship behavior under high and low levels of abusive supervision. Results from a field study based upon 296 employees and 44 supervisors in 44 teams across three organizations provided support for the predicted relationships. Charismatic leadership positively influenced followers’ prosocial motivation when abusive supervision was low but not high. Furthermore, followers’ prosocial motivation mediated the link between charismatic leadership and followers’ organizational citizenship behavior when abusive supervision was low but not high. We discuss theoretical implications for abusive supervision's neutralizing effect, identify avenues to advance charismatic leadership and prosocial motivation research, and provide recommendations for practitioners to cultivate an environment that nurtures employees’ prosocial motivation.

Keywords

charismatic leadership abusive supervision prosocial motivation citizenship behavior

Charismatic leadership is increasingly ubiquitous in organizations because it is inspirational and attractive. Charismatic leaders display confidence and communicate a compelling vision that elicits positive emotional, motivational, and behavioral responses from their followers (Conger & Kanungo, 1987, 1998). For instance, charismatic leadership is positively associated with followers’ positive mood (Bono & Ilies, 2006), workgroup identification (Cicero & Pierro, 2007; Shamir et al., 1993), organizational commitment (DeGroot et al., 2000), task performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (Banks et al., 2014; Ernst et al., 2022). This long-standing pattern of positive effects along with seminal charismatic leadership theory has engendered a romantic and idealistic view of charismatic leadership: charismatic leaders selflessly and self-sacrificially inspire others to transcend self-interest and pursue a noble prosocial cause (Conger & Kanungo, 1987). A growing literature is beginning to challenge this romantic view of charismatic leadership and question its effects on followers’ prosociality by documenting charismatic leaders’ dark side.

Charismatic leaders can certainly have positive prosocial consequences, but the high personal risk they incur for achieving their vision (Conger & Kanungo, 1987) can compel them to “transform their concern for followers’ needs into total dedication and commitment to the common cause they share with followers” (Conger & Kanungo, 1987, p. 642). Such an intense and myopic devotion to achieving their vision may lead charismatic leaders to justify destructive behaviors out of personal ambition and a desire to protect their grandiose self-concept (O’Reilly & Chatman, 2020). As a result, charismatic leaders may simultaneously display both positive leader behaviors—inspiring followers with a compelling vision of the future—with negative leader behaviors—such as abusive supervision—whereby inspiration is accompanied by indignation toward those they lead.

Several examples of high-profile charismatic leaders illuminate how they can couple idealized inspiration with abusive behavior, or sustained verbal and nonverbal hostility (Tepper, 2000), as a means to attain their espoused vision. Jeff Bezos, founder and former CEO of Amazon, espoused an ambitious and inspirational vision while behaving contemptuously toward employees and inculcating a highly confrontational culture defined by incivility, ruthless competition, and relentless work hours (Gavett, 2013; Kantor & Streitfeld, 2015). In a similar vein, Elon Musk articulated an inspirational vision for Tesla and Space X but was also abusive toward his staff by engaging in emotional rampages, firing outbursts, intimidation, and demanding relentless working hours that degraded employees’ health and well-being (Carrie Wong, 2017; Duhigg, 2018). Finally, Magic Johnson, a legendary player for the Los Angeles Lakers professional basketball team who served as the Lakers’ President of Operations until 2019, was described as charismatic in some instances but abusive in others, threatening and intimidating Lakers’ staff that performed below his expectations (Holmes, 2019). A former employee described him as follows:

“When Johnson was present, there was often a question of who employees would face that day: Would they see Magic? Or would it be Earvin? The cameras love Magic, the charismatic one, but there was also Earvin, who could be manipulative and impulsive. It was a roller-coaster ride of up and down with him” (Holmes, 2019).

These prominent phenomenological observations juxtaposing charismatic leadership and abusive supervision suggest that the positive link between charismatic leadership and followers’ prosociality may not be so straightforward.

In addition to phenomenological observations, empirical and theoretical considerations point to the need to consider the co-occurrence of charismatic leadership and abusive supervision. From an empirical perspective, research suggests that narcissism, a leader trait, increases a leader's charismatic leadership and abusive supervision behaviors. Galvin and colleagues (2010) reported that narcissism causes leaders to espouse bolder visions that increas followers’ attributions of leader charisma. Zhang and colleagues (2017) further found that “tempered narcissism,” or the interaction of CEO narcissism and CEO humility, predicts leader charisma and positive organizational outcomes. Several studies also provided empirical evidence linking narcissism to abusive supervision (Finney et al., 2021; Gauglitz et al., 2023; Waldman et al., 2018).

From a theoretical perspective, Padilla and colleagues (2007) argued that charismatic and abusive behaviors can coexist as an effective means of influence; leaders compel followers to achieve collective goals through inspirational appeals to common ideals and then coerce them to conform to high performance standards by pointing to a sense of social obligation. Hence, charisma elicits trust whereas abuse exploits it. Leaders who simultaneously engage in charismatic and abusive behaviors may thus be a stronger predictor of followers’ prosocial motivation and behaviors than charisma alone. On the other hand, abusive behaviors may neutralize the positive effects of charismatic leadership on followers’ prosociality because it could call into question leaders’ prosocial motives and lead followers to experience injustice and work stress causing them to withdraw their focus on others (Zhang et al., 2019). The objective of this study is to understand the extent to which charismatic and abusive supervision behaviors occur simultaneously and influence followers’ prosocial motivation and prosocial behavior.

Our study contributes to the literature in two important ways. First, we advance charismatic leadership research by investigating the co-occurrence of leaders’ charismatic and abusive supervision behaviors. This approach is especially important for charismatic leadership research because extant studies indicate that subordinates’ affect toward their leader often creates a halo effect that influences how they rate their leader (Martinko et al., 2018). Follower positive affect is particularly heightened as a response to charismatic leadership because charismatic leaders display positive emotions that transfer to followers (Erez et al., 2008). Charismatic leaders also channel followers’ emotions to engender trust and direct followers’ behaviors (Sy et al., 2018). Hence, studies measuring charismatic leadership alone may confound results with how subordinates feel about their leader or how much they like their leader (Brown & Keeping, 2005; Mumford & Fried, 2014). Accounting for a larger repertoire of positive and negative leader behaviors provides a clearer vantage point to account for followers’ motivational and behavioral responses to their leader. This pursuit also broadens our understanding of leadership beyond a single leadership construct to a pattern of leader behaviors and overcomes limitations associated with studying individual leadership constructs in insolation (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023). We thus take a step toward investigating leadership configurations and offering a more nuanced understanding of how multiple leadership behaviors jointly impact follower prosociality.

Second, our study builds upon Grant's (2007) theoretical model illuminating relational job characteristics as antecedents to employee prosocial motivation by considering the extent to which destructive relational factors undermine followers’ prosocial motivation. Grant (2007) aptly observed that “the motivation to make a prosocial difference is an inherently relational phenomenon…[and] interpersonal relationships often enhance employees’ motivations, opportunities, and resources at work” (p. 394). Indeed, recent studies have begun to examine the influence of leadership on employees’ prosocial motivation (Stollberger et al., 2019), yet there is less emphasis on the contingencies underlying the effect of different leadership behaviors on employees’ prosocial motivation. This omission is important to address because leaders seldom employ one singular leadership style. Furthermore, the underexamined connection between leadership and employee prosocial motivation is important to expound upon because followers’ prosociality is becoming increasingly requisite for employee, work group, and organizational effectiveness.

Conceptual Framework, Level of Analysis, and Hypothesis Development

Figure 1 illustrates our conceptual framework. Within our conceptual framework, charismatic leadership and abusive supervision are conceptualized as shared, team-level phenomena. Group members’ perceptions of supervisory leadership behaviors become shared through team members’ emergent social interactions and shared experiences (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). In contrast to individualized forms of influence, visionary and inspirational leader behaviors that focus on shared values and a common vision tend to be undifferentiated among group members (Wu et al., 2010). That is, group members observe and experience a similar set of leadership behaviors. Likewise, abusive supervision research indicates that group members share common views about their supervisor's destructive behaviors (e.g., Liao & Rupp, 2005; Priesemuth et al., 2014; Stoverink et al., 2014). Team members recall and discuss their experiences and observations of their leader's demeaning behaviors within the workgroup and, thus, develop agreement with group members about their leader's abusive supervision (Roberson, 2006). Consequently, abusive supervision and charismatic leadership are conceptualized as team-level inputs.

Charismatic Leadership and Abusive Supervision on Follower Prosocial Motives

Charismatic leadership appeals to followers’ self-concept (Shamir et al., 1993). It entices followers to transcend self-interest for the benefit of the collective (Walter & Bruch, 2009). Charismatic leaders also display confidence and communicate an attractive vision of the future (Conger & Kanungo, 1987). Followers respond to these inspirational and attractive behaviors by personally identifying with charismatic leaders (Conger & Kanungo, 1987, 1998). Personal identification can create undeterred devotion to and dependence on the leader (Kark et al., 2003). Followers may thus be more susceptible to the influence of abusive supervisors who utilize charismatic leadership because charisma compels followers to develop a myopic adulation, admiration, and adoration for their leader. This vulnerability increases the likelihood that followers will internalize their leaders’ underlying values and motivations and emulate their behaviors, for better or for worse.

According to Padilla et al. (2007), abusive leaders who employ charismatic leadership use vision, self-presentational skills, and personal energy to build follower trust. First, they influence followers by projecting an appealing vision that inspires hope. Second, these leaders utilize impression management skills to gain followers’ trust and identification. Third, they attract followers’ admiration by exhibiting relentless personal energy toward their work (Padilla et al., 2007). Positive leader behaviors that inspire hope, trust, and personal identification entice followers to believe that their leader has good intentions toward them and, consequently, to become more vulnerable to leader influence.

From a social exchange and justice perspective, “parties establish social standards that govern their exchange relationships” (Mackey et al., 2019, p. 6). Charismatic leadership sets high interpersonal social exchange expectations whereas abusive supervision violates them. Stated differently, abusive supervisors utilize charismatic leadership behaviors to exploit followers’ vulnerability as an instrumental means to accomplish their self-serving ends. Followers are thus more likely to perceive injustice due to a violation of social exchange expectations and/or moral standards. The perceived injustice undermines followers’ hopeful beliefs about and expectations of their leader. Consequently, injustice weakens followers’ obligation and motivation to benefit others (Zhang et al., 2019).

Research indicates that a mix of positive and negative leader behaviors induce “feelings of relationship insecurity as well as…lack of control, trust, and predictability in the relationships” (Duffy et al., 2002, p. 337). For example, leaders who displayed both supportive and hostile behaviors diminished followers’ self-efficacy and organizational commitment (Duffy et al., 2002) as well as increased counterproductive behaviors and somatic complaints (Hobman et al., 2009). Similarly, abusive supervision in an otherwise high-quality leader–follower relationship produced mixed messages such that both positive and negative leader behavioral cues led followers to sense-making and uncertainty reduction efforts that resulted in emotional exhaustion (Xu et al., 2015). Furthermore, variability in receiving fair treatment resulted in greater follower stress than consistently unfair treatment because such inconsistencies resulted in employees’ diminished capacity to cope with uncertainty, unpredictability, and lack of control (e.g., Matta et al., 2017).

Drawing upon the preceding theoretical arguments and empirical support, we expect that leaders high in charismatic behaviors and abusive supervision will result in lower levels of followers’ prosocial motivation compared to leaders that engage in high charismatic behaviors and low levels of abusive supervision.

Hypothesis 1: Charismatic leadership and abusive supervision interact such that followers’ prosocial motivation is higher when charismatic leadership is high and abusive supervision is low than when charismatic leadership and abusive supervision are both high.

Followers’ Prosocial Motivation on OCB

Organizational citizenship behavior is defined as “individual behavior that is discretionary, not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, and that in the aggregate promotes the effective functioning of the organization” (Organ, 1988, p. 4). In this study, we focus on citizenship behaviors directed toward the team. Citizenship behaviors such as voice, boosterism, and civic virtue reflect the degree to which a team member positively represents and affiliates with the team. Hence, OCB directed toward the team reflects individual employees’ deliberate extra role behaviors that aim to benefit their immediate work unit (Lee & Allen, 2002).

Past theorizing and empirical research support prosocial motivation's positive association with OCBs (e.g., Bolino, 1999; Grant & Mayer, 2009; Rioux & Penner, 2001). Employees’ concern for others motivates them to have a positive impact on others (De Dreu, 2006) because prosocial motives tend to be relationally focused (Bolino et al., 2012). This argument is consistent with findings from empirical studies showing that individuals’ desire to help others, care for others’ well-being, and concern for their organization's success is positively associated with citizenship behaviors (e.g., Bourdage et al., 2012; Finkelstein, 2006; Takeuchi et al., 2015). We thus expect that followers high in prosocial motivation will be more willing to protect and improve their team's image, invest discretionary effort to improve team functioning, and express loyalty toward their team.

Hypothesis 2: Followers’ prosocial motivation is positively associated with their citizenship behavior toward the team.

A Mediated Moderation Relationship Linking Charismatic Leadership and OCB

Follower prosocial motivation is a conduit through which charismatic leadership influences follower OCB. Charismatic leaders inspire and motivate followers to transcend self-interest for the benefit of the collective, a proximal mechanism that subsequently influences followers’ helping behaviors. Abusive supervision, however, may diminish charismatic leadership's indirect effect on followers’ OCB. Empirical and meta-analytic studies have consistently shown that employees who perceive their supervisors as abusive tend to engage in fewer OCBs in general (Mackey et al., 2017; Zellars et al., 2002; Zhang et al., 2019).

Charismatic leadership and abusive supervision jointly produce behavioral discrepancies about the degree to which prosocial behavior is valued, rewarded, and supported. These mixed messages send ambiguous signals that make followers’ discretionary helping behaviors less appealing and appear more risky. As a result, high levels of charismatic leadership and abusive supervision reduce followers’ desire to help others and engage in helping behaviors. When abusive supervision is low, charismatic leader behaviors are more likely to generate signals that inspire others to benefit the collective and adhere to collective values. Consequently, charismatic leadership is expected to have a positive indirect effect on follower OCB when abusive supervision is low. Drawing on this perspective and building on the theoretical arguments advanced in Hypotheses 1 and 2, we expect that charismatic leadership will indirectly influence employee OCB directed toward the team through employee prosocial motivation when abusive supervision is low, but not when it is high.

Hypothesis 3: Followers’ prosocial motivation will mediate the interactive effect of abusive supervision and charismatic leadership on OCB directed toward the team such that the indirect relationship will be stronger when abusive supervision is low rather than high.

Methods

Sample and Procedure

Multisource data were gathered in a larger data collection effort that included three waves from employees and their supervisors in three Chinese organizations. The organizations were all in the electronics manufacturing industry with similar cultures, organizational structures, and were competing for the same customers. Participants were recruited on a voluntary basis with the assistance of each company's respective human resources (HR) department. Participants were informed that their anonymity would be assured and that the data collected was for academic purposes only. A token of appreciation equivalent to 20 United States dollars was provided to participants upon completion of the surveys. Surveys were completed at work during regular working hours. Completed surveys were returned by participants in sealed envelopes to a designated location in each organization and retrieved by the researchers. The companies confirmed that employees within each team interacted regularly and had common goals and objectives. Each team was comprised of members from the same department and teams were sampled from the same departments (mainly manufacturing operations) across the companies to ensure comparability. Surveys were coded to ensure that responses could be matched. At Wave 1, supervisors reported their demographic characteristics. At Wave 2, three weeks following Wave 1, subordinates rated their immediate supervisor's abusive supervision and charismatic leadership. Finally, at Wave 3, approximately three weeks following Wave 2, subordinates rated their own prosocial motivation and supervisors rated each follower's OCB directed toward the team.

Complete data were obtained from 296 subordinates and 44 supervisors (response rate over the three waves was 80.7%, 85.8%, and 93.3%, respectively). Team size ranged from 5 to 8 (mean = 6.7). Followers’ average age was 29.8 years old with 34 months average tenure in the organization and 9.03 months average tenure in the team; 55.7% were female; 93% had a high school education or below, and 3% had a college or university degree (4% did not respond to this question). Supervisors’ average age was 29.2 years old with 46.7 months average tenure in the organization; 62.2% were female; 89% had high school education or below, and 11% had a college or university degree. The same sample participated in one prior study (Hartnell et al., 2023), but none of the variables in the hypothesized theoretical model (see Figure 1) overlapped and the nature of the research questions are significantly different.

Measures

All surveys were conducted in Chinese. We translated the English-based measures into Chinese and back to English following the standard translation–back translation procedure recommended by Brislin (1980). Specifically, a professional translator translated the surveys into Chinese, after which a different professional translator translated them back from Chinese to English. The first translator compared the two scales to examine whether the back-translation scales were similar to the original, and no issues were detected.

Abusive supervision was measured with 15 items from Tepper (2000). Followers rated their immediate supervisor's abusive supervision on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = frequently). The question stem read, “My supervisor…” and sample items were: “Ridicules me” and “Tells me my thoughts or feelings are stupid.” Cronbach's alpha (group-level) was .99.

Charismatic leadership was measured with four items from the Transformational Leadership scale (5x-short form; Bass & Avolio, 2004). The question stem read, “My supervisor…” and sample items were: “Specifies the importance of having a strong sense of purpose” and “Emphasizes the importance of having a collective sense of mission.” Followers were asked to rate their leaders on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = not at all, 5 = frequently). Cronbach's alpha (group-level) for this scale was .74.

Follower prosocial motivation was measured with four items developed by Ryan and Connell (1989) and adapted by Grant (2008). The question stem read, “Why are you motivated to do your work?” Sample items were: “Because I care about benefiting others through my work” and “Because I want to help others through my work.” Followers were asked to rate themselves on each item on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Cronbach's alpha for the follower prosocial motivation scale was .82.

Follower OCB was measured with four items adapted from Lee and Allen (2002). Supervisors were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = never, 5 = always) how frequently each employee engaged in OCB that helps their work unit. The question stem read, “This employee…” and sample items were: “Keeps up with developments in the team” and “Takes action to protect the team or work unit from potential problems.” Cronbach's alpha for this scale was .82.

Control variables. We controlled for followers’ hours worked per week and age. Past research suggests that resource depletion may negatively influence employees’ OCBs; we used hours worked per week as a proxy for resource depletion reasoning that the more hours employees work, the more likely they are to be too drained to help others (see Trougakos et al., 2015). Other work also suggests that age may play a role in employees’ prosocial motivation and willingness to engage in OCB-related behaviors because employees’ motivations and needs change throughout their various life stages (Doering et al., 1983).

Analytical Strategy

Data were analyzed using multilevel path modeling in Mplus (Version 8.8) to test our multilevel hypotheses simultaneously and to account for the nested nature of the data. Individual-level variables were group-mean centered and variables used in interactions were grand-mean centered as recommended by Enders and Tofighi (2007). As specified by our theoretical framework, abusive supervision and charismatic leadership were modeled at the team level. The agreement indices (i.e., r_wg(j)) and significant ICCs (p < .01) for follower-rated variables at the team level showed that the team-level variance was sufficient to justify aggregating responses (Bliese, 2000; LeBreton & Senter, 2008). Charismatic leadership had a median r_wg(j) of .74, ICC(1) of .12, and ICC(2) of .36. Abusive supervision had a median r_wg(j) of .90, ICC(1) of .58, and ICC(2) of .91. In sum, these statistics indicate that our team-level variables are modeled at the appropriate level of analysis.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Descriptive statistics, reliability coefficients, and correlations are reported in Table 1. Reliabilities were calculated for each scale with aggregated items at the group level.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations among Study Variables.

Individual-level variables	Mean	SD	1	2	3
1. Follower prosocial motivation	3.72	.60
2. Follower OCB	3.29	.70	.24**
3. Follower age	27.52	6.65	.12	−.04
4. Follower hours worked per week	52.13	9.00	−.19*	−.01	.07
Team-level variables	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4	5
1. Charismatic leadership	3.11	.71
2. Abusive supervision	1.92	.88	−.48**
3. Follower prosocial motivation	3.72	.60	.42*	−.53**
4. Follower OCB	3.29	.70	.52**	−.70**	.40^†
5. Follower age	27.52	6.65	−.45	.69*	−.13	−.51
6. Follower hours worked per week	52.13	9.00	−.30^†	.14	.02	−.20	.02

Note. Individual-level, N = 296; team-level, N = 44. Correlations among individual-level variables are derived from group-mean centered variables; correlations among team-level variables are derived from group means. SD = standard deviation; OCB = followers’ citizenship behaviors.

**p ≤ .01, two-tailed. *p ≤ .05, two-tailed. † p < .10, two-tailed.

We established discriminant validity for the follower-rated study variables (abusive supervision, charismatic leadership, and follower prosocial motivation) using confirmatory factor analysis and accounted for the nested data structure using a sandwich estimator to compute standard errors (Asparouhov, 2005). This method yields a model that is representative of the entire sample population while taking into account nonindependence due to clustering. The baseline model of three factors fit the data well (χ² [227] = 383.99, p < .01; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .05; SRMR = .05). All items loaded on their respective factors significantly (p < .01). We compared this model with a two-factor model that combined charismatic leadership with abusive supervision. This model fit worse (χ² [229] = 460.54, p < .00; CFI = .91; RMSEA = .06; SRMR = .06; Δχ² [2] = 76.55, p < .01) than the baseline model. The baseline three-factor model also fit better than a two-factor model combining abusive supervision with follower prosocial motivation (χ² [229] = 663.70, p < .01; CFI = .82; RMSEA = .08; SRMR = .09; Δχ² [2] = 279.71, p < .01). Finally, a one-factor model combining all indicators demonstrated the worst fit (χ² [230] = 737.78, p < .01; CFI = .79; RMSEA = .09; SRMR = .09; Δχ² [3] = 353.79, p < .01). Thus, we concluded that our follower-rated variables were sufficiently distinct, and we proceeded to test our path analytic model.

Hypotheses Testing

To test our hypotheses, we compared a model with a direct effect between charisma and OCB at level 2 to a model with no direct effect. There was no significant difference between the model without the direct effect (χ² [5] = 6.81, p > .01; CFI = .95; RMSEA = .04; SRMR = [within] .02, [between] = .08) as compared to the model with the direct effect (χ² [4] = 6.52, p > .01; CFI = .93; RMSEA = .05; SRMR = [within] .02, [between] = .07; Δχ² [1] = .29, p > .05). The direct effect from charisma to OCB was not significant. Thus, we used the model without the direct effect for hypothesis testing given that this was the more parsimonious model. Figure 2 shows the summary of results of the empirical model. As theorized, Hypothesis 1 was tested at the group level and Hypothesis 2 was tested at the individual level. Hypothesis 3 was a multilevel mediated moderation hypothesis. We tested this hypothesis following recommendations by Preacher and colleagues (2010) to test the entire chain of variables at the highest hypothesized level and thus tested this hypothesis at the group level. We controlled for followers’ hours worked and age on all paths at both levels. The overall model showed good fit to the data (χ² [5] = 6.81, p > .05; CFI = .95; RMSEA = .04; SRMR [within] = .02, SRMR [between] = .08). Table 2 shows the path analytic modeling results.

Table 2.

Multilevel Path Modeling Results.

	Followers’ prosocial motivation (Level 2)		OCB (Level 2)		OCB (Level 1)
Variable	Coefficient (SE)	95% CI	Coefficient (SE)	95% CI	Coefficient (SE)	95% CI
Charismatic leadership	.24* (.11)	[.03, .45]
Abusive supervision	−.24** (.08)	[−.39, −.10]
Charismatic leadership X abusive supervision	−.38* (.19)	[−.74, −.01]
Followers’ prosocial motivation			1.14* (.45)	[.26, 2.03]	.11* (.05)	[.01, .21]
Age	.07** (.03)	[.02, .12]	−.13** (.03)	[−.20, −.07]	−.01 (.01)	[−.01, .01]
Hours worked	.01 (.01)	[−.01, .02]	−.02^† (.01)	[−.05, .01]	−.01 (.01)	[−.01, .01]
Intercept	1.21 (.87)	[−.50, 2.91]	3.75^† (2.08)	[−.33, 7.82]	3.75^† (2.08)	[−.33, 7.82]
	R²= .88** (.25)		R²= .59** (.14)		R²= .02 (.02)
Conditional effect of charismatic leadership on followers’ prosocial motivation
SD of abusive leadership			Effect (SE)	95% CI
−1 SD (−.88)			.57** (.22)	[.15, .99]
M (0)			−.14 (.19)	[−.52, .24]
+1 SD (+.88)			−.09 (.18)	[−.44, .25]
Difference between high and low slopes			−.66* (.33)	[−1.30, −.03]
Conditional indirect effects of charismatic leadership on OCB through followers’ prosocial motivation
SD of abusive leadership			Effect (SE)	95% CI
−1 SD (−.88)			.65** (.25)	[.17, 1.14]
M (0)			−.16 (.21)	[−.57, .26]
+1 SD (+.88)			−.11 (.19)	[−.48, .27]
Difference between high and low slopes			−.76* (.35)	[−1.44, −.08]

Note. Individual-level, N = 296; team-level, N = 44. Unstandardized coefficients. SE = standard error; CI = 95% confidence interval; SD = standard deviation; M = mean; OCB = followers’ citizenship behaviors.

**p ≤ .01, two-tailed. *p ≤ .05, two-tailed. † p < .10, two-tailed.

Hypothesis 1 predicted that charismatic leadership and abusive supervision would interact such that followers’ prosocial motivation would be higher when charismatic leadership was high and abusive supervision was low than when charismatic leadership and abusive supervision were both high. We found significant direct effects of both charismatic leadership (γ = .24, p < .05) and abusive supervision (γ = −.24, p < .01) on followers’ prosocial motivation. The interaction effect was also significant (γ = −.38, p < .05). The pattern of the interaction is shown in Figure 3. Simple slope analyses revealed that the effect of charismatic leadership on follower prosocial motivation was positive and significant under low abusive supervision (−1 standard deviation [SD], conditional effect = .57, p < .01), whereas the simple slope was not significant when abusive supervision was high (+1 SD, conditional effect = −.09, ns). The difference between conditions was significant (b = −.66, p < .05). These analyses supported Hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 predicted that followers’ prosocial motivation was positively associated with their citizenship behavior toward the team. We found a positive and significant relationship at the individual level (γ = .11, p < .05), providing support for Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that followers’ prosocial motivation would mediate the interactive effect of abusive supervision and charismatic leadership on OCB directed toward the team. We tested the conditional indirect effect of charismatic leadership on followers’ OCB directed toward the team through follower prosocial motivation under high and low levels of abusive supervision using only group-level variance. Results showed that charismatic leadership positively impacts OCB through prosocial motivation when abusive supervision is low (−1 SD, conditional indirect effect = .65, p < .01), but not when abusive supervision is high (+1 SD, conditional indirect effect = −.11, ns). The difference between conditions was significant (b = −.76, p < .05). This provided support for Hypothesis 3.

Discussion

The purpose of our study was to evaluate the degree to which charismatic leadership and abusive supervision jointly influence followers’ prosocial motivation and prosocial behaviors (i.e., OCB) directed toward the team. Supporting our hypotheses, we found that charismatic leadership's positive effects on followers’ prosociality were significant when abusive supervision was low but were nonsignificant when abusive supervision was high. These findings yield several theoretical and practical implications and illuminate important directions for future research.

The Co-Occurrence of Charismatic Leadership and Abusive Supervision

Our study contributes to the overall science of leadership and charismatic leadership theory in particular by examining the co-occurrence of positive and negative leadership behaviors. Under the attractive veneer of charismatic leadership, research is equivocal regarding whether charismatic leaders are motivated to use their influence for other-serving or self-serving ends. House and Howell (1992) differentiated between two types of charismatic leaders: socialized and personalized charismatic leaders. Socialized charismatic leadership “serves collective interests and is not driven by the self-interest of the leader and develops and empowers others” whereas personalized charismatic leadership “serves the self-interest of the leader and is self-aggrandizing and is exploitative of others” (House & Howell, 1992, p. 84). Theoretical considerations aside, the empirical literature to date presumes charismatic leadership is an ethical leadership style in which leaders highlight the collective sense of a mission and sacrifice their self-interest for the benefit of the group/organization (e.g., Brown & Trevino, 2006, 2009). However, the assumption that charismatic leadership is equated with “socialized charisma,” or prosocial intentions, based on followers’ ratings of one singular leadership style may be tenuous.

Research indicates that leader affect, or subordinates’ feelings about their leader, creates a halo effect that influences how they rate their leaders (Martinko et al., 2018). As such, extant studies that claim to measure socialized charisma may be confounded with leader affect or leader liking (Brown & Keeping, 2005; Mumford & Fried, 2014). Juxtaposing charismatic leadership with abusive supervision may be one avenue to circumvent this problem. Followers’ propensity to conflate positive leader evaluations with positive affect for the leader may be mitigated by asking followers to assess leaders’ positive and negative behaviors. Moreover, because behaviors are a reflection of one's values, the pattern of positive and negative behaviors is arguably a more reliable indicator of a leader's underlying values than one leadership style alone. Therefore, the juxtaposition of charismatic leadership and abusive supervision in this study provides insight into charismatic leaders’ underlying motives and offers a more nuanced rationale to understand their subsequent effects on followers’ prosociality.

Patterns among Multiple Leadership Behaviors

In addition to discerning leaders’ motives, our study contributes to a growing stream of leadership research that considers the interaction of positive and negative forms of leadership behaviors and characteristics. Our finding that abusive supervision diminishes the positive relationship between charismatic leadership and employee prosocial motivation is consistent with extant research on hostile forms of leadership. Extant research indicates that supportive leader behaviors amplify the negative consequences associated with hostile leader behaviors (Duffy et al., 2002; Hobman et al., 2009). This phenomenon is called the within-domain exacerbation effect (Duffy et al., 2002). The co-occurrence of positive and negative leader behaviors, such as social support and social undermining, induces feelings of relational ambiguity and unpredictability such that employees experience stress from not knowing if their efforts will be consistently rewarded, supported, or reprimanded. Several studies have documented the deleterious effect of abusive supervision and leader-member exchange on followers’ emotional exhaustion, silence, and organizational deviance (Lian et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2015). Our study contributes to this growing literature by documenting abusive supervision's neutralizing effect on charismatic leadership's ability to influence followers’ prosociality.

Our study's results also suggest that concurrently examining multiple leadership styles provides valuable opportunities to study configurations of leadership behaviors that create synergistic or neutralizing effects for followers, teams, and organizations. Configurations better account for the complexity of the phenomenon in question because they identify patterns among elements that “commonly occur together” (Meyer et al., 1993, p. 1175). For instance, studies have examined configurations among HR practices (Toh et al., 2008), organizational climate (Schulte et al., 2009), and organizational culture (Marinova et al., 2018). Similar to these prominent elements of an organization's social context, leadership is a multifaceted construct in which leaders employ multiple leadership styles. Consequently, the leadership domain would benefit from a configural approach to understand the tensions and synergies among different leadership styles and document their influence on leader effectiveness (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023; Lemoine et al., 2019).

Enlarging Prosocial Motivation's Theoretical Framework

Our study expands Grant's (2007) model of relational job design that specifies antecedents and consequences of prosocial motivation. According to Grant's (2007) framework, the relational architecture of jobs, or “structural properties of work,” are key predictors of prosocial motivation. Relational job architecture refers to relational job characteristics (e.g., job impact on beneficiaries and contact with beneficiaries) that provide employees opportunities to psychologically and emotionally connect with beneficiaries within and outside the organization. Such relational job characteristics can motivate employees to care about others, be willing to expend energy to benefit others, and engage in helping behaviors. Structural properties of work, however, are one component of workgroups’ larger relational architecture. Relational architecture also includes social interactions and support within the work environment, such as relationships with supervisors and team members. This broader understanding of relational architecture is consistent with conceptualizations of organizational architecture (Nadler & Tushman, 1997) and organizational context (Ostroff, 2019) that encompass both structural and social elements in an organization's work environment as determinants of organizational processes and performance. It is also consistent with Grant's (2007) argument that “both researchers and practitioners need a deeper understanding of how work contexts cultivate the motivation to make a prosocial difference” (p. 395). Our study thus builds upon Grant's theoretical framework by incorporating the relational element of leadership behaviors—charismatic leadership and abusive supervision—as determinants of prosocial motivation.

Several interesting avenues exist to continue to build upon Grant's theoretical foundation for prosocial motivation. The degree to which positive elements of the work unit, such as clan culture, service climate, group identification, and team cohesion engender employees’ prosocial motivation, have received scant attention. Such investigations are needed to illuminate why positive relational cues increase employees’ prosocial motivation. Furthermore, additional employee motivations may provide important insight into when relational cues will increase employees’ prosocial motivation. The norm of reciprocity suggests that employees benefit others to maintain positive social exchanges, prevent negative future interpersonal exchanges, and adhere to generalized moral norms (Gouldner, 1960). Hence, alternative employee motivations (e.g., intrinsic motivation, impression management motivation, and self-serving motivation) may be particularly promising boundary conditions to yield important insights into whether employees’ prosocial motivation is an autonomous expression of intrinsic self-determination or reflects guilt derived from extrinsic obligations (Bolino & Grant, 2016).

In addition, the importance of illuminating destructive relational factors that may undermine followers’ prosocial motivation should not be understated. Perceived organizational politics, hostile climate, authoritarian leadership, and social undermining may cause employees to reassess or diminish their motivation to help others. Even worse, negative social cues may threaten employees’ resources resulting in a cynical and critical view of others that may manifest in counterproductive behaviors. Consistent with predictions derived from conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), leaders and employees alike are more likely to engage in deviant behaviors when they experience or perceive negative social cues that deplete their emotional and psychological resources (Courtright et al., 2016; Mawritz et al., 2014). These possibilities implore future research to explicate when and how destructive relational elements in the workplace impair employees’ prosocial motivation and undermine its positive effects.

Practical Implications

Our study's findings offer two important practical implications. First, charismatic leadership is often extolled as an attractive and desirable leadership style, but not all charismatic leaders treat their employees well. To be sure, leader charisma is a valued behavior by organizations because it is associated with leader effectiveness and organizational performance (Lowe et al., 1996; Waldman et al., 2001). Charismatic leaders are considered more influential, energetic, and confident as they communicate an attractive vision (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998). They also show persistence in goal attainment and have high performance expectations of their followers (Bass, 1985, 1998). However, our study reveals the potentially nefarious side of charismatic leaders in which they can be abusive, undermining followers’ prosocial motivation. This finding is important for organizations because positive leader behaviors combined with negative leadership behaviors can stifle positive, prosocial momentum among employees within the organization. Therefore, organizations should not dismiss abusive behaviors from otherwise inspirational leaders. Rather, organizational leaders and HR executives should be attentive to evaluating leaders’ positive behaviors and destructive behaviors and build an incentive system that rewards positive, desirable leadership behaviors and reduces negative, undesirable behaviors. This two-fold approach promises to build a psychologically safe and supportive work environment for employees to grow in their motivation to help others inside and outside the organization.

Second, our results underscore the importance of relationships within the work unit for individuals’ prosocial motivation and prosocial behaviors. Practitioners can increase employees’ prosocial motivation and prosocial behaviors by focusing on developing supportive relationships between leaders and team members. Practitioners can facilitate building these relationships by implementing 360-degree feedback assessments or at the very least attempting to offer team building programs that facilitate high-quality relationships among team members and their respective leaders. They can also design work structures to facilitate open communication, emotional bonding, and social support to improve employees’ social interactions with their leaders (e.g., see Christensen-Salem et al., 2021).

Methodological Strengths and Limitations

This study has several methodological strengths. Leadership behaviors were follower-rated and followers’ behaviors were rated by supervisors, thus reducing common source bias when both predictors and outcomes are self-reported. Also, our research design employs multiple waves of data collection to ensure the temporal sequence of variables examined is consistent with our theoretical model. Finally, in addition to controlling for theoretically relevant variables, we tested a relatively complex multilevel model which allowed us to provide a more thorough understanding of the interplay of relational elements in the work unit on prosocial motivation and its effects on followers’ citizenship behaviors toward team members. This model allowed us to account for the influence of other variables while also considering the effect of control variables at different levels of analysis (Diez-Roux, 2000; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), enhancing our confidence in the findings and their potential contribution to the literature.

Nevertheless, our study's results should be interpreted in light of the following limitations. First, we focused on charismatic leadership as a positive leadership behavior and abusive supervision as a negative leadership behavior to explain their interactive effects on followers’ prosocial motivation. Other combinations of positive and negative leadership behaviors might explain additional variance. For example, some aspects of servant leadership behaviors (i.e,., stewardship, accountability, empowerment) combined with abusive supervision may also attenuate followers’ prosocial motives. We encourage future studies to examine how these and other combinations of leadership behavior might impact followers’ motivation. Second, our study design utilized a small sample size at the supervisor level. Nonetheless, our hypotheses were supported, and we found significant effects indicating that our study had sufficient power. A larger sample size, however, may have helped strengthen our results. Fourth, because full panel data were not available, we cannot fully rule out the possibility of reverse causality. The predicted direction of our hypothesized relationships, though, are consistent with extant theory and research. Additionally, our sample was derived from respondents in three electronic manufacturing Chinese organizations limiting our study's generalizability. To extend our findings’ generalizability, we recommend that future studies constructively replicate our findings in different cultural contexts. Finally, charismatic leadership had lower r_wg(j), ICC(1), and ICC(2) values as compared to abusive leadership. Woehr and colleagues (2015) suggest that these measures should be interpreted as a first step in considering whether there is sufficient evidence that there is enough agreement in teams that researchers are not capitalizing on pseudo agreement. One of the steps in determining this is comparing the values to those observed in similar studies. Woehr and colleagues (2015) note that 75% of group-level studies in their literature review reported ICC(1) values exceeding .11 (this value is lower than what we observed in our study for charismatic leadership), and the ICC(2) and r_wg(j) values in our study are also above those observed in similar studies.

Conclusion

Our examination of charismatic leadership's conditional impact on employee prosocial motivation and OCB directed toward the team contributes to the charismatic leadership and prosocial motivation literatures. Our findings highlight the importance of positive and negative leadership behaviors for employee prosocial motivation, illuminate when and how charismatic leadership indirectly affects employees’ OCB toward the team, and identify supervisors’ behaviors as an important element of the relational job architecture that affects employees’ prosociality. We encourage researchers and practitioners to continue to investigate the additional leader behaviors that occur together with charismatic leadership that accentuate or attenuate its effect on followers’ motivations and behaviors. Such an endeavor promises to introduce a more nuanced understanding of charismatic leadership's positive and negative implications for the followers, teams, and organizations they lead.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical Standards

We confirm that there are no known potential conflicts of interest.

Our research involves human participants and we have complied with ethical standards in the treatment of the participants involved in the present study.

Participants were given informed consent.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chad A. Hartnell

Author Biographies

Amanda Christensen-Salem has a PhD in business management from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Her research interests include positive organizational behavior topics that span levels including leadership, feedback, affect, creativity, human resources, and organizational behavior issues in family firms. She has published in a variety of management, business, and applied psychology journals.

Chad A. Hartnell is an associate professor in the Management Department at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business. He received his PhD from Arizona State University. His research focuses most centrally on leadership and organizational culture, how they interrelate, and the intervening mechanisms through which they influence organizational, unit, and individual effectiveness. His work has been published in top journals including Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Personnel Psychology.

Fred O. Walumbwa (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is a professor and the Knight-Ridder Byron Harless Endowed Eminent Scholar Chair of Management at Florida International University in the College of Business' Department of International Business, USA. His primary research is on leadership development as a key tool for an organization's competitive advantage, and his work has been published widely in a variety of journals in business, management, and psychology.

Flora F. T. Chiang is a Professor of Management at China Europe International Business School. Her primary research interests include employee behavior and performance, leadership, and cross-cultural management and her publications regularly appear in leading international academic journals, such as Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Applied Psychology, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Management, and Journal of Business Ethics. Prior to her academic career, Flora held senior management and directorate positions in public and private organizations and consulted internationally on all facets of employee performance and development, including in the service industry.

Thomas A. Birtch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Exeter Business School. Prior to joining the University of Exeter, Thomas has held appointments at the University of South Australia, the University of Nottingham, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Cambridge as well as visiting affiliations at MIT and other prominent institutions. His research regularly appears in leading business journals, including the Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Applied Psychology, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Journal of Management, and Journal of Business Ethics. Prior to joining academia, Thomas held senior management and executive positions in both private sector and government.

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