All You Need is Love

Abstract

newlineThough love (in the agape form) forms the foundation of most leadership concepts, newline there is very limited understanding on what it entails and how it can impact follower newline outcomes. This research advances a conceptual understanding of agape and develops an newline empirical scale to measure agape demonstrated by leaders. Leaders agape is acting newline intentionally to promote well-being of followers in response to ill-being and it involves newline behaviours such as humility, self-sacrifice, forgiveness, empathy, emotional control and newline impartiality. I offer a theoretical model that captures the antecedents and outcomes of leaders newline agape, as well as the underlying processes through which it operates. Four studies were newline conducted which included an item development and content validity assessment (Study 1), an newline organizational survey (Study 2: N = 214), a vignette experiment (Study 3: N = 147) and a task newline experiment (Study 4: N = 282). I developed a 12-item leaders agape scale, validated it, newline showed how it differed from transformational leadership and showed its utility in predicting newline follower outcomes. Additionally, I showed how followers characteristics such as followers newline attachment dimensions, power distance orientation, gender, tenure in organization and newline frequency of interaction with the leader moderated the leaders agape - follower outcomes newline relationship. Further, I showed how leaders agape significantly predicted follower outcomes newline beyond transformational leadership and weakened the relationship between transformational newline leadership and follower outcomes. As agape behaviours can be developed, this research has newline implications for organizations to embrace a culture of agape through conducting training on newline agape for current organizational leaders. newline Keywords: Agape, Transformational Leadership, Leadership Effectiveness, Job newline Satisfaction, Power Distance Orientation, Attachment Styles