All you need is love : the relationship between agape and work outcomes
Purpose: The purpose of this paper was to lay the necessary conceptual and empirical groundwork of agape in organizations. Specifically, the authors reviewed literature on agape; advanced formal definition of agape; explained the relationship of agape with related variables; developed a scale to measure agape and provided evidence of its reliability and construct validity; showed how agape uniquely predicted employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and showed how agape compensated for the lack of transformational leadership. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a survey with 214 working executives who rated their manager on transformational leadership and agape behaviours, and later indicated their own work attitudes. Next, the authors conducted a 20-min between-subjects vignette experiment with 147 business management students who were provided with a description of a supervisor and asked to indicate their work attitudes under the supervisor. Findings: The authors advanced an operational definition and a scale to measure agape. The findings of this study indicated that agape was a unidimensional construct with high reliability. It had significant positive relationships with followers’ job satisfaction, faith and loyalty, team commitment, satisfaction and risk-taking; explained incremental variance in employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and compensated for the lack of transformational leadership. Research limitations/implications: The present research has the potential to inform recruitment, selection, training, promotion and performance evaluation decisions in organizations. Originality/value: The authors responded to calls for developing a clear and consistent conceptualization and operationalization of agape for improving scholarly research and leadership training and development.
Year of publication: |
2021
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Authors: | Carvalho, Fallan Kirby ; Mulla, Zubin R. |
Published in: |
International Journal of Organizational Analysis. - Emerald, ISSN 1934-8835, ZDB-ID 2435914-2. - 2021 (08.09.)
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Publisher: |
Emerald |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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