Keywords

1 Introduction

The world is undergoing profound changes ever seen in a century, and with the rapid development of new technologies, the market environment is full of change and uncertainty. As a pivotal role in an organization, the behavior and attitudes of leaders have a significant impact on the development of the organization, while the relationship between leaders and employees needs to maintain a new balance. Self-sacrificial leadership is a leadership style that postpones or gives up personal interests, benefits or privileges in order to achieve the mission and collective interests of the organization, it often postpones or sacrifices self-interest, such as the exercise of power, the division of labor and the distribution of rewards [1], in order to serve the collective interests and promote the achievement of organizational goals. The spirit of collectivism and the concept of sharing hardships often lead the organization to overcome difficulties, and is needed for enterprises to avoid risks and develop steadily in information age.

“Dedication” is one of the core values of Chinese socialism, and it is the requirement of an individual’s attitude towards work. “Engagement” is defined as the positive integration of the individual in the work from physical, cognitive and emotional aspects [2]. Employees are the mainstay of the companies, governing the existence and development of the organization, and both individuals and organizations can derive positive results from a high level of employee engagement. Employee engagement provides motivation for employees to adopt more positive attitudes and behaviors in the organization, and also provides a sustainable competitive advantage for the organization in today’s complex and changing information age.

According to leadership theory, leaders are able to influence employees’ behavioral concepts through their perceptions, motivations, and competencies. Many studies have focused on the effects of self-sacrificial leadership on various aspects of employees, such as promoting employee creativity [3], improving work performance [4], etc. While the influencing mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement and its dimensions remain to be explored, and there is no research on the effectiveness of self-sacrificial leadership from the perspective of both extra-role identities, leader identification and organizational identification. Therefore, based on social identity theory, this study focuses on uncovering the internal influence mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement from both leader identification and organizational identification perspectives, and discusses the differences in the influence of different dimensions of engagement in order to provide suggestions for improving employee engagement and find a balance in leadership-employee relations, as well as providing valuable references for companies to maintain a balanced internal organizational environment and promote development In the current changeable era.

2 Theories and Hypotheses

2.1 Self-sacrificial Leadership and Employee Engagement

Self-sacrificial leadership is manifested as sacrificing oneself in order to achieve the organizational mission and set up personal example, which has the following characteristics: out of individual willingness, giving up or postponing personal interests, and aiming at achieving collective interests or goals [5]. Many studies have demonstrated that self-sacrificial leadership can have a positive impact on employees’ perceptions or behaviors. Specifically, self-sacrificial leaders’ selfless values and behaviors express that leaders value the interests of organizational members, so that employees can recognize the leaders and are willing to demonstrate positive work performance. According to the social learning theory, the collectivism concept of self-sacrificial leaders can easily be used as a role model to motivate employees to exhibit similar concept. And combined with the “reciprocity principle” of social exchange theory, when the self-sacrificial leaders sacrifice personal interests to serve the organization and its members, the members will have the belief to return leaders and show more positive states.

Kahn (1990) pointed out that employee engagement refers to the degree to which organizational members combine their personal emotions, abilities and other resources with their work roles [6], and classified engagement into three dimensions: cognitive engagement, affective engagement and behavioral engagement, where cognitive engagement is characterized by attention and immersion in the work, affective engagement is characterized by positive reactions in the work, and behavioral engagement is characterized by the effort put in the work. Some studies have shown that positive leaders have higher virtue, and subordinates will have a higher sense of trust and satisfaction with their leaders, thus showing a more dedicated work status [7]. Self-sacrificial leaders, as people who are willing to self-sacrifice for the benefit of the collective, can make employees feel supported and valued, satisfy their personal expectations, make them willing to work in a more positive state. The self-sacrificial leadership can create a role model that makes subordinates willing to follow them, and moreover, it can make employees feel obligated to reciprocate the sacrifice of the leader based on reciprocity, and meet the expectations of the leader to complete the work within the role with a higher level of dedication. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed.

H1: Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on employee engagement (including cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement).

2.2 Leader Identification as a Mediator

According to social identity theory, in order to reduce uncertainty or enhance their self-worth, individuals often define and categorize themselves in comparison with groups or others, and establish an emotional connection with the target object [8], that is, generate identity. The process of social identity generally includes social-classification and self-reinforcement. Social-categorization is the process of defining and categorizing oneself and the group, in which the similarity between individuals and the group is strengthened. Self-reinforcement is the process of accelerating this similarity and increasing dissimilarity to the external groups, in which individuals will actively exhibit behaviors that are consistent with the group and will also exhibit positive and proactive behaviors in order to increase the dominance of the group to which they belong.

Leader identification is the employee’s connection to the leader and the degree to which the employee overlaps with the values and goals of leaders. In general, leader identification is catalyzed when leadership styles maintain or enhance employees’ self-esteem, satisfaction of needs, and self-improvement of meaning [9]. Studies have proved that self-sacrificial leadership can make employees develop emotional attachment, and promote the formation of leader identification [4]. The dedication and collectivism of self-sacrificial leaders can make employees feel respected and valued, and thus willing to establish an emotional connection with the leader, that is, to improve employees’ identification with the leader and show consistent behaviors with the leader.

When the behavioral state of the leader catalyzes employees to develop leader identification, which leads to a strong sense of belonging and psychological attachment to the leaders [10], employees will more actively associate themselves with the leaders in a consistent manner, translate identification into psychological motivation, and perform positive behaviors expected of leaders, such as increasing work engagement [11]. The higher virtues of self-sacrificial leaders can inspire employees to form identification with their leaders, and the higher the employees’ leader identification, the more they tend to combine the attitude and behavior of leaders with themselves and maintain consistency, strive to achieve organizational goals and promote organizational development, and they are more willing to give feedback on more positive states, which can also result in higher engagement. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed.

H2: Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on leader identification.

H3: Leader identification plays a mediating role in the influence of Self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement (including cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement).

2.3 Organizational Identification as a Mediator

Organizational identification is the cognitive or emotional association of organizational members with their identification as members of the organization and reflects the degree of integration and recognition of the individual to the organization. Generally speaking, employees are more likely to identify with the organization that brings them a higher sense of security, self-realization and belonging [12]. The self-sacrificial leader, as the agent of the organization, is loyal to the organization’s goals and mission, and to a certain extent represents the organization’s values and behavioral norms, thus being able to influence employees’ personal concepts such as enhancing organizational identification [12]. Self-sacrificial leaders put the development of organization and organizational member’s interests first and emphasize the overall awareness, which can make employees feel a sense of security and belonging brought by the organization, as well as the self-worth of individuals in the organization, they are willing to include individuals in the organization and thus increase their identification with the organization.

According to the social identity theory, the higher the employees’ identification with the organization, the easier it is to link themselves closely with the organization, employees will incorporate organizational development and goals into their personal goals, and will be more willing to show a more active and proactive state for the development of the organization. Most studies on organizational identification also agree that organizational identification can have positive effects on employees, such as promoting subordinate taking charge [13]. High organizational identification enables employees to align their attitudes or behaviors with the organization and align the interests and development of the organization to the interests and development of the individual, driving employees to work hard to achieve organizational goals, employees will do their jobs better and show more positive and dedicated states and behaviors. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed.

H4: Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on organizational identification.

H5: Organizational identification plays a mediating role in the influence of Self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement (including cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement).

2.4 Leader Identification and Organizational Identification

The typical manifestations of social identity are organizational identification and leader identification, that is, the emotional connection of employees to organizations or leaders. Leader as part of the organization, employees support for the leader can be expanded to generate support for the organization, positive leadership style can also make employees produce follower effect and maintain a high sense of support and trust for the organization. Sluss et al. (2018) pointed out in their research that when the supervisor is perceived to be prototypical, Leader identification is more likely to generalize to organizational identification through affective, cognitive, and behavioral mediating mechanisms [14]. The collectivist value of the self-sacrificial leader is highly representative of the organization, and can effectively facilitate the transformation of leader identification to organizational identification, so that employees link the individual, the leader, and the organization as one, and thus show the attitude and behavior conducive to the development of the organization. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed.

H6: Leader identification can promote employees’ organizational identification, which in turn affects employee engagement (including cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement).

In summary, the research model of this study is shown in Fig. 1 below.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Research model

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3 Methods

In this study, data were collected through questionnaire method, the questionnaire scale is suitable for employees to fill in and the respondents anonymously evaluate the leaders and personal feelings. Pre-survey was conducted before the formal survey and the questions were optimized based on the analysis results. After the formal research, a total of 320 questionnaires were collected, of which 273 were valid, with an effective rate of 85.3%. The collected data were processed, analyzed, establish regression model and hypothesis tested using SPSS and AMOS soft.

The questionnaire scales used in this study are all mature scales that have been tested by domestic and foreign scholars, with appropriate modifications for the Chinese context. All scales were scored by Likert 7 points. The measurement of self-sacrificial leadership was based on a 5-item unidimensional scale developed by Cremer et al. [15], which is suitable for employees to fill in, and has been verified by domestic scholars for many times with good reliability and validity, the scale questions include “My leader will make personal sacrifices for the good of the organization”. Leader identification was measured using the unidimensional leader identification scale developed by Kark et al. [16], which was modified to have seven items, and the scale questions included “I trust my leader a lot”. The organizational identification scale was based on the unidimensional six-item scale introduced by Mael et al. [17], with question such as “I care about what people think of the company I work for”. Regarding the scale of employee engagement, this paper draws on the three-dimensional employee engagement measurement scale adapted by Ma [18], which has 13 items, including “I think it is my duty to do my job well”, etc.

According to the final data collection statistics, the respondents came from more than 20 provinces, covering various types of positions and business nature. In terms of gender, 51.3% were female and 48.7% were male; in terms of age, 25.6% were under 25 years old, 44.7% were between 26 and 30 years old, 20.1% were between 31 and 35 years old, and 9.5% were over 35 years old; in terms of working years, 18.7% were under one year, 34.1% were 1–3 years old, 33.7% were 4–6 years old, and 13.5% were over 7 years old; in terms of education, 34.8% were college education or below, 49.1% were bachelor degree, and 49.1% were graduate degree or above.

4 Data Analysis and Results

4.1 Reliability Analysis

In this study, the Cronbach-α was used to measure the reliability of the questionnaire. Among them, the coefficients of self-sacrificial leadership (SL), leader identification (LI), organizational identification (OI) and employee engagement (EE) were 0.807, 0.818, 0.780, and 0.888, and the coefficients of cognitive engagement (CE), affective engagement (AE), behavioral engagement (BE) in engagement were 0.743, 0.759, 0.756, all of which exceeded 0.7. The value of KMO statistic was 0.932 and the result of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity approximated 0, indicating that the data in this study were suitable for factor analysis. Next, the structural validity test was conducted using Amos, and the four-factor model containing second-order dimensions was validated by factor analysis. And the fit indicators were as follows: χ2/df = 1.659 < 3, IFI = 0.920, TLI = 0.908, CFI = 0.919, which were all greater than 0.9, and RMSEA = 0.049 < 0.08, indicating that each variable has high structural. The combined reliability values CR for SL, LI, OI, CE, BE and AE were 0.797, 0.820, 0.767, 0.757, 0.755 and 0.739, all of which exceeded 0.7, indicating that the reliability coefficients of the questionnaire were good and basically meets the requirements of the research. In addition, the results of unrotated factor analysis showed that the total variance of the first factor interpretation was 36.91%, less than 40%, indicating that there was no serious homologous variance problem in the data in this study.

4.2 Correlation Analysis

Correlation analysis was first performed using SPSS, and the correlation coefficients, means, and standard deviations of all variables are shown in Table 1 below. The results indicate that the independent variables, mediating variables and dependent variables are significantly correlated with each other, which initially supports the research hypothesis of this study.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis results
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4.3 Direct and Mediating Effects Tests

Next, the direct and mediating effects were tested by constructing regression models for the variables of self-sacrificial leadership (SL), leader identification (LI), organizational identification (OI) and employee engagement (EE) to verify the main hypotheses of this study. The results of the regression analysis are shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2. Regression analysis of self-sacrificial leadership, leader identification, organizational identification and employee engagement
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As shown in the table above: Model 2 shows that self-sacrificial leadership has a significant positive effect on leader identification (β = 0.578, P < 0.001). Model 3 shows that self-sacrificial leadership has a significant positive effect on organizational identification (β = 0.552, P < 0.001). Model 4 shows that the positive influence of leader identification on organizational identification is significant (β = 0.438, p < 0.001), and the positive effect of self-sacrificial leadership on organizational identification is reduced but still significant (β = 0.300, p < 0.001), indicating that leader identification plays a partial mediating effect in the positive effect of self-sacrificial leadership on organizational identification. Model 5 shows that self-sacrificial leadership has a significant positive effect on employee engagement (β = 0.540, P < 0.001). Model 6 shows that the positive effect of leader identification on employee engagement is significant (β = 0.552, p < 0.001), and the positive effect coefficient of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement is reduced but still significant (β = 0.221, p < 0.001), indicating that leader identification plays a partial mediating effect in the positive effect of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement. Model 7 shows that the positive effect of organizational identification on employee engagement is significant (β = 0.404, p < 0.001), and the positive effect of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement is reduced but still significant (β = 0.317, p < 0.001), indicating that organizational identification plays a partial mediating effect in the positive effect of leader identification on employee engagement (β = 0.449, p < 0.001). Model 8 shows that that the positive effect of leader identification on employee engagement is significant (β = 0.449, p < 0.001), and the positive effect of organizational identification on employee engagement is significant (β = 0.235, p < 0.001), and the positive effect of Self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement is reduced but still significant (β = 0.151, p = 0.001), indicating that leader identification and organizational identification play the multiple mediating effect in the positive effect of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement.

Table 3. The bootstrapping test of self-sacrificial leadership and employee engagement
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The bootstrapping test was used to further verify the mediating effect of leader identification and organizational identification in the influence of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement. As the results shown in Table 3, the 95% confidence intervals of the influence effects of each path do not include 0, that is, self-sacrificial leadership can influence employee engagement through the mediating effect of leader identification, organizational identification, and the multiple mediating effect of leadership identification-organizational identification. And according to the proportion of influence effects, self-sacrificial leadership are more likely to positively influence employee engagement through the mediating effect of leader identification, followed by the direct effect influence on employee engagement, the effect influenced through the mediating path of organizational identification and the multiple mediating path of leader identification-organizational identification accounts for a smaller percentage.

4.4 Hypothesis Testing of the Dimensions of Employee Engagement

In order to further explore the different effects of the dimensions of engagement in this research, cognitive engagement (D1), affective engagement (D2), and behavioral engagement (D3) were introduced into the model as dependent variables and constructed regression analysis models. The analysis results are shown in Table 4 below.

Table 4. Regression analysis of self-sacrificial leadership, leader identification, organizational identification and engagement dimensions
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As the results shown in Table 4 above, the direct effects of self-sacrificial leadership on cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement are all significant. When leader identification and organizational identification are introduced into the model, both of them can positively influence employee engagement, and direct effect coefficients of self-sacrificial leadership are all reduced but still significant, indicating that leader identification and organizational identification can play the partial mediating effect and multiple mediating effect in the influence of self-sacrificial leadership on the dimensions of engagement.

Table 5. The bootstrapping test of self-sacrificial leadership and the dimensions of engagement
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The bootstrapping test was used to further verify the mediating effects of leader identification and organizational identification in the influence of self-sacrificial leadership on cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. As the results shown in Table 5, the 95% confidence intervals of the influence effects of each path do not include 0. That is, self-sacrificial leadership can influence cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement through the mediating effect of leader identification, organizational identification, and the multiple mediating effect of leader identification-organizational identification. According to the proportion of influence effects, Self-sacrificial leaders are more likely to positively influence the dependent variable through the mediating effect of leader identification, followed by the direct effect influence on employee engagement, the effect influenced through the mediating path of organizational identification and the multiple mediating path of leader identification-organizational identification accounts for a smaller percentage, and gradually decreases with the change of cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement.

5 Discussion

5.1 Conclusion

Self-sacrificial leadership can effectively motivate the generation of employee engagement in enterprises. Previous studies have not yet explored the impact of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement. This study proves that the leader who is able to make self-sacrifices for the benefit of his organization and employees will win the recognition of employees, as well as inspiring them by example, which positively affects employees’ engagement and related dimensions such as cognitive engagement, affective engagement, and behavioral engagement.

Self-sacrificial leadership can positively influence employees’ engagement through leader identification and organizational identification, and can also promote employees’ organizational identification through the multiple mediating effects of leader identification-organizational identification. Based on the social identity theory, this paper attempts to introduce two extra-role identity variables, leader identification and organizational identification, into the model of the effect of self-sacrificial leadership on employee engagement, and the results show that, self-sacrificial leadership mainly enhances employees’ positive perceptions and leader identification through personal values and behaviors of making personal sacrifices for the public good, so that employees can keep their own attitudes and behaviors consistent with their leaders. At the same time, as an agent of the organization, the leader’s own performance will also make the organizational characteristics show similarity, so the employees’ organizational identification will be stimulated along with the leader identification, and the employees will be willing to subsume themselves into the organization and show positive behaviors.

The effects of self-sacrificial leadership on cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement are consistent with the hypotheses of this research, and the proportion of mediating effects and multiple mediating effect of the path where organizational identification is located gradually decreases with changes in cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement. The paper argues that employees’ affective engagement and behavioral engagement need affective or behavioral giving as performance, still have some differences with the actual psychological will of employees, and employees may inhibit the actual occurrence of certain pay based on personal or situational factors such as ability mismatch or protecting personal resources [19]. Leader identification is an intuitive psychological perception of self-sacrificial leaders, and employees tend to align themselves directly with their leaders more than with the organization. Therefore, when leader identification and organizational identification are introduced simultaneously, organizational identification is more likely to be inhibited by external factors or employees’ internal willingness than leader identification, thus the positive effects on affective and behavioral engagement is reduced.

5.2 Practical Implications

For leaders, they need to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of organizational goals and employees’ interests to some extent, such as daring to take on more difficult tasks at work, actively sacrificing their personal time to lead employees to accomplish corporate goals, giving up the privileges they have as leaders, etc., make employees feel valued from their leaders and thus willing to behave in a more positive manner; Self-sacrificial leaders should weaken the traditional commanding and authoritarian leadership style, and effectively promote the formation of their leader identification by influencing the psychological state of employees. It should also strive to improve its representation in the organization, and promote the development and transformation of organizational identification; Leaders should strengthen communication with employees, and promptly find out the reasons that cause inconsistency between employees’ psychological state and actual performance, such as whether employees feel that they have received a personal loss of benefits, whether they have generated greater pressure in their work, etc., and promptly communicate with employees to solve the problem, so as to avoid the actual occurrence of inhibiting employees’ dedicated emotions and behaviors.

For companies, when recruiting or selecting leaders, they can focus on leaders with the spirit of self-sacrifice, the internal training of enterprises can also focus on the cultivation of leaders of all ranks with the concept of “ Collective priority”, this type of leadership can play an important role in promoting the formation of employee dedication; The organization should create a corporate culture, and synchronize with self-sacrificial leadership to effectively protect the interests of employees, to make employees really feel valued and inspire them to have organizational identification and show higher dedication to accomplish the mission of the organization; In daily work, incentive system can be developed to encourage and support employees, so as to better promote the actual occurrence of employee engagement emotion and behavior.