A Leader's Procedural Justice, Respect and Extra-role Behaviour: The Roles of Leader In-group Prototypicality and Identification

The relational models of procedural justice suggest that a leader's procedural justice indicates to group members whether they are respected members of the group or not and that feelings of respect induce subsequent group-serving behaviour. Importantly, these models also present, and previous empirical studies show, that a leader's procedural justice conveys respect-related information most powerfully when the leader is in-group prototypical. The present study of 153 employees from 20 children's day-care centres builds on these assumptions and develops them further. This study shows that leader in-group prototypicality moderates the relationship between the leader's procedural justice and group members' feelings of respect only when group members are highly identified with the group. In addition, our study reveals that feelings of respect mediate the relationship between the leader's procedural justice and group members' extra-role behaviour only if perceived leader in-group prototypicality and group identification are concurrently at a relatively high level. The paper discusses the implications of these findings.