Good Soldiers Instead of Good Change Agents: Examining the Dual Effects of Self-Sacrificial Leadership on Pro-Social Behavior and Change-Oriented Behavior in Teams.

This article examines the dual effects of self-sacrificial leadership—where leaders forgo personal interests for their team's welfare—on team behaviors, using social learning theory as a framework. It finds that self-sacrificial leadership positively influences team prosocial behavior, specifically team helping, by fostering a collective other-focus among members. Conversely, it negatively impacts team change-oriented behaviors, such as creativity and proactivity, by increasing team dependence on the leader, which discourages independent initiative. These effects are amplified when leaders are perceived as highly competent. The research, based on two multisource, time-lagged field studies in Chinese organizations, challenges the assumption that self-sacrificial leadership is uniformly beneficial and highlights the importance of balancing leadership behaviors to support both team cooperation and innovation.