Altruistic leadership and job performance: a Darwinian evolutionary perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18226/25253824.v6.n11.04Keywords:
Altruistic Leadership, Selfish Leadership, Evolutionary Biology, Path Modeling, Population GeneticsAbstract
This paper presents an altruistic leadership theory based on evolutionary concepts. The theory proposes that natural processes selected for selfish behaviors, and that these selfish behaviors continue in modern humanity. However, while these selfish tendencies provided positive survival traits among ancestral populations, they induce negative behavioral traits in modern times in most organizational situations. We argue that altruistic behavior – placing followers’ needs before one’s own – elicits increases in follower performance by increasing their commitment and job satisfaction. However, it seems that the same forces that led to the spread of selfish leadership traits among ancestral humans also inhibit the spread of altruistic leadership traits today. As such, we can expect few naturally altruistic leaders to be available, and we can also expect that organizations must nurture such behaviors to develop trained altruistic leaders. These trained altruistic leaders may have advantages if they can draw upon training to behave altruistically with followers, and selfishly to deal with external competition. We develop these ideas by presenting mechanisms for how selfish leadership traits developed and spread through ancestral humans, what role altruism plays in enhancing follower outcomes, and suggestions for future theoretical development.
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