How Leaders can Promote Cooperation and Why They Often Don’t Seminar

One critical requirement of effective leadership is to stimulate individuals to voluntarily contribute to the welfare of the collective, rather than focusing solely on their own selfish outcomes; behavior known as cooperation. Various leadership behaviors, such as making decisions in a fair manner and empowering behaviors are known to stimulate cooperation. I will, first of all, present research that integrates empowering leadership styles in relational justice models (Tyler & Blader, 2003). This research shows that leaders should look at the various behaviors they display in concert, rather than in isolation: Some empowerment behaviors strengthen the effect of fair decision-making on individuals' cooperation; others weaken these effects.

Secondly, I approach the issue of cooperation from a self-regulation perspective in terms of action-control theory (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994), and present research showing that when employees do not display cooperative behaviors, this is not necessarily an issue of low motivation, but often a matter of being incapable of doing so. Finally, a core problem with stimulating cooperation is that leaders often refrain from displaying the behaviors that stimulate it. I will present research that addresses various motives for leaders to refrain from displaying effective leadership styles.