Leadership, power and the use of surveillance: Implications of shared social identity for leaders' capacity to inﬂuence Emina Subašić a, ⁎, Katherine J. Reynolds a , John C. Turner a , Kristine E. Veenstra a , S. Alexander Haslam b a Department of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia b School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom article info abstract Available online 2 February 2011 To ensure subordinates' compliance with organizational policies and procedures, those in positions of organizational leadership and authority have a number of resources at their disposal (e.g. rewards and punishments, surveillance, persuasion). When choosing strategies that will maximise their capacity to influence, however, leaders cannot afford to overlook the role of social identity processes. Evidence from two studies shows that the success or otherwise of strategies such as rewards/punishments and surveillance depends on whether the leader is considered to be an ingroup or outgroup member. In line with hypotheses, the results indicate that while surveillance may be a necessary tool in the repertoire of outgroup leaders (Experiment 2), in the hands of ingroup leaders it is likely to attenuate rather than enhance their capacity to inﬂuence (Experiments 1 and 2). © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Leadership Inﬂuence Surveillance Power Self-categorization Social identity Leadership is fundamentally a process of social inﬂuence through which particular attitudes and behaviours are harnessed towards the realization of group goals (Haslam, 2004; Hollander, 1985). How to maximise leader inﬂuence has been a matter of ongoing debate within social and organizational psychology. Within this work a distinction is made between those ‘tools’ of inﬂuence that focus more on extrinsic incentives (e.g. rewards and punishments)—and as such require close monitoring and surveillance of subordinate behaviour—from more intrinsic strategies where inﬂuence is based on cognitive internalization of leaders' views and objectives (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; French & Raven, 1959; Kramer & Tyler, 1996; Tyler & Blader, 2000). There has also been a growing recognition that leaders' inﬂuence is based on a sense of psychological connection or identiﬁcation with the organization or group and its leadership (cf. Lord & Brown, 2001; Turner & Haslam, 2001). Where there is a sense of shared social identity between leaders and followers, intrinsic motivation to behave in line with organizational or group goals and objectives is also likely to be enhanced and the need for harsh penalties and close scrutiny of individual workers' actions are reduced (e.g. Haslam, 2004). More recently, it has been proposed that ingroup leaders' inﬂuence may be jeopardised when they act in ways that violate “our” beliefs, expectations and values stemming from shared social identity (Subašić & Reynolds, in press; Turner, 2005; Turner, Reynolds, & Subašić, 2008). As such, where there is shared psychological group membership between leaders and followers, resorting to relatively coercive ‘power tools’ may in fact undermine a leader's inﬂuence. Namely, while the use of rewards/ punishments and surveillance may be expected of leaders who do not share “our” goals, values and beliefs, the same approach could be seen as unnecessary and detrimental to ‘ingroup’ leader inﬂuence. In this paper, we investigate this novel idea more fully. The Leadership Quarterly 22 (2011) 170–181 ⁎ Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, Building 39, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200. Tel.: +61 2 6125 9685; fax: +61 2 6125 0499. E-mail address: Emina.Subasic@anu.edu.au (E. Subašić). 1048-9843/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.12.014 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Leadership Quarterly journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua