van Quaquebeke, N., Kerschreiter, R., van Dick, R., & Buxton, A. (2007). Two sides of the same coin: Effects of ideals and counter-ideals on employees' identification and satisfaction with leaders, teams and organizations. Paper presented at the 13th European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology, Stockholm, SWE, May 9th – 12th.

Ideals (or ideal values) help people to navigate in social life. They indicate at a very fundamental level what people are concerned about and what they strive for. Because they provide this sense of direction for people, we can assume that objects which are perceived to represent these ideal values should thus also be objects people tend to identify with (identification being an indicator of a “shared fate” or “sense of unity”). Our first study (N

= 287) confirms this assumption. Data show that subordinates' identification and satisfaction with leaders, teams, and organizations, respectively, are stronger the more these foci match participants’ ideals for each focus. The second study (N = 228) extends the perspective by including negative aspects of ideals (or counter-ideals, i.e. how an ideal leader/team/organization should NOT be) as a second point of reference. We propose that ideals and counter-ideals do not necessarily form two poles of a one-dimensional continuum but rather represent two separate dimensions for the evaluation of and responses to the foci. Results confirm this hypothesis, showing that matching ideals and not matching counter-ideals have independent effects on employees’ identification and satisfaction for all three foci. Consequences for identification

research and interventions in organizational settings are discussed.