Familiarity at Work: Awesome or Contempt? Assessing the Interplay among Familiarity, Leadership and Team Identification

The purpose of this study was to examine competing hypotheses (positive vs. negative) on how organizational members’ familiarity with multiple stakeholders differentially relates to members’ social identity and perception of leadership styles grounded in relational and emotional factors. Specifically, we developed and tested a conceptual model wherein employees’ familiarity with leaders, colleagues, and externals plays a differential role in predicting the extent to which they identify with their workgroup (i.e., group member prototypicality—GMP) and perceive transformational, authentic, leader–member exchange and servant leadership styles. Moreover, we examined the moderating effect of combat experience. We tested this nomological network using structural equation modeling and invariance analyses on a sample of 435 military personnel from the Italian Army (228 combat, 207 non-combat). Results indicated an invariant pattern of relationships among variables for combat and non-combat sub-samples. Specifically, familiarity with leaders positively predicted all leadership styles and GMP. Familiarity with colleagues positively predicted only GMP, whereas familiarity with externals did not predict GMP or leadership factors. Moreover, post hoc quadratic regressions showed a curvilinear inverted-U-shaped relationship between familiarity with colleagues and GMP. Militaries with low or high levels of familiarity with colleagues reported lower levels of GMP compared to militaries with moderate levels of familiarity with colleagues. Hence, at very high levels of familiarity with colleagues, GMP begins to decrease. Theoretical and practical implications of results are discussed in light of the increasing relevance of relational and emotional factors for military leadership, and the current pandemic and geopolitical turmoil.