Following Your Ideal Leader: Implicit Public Leadership Theories, Leader—Member Exchange, and Work Engagement

Although social comparisons are ubiquitous in leadership, previous scholarship in public administration has not yet studied comparative aspects of how followers perceive and respond to leadership. This study addresses this gap and disentangles the link between leadership and work engagement from a socio-cognitive and relational perspective. It examines how public employees compare their real leaders against ideal leaders and how perceived gaps between both affect their work engagement through leader–member exchange (LMX). Building on leadership and job demands–resources theory, a priming study using the Semantic Misattribution Procedure (SMP) extracts participants’ Implicit Public Leadership Theories. Structural equation modeling reveals that work engagement is substantially higher (lower) when characteristics of the supervisor resonate with positive (negative) prototypes of ideal leaders, with this association being fully mediated by LMX. The study shows how implicit information processing matters for the emergence of leader–follower relationships and, in turn, for important follower outcomes. It thus contributes to, and combines, a socio-cognitive and a relational approach to leadership in the public sector.