What it Means When Your Work is Admired by Others: Observations of Employees of Professional Sport Organizations

Abstract

Utilizing social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) as a guiding framework, this study investigated the way in which the evaluative dimension of group identification can ultimately affect employees’ perceptions of work and their performance at work. From a matched sample of 103 employees and their managers working for professional sport clubs in the United States, we developed and tested a model that explains how elements of prestige and evaluative group identification (pride) ultimately lead to increased job performance. Our model explained 77% of the variance in job performance and 42% of the variance in job satisfaction. We offer several practical implications and future research ideas for extensions of this work.