Identity Leadership and Work Engagement in Spain: A Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Identity Leadership Inventory

This paper reports the adaptation and validation of the Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI) in a Spanish organizational context. In addition, this study empirically explores the positive relationship between identity leadership and followers’ work engagement as mediated by positive and negative job-related affect. A total of 854 employees from different organizations (53.6% female, 46.4% male; M = 40.7 years, SD = 11.5, 19-74) completed an online questionnaire. Descriptive analyses, as well as confirmatory factor analyses, were conducted. According to our results, the Spanish version of the ILI had adequate psychometric properties. The four dimensions obtained in other countries (i.e., identity prototypicality, identity advancement, identity entrepreneurship, and identity impresarioship) were replicated in our sample. Moreover, we found that only identity entrepreneurship significantly related to followers’ positive and negative affect at work, which in turn, related to reported work engagement. We conclude that the Spanish version of the ILI adequately measures identity leadership in organizations. Future studies can build on this instrument to assess and foster identity leadership among supervisors.