1. Research Background and Purpose


Employees' reluctance to pursue managerial roles has been studied in prior research (Nguyen, 2023). In Japan, managerial posts are sometimes even described as a "penalty." This tendency is often linked to employees' own belief that they are ill‑suited to leadership or uncomfortable with taking on such roles—conceptualized as low affective‑identity motivation to lead (AI‑MTL; Chan & Drasgow, 2001). This study investigates what helps employees with low levels of AI‑MTL become more willing to accept managerial roles, focusing on the role‑modeling of supervisors.


2. Method


We collected data from 361 non‑managerial employees working across a range of industries in Japan. The average age was 32.75 years, and 187 participants were female.


3. Results


AI-MTL moderated the association between supervisors' role‑modeling and management role acceptance: the positive effect of role‑modeling emerged only when AI‑MTL was low. A moderated‑mediation analysis further showed that social‑normative motivation to lead (SN‑MTL; the felt normative obligation to assume leadership roles) mediated this relationship. The bootstrapped conditional indirect effects were significant at low levels of AI‑MTL, but not at high levels. In sum, for employees with low AI-MTL, exposure to supervisors' role-modeling increases SN-MTL, which in turn enhances management role acceptance.


4. Conclusions


For employees who doubt their fit for leadership, supervisors who model managerial behavior are crucial. Such modeling cultivates the perception that "becoming a manager is normative," thereby increasing acceptance. When identity‑based internal motives are weak, external social learning (Bandura, 1977) appears effective. Many organizations rely solely on transactional incentives (e.g., higher pay) to address reluctance toward managerial roles, but overlook a more critical lever—strengthening normative expectations through deliberate role-modeling.