Problems with the pygmalion effect and some proposed solutions

Over the last few decades, the Pygmalion effect (i.e., the finding that leader expectations for subordinate performance can subconsciously affect leader behavior and subordinate performance) has been explored extensively. Numerous studies have clarified the effect, and mediating mechanisms of leadership and self-expectations have been identified. However, a number of factors limit the application of the Pygmalion effect to the workplace. These include its lack of generalizability to women and established work groups, its subconscious nature, the ethical questions surrounding the deceptive procedure used to create the effect, and the failure of Pygmalion training. The primary purpose of this article is to present a review of these problems and to offer suggestions for dealing with them.     

Leaders' conceptions of followers: Implications for naturally occurring Pygmalion effects

We investigated the relationships between leaders' implicit followership theories (LIFTs) (conceptions of followers) and naturally occurring Pygmalion effects (leaders' high performance expectations that improve follower performance). Results based on 151 workplace leader–follower dyads supported a model of naturally occurring Pygmalion effects. Positive LIFTs led to higher performance expectations, liking, and relationship quality from leaders, which impacted follower performance. Supervisory experience moderated the relationship between positive LIFTs and leaders' performance expectations for their followers, such that the performance expectations of leaders with less supervisory experience were more strongly influenced by their conceptions of followers. Implications of the findings for improving follower performance are discussed. Suggestions for future research are offered: antecedents of LIFTs, negative LIFTs, Golem effects, and role reversed Pygmalion effects, among others.     

How the Pygmalion Effect operates in intra-family succession: Shared expectations in family SMEs

The Pygmalion Effect is a case of the self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the expectations of leaders influence the performance of followers (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009; Rosenthal, 1993). Intra-family succession processes, which are hardly ever formalised in small- and medium-sized family enterprises, provide a natural context to explore the perceptions that predecessors have about their successors and where the Pygmalion Effect is expected to occur. However, little is known about how a predecessor’s expectations can affect intra-family firm succession processes. Based on qualitative interviews with key family and non-family members, expectations were analysed in four in-depth case studies of intra-family SME succession processes. The findings show that the Pygmalion Effect operates over time and embraces incumbent, successor, and key stakeholders’ expectations, which support the new leader when facing succession-related challenges.     

The Pygmalion Process and Employee Creativity

The study examined the Pygmalion process for creativity among 140 R&D employees. Results generally supported the Pygmalion model. Supervisors holding higher expectations for employee creativity were perceived by employees as behaving more supportively of creativity. The effects of these behaviors on employee creative self-efficacy were mediated by employee view of creativity expectations. Creative self-efficacy mediated the effects of supervisor expectations, supervisor behaviors, and employee view, on creative performance. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Benevolence-dominant,authoritarianism-dominant,and classical paternalistic leadership: Testing their relationships with subordinate performance

We propose a new typology of paternalistic leadership styles based on how leaders demonstrate authoritarianism and benevolence, the two essential components of this type of leadership. Benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership refers to leaders' sole dependence on the use of benevolence without their strong assertion of authority, whereas authoritarianism-dominant paternalistic leadership is based mainly on authoritarianism itself; classical paternalistic leadership, which best fits early observations of paternalistic leaders, refers to the salient combination of both leadership components. We used two distinct samples and methods to test this typology and the association with subordinate performance. Across the two studies, a field investigation with Taiwanese military supervisor-subordinate dyads and a hypothetical scenario experiment with U.S. working adults, we found a positive relationship between classical paternalistic leadership and subordinate performance as strong as that between benevolence-dominant paternalistic leadership and performance. Our findings echo the phenomenon that paternalistic leaders tend to combine benevolence with authoritarianism to affect subordinate performance.     

Country differences in the relationship between leadership and employee engagement: A meta-analysis

Leadership is frequently related to important organizational outcomes such as follower engagement. However, to date we have little insight into the degree to which this relation is contingent upon (a) types of leadership style and (b) national culture. These two issues are addressed in a meta-analysis of 209 independent (257 effect sizes), mainly cross-sectional studies (79%), involving 82,386 participants from 45 countries. The findings show that whereas abusive supervision was negatively associated with work engagement, several leadership styles (e.g., servant, empowering, ethical, and charismatic leadership) have positive correlations with subordinate engagement; some dimensions of national culture (e.g., gender egalitarianism, human orientation, performance orientation, future orientation, and power distance) moderate the leadership–employee engagement relationship. However, the correlations between servant, ethical, and transactional leadership and subordinate engagement are less likely to vary across national cultural characteristics. Notwithstanding the proliferation of leadership–employee engagement literature with more than 200 published articles, a strong reliance on cross-sectional designs have impeded it to gain any solid conclusions about causality due to endogeneity biases. We conclude by providing a detailed future research agenda and discussing how our results can stimulate future leadership research and inform practices with regards to leader development.     

Leadership effects on organizational climate and financial performance: Local leadership effect in chain organizations

Leadership research to date has mainly focused on leaders' subjective effects. In this study, we examine the effect of different leadership styles on two financial measures of organizational performance and three measures of organizational climate in 50 supermarket stores of a large supermarket chain in the Netherlands. Our findings show a clear relationship of local leadership with the financial performance and organizational climate in the stores. The findings also show that the leadership styles have differential effects. Charismatic leadership and consideration have a substantial effect on climate and financial performance in the small stores, suggesting the relevance of personal leadership of the store manager in these small stores. Initiating structure leadership had no effect on financial results or organizational climate, either in the small stores or in the large stores. Based on these findings, we have formulated some avenues for further research.     

Impact of leadership style and emotions on subordinate performance

This article examines whether the emotions of frustration and optimism mediate, fully or partially, the relationship between leadership style and subordinate performance in the context of structural equation modeling. The findings show that transformational leadership has a significant direct influence on frustration and optimism, with the negative influence of frustration having a stronger effect on performance than the positive influence of optimism. Frustration and optimism are found to have a direct influence on performance, and the emotions, frustration and optimism, fully mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and performance. Thus, the effect of transformational leadership style on performance is significant, but indirect.     

Leadership,values, and subordinate self-concepts

This article discusses two means by which leaders can impact on subordinate self-regulatory processes — making particular patterns of values salient and activating specific subordinate self-concepts. Research indicating compatible structures among values and self-identities is discussed, and it is suggested that such structures are automatically related by networks of mutual activation or inhibition. The potential of this framework for advancing leadership practice and research is also discussed.     

The language of power and authority in leadership

The purpose of this article is to provide insight into how leaders obtain their power through language use. The thesis defended is that, at its best, the language of power in leadership activates specific linguistic functions in prescribed ways. This thesis draws on three subordinate arguments. First, to the extent that leadership is a relationship resting on voluntary obedience, it is through a process of authorisation that leaders obtain their power. Second, the way language functions are instantiated in communication determines whether social interactions are authoritative or authoritarian. The view advanced is that noble language characterises the former, base language the latter. Third and consequently, the power of leaders develops from their use of noble language. Contrasting examples illuminate this article's thesis. An agenda for leadership research and education is then outlined.     

The queen bee: A myth? The effect of top-level female leadership on subordinate females

We investigate the effect of female leadership on gender differences in public and private organizations. Female leadership impact was constructed using a quasi-experiment involving mayoral elections, and our research used a sample of 8.3 million organizations distributed over 5600 Brazilian municipalities. Our main results show that when municipalities in which a woman was elected leader (treatment group) are compared with municipalities in which a male was elected leader (control group) there was an increase in the number of top and middle female managers in public organizations. Two aspects contribute to the results: time and command/role model. The time effect is important because our results are obtained with reelected women – in their second term – and the command/role model (the queen bee phenomenon is either small, or non-existent) is important because of the institutional characteristics of public organizations: female leaders (mayor) have much asymmetrical power and decision-making discretion, i.e., she chooses the top managers. These top managers then choose middle managers influenced by female leadership (a role model). We obtained no significant results for private organizations. Our work contributes to the literature on leadership by addressing some specific issues: an empirical investigation with a causal effect between the variables (regression-discontinuity design – a non-parametric estimation), the importance of role models, and how the observed effects are time-dependent. Insofar as public organizations are concerned, the evidence from our large-scale study suggests that the queen bee phenomenon may be a myth; instead, of keeping subordinate women at bay, our results show that women leaders who are afforded much managerial discretion behave in a benevolent manner toward subordinate women. The term “Regal Leader” instead of “Queen Bee” is thus a more appropriate characterization of women in top positions of power.     

Situational impacts on leader ethical decision-making

Leader ethical decision-making has received a great deal of attention in the academic literature. Most research examining ethical leadership has focused on the leader characteristics and subordinate outcomes associated with ethical leadership, but research examining the situational variables influencing leader ethical decision-making is limited. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine a number of situational variables that may influence leader ethical decision-making. This study examined the impacts of performance pressure, interpersonal conflict, the leader's decision-making autonomy, the type of ethical issue at hand, and the level of authority of the other person involved in the interaction. The results indicated that when making a decision in response to a superior (as opposed to a peer or subordinate), leaders make worse decisions. Additionally, a number of interactions of the other variables negatively impacted leaders' ethical decision-making. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The mediating role of leadership and people management practices on HRD and organizational performance

Drawing upon prior research, we identify strategic value and transaction effectiveness as two significant HRD contributions and examine their dyadic effect on leadership and people management practices, and influence on firm performance. Results of path analysis on 138 participants supported the dyadic effect hypothesis. More significantly, we found leadership and people management practices as a significant predictor on the relationship between strategic value and organizational performance, which suggests that organizational performance is affected by the combined effect of leadership and people management practices. A key implication of this research is that where organizations had effective leadership and people management practices, both types of HRD contributions – strategic value and transaction effectiveness – significantly enhanced firm performance.     

Is white always the standard? Using replication to revisit and extend what we know about the leadership prototype

This research is a pre-registered replication of Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips' (2008) seminal work in leadership categorization theory. Their work established race as a component to the business leader prototype and found evidence that when a leader was given credit for successful organizational performance, White leaders were evaluated more favorably than non-White leaders. As leadership exemplars are evolving, however, a need to reexamine these relationships has emerged. Results from our replications of their first and third studies showed minimal support for the argument that being White is a component of the business leader prototype. Additionally, across six separate studies, we found no conditions in which White leaders received more favorable evaluations than their non-White counterparts. Contrary to our expectations, we found that non-White leaders received marginally more favorable ratings than White leaders in four of our studies.     

Revisiting the mediating role of trust in transformational leadership effects: Do different types of trust make a difference?

This study examines the mediating effects of cognitive and affective trust on the relationship between follower perceptions of transformational leadership behavior and their work outcomes. Using data obtained from 318 supervisor–subordinate dyads from a manufacturing organization located in mainland China, structural equation modeling results revealed that affective trust fully mediated the relationships between transformational leadership and the work outcomes of followers, including their affective organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), and job performance. In contrast, cognitive trust negatively mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and follower job performance, and had insignificant effects on their affective organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behaviors. These findings highlight the importance of affective trust as a mechanism which translates transformational leadership into positive work outcomes for the organization.     

Empowering leadership: An examination of mediating mechanisms within a hierarchical structure

Drawing from recent theory and research on empowerment and resistance, data on leader behaviors and follower responses were collected from superior–subordinate dyads in 179 public high schools. Structural equation modeling revealed that empowering leadership was associated with higher employee performance and satisfaction, as well as reduced dysfunctional resistance. Also, employee dysfunctional resistance partially mediated the relationship of empowering leadership with (a) employee performance and (b) employee satisfaction. These results are interpreted as supportive of a perspective that endorses the utility of empowering leadership at the dyadic level within a hierarchical power structure.     

Traditional Chinese leadership and employee voice behavior: A cross-level examination

To enhance the understanding of leadership influences on employee voice behavior, this study focused on traditional Chinese leadership (i.e., authoritarian leadership). We proposed that supervisor authoritarian leadership negatively affects employee voice behavior and manager authoritarian leadership has a cascading effect on such behavior through supervisor authoritarian leadership. Furthermore, these effects were either amplified or attenuated under different conditions (i.e., leader identification and power distance orientation). A cross-level investigation of voice behavior within 52 groups of employees from multiple Chinese companies in Beijing was conducted. The results showed that supervisor authoritarian leadership negatively affected employee voice behavior and mediated the negative relationship between manager authoritarian leadership and employee voice behavior. Leader identification moderated the indirect negative effect of manager authoritarian leadership on employee voice behavior via supervisor authoritarian leadership, while power distance orientation moderated the direct negative effect of supervisor authoritarian leadership on employee voice behavior.     

Not all leader–member exchanges are created equal: Importance of leader relational identity

Recent research by leadership scholars has emphasized the important role of follower self-identity. For example, leaders influence subordinate attitudes and behaviors by activating a collective identity level among their subordinates. We extend existing identity-based approaches by examining the relational identity level of leaders. Previous work has focused predominantly on followers (vs. leaders) and on collective (vs. relational) identity. Using data from two samples, we supported our hypothesis that leader relational identity moderates relationships of leader–member exchange (LMX) with subordinate task performance and citizenship behaviors. The nature of the interaction was such that the negative relationships of low-quality LMX with performance are mitigated when subordinates had supervisors with strong relational identities. These findings highlight the need to consider not only the identities of followers but those of leaders as well.     

Calling out and calling off the dogs: managerial diagnosis in public service organizations

Decision-makers spend their professional lives identifying situations that merit action. Nutt defines this process of placing problems in action or deferred categories as "managerial diagnosis." It is felt that this is a critical aspect of managerial action because it rests on assumptions that need to be considered in project planning and evaluation. To facilitate future studies of the effectiveness of managerial behavior, a framework of fourteen propositions which describe the process of managerial diagnosis is presented. The author says that: 1) the manager will defer those perceptions where performance exceeds expectations; 2) decision-makers are goaded into evaluation (a process used to measure performance or comparative alternatives) by stimuli such as conflict, uncertain performance, and uncertain expectations; and 3) evaluation findings are deemed acceptable only when they reduce conflict.