When managers become leaders: The role of manager network centralities,social power,and followers' perception of leadership

We explore how formal managers' centralities in both positive and negative networks predict followers' perceptions of their leadership. By incorporating social networks and social ledger theory with implicit leadership theories (ILTs), we hypothesize that formally assigned group leaders (managers) who have more positive advice ties and fewer negative avoidance ties are more likely to be recognized as leaders by their followers. Further, we posit that managers' informal networks bring them greater social power, an important attribute differentiating leaders from non-leaders. We conducted two survey-based studies in student and field teams to test the hypotheses. Based on nested data in both studies, we found support for our hypotheses. These results remain robust across the two studies even though they used different designs (cross-sectional versus longitudinal), different samples (field versus students) across different countries (United States versus India), and a host of control variables at both the leader and follower levels. We find that managers who are central in the advice network are socially powerful and are seen as leaders by individual followers. In contrast, managers who are avoided by followers lack informal social power are not seen as leaders. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and the ways in which our theory and results extend ILTs and social network theory.     

“Facing” leaders: Facial expression and leadership perception

This experimental study investigated the effect of a leader's expression of happy versus nervous emotions on subsequent perceptions of leadership and ratings of traits associated with implicit leadership theories (ILTs). Being fast and universally understood, emotions are ideal stimuli for investigating the dynamic effects of ILTs, which were understood in this study in terms of the constraints that expressed emotions impose on the connectionist networks that activate ILTs. The experimental design contrasted videotaped and still frame presentations of a leadership event; however, this methodological factor had no significant effects and analyses were thus collapsed across this factor. Key findings were that the expression of a happy versus nervous emotion at the end of a problem-solving sequence had multiple effects: happy emotions resulted in higher leadership ratings, higher trait ratings, greater correlations among trait ratings, and greater dependence of trait ratings on leadership perceptions. An exploratory model suggested that leadership impressions mediated the effects of facial emotions on trait ratings. The discussion further links the study findings with interpretations in terms of ILTs and many types of constraints on these cognitive structures. It also suggests ways to integrate these ideas with advances in neuroscience research.     

Implicit theories of leadership: Stability and change over two decades

Much has changed in the last 20 years, but have people's naïve conceptions of leaders changed as well? Paralleling Offermann et al.'s (1994) study of the content of implicit leadership theories with new samples, the present study investigates ILT stability and change across a 20-year period. Results indicate that, as in 1994, Sensitivity, Dedication, Tyranny, Charisma, Strength, Masculinity, and Intelligence were confirmed as ILT factors. Analyses revealed a new factor, Creativity, and the rearranging of some characteristics across factors. The nine-factor, 46-item scale was confirmed with an independent sample, yielding superior fit indices to the eight-factor solution. This supports the view of ILTs as having both remarkably stable elements despite organizational and societal changes as well as contextually-sensitive elements. Open-ended characteristics had no references to females despite reference to males, as in 1994; thus, “think leader, think male” appears to persist in terms of naïve conceptions of leadership.     

Testing the generalizability of the white leadership standard in the post-Obama era

Over a decade ago, Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips (2008) conducted a study on race and business leader prototypes and discovered that participants held an implicit “white leadership standard”. As revealed in that study, such a standard introduces racial bias into the leadership categorization process, and places employees from racial minority groups at a disadvantage as they seek to attain leadership roles. However, in the last decade, broader trends and events in American society (e.g., the Obama presidency; the Harris Vice Presidency; an increase in minority business leader representation; changing demographics) have altered the socio-cultural context in which implicit leadership theories (ILTs) develop, hence offering the possibility that leadership models may have become amenable to change. The present study set out to retest the theoretical hypotheses of Rosette et al. (2008) in a direct/close replication study to examine the extent to which the findings generalize to a new sample within this new era. Across four experimental studies, results reveal more racially inclusive leadership perceptions than previously observed, as well as a weakened and context-dependent white leadership standard.     

Implicit Leadership and Followership Theories “in the wild”: Taking stock of information-processing approaches to leadership and followership in organizational settings

For over 30 years information-processing approaches to leadership and more specifically Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) research has contributed a significant body of knowledge on leadership processes in applied settings. A new line of research on Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs) has re-ignited interest in information-processing and socio-cognitive approaches to leadership and followership. In this review, we focus on organizational research on ILTs and IFTs and highlight their practical utility for the exercise of leadership and followership in applied settings. We clarify common misperceptions regarding the implicit nature of ILTs and IFTs, review both direct and indirect measures, synthesize current and ongoing research on ILTs and IFTs in organizational settings, address issues related to different levels of analysis in the context of leadership and follower schemas and, finally, propose future avenues for organizational research.     

Authentic leadership and leaders' mental well-being: An experience sampling study

Research on authentic leadership has yielded important insights about its effects on subordinates. However, its consequences for the leaders themselves remain largely unexamined. This is problematic, as organizations require their leaders to provide guidance and leaders' mental well-being is a prerequisite for this. Drawing on the theories of ego-depletion and authentic leadership, we investigate the role of authentic leadership in predicting leaders' mental well-being. In an experience sampling study, we apply hierarchical linear modeling to analyze 396 observations from 44 executives. Our multilevel moderated mediation analyses reveal that authentic leadership reduces leaders' stress and increases their work engagement and that these effects are mediated by leader mental depletion. Moreover, we show that the indirect effects are contingent on the extent to which leaders interact with their subordinates: authentic leaders deplete less with increasing follower interaction, while inauthentic leaders deplete less with decreasing follower interaction.     

A reconceptualization of authentic leadership: Leader legitimation via follower-centered assessment of the moral dimension

We explore some challenges that face authentic leadership scholarship including problems related to how the construct is understood and measured. We present a model of authentic leadership that looks at it, not as a leadership style, but as an outcome of a legitimation process. Authentic leadership represents legitimated follower perceptions of a leader's authenticity which are activated by moral judgments. We explain how a follower-centered assessment of the moral component helps explain leadership dynamics in situations involving ethical relativism, thus alleviating concerns regarding the presumed moral component of the construct. The overlap between leaders' and followers' value systems leads to impressions of authenticity, even in cases in which there are no clear universal moral standards. An authentic person's behavior cannot be labeled as “leadership” unless it is embraced by a follower who grants moral legitimacy to the leader. We then discuss the implications of our study for scholars and practitioners.     

Daily transformational leadership and employee job crafting: The role of promotion focus

Transformational leaders are expected to challenge their followers to take greater ownership of their work, allowing the leader to align followers with tasks that enhance their performance. In the present study, we hypothesize that transformational leadership is positively related to followers' job-crafting behaviour – proactive behaviour aimed at optimizing job demands and job resources. Moreover, we argue that followers' promotion focus (i.e. being driven by growth and development needs) positively moderates this relationship. Data were collected from 107 employees from Norwegian knowledge-based organizations (response?=?93.2%). Participants responded to a general questionnaire and five daily diary questionnaires (total N?=?535 occasions). The results of multilevel analyses revealed partial support for our hypotheses. Followers' day-level perception of their leader's transformational behaviour was positively related to followers' day-level job crafting in the form of increasing structural and social resources. Moreover, daily transformational leadership was particularly beneficial for job crafting when followers scored high (vs. low) on the trait promotion focus. We conclude that transformational leaders can encourage their followers' use of job crafting, and that employees' promotion focus facilitates this effect.     

Motivational or dispositional? The type of inference shapes the effectiveness of leader anger expressions

Existing leadership research has presented conflicting views on the effects of leader anger expressions. The present research aims to reconcile these findings by proposing that the type of inferences followers make (i.e., motivation-focused inference or trait-focused inference) is a key factor determining the outcomes of leader anger expressions. Through one survey study (Study 1) and two experimental studies (Studies 2 and 3), the present research indicates that the effectiveness of leader anger expressions is associated with the type of inferences followers draw from the anger. In general, we found support for the negative relationship between trait-focused inferences and leader effectiveness, but were unable to properly test the positive relationship between motivation-focused inferences and leader effectiveness due to the lack of appropriate instrumental variables. We also investigated whether followers' implicit theories of personality (i.e., entity versus incremental theory) would moderate the effect of leader anger expressions on the type of inferences made by followers, which in turn shapes leader effectiveness. The results of Study 3 provide evidence of the moderating role of implicit theories of personality. Theoretical contributions and practical implications of the present research are discussed.     

The aura of charisma: A review on the embodiment perspective as signaling

Charismatic leaders have consistently been shown to affect followers' performance, motivation, and satisfaction. Yet, what precisely constitutes charisma still remains somewhat enigmatic. So far, research has mainly focused on leader traits, leader behaviors, or the leader follower-relationship, and the subsequent consequences of each on followers' self-concepts. All of these approaches share the notion that leader charisma depends on an explicit interaction between leader and follower. With the present review paper, we extend extant theorizing by arguing that charisma is additionally informed by embodied signals that flow directly from either the leader or the immediate environment. We introduce the embodiment perspective on human perception and describe its utility for theoretically understanding the charismatic effect. Correspondingly, we review studies that show which concrete embodied cues can support the charismatic effect. Finally, we discuss the variety of new theoretical and practical implications that arise from this research and how they can complement existing approaches to charismatic leadership.     

Shaping emotional reactions to ethical behaviors: Proactive personality as a substitute for ethical leadership

Due to ethical lapses of leaders, interest in ethical leadership has grown, raising important questions about the responsibility of leaders in ensuring moral and ethical conduct. However, research on ethical leadership has failed to examine the active role that followers' attributes play in enhancing or minimizing the influence of ethical leadership in organizational outcomes. We applied the substitutes for leadership approach (Kerr & Jermier, 1978) to ethical leadership and predicted that proactive personality acts as substitute in the relationship between ethical leadership, workplace emotions and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Data from two distinct samples offered strong support for the hypotheses. Specifically, we found that ethical leadership was significantly and negatively related to negative workplace emotions when subordinate proactive personality was low, but not when it was high, with consequences for OCBs. These findings suggest that proactive personality constitutes an important moderator on the impact of low ethical leadership on workplace emotions, with consequences for OCBs.     

Followers' moral judgments and leaders' integrity-based transgressions: A synthesis of literatures

This paper reviews the state of knowledge about integrity-based transgressions with an emphasis on the leader-follower relationship. Our review highlighted many important contributions of this literature, but, it revealed several limitations that should be addressed within a followership paradigm. We then synthesized the integrity and trust literatures with a targeted review of moral experimental philosophy. Cushman's (2008) dual process model suggests that because followers simultaneously assess leaders' intentions and their causal nexus with negative outcomes, they might judge behavioral and moral integrity transgressions in different ways. Judgments of moral condemnation should primarily be a function of perceived intent while blame and punishment of the leader based on behavior should be jointly affected by cause and intent. This moral assessment is expected to influence followers' trust through its effect on moral identity. A framework is offered for guiding future studies of followers' interpretations of leaders' integrity-based transgressions.     

Thinking outside the box by looking inside the box: Extending the cognitive revolution in leadership research

Follower and leader cognitions play critical roles in many organizational phenomena. In this review, we report and reflect on a decade of cognitive leadership research. Following a brief introduction, the review is divided into two sections—one devoted to individual and dyadic cognition, and the other to collective cognition. We identified three central themes for each section. For individual and dyadic cognition, we identified metacognitive processes and leadership, implicit leadership theories (ILTs), and network based models of ILTs as central themes. For collective cognition, we identified charisma, organizational performance and sensemaking, and transformation and change as central themes. Our goal in this review was to uncover important underlying assumptions of selected studies to illuminate more clearly the path of cognitive leadership research over the past 10 years and its potential paths over the next ten years.     

The servant leadership advantage: When perceiving low differentiation in leader-member relationship quality influences team cohesion,team task performance and service OCB

How does servant leaders' unique ability to place each follower's needs above their own influence relationships between followers and impact their collective performance? In a study that integrates principles of servant leadership with the social comparison theoretical framework, we tested a group-level model to examine how servant leadership induces low perceived differentiation in leader-member relationship quality (perceived LMX differentiation) within a group, which strengthens team cohesion and in turn positively influences team task performance and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors (service OCB). Our sample comprised 229 employees nested in 67 work teams. Structural equation modeling results indicate that servant leadership significantly predicts low perceived LMX differentiation; perceived LMX differentiation is strongly related to team cohesion such that the lower the perceived differentiation, the stronger the team's cohesiveness. And, team cohesion is also strongly related to both the team's task performance and service OCB. Perceived LMX differentiation and team cohesion mediate the effect of servant leadership on both team task performance and service OCB.     

Unlocking the mask: a look at the process by which authentic leaders impact follower attitudes and behaviors

The conceptual and empirical links between authentic leadership and follower attitudes, behaviors, and performance outcomes have not been fully developed. Although we have a number of articles developing the theory of authentic leadership and testing propositions that will appear in a forthcoming special issue of The Leadership Quarterly (Vol. 16, Issue 3, 2005), the focus of this article is to provide some of the initial foundation work for the broader theoretical framework of how authentic leaders influence follower attitudes, behaviors, and performance. Here, we draw from positive organizational behavior, trust, hope, emotion, identification, and identity theories to describe the processes by which authentic leaders exert their influence on followers' attitudes and behaviors. Research propositions based on the proposed theoretical model and implications for future theory building and research are presented.     

Seeing eye to eye: A meta-analysis of self-other agreement of leadership

The agreement between a leader's self-rating of leadership and ratings from the leader's subordinates, peers, and superiors (i.e., self-other agreement) is critical to understanding leadership, but questions remain regarding the extent to which leaders are aware of their behaviors. This meta-analysis investigates whether leader-observer agreement is influenced by type of observer and type of leadership. First, we examined the convergence (i.e., correlation) between leader- and observer-ratings along several dimensions of leadership (e.g., initiating structure, consideration, contingent reward, and transformational leadership). Our results indicated that leader-observer correlations were generally moderate and of similar magnitudes for task- and relation-oriented behaviors (with the exception of a strong correlation for contingent reward). Next, we compared leaders' and observers' mean-level ratings (i.e., Cohen's d), and found that leaders generally reported lower or similar levels of task-oriented behaviors but higher levels of relation-oriented behaviors. Last, several variables (e.g., sampling method and study purpose) moderated leader-observer convergence. Implications of these findings for research, theory, and practice are discussed.     

Transformational leadership and performance outcomes: Analyses of multiple mediation pathways

Transformational leadership (TFL) has been shown to affect employees' job performance, and the literature offers a large variety of explanatory processes. Integrating the diverse literature related to the mechanisms that mediate the TFL-performance relationship, the current study identified five core mechanisms—affective, motivational, identification, social exchange, and justice enhancement—that are consistent with established social and psychological theories. Meta-analysis involving > 600 samples was conducted to test these mechanisms. General support was found for each of the five mechanisms. The findings showed that TFL was related to variables that represented these mechanisms, which in turn were associated with non-self-report measures of employees' task performance, citizenship behavior, and innovative behavior. An integrative model was further proposed and tested to show the central role of leader-member exchange in the relationships between TFL, other mediating variables, and performance outcomes. This study contributes to the literature by strengthening researchers' theoretical understanding of the major social and psychological processes by which transformational leaders promote followers' job performance.     

Are there advantages to seeing leadership the same? A test of the mediating effects of LMX on the relationship between ILT congruence and employees' development

Although there has been an increased interest in implicit leadership theories (ILTs) over the last two decades, only a handful of studies have examined the effects of ILT congruence among leader-follower dyads. Just as important, this research has largely suggested few effects for ILT congruence, focused exclusively on prototype congruence, examined a limited number of potential outcomes, and has failed to examine questions about ILT congruence utilizing the most appropriate statistical approaches. We examine the effects of ILT congruence, with an explicit focus on the possibility that congruence between supervisors and their employees on both prototypes and antiprototypes impacts the LMX developed within their dyads. We predict that LMX, in turn, affects employees' opportunities to engage in developmental activities. Using a sample of 74 matched pairs of supervisors and employees and polynomial regression and response surface methodology, we found that congruence between supervisors' and employees' prototypes positively influenced LMX. We also found limited evidence that LMX explained the effects of this congruence on employees' engagement in developmental activities. Although we found no evidence of antiprototype congruence effects, supervisors who rated antiprototypical traits as characteristic of leaders had lower LMX with their employees.     

Invoking Cleopatra to examine the shifting ground of leadership

This essay argues that the understanding of leadership is not independent of the power relations within a given cultural context. These shape how ‘leadership’ comes to be ‘known’ — defined and identified. Drawing from cultural studies, it examines the interacting dynamics of power, difference and context in shaping our knowledge of leadership. So whereas we currently identify leadership in Cleopatra, this is due to shifts in the contemporary ground of knowledge that constitutes ‘leadership’. Specifically, the essay focuses on manifestations of gendered power that elicited changes in her appraisals. The analysis examines historical writing (Plutarch), literature (Shakespeare), art (Egyptian Revival) and film (Hollywood) to illustrate gendered paradoxes — criteria that had traditionally defined ‘leaders’ from ‘followers’, but which have become ambiguous. These include queen–lover (embodiment), public–domestic (sphere of work and influence), sage–child (intellect), white–black (racialized identity) and Rome–Egypt (international leadership). In closing, the essay reflects on the implications for leadership studies.