Leader self-development: A contemporary context for leader development evaluation

Organizations are moving toward self-development as a means to supplement formal leader development programs. However, the highly individualized nature of self-development presents unique challenges for evaluation. We suggest a mixed methods approach, including not only a summative evaluation (i.e., examining self-development outcomes), but also emphasizing a formative evaluation (i.e., examining why certain self-development activities are more or less effective). Accordingly, the purpose of this article is threefold. We first introduce a taxonomy of attributes indicative of the effectiveness level of a leader self-development activity. Second, we present a methodology for utilizing this taxonomy to evaluate whether a given self-development activity, or collection of activities, is higher or lower in effectiveness. We also describe some data from two field studies to illustrate the link between this taxonomy and the performance outcomes of task performance, team performance, and leader adaptive performance. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of undertaking an evaluation utilizing this taxonomy.     

R&D员工领导创新期望、内部动机与创新行为研究

在现代组织行为研究领域推动员工创造、创新的组织行为研究是一个热点问题。本文通过对我国跨地区企业研发员工的问卷调查研究对领导创新期望、员工内部工作动机及其创新行为间的关系进行了实证探讨。研究发现,在我国背景下,直属领导对下属员工的创新期望、员工之间横向交换对研发员工创新的行为都具有正向预测作用,其中员工内在工作动机在领导创新期望、员工横向交换对员工创新行为的作用路径关系中起到中介效应。本研究的调查结论不仅有助于加深我们对组织内员工创新行为推动和作用机制的深入了解,同时也会对我国企业,特别是高新技术企业推动员工创新的管理实践提供借鉴。     

分布式领导、组织支持感与新生代员工主动性-被动性创新行为:基于上下级关系和价值观匹配的交互调节效应

新生代员工正逐渐成为企业的主力军,其创新意识和行为直接影响着企业发展的前景与未来。本文基于中国文化和组织情境,从员工个体创新动机视角将新生代员工创新行为归为主动和被动,以306名新生代员工为研究对象,验证了分布式领导对新生代员工不同性质创新行为的作用机制。研究结果表明:分布式领导与新生代员工主动性创新行为呈正相关关系,与其被动性创新行为呈负相关关系;组织支持感在分布式领导与新生代员工主动性-被动性创新行为之间具有中介作用;上下级关系和价值观匹配正向调节分布式领导与新生代员工组织支持感之间的关系,并进一步检验了有调节的中介效应。此外,上下级关系和价值观匹配的交互项调节了分布式领导与新生代员工组织支持感之间的关系。本文研究为企业如何指导新生代员工进行有效的创新实践提供了经验证据。     

Leader political support: Reconsidering leader political behavior

Historically, organizational politics and political leader behavior have been framed and characterized negatively, as self-serving and counter-productive. However, scholars have noted that political acts can achieve positive ends, and have called for further discussions of positive forms of political leadership. Continuing in this recent stream of research on positive perspectives on organizational politics, a framework of leader political support is proposed, suggesting that the positive features of leader political behavior, and testable propositions are developed. The leader political support construct is defined and its antecedents are explicated utilizing a social capital perspective. Additionally, social exchange theory is used to explain the consequences of leader political support. Contributions to both leadership and organizational politics literatures and directions for future research are discussed.     

Leader motive profiles in eight types of organizations

McClelland (1975) introduced the leadership motive pattern (LMP), a motivational configuration found to contribute to leader performance in traditional bureaucratic organizations. Using McClelland's general theory of motivation and Miner's work on organizational sociology, we refine McClelland's original leadership motive pattern, develop leader motive profiles for eight classical and new types of organizations, and advance eight testable propositions for empirical verification. We conclude with implications for future research and practice.     

Moving beyond the employee: The role of the organizational context in leader workplace aggression

Management and psychology scholars are increasingly seeking to examine how organizational characteristics that contextualize leadership shape the occurrence, impact, and prevention of leader workplace aggression. However, a comprehensive review of this literature has not yet been conducted, so a systematic understanding is lacking regarding questions including: (1) when, why and how is such aggression more likely to occur; (2) how do contextual factors enable or constrain effects of these leader behaviors on employees; and (3) how can organizations proactively manage their internal dynamics to prevent or reduce such incidences? Drawing on Porter and McLaughlin's (2006) components of organizational context, I review existing leader aggression research that intersects with seven categories: (1) culture/climate; (2) goals/purposes; (3) people/composition; (4) processes; (5) state/condition; (6) structure; and (7) time. I then offer theoretical propositions for future work, which are grounded in the roles and responsibilities inherent to the nature of leadership and coupled with the changing nature of organizational life. As a result, I set the research agenda for the next decade of organizational context × leader workplace aggression studies.     

How feedback about leadership potential impacts ambition,organizational commitment,and performance

In the present research we report results from two experimental studies that examine how feedback about leadership potential impacts leadership ambition, organizational commitment, and performance. Study 1 used an experimental vignette methodology that controls for prior performance. Results show that individuals who receive feedback that they have low potential to be a future leader have lower ambition and organizational commitment relative to those who receive feedback that they have high potential to be a future leader. Study 2 provides evidence of the causal behavioral effects of feedback about leadership potential using a real task effort environment. Results show that participants informed to be unlikely future leaders display lower performance in a subsequent task than participants informed to be likely future leaders. The findings from the two studies demonstrate that information about leadership potential affects subsequent ambition to become leaders as well as performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the importance of followership, talent management, and leadership succession.     

Leader diffuse status and leadership outcomes: Towards an integrative framework

This review seeks to enrich our understanding of how a leader's status influences leadership outcomes such as motivation to lead, leader emergence and perceived leader effectiveness. The focus is on the leader's diffuse status, that is, status derived from demographic (e.g., gender and race) and physical (e.g., height and body shape) characteristics. Drawing insights from empirical findings and their theoretical underpinnings, we (1) highlight the need to explicitly model the leader's diffuse status as a mediator in the relationship between leader demographic and physical characteristics and leadership outcomes, (2) differentiate the effects of the leader's diffuse status as perceived by others (interpersonal level) and the leader's diffuse status as perceived by the leader (intrapersonal level) and (3) synthesize a wide range of contextual factors that influence the degree to which the leader's demographic and physical characteristics affect leadership outcomes through the leader's diffuse status. Moreover, we explain how other status types, such as status derived from the leader's position in the organizational hierarchy and status related to task-relevant leader characteristics, can moderate the effects of the leader's diffuse status. Finally, we discuss the utility of our proposed integrative framework for researchers and practitioners and outline promising future research opportunities.     

Effective leadership in the Mexican maquiladora: challenging common expectations

This article reports a cross-cultural study of Mexican and U.S. leaders in Mexican maquiladoras. The research builds on relational demography to determine if leader ethnicity, regional Mexican culture, and organizational affiliation moderate the impact of leadership behavior on important organizational outcomes. We examined the impacts of specific leader behaviors on follower attitudes and performance. Contrary to expectations from the current cross-cultural leadership literature, managerial leaders from the United States had approximately the same effects on the Mexican workforce as managerial leaders from Mexico. However, regional differences within Mexico and organizational affiliation were significant moderators. We postulate that there are at least two leader prototypes in Mexico: the “transitional” leader and the more “traditional” leader. Additional implications of these findings for leadership in Mexico are discussed.     

No longer a solo practice: how physician leaders lead

The authors conducted a national study to determine the factors associated with the success of physician leaders. They utilized the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) and a demographic survey followed by individual interviews with respondents. Data analysis revealed several implications for the selection, training, management, and career development of physician leaders. The results suggest that: Physician leadership training should have a strong focus on the "human side" of management, including negotiation, organizational "politics," conflict resolution, team building, and motivation. Data management and finance should be a focus represented in the curriculum. Mentoring relationships should be developed as an aspiring physician leader pursues a career shift. Self assessment, including an analysis of style, strengths, best potential organizational fit, and specific areas of strength and weakness should be an integral part of the development of an aspiring physician leader. Screening mechanisms to ascertain a physician's motivation to move toward a full-time leadership role should be developed to ensure appropriate intent. To facilitate this implication, more effective assessment tools need to be developed.     

Toward a theory of spiritual leadership

A causal theory of spiritual leadership is developed within an intrinsic motivation model that incorporates vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love, theories of workplace spirituality, and spiritual survival. The purpose of spiritual leadership is to create vision and value congruence across the strategic, empowered team, and individual levels and, ultimately, to foster higher levels of organizational commitment and productivity.I first examine leadership as motivation to change and review motivation-based leadership theories. Second, I note the accelerating call for spirituality in the workplace, describe the universal human need for spiritual survival through calling and membership, and distinguish between religion and spirituality. Next, I introduce a generic definition of God as a higher power with a continuum upon which humanistic, theistic, and pantheistic definitions of God can be placed. I also review religious- and ethics-and-values-based leadership theories and conclude that, to motivate followers, leaders must get in touch with their core values and communicate them to followers through vision and personal actions to create a sense of spiritual survival through calling and membership.I then argue that spiritual leadership theory is not only inclusive of other major extant motivation-based theories of leadership, but that it is also more conceptually distinct, parsimonious, and less conceptually confounded. And, by incorporating calling and membership as two key follower needs for spiritual survival, spiritual leadership theory is inclusive of the religious- and ethics and values-based approaches to leadership. Finally, the process of organizational development and transformation through spiritual leadership is discussed. Suggestions for future research are offered.     

Achieving leadership and success: A 28-year follow-up of college women leaders

Using a life span perspective focusing on establishing early leader identity, we examine the relationship of achievement orientations, career aspirations, personal and organizational factors, and family choices of 101 women college leaders surveyed in 1985 to ascendance into senior leadership roles and occupational success 28 years later. College-age orientations toward leadership and competition best predicted later-life outcomes. Higher college-age leadership orientation differentiated between women subsequently achieving senior leadership positions and those who did not. Networking and family support positively related to career outcomes; women with and without children had similar outcomes. Women who took leaves beyond a standard maternity absence reported similar career satisfaction to those continuously employed but were less likely to reach senior leadership positions and paid a significant economic penalty in salary. College-age achievement orientations, including leadership orientation, significantly predicted adult achievement orientations, suggesting the college years as an important period for leadership development and intervention.     

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.     

Ethical leadership and follower voice and performance: The role of follower identifications and entity morality beliefs

Previous studies have established the relationship between ethical leadership and a variety of positive follower outcomes. Follower organizational identification has been found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower job performance. In this research, we incorporate a second distinct and theoretically important type of social identification process, relational identification with the leader, along with organizational identification, and examine their mediating effects on follower performance and voice outcomes. Further, we bring the implicit theory of morality to the behavioral ethics literature and examine follower morality beliefs as a moderator. Using a Romanian sample of 302 followers under the supervision of 27 leaders, we found that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on follower job performance and voice (through the mediating mechanisms of both organizational and relational identifications) and that these relationships are stronger for followers who held the implicit theory that a person's moral character is fixed.     

Transformational leadership and optimal functioning at work: On the mediating role of employees' perceived job characteristics and motivation

This study aimed to deepen our understanding of the motivational mechanisms involved in the relationship between transformational leadership (TFL) and employee functioning. Drawing on the TFL literature, the job demands–resources model and self-determination theory, we propose an integrative model that relates TFL to employee psychological health (burnout and psychological distress), attitudes (occupational commitment and turnover intention) and performance (professional efficacy, self-reported individual and objective organizational performance) through two explanatory mechanisms: perceived job characteristics (job demands and resources) and employee motivation (autonomous and controlled). This research was conducted in two occupational settings (nurses and school principals), using a distinct variable operationalization for each. Results of both studies provide support for the hypothesized model, suggesting that TFL relates to optimal job functioning (psychological health, job attitudes and performance) by contributing to favourable perceptions of job characteristics (more resources and less demands) and high-quality work motivation (more autonomous motivation and less controlled motivation) in employees. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications as well as directions for future research are presented.     

A meta-analysis of humble leadership: Reviewing individual,team, and organizational outcomes of leader humility

Humility is a concept grounded in a self-view that something greater than oneself exists. A multitude of disciplines to date have sought to understand how humility impacts leaders, as well as the individuals, teams, and organizations they lead. Despite overlapping research questions, methodologies, and empirical contexts, studies examining leader humility have developed largely in isolation with little overlap between fields. This has created a fundamental divide between micro and macro researchers who suggest that humility is conceptualized as both a mutable behavioral state and a stable leader trait, respectively. We provide a systematic review of research on leader humility at multiple organizational levels of analysis to provide linkages across disciplinary and theoretical divides. We couple our systematic review with a meta-analysis of 212 unique studies, identifying 99 estimates for the relationships between leader humility and numerous individual, team, and organizational variables. Among all variables, we find humble leadership most strongly predicts followers’ satisfaction with the leader and the leaders’ participative decision making. We also find humble leadership does not affect their own job performance or the performance of organizations, but improves the performance of their followers and teams. Building on our results, we call for research across academic disciplines.     

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.     

Transformational leadership and leader moral orientation: Contrasting an ethic of justice and an ethic of care

Previous research on the moral foundations of transformational leadership has focused on a Kohlbergian (1969, 1976) ethic of justice. However, proposed associations between level of justice reasoning and transformational leadership have received only partial support. We reasoned that an ethic of care would be more consistent with the nature of transformational leadership than would be an ethic of justice. Multilevel regression analyses on data obtained from a sample of leaders (N = 55) and followers (N = 391) at a Canadian university supported our predictions. Specifically, leader propensity toward using an ethic of care was significantly, positively related to follower perceptions of transformational (but not transactional) leadership. Leader propensity toward an ethic of justice was significantly, positively related to follower perceptions of transactional (but not transformational) leadership. Conceptual, research, and practical implications are discussed.     

Knowing me,knowing us: Personal and collective self-awareness enhances authentic leadership and leader endorsement

In the present research, we examine how two aspects of leader self-awareness — namely, leader awareness of their (a) personal identity and (b) collective (group) identity — influence perceptions of authentic leadership and leader endorsement. Study 1 provides experimental evidence that (a) leader personal self-awareness has a somewhat stronger impact on perceptions of their authentic leadership than leader collective self-awareness, but that (b) leader collective self-awareness has a stronger impact on leader endorsement. These findings are replicated in a second field study with political leaders, and in a third experimental study with workplace supervisors. Results suggest that for leaders to be seen as authentic and garner support, they need to be seen as aware not only of who they are as individuals, but also of who they are as members of the collective they seek to lead. Implications for theories of the nature of self, authenticity, and leadership are discussed.     

A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Research into leadership effectiveness has largely overlooked the implications of the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership, where leaders, as group members, ask followers, as group members, to exert themselves on behalf of the collective. In contrast, the social identity model of organizational leadership, proposed here, emphasizes the characteristics of the leader as a group member, and the leader’s ability to speak to followers as group members. In salient groups with which group members identify, leadership effectiveness rests on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group (i.e. representative of the group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behavior (i.e. behavior perceived to benefit the group). Explicating the added value of our model and going beyond contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness, we discuss how our model extends, and may be integrated with, three major contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness (charismatic leadership theories, Leader-Member Exchange theory, and leadership categorization theories). In addition, we outline how our model provides a viable framework to integrate future developments in research on leadership such as a growing attention to leader fairness and the role of emotions in leadership effectiveness.