Change agent's contribution to recipients' resistance to change: A two-sided story

In the change management literature, most studies on recipients' resistance to change include only the views of agents or of recipients, thereby ignoring that these parties may have different perceptions. In this quantitative study, we include the perceptions of both parties in studying the recipients' resistance and the impact of the agent's leadership behavior. In a sample of 117 agent-recipients groupings, covering 110 different change projects in 90 organizations, we found that agents perceive higher levels of recipients' resistance than do the recipients themselves. Additionally, we found that agents who create space to enable recipients to think and act differently (by employing creating behavior) report higher levels of recipients' resistance, whereas recipients perceive their resistance to be lowered when agents facilitate an emotional connection to the change (framing behavior). The depth of the change appeared to moderate the relationship between agent's leadership behavior and recipients' resistance, indicating that agents and recipients differ in which change leadership behaviors they perceive as increasing or decreasing resistance at different levels of change depth. These findings imply to reconsider the relationship between agent and recipients and we propose some promising avenues for future studies in resistance research.     

The influence of economic context on the relationship between chief executive officer facial appearance and company profits

Inferences of leadership ability and personality from faces have been associated with leaders' efficacy across multiple domains. One influential factor that has only been scarcely explored, however, is the context in which leadership occurs. The present studies examined the effect of two such contextual variables: economic conditions across time and economic conditions across nations. In Study 1, inferences of leadership ability from the faces of American Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) predicted their companies' financial performance prior to the Financial Crisis of 2008 but not after. In Study 2, traits previously found to predict the success of American CEOs before the Financial Crisis (i.e., Power) predicted the success of CEOs in Germany in the year following the crisis but not in the US, consistent with the differential impact of the international recession in the two nations. These results suggest that economic events may affect the relationship between facial appearance and business leaders' success.     

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.     

Facial appearance and leader choice in different contexts: Evidence for task contingent selection based on implicit and learned face-behaviour/face-ability associations

Facial appearance plays a role in leader selection and some facial traits are more valued in certain contexts. Here, I examined associations between facial appearance and perceptions of leadership. In Study 1, male faces were rated for several traits and leadership ability under general, war-time, and peace-time scenarios. Masculinity was found to be favoured in war-time over peace-time, however, this association was diminished when controlling for dominance. In Study 2, cues to physical ability or cooperative personality were associated with different face traits. When subsequently asked to select the best leader for a physically competitive task, participants chose faces with the trait associated with physical ability. For a cooperative task, participants chose faces with the trait associated with cooperation. These data suggest that leaders may be chosen based on their visual characteristics because certain characteristics suggest that they possess abilities that make them well suited to lead in particular situations.     

Leaders's language and employee proactivity: Enhancing psychological meaningfulness and vitality

Today's volatile environment and pressure for continuous improvement require leaders to play a central role in fostering and nurturing employee proactivity. Effective leaders use their communication skills as a key tool to motivate employees to achieve organizational goals. In this study, we tested a model in which leader motivating language (manifested as direction-giving, empathetic, and meaning-making language) fosters the development of employee proactive behavior by shaping a psychological context of meaningfulness and cultivating a motivational state of employee vitality. The findings indicate that the leader motivating language is related directly and indirectly, through psychological meaningfulness, to employee vitality. We also found that psychological meaningfulness and employee vitality are mediating mechanisms through which leader motivating language can result in enhanced employee proactivity. This study advances theory and research on employee proactivity as a contingency of leadership motivating language by integrating three emerging streams of research—relational leadership, relational communication, and proactivity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

‘It is not fair that you do not know we have problems’: Perceptual distance and the consequences of male leaders' conflict avoidance behaviours

This study investigates perceptual distance in terms of managers' conflict avoidance behaviour and its consequences for subordinates. We argue that perceptual distance, or the disagreement between a manager's perception and that of his or her subordinates of his or her conflict avoidance, is a genuine phenomenon. We examine the extent to which the perceptual distance regarding managers' avoidance behaviour influences a team's justice climate as well as the role of gender. The data collected from three multinational companies in China show that the perceptual distance of a male manager's avoidance behaviour exists and that it is associated with a negative justice climate within the team. These findings provide evidence of gender's effect on leadership and highlight the benefits of female leadership.     

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.     

Managers’ Resources for Authentic Leadership – a Multi‐study Exploration of Positive Psychological Capacities and Ethical Organizational Climates

While authentic leadership is highly valued in today's business world, managers do not necessarily have the resources to attain it. Building on conservation of resources theory, we propose a conceptual model to address how personal and contextual resources predict authentic leadership. Study 1 analyses the day‐to‐day variability in managers’ positive psychological capacities as personal resources in relation to changes in authentic leadership. In addition, it tests ethical organizational climates as stable, contextual resources for authentic leadership. In Study 2, we replicate our results on the between‐person level and extend the research model by exploring promotion focus as a link in the relationship between personal resources and authentic leadership. Evidence from an experience sampling study with 89 managers surveyed daily on 10 consecutive working days (Study 1) and a field survey of 130 managers at two points in time (Study 2) supports the hypothesized role of personal resources and promotion focus for authentic leadership. In both studies, only principled but not benevolent ethical organizational climates emerged as a contextual resource for authentic leadership. We discuss the implications for current management research and practice.     

Motivating deference: Employees' perception of authority legitimacy as a mediator of supervisor motivating styles and employee work-related outcomes

The two studies presented here examine the extent to which perceived authority legitimacy mediates the association between supervisors' motivating styles and subordinates' work-related outcomes. From the perspective of the self-determination theory (SDT), we examined two supervisory motivating styles: the autonomy-supportive style that nurtures employees' inner motivational resources and the controlling style in which supervisors pressure their employees to behave in specific manager-directed ways. Perceived authority legitimacy was defined according to the Relational Model of Authority (RMA). The results of Study 1 (n?=?191) showed that the autonomy-supportive motivating style, but not the controlling style, was associated with employees' work satisfaction, commitment, and burnout through legitimacy. These results were replicated in Study 2 (n?=?314), even after controlling for task-autonomous and controlled motivation, and extended to other reported employee behavioral outcomes such as organizational citizenship behavior, deviant behavior, and conflicts within the workplace. Taken together, the results suggest that the effectiveness of the autonomy-supportive motivating style is partly due to its association with volitional deference to authority. The paper concludes by discussing theoretical implications of integrating SDT with RMA and the practical implications of the findings.     

What’s in a face? Facial appearance associated with emergence but not success in entrepreneurship

Facial appearance has been associated with leader selection in domains where effective leadership is considered crucial, such as politics, business and the military. Few studies, however, have so far explored associations between facial appearance and entrepreneurship, despite the growing expectation that societies project on entrepreneurs for providing exemplary leadership in activities leading to the creation of disruptive start-ups. By using computer vision tools and a large-scale sample of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs from Crunchbase, we investigate whether three geometrically based facial characteristics - facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), cheekbone prominence, and facial symmetry - as well as advanced statistical models of whole facial appearance, are associated with a) the likelihood of an individual to emerge as an entrepreneur and b) the performance of the company founded by that individual. We find that cheekbone prominence, facial symmetry and two whole facial appearance statistical models are associated with the likelihood of an individual to emerge as an entrepreneur. In contrast to entrepreneurship emergence, none of the examined facial characteristics are associated with performance. Overall, our results suggest that facial appearance is associated with the emergence of leaders in the entrepreneurial endeavor, however, it is not informative about their subsequent performance.     

‘Let's share!’ The mediating role of employees' self-determination in the relationship between transformational and shared leadership and perceived knowledge sharing among peers

Building on social-exchange and self-determination theory, this study aimed to contribute to the scholarly literature on leadership and knowledge sharing by simultaneously testing how shared and transformational leadership and their interrelatedness may foster employees' perceptions of knowledge sharing behaviour among peers. Additionally, we investigated the mediating role of employees' basic psychological needs satisfaction (in terms of autonomy, competence and relatedness, respectively) as an additional explanatory mechanism to reveal how shared and transformational leadership may foster individuals' perceptions of knowledge sharing behaviour among peers. We employed PLS structural equation modelling to analyse survey data obtained from professionals in an R&D unit of a knowledge-intensive firm. We found shared leadership to be the most important factor enhancing employees' perceptions of knowledge sharing among peers, both directly and indirectly through employees' satisfaction of the need for autonomy. Transformational leadership was found to foster employees' knowledge sharing ultimately, through shared leadership and the need for autonomy satisfaction. We concluded that shared forms of leadership supplemented with transformational leadership on the part of formal leaders are important in contemporary work environments as they can foster employees' perceptions of knowledge sharing among peers and contribute towards employees' self-determination, which ultimately enhances perceptions of knowledge sharing among peers.     

The face of leadership: Perceiving leaders from facial expression

The aim of the two studies presented here was to add to our knowledge about the contribution of facial expression to the perception of leadership. We assessed participants' prototypes of leadership. In addition, participants were shown pictures of different facial expressions. First impressions of leadership from the facial expressions were compared to the participants' prototypes. The results indicate that the participants used all available information, including facial appearance, expression, context of communication, appropriateness, and authenticity of expression to form complex prototypes. When the facial expressions in the studies matched the participants' prototypes, first impressions of leadership were higher. Therefore, understanding what is inside the perceiver's mind is significant for understanding leadership perceptions. On the basis of these two studies, we recommend that leaders should be aware of the influence their facial expressions have on their followers' perception of their leader-likeness.     

Dying for charisma: Leaders' inspirational appeal increases post-mortem

In the present research, we shed light on the nature and origins of charisma by examining changes in a person's perceived charisma that follow their death. We propose that death is an event that will strengthen the connection between the leader and the group they belong to, which in turn will increase perceptions of leaders' charisma. In Study 1, results from an experimental study show that a scientist who is believed to be dead is regarded as more charismatic than the same scientist believed to be alive. Moreover, this effect was accounted for by people's perceptions that the dead scientist's fate is more strongly connected with the fate of the groups that they represent. In Study 2, a large-scale archival analysis of Heads of States who died in office in the 21st century shows that the proportion of published news items about Heads of State that include references to charisma increases significantly after their death. These results suggest that charisma is, at least in part, a social inference that increases after death. Moreover, they suggest that social influence and inspiration can be understood as products of people's capacity to embody valued social groups.     

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.     

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.     

Ethical leadership and employee success: Examining the roles of psychological empowerment and emotional exhaustion

The current study aims to advance ethical leadership theory and research in two ways. First, we propose that psychological empowerment is a comprehensive motivational mechanism linking ethical leadership with employee current in-role success and future success potential. Second, we propose that employee emotional exhaustion is a disruptive psychological state that dampens the empowering effects of ethical leaders. Findings from two field studies illustrate that emotional exhaustion impairs the motivational efforts of ethical leaders by attenuating the direct effects on psychological empowerment and the indirect effects on employees' current success and success potential. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Effect of Perceived Crisis Response on Consumers' Behavioral Intentions During a Company Scandal – An Intercultural Perspective

In the context of a multi-national company scandal, namely Volkswagen's Dieselgate, we examine the effect of customers' perception of organizational crisis response on their revenge and avoidance intentions in different cultural settings. Using data collected in the US and in Germany, we are able to show that the perception of appropriate crisis response reduces customers' revenge as well as avoidance intentions. However, due to the domestic bias of German respondents, the mechanism linking perception of the organization's crisis response to the respective outcomes differs between Germany and the US. Our results demonstrate for the first time that domestic bias is not always associated with being an amplifier of positive factors; rather, in the context of an organizational scandal, it dampens the effects of organizational crisis response.     

How leader role identity influences the process of leader emergence: A social network analysis

Contemporary theories on leadership development emphasize the importance of having a leader identity in building leadership skills and functioning effectively as leaders. We build on this approach by unpacking the role leader identity plays in the leader emergence process. Taking the perspective that leadership is a dynamic social process between group members, we propose a social network-based process model whereby leader role identity predicts network centrality (i.e., betweenness and indegree), which then contributes to leader emergence. We test our model using a sample of 88 cadets participating in a leadership development training course. In support of our model, cadets who possess a stronger leader role identity at the beginning of the course were more likely to emerge as leaders. However this relationship was only mediated by one form of network centrality, indegree centrality, reflecting one's ability to build relationships within one's group. Implications for research and practice are discussed.