Leadership Quarterly最新文献

This paper leverages technological and methodological advances in natural language processing to advance our understanding and approaches to leadership research by introducing structural topic models (STM) to researchers wanting to inductively code massive amounts of unstructured texts. Specifically, we illustrate the application of STM applied to a large corpus (N ≈ 8000) of unstructured text responses from a diverse sample of leaders to inductively generate a classification system of leader challenges and simultaneously examine whether the challenges being experienced by leaders covary with leader characteristics. Overall, we identify nine central leader challenges. Results indicate that certain leader challenges are more prevalent depending on the leader’s characteristics (e.g., gender), and that two challenges, Daily Management Activities and Communication, were significantly related to boss’ ratings of performance. We also highlight additional applications of this technique to aid leadership researchers who wish to inductively derive meaning from large amounts of unstructured texts.

What makes followers act collectively when called upon by their leaders? To answer this question, participants were randomly allocated to leader–follower relationships embedded either in a partisan group or a workgroup context; and the relationship between identity leadership and collective action through ingroup identification (Study 1: N = 293) or both ingroup identification and group-efficacy (Study 2: N = 338) were assessed. Based on the model of identity leadership, we predicted and found that identity leadership was positively related with intentions for collective action when called upon by the leader, both via ingroup identification and belief in group efficacy. As predicted, the social identity process for the effectiveness of identity leadership was more important in partisan groups than in workgroups. The efficacy related process was group context invariant. These results have implications for our understanding of group processes involved in the leadership in collective action.

We examine the effects of moral (vs. competent) leadership on followers' leader evaluations and endorsement. In Study 1 (N = 157), followers evaluated a leader more negatively and endorsed them less when they failed on morality than competence. An indirect effect from leader morality to leader evaluation, through perceived group prototypicality emerged, demonstrating the identity-basis of this evaluation. In Studies 2 (N = 150), 3 (N = 297), and 4 (N = 192) participants considered incongruous situations in which the leader failed on morality but succeed on competence, or vice-versa. Followers expressed more negative evaluations and less endorsement of an immoral but competent leader than of a moral but incompetent leader, through group prototypicality. In Study 4, we manipulated group prototypicality. A leader considered prototypical of the group received worse evaluations when they behaved immorally, irrespective of their competence. Results contribute to the understanding of leader-followers dynamics.

We demonstrate the value of a moral decision making paradigm for investigating the effects of intention and harm on followers' reactions to leaders' wrongdoing. We also introduce damaged relational identity as a mediator of these effects. Participants were assigned to one of four conditions in which intention to harm and harm were manipulated. The study was conducted using a stochastic, incentivized economic game that involved real monetary consequences for the followers. The results indicated that intention to harm was the primary determinant of followers' withdrawal behavior while actual harm had no effect on withdrawal. A desire to punish the offending leader was influenced by both intention and harm. Damaged relational identity mediated the effect of intention on withdrawal behavior and punishment. In contrast, harm's effect on punishment was direct. We hope that our study stimulates additional research on leader misconduct using intention and identification processes as linchpins.

Identity leadership theorizing suggests that leadership effectiveness derives from a potential leader’s perceived ability to create, embody, promote, and embed a shared group identity. However, little is known about how people integrate this information to form a judgment of a leader. We use cognitive modeling to operationalize leadership judgments as exemplar-and prototype-based categorization processes. Analysis of attribute rating data for 80 highly recognizable Americans revealed that leadership judgments were well-characterized by an exemplar-based model. Judgments were based overwhelmingly on promoting shared collective interests and embedding group identity. The pattern of attribute weightings was consistent for judgments of a general leadership role (i.e., as a competent leader) as well as judgments for a specific leadership role (i.e., as an effective US president). We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of identity leadership as well as for integrated social-cognitive models of individuals’ judgements of and responses to leaders.

Why do people support strong leaders? We examined the link between social identity continuity – the sense that a nation’s past, present, and future are interconnected – and the wish for a strong national leader. Drawing on a multi-country data set (Study 1: N = 6112) and a sample from Australia (Study 2: N = 621), Studies 1 and 2 showed that identity continuity was related to increased desire for a strong leader. Studies 3a (UK sample; N = 293) and 3b (US sample; N = 294) further showed that desired (not perceived) identity continuity was related to wish for a strong leader, suggesting that the key ingredient is the desire for continuity regardless of the perceived current levels of continuity. These findings suggest that people may want to preserve their national identity as a link to the past to face present and future challenges, even if it means forgoing democratic leadership.

Research exploring the powerful links between leadership and identity has burgeoned in recent years but cohered around two distinct approaches. Research on identity leadership, the main focus of this special issue, sees leadership as a group process that centers on leaders’ ability to represent, advance, create and embed a social identity that they share with the collectives they lead—a sense of “us as a group”. Research on leader identity sees leadership as a process that is advanced by individuals who have a well-developed personal understanding of themselves as leaders—a sense of “me as a leader”. This article explores the nature and implications of these divergent approaches, focusing on their specification of profiles, processes, pathways, products, and philosophies that have distinct implications for theory and practice. We formalize our observations in a series of propositions and also outline a dual-identity framework with the potential to integrate the two approaches.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 virus turned into a pandemic that hit organizations globally. This pandemic qualifies as an exogenous shock. Based on the threat-rigidity hypothesis, we hypothesize that this shock led to an increase in directive leadership behavior. We also argue that this relationship depends on the magnitude of the crisis and on well-learned responses of managers. In our empirical analysis we employ a differences-in-differences design with treatment intensity and focus on the period of the first lockdown, March until June 2020. Using a dataset covering monthly data for almost 27,000 managers across 48 countries and 32 sectors for January 2019 to December 2020, we find support for the threat-rigidity hypothesis. During the first lockdown, directive leadership increased significantly. We also find that this relationship is moderated by COVID-19 deaths per country, the sectoral working from home potential, and the organizational level of management. Our findings provide new evidence how large exogenous shocks like COVID-19 can impact leadership behavior.

Why and when do CEOs invest in corporate social responsibility (CSR)? We theorize how CEOs' intrinsic motivations – their social values – and the incentivizing context interact to determine the utility they attach to generating collectively beneficial outcomes in decision-making, subsequently manifested in organizations' CSR investments. Based on a review of neuroscience evidence, indicating that social values are associated with distinct patterns of neural activation, we propose that these values are the compass by which CEOs navigate in complex decision environments. For CEOs with other-regarding values, generating collectively beneficial outcomes is part and parcel of their utility function. They are intrinsically motivated to invest in CSR, regardless of context. In contrast, CEOs with self-regarding values derive utility from generating collective benefits only when it is monetarily or socially incentivized. They are extrinsically motivated to invest in CSR when they stand to gain from it personally.

The CEO-TMT interface, defined as the linkage and interaction between the CEO and other top managers, has received increasing attention from scholars in different disciplines. This stream of research aims to unveil how CEOs and other executives interact with one another, influence each other, and become involved in collective activities that shape the fate of organizations. Yet, despite the burgeoning interest in this area, extant CEO-TMT research is characterized by various and disconnected assumptions about the interfacing roles through which CEOs and TMTs exercise strategic leadership. Drawing on role theory, we review extant CEO-TMT interface research in different disciplines, and systematically organize the various CEO-TMT role assumptions into three role-theory specifications: functionalism, social-interactionism, and structuralism. In taking stock of the three role specifications, we provide a critique of the strengths and boundaries of each, and chart directions toward an integrated ‘multi-role’ understanding of the CEO-TMT interface in strategic leadership.