Abstract
The aim of the current study was to examine the HEXACO personality traits in relation to followers’ preference for charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented leadership. Based on the similarity perspective, we expected followers high on Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience to prefer a charismatic leader, and those followers high on conscientiousness and low on Openness to Experience to prefer a task-oriented leader. In addition, from a need fulfillment perspective, we expected followers high on Emotionality to prefer a task- and a relationship-oriented leader. We examined these expectations using paper vignette methodology in a sample of 272 undergraduates. The results showed that most participants preferred a relationship-oriented leader over a charismatic or task-oriented leader. In addition, we found support for all our hypotheses, with the exception of the relations between Honesty-Humility and preference for charismatic leadership, and Conscientiousness and preference for task-oriented leadership. Our findings contribute to the nomological network of the role of follower characteristics in the leader-follower relationship. Implications and suggestions for research on charismatic leadership are provided.
Highlights
The aim of the current study was to examine the HEXACO personality traits in relation to followers’ preference for charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented leadership
The results for the preference for charismatic and task-oriented leadership were somewhat different from the forced-choice question responses, showing that the difference was in the opposite direction, with a higher mean for preference for task-oriented (M = 3.63) compared with charismatic leadership (M = 3.46; t (271) = −2.32, p < .05)
Based on the similarity perspective (Klein & House, 1998), we expected Honesty-Humility, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience to be positively associated with a preference for charismatic leadership, whereas low Openness to Experience and high Conscientiousness were expected to relate to a preference for task-oriented leadership
Summary
The aim of the current study was to examine the HEXACO personality traits in relation to followers’ preference for charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented leadership. In their study, Ehrhart and Klein (2001) examined the relations between a range of follower work values, as well as follower personality (i.e., achievement, risk-taking, self-esteem, and need for structure) and their preference for charismatic, relationship-oriented, and task-oriented leadership. Based on their results, Ehrhart and Klein concluded that the similarity perspective may play a role in explaining the relations between follower characteristics and leader preference, “based on the predictors that had the strongest relation with leader preference, need fulfillment appears to be the dominant mechanism.”. With regard to followers’ personality characteristics, the only relations that were found were that followers with a higher selfesteem and more need for structure had a stronger preference for a task-oriented leader
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