Leadership Attributions: The Role of Environmental Uncertainty and Communal Leadership Schemas

Abstract

How do members of self-managing teams attribute leadership to each other? Although scholars have assumed that people attribute leadership on the basis of members' behaviors, leadership attributions may be a function of relational schema people hold and situations teams operate in. This research argues that prior research has overlooked the crucial role of the situation in engendering leadership attributions. Building on recent research leadership structure schemas, I argue that these schemas about sharing leadership are a function of team members' perception of the situation. When members perceive the environment to be more uncertain, they believe that more communal approaches to leadership are appropriate. This communal leadership schema thus increases the likelihood that they will attribute leadership to several teammates. I test these hypotheses in two studies. Study 1 uses multi-wave data from student project teams (n = 352 individuals, 46 teams) to show that, when individuals perceive the environment as more uncertain, they adopt more communal leadership schemas and thus are more likely to attribute leadership to multiple members. In Study 2 (n = 397 individuals), I replicate these findings in an experimental study where I varied descriptions of the certainty of the environment, then measured changes in communal leadership schemas and attributions of leadership to fictitious team members. This research contributes to the literature by emphasizing the attributional views of leadership and the role of the situation in shaping communal leadership schemas and informal leadership attributions in teams.