Leadership in Black and White: Ethnicity and Its Impact on the Way Public Leaders’ Efforts in Tackling Corruption are Perceived

Abstract

Previous research has studied the factors that impact the way individuals perceive leaders. This study aimed to extend previous leadership research by (1) examining the rating disparities of black and white leaders in an agency and (2) basing the ratings on agency levels of corruption. No such study was found to use government as a context or corruption as a measure. The results from the survey experiment indicate that when leaders performed very well in terms of lowering corruption, white respondents perceived the corruption efforts of the leader with a white sounding name higher than the leader with a black sounding name, while black respondents perceived the corruption efforts of the leader with a black sounding name higher. Black and white sounding names were used as a proxy for the leader’s ethnicity. However, when corruption increased under the leaders’ tenure, neither black nor white respondents differed in how they perceived leaders with white and black sounding names. Thus, respondents only exhibited implicit leadership bias when leaders performed very well.