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Abstract
Charisma is crucially important for a range of leadership outcomes. Charisma is also in the eye of the beholder—an attribute perceived by followers. Traditional leadership theory has tended to assume charismatic attributions flow to men rather than women. We challenge this assumption of an inevitable charismatic bias toward men leaders. We propose that gender-biased attributions about the charismatic leadership of men and women are facilitated by the operation of a leader-in-social-network schema. Attributions of charismatic leadership depend on the match between the gender of the leader and the perceived structure of the network. In three studies encompassing both experimental and survey data, we show that when team advice networks are perceived to be centralized around one or a few individuals, women leaders are seen as less charismatic than men leaders. However, when networks are perceived to be cohesive (many connections among individuals), it is men who suffer a charismatic leadership disadvantage relative to women. Perceptions of leadership depend not only on whether the leader is a man or a woman but also on the social network context in which the leader is embedded.
Highlights
To be an effective leader, it is crucial to be granted leadership qualities by others
We draw from cognitive psychology and schema research to offer a new approach to the question of why certain people are attributed with charismatic leadership
We suggest that the process by which an observer endorses an individual as a charismatic leader involves a cognitive matching between the observer’s expectations concerning the types of people suitable for leadership and the extent to which the individual is perceived to fulfill those expectations in particular social network contexts
Summary
To be an effective leader, it is crucial to be granted leadership qualities by others. We suggest that the process by which an observer endorses an individual as a charismatic leader involves a cognitive matching between the observer’s expectations concerning the types of people suitable for leadership and the extent to which the individual is perceived to fulfill those expectations in particular social network contexts. Networks in which informal power is perceived to be centralized in one or a few individuals resemble the traditional, formal structures of command-and-control that are associated with male stereotypes about leadership (Schein 1973) These hierarchical structures are readily perceived (Zitek and Tiedens 2012) and tend to reinforce male gender stereotypes, thereby placing men at an advantage over women (Acker 1990). We bring these lines of work together by testing whether the same underlying network, presented to appear either centralized or dense, triggers different schematic expectations
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