Implicit Leadership Research Articles

An Empirical Vision for Organizational Renewal: Utilizing Self-Reflection and Self-Awareness to Prompt Deep Transformation

Though it would not be disputed that individual contributors within the organization are pivotal to organizational innovation and change, there seems to be a disconnect between the organization’s design as it pertains to systems, structures and policies and those in leadership who determine the realities, norms, and behaviors for how innovation is to take place. Often, the implicit leadership influence in regard to this is unspoken and separate from the established organizational culture. For this reason, before an organization has this ability to renew on a product and innovation level, deeper renewal may be required. This renewal process utilizes principles of self-reflection and self-awareness to gain greater understanding of how the many dimensions of the organization work together. This method of organizational renewal can be extremely beneficial regardless of the current state of the organization. The key is to consider renewal as a form of strengthening the very core for greater sustainability and future readiness. This article provides an empirical framework to illuminate ways in which an organization can engage in the renewal process. The process involves discussing the importance of renewal at all levels of the organization, providing the foundational concepts of self-reflection and self-awareness in the context of renewal, highlighting the various aspects of the organization requiring renewal, and bringing it all together into a cohesive framework.

The role of social dominance orientation and patriotism in the evaluation of racial minority and female leaders

This research broadens our understanding of racial and gender bias in leader evaluations by merging implicit leadership theory and social dominance perspectives. Across two experimental studies (291 participants), we tested the prediction that bias in leader evaluations stemming from White and masculine leader standards depends on the extent to which people favor hierarchical group relationships (social dominance orientation) and their level of patriotism. Employing the Goldberg paradigm, participants read identical leadership speeches attributed to either a woman or a man described as either a minority (Black or Latino/a) or a majority (White) group member. Results show social dominance orientation negatively predicted evaluations of minority and female leaders and patriotism positively predicted evaluations of White leaders.

Enhancing Teacher Credibility: What We Can Learn From the Justice and Leadership Literature

ABSTRACTEnhanced perceptions of instructor credibility are related to positive outcomes in the classroom, including participation and learning (Chory, 2007; Frymier & Thompson, 1992; McCroskey & Teven, 1999; Myers, 2004; Teven & McCroskey, 1997). We contend that student perceptions of instructor credibility can be directly impacted by applying management research to classroom practices. In other words, actionable management research is useful in the classroom not just to share with students because it may make them better managers, but also to improve teaching practices and related outcomes. The present article explores this tenet, first discussing why we believe applied research findings can and should be transferred to the classroom and then using Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT) and organizational justice literature to demonstrate how these concepts can be generalized to the classroom environment to ultimately enhance instructor credibility.

Are leaders defined by followers? Role of follower’s ILT and the mediating influence of LMX on follower outcomes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to cast followers in an active role, and proposes a research model in which follower’s implicit leadership theory (ILT) congruence (ILT congruence) influences perceptions of transformational leadership (TL) and the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship. In addition, the authors expect LMX to mediate the influence of ILT congruence and TL on outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The research model was tested with data collected at three different points in time from 210 newly hired employees. Results of structural equation modeling provided strong support for the overall model. Findings – This study focussed on extending the understanding of leader-follower relationships. First, ILTs measured on the first day of employment shaped new entrants’ perceptions of TL measured 30 days after date of hire. Second, both ILT congruence and TL influenced the quality of LMX measured approximately 90 days from followers’ date of hire. As expected, LMX fully mediated the influence of ILT congruence and perceptions of TL on the dependent variables of turnover intentions, organizational identification and perceived organizational support (POS). Practical implications – Organizations should focus on measuring and developing LMX quality during the early phases of a follower’s socialization into the organization. Consistent with other research (Erdogan and Liden, 2002), LMX was a significant predictor of turnover intentions, organizational identification, and POS. Given the cost of turnover, organizations focussed on developing high quality LMX relationships could realize dramatic results. Originality/value – This study extends prior research by showing LMX fully mediates the influence of followers’ ILTs and transformational leader behaviors on POS, organizational identification and turnover intentions. By using data collected at three points in time from new employees, the authors demonstrated the effect of ILT congruence on the early development of LMX. Additionally, the results showed high ILT congruence leads followers to perceive their leaders as more transformational. Finally, data show the effects of ILT congruence and TL perceptions on turnover intentions, POS and organizational identification were fully mediated by LMX.

Servant leadership and employee outcomes: the moderating role of subordinates’ motives

Drawing from implicit leadership theories we advance servant leadership theory by examining moderating mechanisms that explain under what conditions servant leader behaviours impact followers in organizations. Specifically, we focused on the moderating role of subordinates’ motivational orientations—prosocial values or impression management motives—in relationships between servant leadership behaviours and job satisfaction, as well as subordinate organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Using time-lagged data collected from 192 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that servant leadership was positively associated with employees’ job satisfaction, but not significantly related to their performance of OCBs. We also found evidence that subordinates’ motives moderate the relationships between servant leadership and outcomes. Specifically, employees high on impression management experienced lower levels of job satisfaction than their lower scoring counterparts. Our findings suggest that servant leadership may not be equally beneficial for all followers. We discuss implications for theory and practice.

Development Of Implicit Leadership Theories Prior To Training Or Employment

This empirical study explored the development of implicit leadership theories among 16 to 18 year-old students in secondary schools prior to any formal leadership training or full-time employment. Students from governance, athletics, clubs, performance groups, and part-time work groups completed interviews and questionnaires. Adult leaders of activity groups also completed questionnaires. Results were analyzed by activity and role (e.g., student leader, student group member, and adult supervisor) for three separate dependent variables: Adult Leaders, Leaders in General, and Student Leaders. Results show that adolescents categorize leader behavior into similar constructs that have been previously established by research with adult samples experienced in organizational life. Experience in groups but not necessarily as a leader contributes to developing implicit leadership theories and type of activity guides such leadership attributions. Gender differences in the expectations for leaders were found and support the existence of early socialization into gender-specific leadership role stereotypes.

Blaming the building: How venue quality influences consumer bias against stigmatized leaders.

Because stigmatized individuals are viewed as incongruent with commonly held implicit leadership theories, they are often deemed less fit to lead than their nonstigmatized counterparts (Eagly & Karau, 2002). This suggests consumers might use such views to discredit not only stigmatized leaders, but also the companies they represent. However, cognition based on social categories (1 potential form of stigma) may be more likely when there are readily available alternative factors to account for one's decisions via casuistry. Across 2 complementary studies (field and experiment), we find that customers react negatively to stigmatized leaders only when the physical state of the company venue provides an ostensible defense to mask their biased behavior. When facilities are of lower quality, consumers appear to use a leader's stigma to infer lower product quality, coinciding in less patronage for companies with stigmatized as opposed to nonstigmatized leaders. Thus, consumers penalize companies with stigmatized leaders only when doing so can easily be attributed to an alternative factor (e.g., a lower quality venue) not involving the leader's stigma. (PsycINFO Database Record

"A Comparison of Leadership Effectiveness among China, Japan, and Korea:Crossvergence Perspective"

This study analyzed how leadership effectiveness is different across cultures from Ralston et al.’s (1997) crossvergence perspective. Based on implicit leadership theory, we developed and tested a ...

Love is Over: The Moderating Role of Relationship Tenure on Leader Narcissism and LMX

Integrating implicit leadership theory with social exchange theory, this paper investigates how the relationship tenure between subordinates and their narcissistic leader affects their leader-membe...

Implicit Leadership in Rural School Management in South Africa

The aim of this paper is to explore the views of teachers on the role of learners in rural school management in South Africa. Apart from a literature review on learner management, empirical study investigation based on quantitative research paradigm was used to collect data from teachers about the role of learners in rural school management. The literature findings revealed that learner participation in school management is a critical component of education in South Africa. The study further on revealed that empirical findings highlighted the important functions of learner leadership. The study is concluded by the submission that it is essential for rural schools to build the necessary frameworks and communication avenues for developing learner leaders.

Identifying and ranking implicit leadership strategies to promote evidence-based practice implementation in addiction health services

BackgroundDespite a solid research base supporting evidence-based practices (EBPs) for addiction treatment such as contingency management and medication-assisted treatment, these services are rarely implemented and delivered in community-based addiction treatment programs in the USA. As a result, many clients do not benefit from the most current and efficacious treatments, resulting in reduced quality of care and compromised treatment outcomes. Previous research indicates that addiction program leaders play a key role in supporting EBP adoption and use. The present study expanded on this previous work to identify strategies that addiction treatment program leaders report using to implement new practices.MethodsWe relied on a staged and iterative mixed-methods approach to achieve the following four goals: (a) collect data using focus groups and semistructured interviews and conduct analyses to identify implicit managerial strategies for implementation, (b) use surveys to quantitatively rank strategy effectiveness, (c) determine how strategies fit with existing theories of organizational management and change, and (d) use a consensus group to corroborate and expand on the results of the previous three stages. Each goal corresponded to a methodological phase, which included data collection and analytic approaches to identify and evaluate leadership interventions that facilitate EBP implementation in community-based addiction treatment programs.ResultsFindings show that the top-ranked strategies involved the recruitment and selection of staff members receptive to change, offering support and requesting feedback during the implementation process, and offering in vivo and hands-on training. Most strategies corresponded to emergent implementation leadership approaches that also utilize principles of transformational and transactional leadership styles. Leadership behaviors represented orientations such as being proactive to respond to implementation needs, supportive to assist staff members during the uptake of new practices, knowledgeable to properly guide the implementation process, and perseverant to address ongoing barriers that are likely to stall implementation efforts.ConclusionsThese findings emphasize how leadership approaches are leveraged to facilitate the implementation and delivery of EBPs in publicly funded addiction treatment programs. Findings have implications for the content and structure of leadership interventions needed in community-based addiction treatment programs and the development of leadership interventions in these and other service settings.

Asian Multilateralism in the Age of Japan's ‘New Normal’: Perils and Prospects

AbstractThis paper makes three related points. First, Japan has played an instrumental role in helping to define the shape and substance of multilateralism in Asia in ways deeper than scholarly literature on Asia's regional architecture has allowed. A key driving force behind Japan's contributions is the perceived utility of multilateralism in facilitating Japan's engagement of and/or balancing against China. Second, Japan has been able to achieve this because of the United States' support for Asian multilateralism and Japanese security interests. In the immediate post-Cold War period, Japan facilitated US participation in regional arrangements such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN Regional Forum. But Japanese ambivalence over its dependence on the United States was also apparent in Tokyo's attempts to exclude Washington from the newly formed East Asia Summit in late 2005, despite Japan's felt need to balance China. Japan's reliance on quiet diplomacy and an implicit regional leadership has equally been instrumental to its achievements in regional integration. Third, in the light of Japan's longstanding aim to become a normal military power and adopt a more assertive policy toward China, Japan‒US security ties are likely to deepen with negative consequences for Asian multilateralism. However, if its ties with China and South Korea worsen over their islands disputes in the East China Sea, Japan risks undermining its relations with the United States. How Japan balances its normalization with a continued engagement with multilateralism could be key to a stable and secure Asia.

Images of Leadership Development From the Inside Out

The Problem With the codification of leadership into frameworks, models, and theories that can be taught, leadership, an art that is essentially subjective, symbolic, and context-specific, is “translated into” an objective, pragmatic, and universal domain. Development can be elusive when approached from this universal perspective if external models distract leaders from exploring their own views and practices of leadership. The Solution This article explores the subjective and symbolic reality of those in leadership roles to discover what leaders can learn about their leadership and its development from awareness of their own mental models. These models are illuminated by an exploration of leaders’ naturally occurring metaphors and implicit leadership theories (ILTs) using clean language to acknowledge experience exactly as described while minimizing external influence or interpretation. The Stakeholders Leadership development practitioners can benefit from the innovative personalized approach to surfacing and exploring leaders’ own metaphors facilitated by clean language, offered in this article. Examples are given of the range of leadership metaphors surfaced with this method. Researchers can appreciate a novel approach to qualitative research interviewing and identify future research in surfacing ILTs through naturally occurring metaphor facilitated by clean language.

What matters most in leader selection? The role of personality and implicit leadership theories

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the primary basis upon which raters make decisions in the context of selection for formal leadership positions. Specifically, this paper examines the applicant’s personality, the rater’s personality, and the congruence between the applicant’s personality and the rater’s implicit leadership theories (ILTs) as predictors of interview scores. Design/methodology/approach – The hypotheses were tested via random coefficient modeling analyses using HLM software with the control variables included in Step 1 and the main effects entered in Step 2, and interaction effects in Step 3 as appropriate. Findings – Analyses suggest that both applicant and rater personality impact interview scores, but raters do not appear to select leaders on the basis of their conceptualization of an ideal leader. Research limitations/implications – The results suggest that raters may not consider their own ILTs when attempting to identify future leaders. Given this lack of a natural tendency toward selecting individuals that match one’s perceptions of an ideal leader, future research should focus on adapting current selection methods to leader selection and the development of new selection methods that are more valid. Practical implications – These findings suggest that current staffing practices may not encompass the most effective tools for selecting future leaders of the organization. These results highlight the importance of clarifying the outcome goals of the selection process in advance by giving raters a clear representation of the qualities and ideals that should be present in potential leaders. Originality/value – This study is among the first to examine the relationships between personality and ILTs in the context of a formal leadership selection process and makes a significant contribution to the literature by providing insight into the influence of both rater and applicant personality differences along with rater conceptualizations of ideal leadership in the context of formal leadership selection.

The Threshold Effect of Participative Leadership and the Role of Leader Information Sharing

Drawing on implicit leadership theory (Brown & Lord, 2001; Eden & Leviatan, 1975), we hypothesize that the relationship between participative leadership and employee performance is curvilinear (J-shaped), suggesting that participative leadership is unrelated to employee performance when participative leadership is below a moderate level (i.e., a threshold). Above this threshold, increased participative leadership is related to higher employee performance. Building on adaptive resonance theory (Grossberg, 1999), a variant of implicit leadership theory, we further hypothesize that leaders’ information-sharing behavior will moderate this curvilinear relationship. We test this model using two independent samples: office and call-center employees (Study 1) and factory workers (Study 2). Results from Study 1 reveal that this curvilinear relationship is stronger when leaders’ information sharing is high and weaker when information sharing is low. Furthermore, in Study 2, we find that leadership effectiveness med...

Are companies beholden to bias? The impact of leader race on consumer purchasing behavior

Given that racial stereotypes often influence leader appraisals, many businesses assume consumers will respond unfavorably to Black leaders. Recent research, however, suggests observers may suppress negative stereotypes of Black leaders when they head high-performing organizations. We integrate theory on implicit leadership and motivated social cognition to better understand how leader stereotype application and suppression influence consumer purchasing behavior. Across archival studies, a classroom exercise, and an experiment, we found that customers (real and prospective) appraised Black leaders less favorably than White leaders, resulting in lower patronage only when motivated to view leaders stereotypically. Namely, significant consumer bias against companies with Black leaders emerged only when organizational failure was accompanied by (a) unfamiliarity with the leader(s) in question, (b) greater societal acceptance of racist behavior (i.e., in the past), or (c) high consumer desire to bask-in-reflected-glory of an organization.

A Regional Exploratory Study of Ideal and Confucian Implicit Leadership Profiles in China

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, it is urgent that we better understand leadership phenomena across cultures. In this paper, we evaluate implicit leadership theories based on cultural ...

Understanding Perceptions of Female and Male Leaders

Although the representation of women in top management positions has increased in recent years, there remains a gender imbalance at upper levels in organizations (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009). Past research revealed that this gender gap can be explained through a biased evaluation of female leaders such that when exhibiting the same behavior as male leaders, female leaders are less favorably evaluated than their male counterparts (Heilman, 2001). In this symposium, we include five papers that explore factors influencing this biased evaluation, namely leader emergence (Presentation 1), individuating information about and positions of leaders (Presentation 2), leader role-based behavior (Presentation 3), leader body posture and gender (Presentation 4), and degree of match of individuals’ Implicit Leadership Theories (ILT) with their own leader identity (Presentation 5). Following the presentations, Lynn Shore will serve as the discussant to highlight both theoretical and practical implications and lead a...

Mr. Right & Superman: Effect of Implicit Followership Theories on Employee's Career Success

Implicit followership theories (IFTs) are defined as individuals' personal assumptions about the traits and behaviors that characterize followers, and it is an extension of implicit leadership the...

Considering the gap between Implicit Leadership Theories and expectations of actual leader behaviour: a three-study investigation of leadership beliefs in Romania

The conceptual base of behavioural preferences for leadership can be found in Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs). In a series of three studies, we examined both ILTs and expectations for leader behaviour for the purpose of examining the degree of fit between ILTs and associated expectations. In our first study we found that ILTs for transformational and transactional leadership are highly related, although participant’s ILTs were either not related or weakly related to expectations of actual leader behaviour. We conducted two follow-up studies to examine the understanding of transformational and transactional leadership in Romania. We discuss the findings in terms of how culturally-derived factors may serve to influence ILTs and profiles of expected leader behaviours.