Leadership Categorization Theory Research Articles

Disparities in minority executive dismissal: A contingency perspective

As part of society’s motivation to address racial and ethnic disparities, scholars have examined racial/ethnic minorities’ underrepresentation in organizations’ upper echelons. However, prior research on minority executive dismissal has yielded equivocal findings. We draw on leadership categorization theory and token status theory to hypothesize that, under conditions of greater ambiguity and uncertainty, the likelihood of dismissal differs for White and non-White executives. Using a sample of NCAA Division 1 college basketball coaches over an 18-year period, we find overall support for our theorizing—lower financial support, low prestige power, and greater strategic change increase the chances of non-White executives being dismissed. Our findings have important implications for minority executive dismissal research and point to potential remedies that organizations can implement to reduce stereotyping and bias against non-White executives.

HR managers stereotyping frontline managers

AbstractThis study explored how human resource (HR) leaders' biased perceptions of frontline manager (FLM) effectiveness influence HR ratings of FLM competencies, resulting in insufficient training and job preparation for these critical employees. The literature review examined FLM research, ratings of supervisory competencies and the underlying theoretical frameworks of implicit leadership theory and leadership categorization theory, and their relationship to informal learning. The research used mixed methods, with a qualitative critical incident study to identify competencies, followed by a quantitative survey to compare ratings, followed by qualitative in‐person interviews to confirm survey findings. Results revealed a significant difference between HR and other raters of FLMs, including the FLMs themselves, with regard to FLM effectiveness, and these differences are informed by HR stereotypes of FLMs. Recommendations and implications suggest HR's role in providing unbiased assessment could lead to essential FLM training and development.

Implicit measures in leadership categorization theory: the case for using cognitive mapping and verbal protocols to study cross-categorization phenomena

PurposeThis paper contributes to leadership categorization theory by advocating a new method to surface people's implicit leadership theories. The purpose of this new approach is to simultaneously capture individual difference in how they conceptualize leadership but within a common framework to allow for comparison of within- and between-person effects.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a narrative review of the implicit leadership theory, leadership categorization theory, cognitive mapping and verbal protocol literature with the purpose of surfacing a research method that will overcome the problems of over-simplification and over-individualization in existing methods.FindingsThe authors argue that using a combination of cognitive mapping and verbal protocols can capture the idiosyncrasies of individual lay theories of leadership while retaining the ability to compare people's responses through a common framework. The authors provide an example of how this method can be used to elicit people's perceptions of one aspect of implicit leadership theories, intelligence.Research limitations/implicationsThis new method will provide a methodology to test the subset propositions advocated by leadership categorization theory. These include the idea that subordinate level implicit leadership theories contain a subset of attributes found in the basic-level implicit leadership theories, that there is attribute integrity in superordinate implicit leadership theories through the levels, and the idea that people define leadership differently depending on the context they are observing.Originality/valueWhereas previous approaches to surfacing people's implicit leadership theories either heavily constrain their responses with a predetermined generic suite of attributes or are totally open-ended and idiosyncratic, the authors advocate an approach that combines the best of both.

Ethnic minority CEO turnover: Resource‐based and leadership categorization perspectives

SummaryWe use the resource‐based theory and leadership categorization theory to develop hypotheses about ethnic minority CEO turnover. Using survival analysis, we test the hypotheses and find that, as a group, ethnic minority CEOs at US firms experience only about half of the risk of turnover at any time as do nonethnic minority CEOs. However, the risk is not spread evenly across ethnic minority subgroups. Asian and Hispanic CEOs experience lower risk of turnover than nonethnic minority CEOs. Black CEOs of US firms do not share this reduced risk of turnover. We find that the resource‐based theory is consistent with the turnover experience of Asian and Hispanic ethnic minority CEOs, but that it is not useful for explaining Black CEO turnover. Some implications of our findings are the following: (1) In research, all minorities should not be treated as a single homogenous group, and (2) in practice, it may be useful to increase CEO social capital to lengthen tenure.

Normative Team Age Prototypes: Exploring Follower, Leader, and Team Characteristics

Abstract The concept of implicit organizational timetables suggests that leaders are expected to be older than their followers. However, increased age diversity in the workforce has led to situations in which this is not the case. Expanding on the core tenets of leader categorization theory, the present study establishes the concept of an age-prototypical team characterized by the age of the leader relative to their followers and explores how team age prototypicality influences subsequent observer evaluations of the team. Moreover, this study examines possible boundary conditions and intermediary mechanisms that further explain bias in the evaluation of age-diverse teams. To establish and explore the nature and effect of age-based team prototypes, we conducted 3 independent experimental vignette studies. In Study 1 (n = 590), we establish evidence for age-based team prototypes, by demonstrating a “leaders are older, followers are younger” prototype and further considering the diversity of follower age as a boundary condition for the effects of leader age on ratings of attraction to the team, anticipated team behaviors, and expectations for future success. Then, in Study 2 (n = 686) and Study 3 (n = 782), we extend these results by examining how the perception of team (Study 2) and leader (Study 3) performance cues are influenced by team age composition prototypes. In Study 3, we also consider intermediary attributional mechanisms that explain associations between performance and perceived qualities of the team. Results suggest that prototype inconsistent teams (i.e., teams with younger leaders and older followers) are viewed more harshly in the face of negative performance cues as a function of team composition rather than because of leader or follower attributes individually.

Burden of Being Atypical: (A)typicality in Leader Biographical Profile and Organizational Reputation

Despite growing interest in the advantages of appointing leaders with diverse profiles, most organizations follow typical expectations of what a leader’s profile should look like and avoid deviations from such expectations in their leader selection. This paper aims to answer why such changes are difficult by examining a major disadvantage of atypical over typical leader profiles—reputational penalties for an organization whose leader’s biographical profile is atypical. Drawing on the institutional theory of organizational reputation and leadership categorization theory, we propose that atypical components in a leader’s biographical profile will create credibility problems in the eyes of external observers, thereby having a negative impact on organizational reputation.

Examining when Targets of Downward Hostility See Their Leader as an “Abuser”

We invoke leader categorization theory and labeling theory to examine the circumstances under which individuals come to perceive their managerial leaders as “abusers,” as well as the consequences that the abuser label engenders. Results from field survey and laboratory studies suggest that the label, “abuser,” is more likely to be triggered when targets of downward hostility perceive their managerial leaders to be lower performers. We also found that when performance was lower, the abuser label mediated the relationship between downward hostility and upward hostility. We discuss the studies’ implications for theory, future research, and practice pertaining to downward hostility.

Is white always the standard? Using replication to revisit and extend what we know about the leadership prototype

This research is a pre-registered replication of Rosette, Leonardelli, and Phillips' (2008) seminal work in leadership categorization theory. Their work established race as a component to the business leader prototype and found evidence that when a leader was given credit for successful organizational performance, White leaders were evaluated more favorably than non-White leaders. As leadership exemplars are evolving, however, a need to reexamine these relationships has emerged. Results from our replications of their first and third studies showed minimal support for the argument that being White is a component of the business leader prototype. Additionally, across six separate studies, we found no conditions in which White leaders received more favorable evaluations than their non-White counterparts. Contrary to our expectations, we found that non-White leaders received marginally more favorable ratings than White leaders in four of our studies.

A Vicious Cycle of Bias: Residents' Perceptions of Leadership in Health Care.

Despite growing interest in shared leadership models, autocratic physician leadership remains the norm in health care. Stereotype and bias limit leadership by members of other professions. Furthermore, traditional views of effective clinical leadership emphasize agentic behaviors associated with male gender. To shift the prototypical concept of a leader from a male physician to a more inclusive prototype, a better understanding of prototype formation is needed. This study examines leader prototypes and their development among resident physicians through the lens of leadership categorization theory. One researcher conducted semistructured interviews with anesthesia and internal medicine residents at a single institution, asking participants to describe their ideal team leader and comment on the video-recorded performance of either a male or female nurse practitioner (NP) leading a simulated resuscitation. Interview questions explored participants' perceptions of NPs as team leaders and how these perceptions developed. The researchers conducted deductive analysis to examine leadership prototypes and prototype formation, and inductive analysis to derive additional themes. The majority of residents described a male physician as the ideal resuscitation team leader. Exposure to male physician leaders, and lack of exposure to NP leaders, contributed to this prototype formation. Residents described a vicious cycle in which bias against female and NP leaders diminished acceptance of their leadership by team members, resulting in decreased confidence and performance, further aggravating bias. These results provide suggestions for interventions that can help shift the leadership prototype in health care and promote shared leadership models. These include increasing exposure to different professionals of either gender in leadership roles and increased representation in educational materials, education about effective leadership strategies to create awareness of the benefits of shared leadership, and reflection during team training to increase awareness of bias and the backlash effect faced by individuals whose behaviors counter established stereotypes.

Examining the moderating effect of gender on compassion and leader emergence

Compassion, the endeavor to alleviate another individual’s distress, is commonly seen as a prosocial behavior with positive consequences. Drawing on social role theory and leadership categorization theory, we propose that compassionate behavior is related to perceptions of competence and warmth, which are subsequently related to leader emergence perceptions. Yet, because compassion is a behavior often associated with women, it may activate gender stereotypes, and thus we propose that gender will moderate the relationship between compassion and leader emergence via perceptions of competence and warmth, with compassionate women less likely to be perceived as leaders. However, men stand to benefit from acting compassionately because defying gender stereotypes is unexpected behavior that invites positive attention. Study 1, a longitudinal study with 38 student teams working together for 8 weeks, demonstrates a mediated moderation effect of gender on the relationship between compassion and leadership via competence, such that men, but not women, gain competence credit for displaying compassion and are thereafter ranked higher on leader emergence. To offset these negative consequences of compassion for women, the authors distinguish between two different types of compassion, agentic and communal. Study 2, a pre-registered vignette study with a diverse sample of 563 working adults, shows that gender effects are attenuated when women engage in agentic compassion, a specific form of compassion that both conforms to and breaks with gender stereotypes.

Hustlers, hipsters and hackers: Potential employees’ stereotypes of entrepreneurial leaders

Entrepreneurs’ ability to acquire resources, including human resources, is dependent on others’ beliefs and expectations about what is ‘typical’ in an entrepreneurial context. This paper explores beliefs and expectations of how a typical entrepreneurial leader behaves and looks like, i.e. the ‘entrepreneurial leader stereotype’, from the perspective of potential employees. To analyze and describe those entrepreneurial leader stereotypes, we build on leadership categorization theory and stereotyping literature, and conduct an explorative interview study. Our data suggests that potential employees’ entrepreneurial leader stereotypes are associated with specific leadership behaviors and are cognitively associated with certain groups of individuals. We identify three categories of entrepreneurial leader stereotypes: the ‘hustler’, the ‘hipster’, and the ‘hacker’ – all associated with entrepreneurial leadership, men, and youth. We discuss the implications of our findings for entrepreneurship, recruitment, and leadership research, and for recruiting entrepreneurs.

Implicit Leadership Theories, Implicit Followership Theories, and Dynamic Processing of Leadership Information

We offer a comprehensive review of the theoretical underpinnings and existing empirical evidence in the implicit leadership and implicit followership theories domain. After briefly touching on the historical roots of information-processing approaches to leadership and leader categorization theory, we focus on current contextualized and dynamic perspectives. We specifically present neural network approaches and adaptive resonance processes that guide leadership perceptions. We further address measurement issues, emerging areas of study such as implicit leadership theories, and identity and cross-cultural issues. We offer specific avenues for future research in the form of a systematic list of unanswered research questions and further outline leadership development implications.

Integrity according to Whom? An Experiment of the Effects of Gender, Moral Integrity, and Behavioral Consistency on Evaluations of Leaders

Organizational stakeholders place great importance on leaders’ integrity, which, current theory indicates is a multidimensional construct. Drawing from leadership categorization theory and multidim...

The consequences of humility for leaders: A double-edged sword

Though previous research finds that followers, teams, and organizations benefit when leaders express humility, drawing on leader categorization theory reveals negative consequences for the leader. We posit that displays of humility signal certain prototypical leader characteristics, such that expressed humility increases communal, but reduces agentic characteristics; given that both are positively associated with leadership, displays of humility differentially impact important leader outcomes such as leader effectiveness and undermining (e.g., punishments, rewards). Across five studies, we generally find support for mutual suppression such that expressed humility impacts leader effectiveness and undermining by simultaneously decreasing perceptions of agentic while increasing perceptions of communal characteristics. Our work provides a more balanced perspective on the consequences of leader humility by demonstrating that, seemingly under ideal circumstances, humility can lead to both benefits and costs for the leader. Given the potential downsides to humility, our work has important, practical implications for leader development.

Opening the Implicit Leadership Theories' Black Box: An Experimental Approach with Conjoint Analysis.

Although research on implicit leadership theories (ILTs) has concentrated on determining which attributes define a leadership prototype, little attention has been paid to testing the relative importance of each of these attributes for individuals’ leadership perceptions. Building on socio-cognitive theories of impression processes, we experimentally explore the formation of leadership perceptions based on the recognition of six key attributes in a series of three experimental studies comprising 566 US-based participants recruited online via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our results show that while certain attributes play an important role in the leader categorization process, others are less relevant. We also demonstrate that some attributes’ importance is contingent on the presence of other attributes and on the leadership schema type activated in respondents’ minds. Consistent with the Leadership Categorization Theory, our findings support the premise that individuals cognitively hold a superordinate leadership prototype, which imposes constraints on their more basic level prototypes. We discuss the implications of these results for leadership theory and practice.

Think leader, think heterosexual male? The perceived leadership effectiveness of gay male leaders

AbstractApplying a framework of leadership categorization theory, I examined the leadership perceptions of heterosexual and gay male leaders. A significant interaction was found between participants' homonegativity and the sexual orientation of the target leader (heterosexual male or gay male) for the variable of leadership effectiveness. For participants who were less homonegative, there were no significant differences between evaluations of heterosexual and gay male leaders. However, individuals who were more homonegative evaluated the gay male leader more negatively than they did the heterosexual male leader. Implications of these findings for leaders with a minority sexual orientation and their organizations are discussed. Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Humor as a Relationship Lubricant: The Implications of Leader Humor on Transformational Leadership Perceptions and Team Performance

In this article, drawing on leader categorization theory, we examined the influencing processes of team leaders’ humor on their teams’ performance. Using a time-lagged study, including 244 leaders and 815 followers in a manufacturing firm in Northern China, we found that leaders’ humor is positively related to subordinates’ perceptions of transformational leadership, which in turn, has a positive effect on the team’s performance. In addition, we found that the relationship conflict between a team leader and his or her team members moderates the positive, indirect effect of leader humor on team performance through subordinates’ transformational leadership perceptions. When the relationship conflict between the leader and his or her team members is high, leader’s humor becomes more relevant to subordinates’ perceptions of leader’s transformational leadership, and therefore exerts a stronger positive influence on team performance. The model developed in this study furthered the current understandings on leader humor and its usefulness in practical settings.

The Thin Line Between Empowering and Laissez-Faire Leadership: An Expectancy-Match Perspective

Empowering leadership and laissez-faire leadership are generally thought to represent quite different leadership styles—the former more active and directed in follower development and the latter more passive and dismissive of followers’ needs. The present study questions this sharp differentiation. Building on leader categorization theory, we suggest that empowering leadership can be perceived by followers as laissez-faire depending on followers’ empowerment expectations. Specifically, we propose that when leaders’ behaviors are not aligned with followers’ expectations (either higher or lower), followers may evaluate them as being laissez-faire. A two-stage field study of 150 leader-follower dyads employing a cross-level polynomial regression analysis supported our expectation-match hypotheses. Furthermore, followers’ perceptions of laissez-faire leadership as a mediator subsequently lead to lower leader effectiveness evaluation. Consequently, our results indicate that empowering and laissez-faire leadership in the perceptions of followers are closer to each other than researchers previously thought.

Do as I Say (and Do): Ethical Leadership Through the Eyes of Lower Ranks

This research expands what is currently known in the organizational sciences about the causes, consequences and unique role of ethical leadership in the workplace. In two different studies and two independent samples of approximately 1,500 workers each in field settings, ethical leadership was positioned as an antecedent, mediator and outcome of variables of pragmatic importance to the workplace. Ethical leadership was the central concept modelled across both studies. Social cognitive theory, social identity theory and leadership categorization theory were used to support a model of how follower rank influences workplace outcomes through the mediating effect of ethical leadership. In addressing the ethical imperative of the employment relationship, these studies contribute to ethical leadership research in two ways. First, findings indicated that a follower’s rank was positively associated with perceptions of ethical leadership, and second, that ethical leadership functioned as a partial mediator between rank/status and desirable workplace outcomes such as organizational fairness climate, career satisfaction and follower affective commitment. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

What do leaders have to live up to? Contrasting the effects of central tendency versus ideal-based leader prototypes in leader categorization processes

Leader categorization theory proposes that subordinates perceive leaders against the backdrop of a cognitively represented leader prototype. The match between the two ultimately determines how favourably subordinates respond towards leaders. The respective research, however, yields some confusion as to what kind of prototype is exactly used in this process. Are leaders matched against a central tendency leader prototype, i.e. to an average image of leaders in general, or is it subordinates' goal-directed leader prototype, i.e. their image of an ideal leader, that leaders have to live up to? We reanalysed a field study ( N = 266) and conducted a second one likewise with employees ( N = 271) to contrast the relevance of both prototypes. The analyses reveal that only the match with the ideal leader prototype was predictive of subordinates’ responses towards their leaders. Previous central tendency leader categorization research thus might have pertained to the ideal aspects in the existing leader population.