How leaders really emerge.

Comments on the article by R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007) which offered several research questions that should be productive for furthering leadership research. This comment summarizes some recent progress on one of those questions, "Not what are the traits of leaders, but how do leaders' personal attributes interact with situational properties to shape outcomes?" (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Special issue on leadership falls behind.

A special issue of the American Psychologist (January 2007) was devoted to leadership. The six articles, by W. Bennis (see record 2006-23492-002); S. J. Zaccaro (see record 2006-23492-003); V. H. Vroom and A. G. Yago (see record 2006-23492-004); B. J. Avolio (see record 2006-23492-005); R. J. Sternberg (see record 2006-23492-006); and R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007), were written from an "industrial" perspective that places primary emphasis on positional leaders and their actions. Some readers of this series might conclude that the industrial model best explains leadership. It does not. The ecological perspective offers an alternative that deserves consideration. It is time to end the dominance of the industrial perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diversity and leadership.

Comments on the six articles contained in the special issue of the American Psychologist (January 2007) devoted to leadership, written by W. Bennis (see record 2006-23492-002); S. J. Zaccaro (see record 2006-23492-003); V. H. Vroom and A. G. Yago (see record 2006-23492-004); B. J. Avolio (see record 2006-23492-005); R. J. Sternberg (see record 2006-23492-006); and R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007). The current authors express concern that the special issue failed to include attention to issues of diversity and intersecting identities as they pertain to leadership. A Special Issue Part II on Diversity and Leadership is being proposed to (a) advance new models of leadership, (b) expand on existing leadership theories, and (c) incorporate diversity and multiple identities in the formulation of more inclusive leadership research and theory. The goal of this special issue will be to revise our theories of leadership and our understanding of effective leadership to include gender, racial/ethnic minority status, sexual orientation, and disability status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leadership and attachment theory.

Comments on the six articles contained in the special issue of the American Psychologist (January 2007) devoted to leadership, written by W. Bennis (see record 2006-23492-002); S. J. Zaccaro (see record 2006-23492-003); V. H. Vroom and A. G. Yago (see record 2006-23492-004); B. J. Avolio (see record 2006-23492-005); R. J. Sternberg (see record 2006-23492-006); and R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007). The current authors opine that the inclusion of attachment theory in the study of leadership could strengthen leadership theories as a whole. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

I'm Doing the Best I Can (for Myself): Leadership and Variance of Harvesting in Resource Dilemmas.

Previous research on social dilemmas has shown that leadership can be an effective means to supervise a common resource and that group members prefer a leader when confronted with high variance between group members' harvests. In this article, the authors investigate how leaders and followers react to variance. The results of an experimental study indicate that leaders are especially likely to harvest more than followers (and to deviate from the optimal harvest) when there is high variance between group members' harvests. Moreover, this role effect was explained, at least partly, by the fact that compared with followers, leaders felt more entitled to higher harvests. The findings suggest that assigning leadership may, under certain situations, lead to inefficiency in managing the common resource. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asking the wrong questions about leadership.

Comments on the article by R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007) which presented some directions for leadership research. Hackman and Wageman organized their article around their five reject-accept questions suggesting new directions. The current author discusses how each of the questions appears far too timid for real progress in sorting out the chaff from the grain, but points out that the Hackman and Wageman article was a critique of five companion articles and made a substantial contribution to the literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction to the special issue on developing flexible and adaptable leaders for an age of uncertainty.

It is no secret that today's hyper-competitive, fast-paced, and rapidly changing global economy puts a premium on adaptable organizations and flexible leaders. Even advertising campaigns celebrate the “agile enterprise” and channel the spirit of “constant self-reinvention.” However, what can consulting psychologists do to help managers become more flexible and adaptable leaders? In this introduction to the special issue I provide an overview of the 5 focal articles and the capstone summary article. The articles in this issue are written by respected scholars and experienced practitioners who provide evidence-based guidance to practical questions such as: Why is flexibility so important, especially in tough economic times plagued by crisis and uncertainty?; how can practitioners predict and assess a manager's degree of flexibility?; and, how can leadership training and development interventions promote greater flexibility and adaptability? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leader–follower values congruence: Are socialized charismatic leaders better able to achieve it?

In a field study, the authors investigated the relationship between socialized charismatic leadership and values congruence between leaders and followers. Socialized charismatic leadership theory holds that charismatic leaders convey a values-based message and bring about values congruence between themselves and their followers. Yet, other research suggests that individuals' values are stable and closely linked to occupational membership and that employees' values are therefore likely to be quite difficult to change. Results of this study suggest that occupations are indeed associated with multiple types of employee values. The results also demonstrate that, for 3 of the 4 values studied, socialized charismatic leadership is associated with values congruence between the specific values leaders say they transmit to their followers and the values their followers say they use in work. The findings shed additional light on the values alignment process. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarian dynamics and unethical decision making: High social dominance orientation leaders and high right-wing authoritarianism followers.

When dilemmas require trade-offs between profits and ethics, do leaders high in social dominance orientation (SDO) and followers high in right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) make decisions that are more unethical than those made by others? This issue was explored in 4 studies with female participants performing managerial role-playing tasks. First, dyads comprising a person who was either low or high in SDO and a person who was either low or high in RWA negotiated for a leadership position. People high in SDO were more likely to obtain leader positions than to obtain follower positions. No other effects were significant. Second, leaders high in SDO partnered with an agreeable (confederate) follower made decisions that were more unethical than those of leaders low in SDO. Third, followers high in RWA were more acquiescent to and supportive of an unethical (confederate) leader than were followers low in RWA. Fourth, high SDO leader-high RWA follower dyads made decisions that were more unethical than those made in role-reversed dyads because leaders had more influence. Implications of these results for conceptualizing SDO, RWA, and authoritarian dynamics are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leaving a Legacy

Every leader, whether in the engineering field or society or both, will leave a legacy. Knowing this sets the stage for an analysis of what makes true leaders. From the study of past and current leaders, it has surfaced that virtually all of them possessed 10 basic traits. A review of these traits is made. By knowing these, engineers can establish a plan on how to hone their natural leadership skills to become great leaders, not only in this industry, but in society as well. Leadership development is a highly personal and individual thing. Suggestions on what each one of us can do in this area, as well as a review of the four types of power effective leaders have, are presented.     

Introduction to the special issue on diversity and leadership.

Theories of leadership have neglected diversity issues. As the population within the United States and in countries throughout the world becomes increasingly diverse, the contexts in which leadership occurs within institutions and communities will also become increasingly diverse. Attention to diversity is not simply about representation of leaders from diverse groups in the ranks of leadership. Attention to diversity means paradigm shifts in our theories of leadership so as to make them inclusive; it means incorporating explanations of how dimensions of diversity shape our understanding of leadership. It means paying attention to the perceptions and expectations of diverse leaders by diverse followers and to how bias influences the exercise of leadership. Although leadership theories have evolved and reflect changing social contexts, they remain silent on issues of equity, diversity, and social justice. Theories of leadership need to be expanded to incorporate diversity if they are to be relevant for the 21st century amidst new social contexts, emerging global concerns, and changing population demographics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Promoting more integrative strategies for leadership theory-building.

The agenda for theory and research in the field of leadership studies has evolved over the last 100 years from focuses on the internal dispositions associated with effective leaders to broader inquiries that include emphases on the cognitions, attributes, behaviors, and contexts in which leaders and followers are dynamically embedded and interact over time. Leadership theory and research has reached a point in its development at which it needs to move to the next level of integration--considering the dynamic interplay between leaders and followers, taking into account the prior, current, and emerging context--for continued progress to be made in advancing both the science and practice of leadership. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On grandiosity in personality psychology.

Responds to the comments by A. Wood and S. Joseph (see record 2006-23492-015); S. R. Maddi (see record 2006-23492-016); and S. Epstein (see record 2006-23492-017) on the current author's original article (see record 2006-03947-002) "A New Big Five: Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality" (McAdams & Pals, April 2006). Here, McAdams responds to the objections raised in the three commentaries to his and Pals' characterization of the grand theories of personality provided by Freud, Jung, Rogers, and other luminaries from the first half of the 20th century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leader personality traits and employee voice behavior: Mediating roles of ethical leadership and work group psychological safety.

The antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership were examined in a study of 894 employees and their 222 immediate supervisors in a major financial institution in the United States. The leader personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related to direct reports’ ratings of the leader’s ethical leadership, whereas neuroticism was unrelated to these ratings. Ethical leadership influenced followers’ voice behavior as rated by followers’ immediate supervisors. This relationship was partially mediated by followers’ perceptions of psychological safety. Implications for research on ethical leadership and means to enhance ethical behavior among leaders and nonleaders are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a theory of followership.

Unlike most of the leadership literature, which focuses on the leaders themselves, the point of departure in this paper is that the psychology of the followers is the key to understanding the leaders' influence. Followers' attraction to leaders is analyzed from three theoretical perspectives: (a) psychodynamic, according to which the leader represents a protective parental figure; (b) psycho-cognitive, in which the leader serves as a convenient explanation for a complex reality; and (c) social-psychological, in which the leader becomes a kind of narrative that grants meaning and strengthens social identity. The article illustrates how these perspectives can help in the choice of concepts and models of leadership and in examining their validity in predicting and explaining leaders' influence in various contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The ties that bind: The impact of leader-member exchange, transformational and transactional leadership, and distance on predicting follower performance.

The authors examined the linkages between leader-member exchange (LMX), transformational and transactional leadership, and physical distance in predicting performance of 317 followers over a 1-year period. Results from a partial least squares analysis revealed that LMX was related positively to transformational and contingent reward leadership and negatively to management-by-exception. LMX and active management-by-exception positively predicted follower performance, and physical distance moderated leadership-performance relationships. Transformational leadership produced significantly higher follower performance in close versus distant situations, whereas LMX produced high follower performance irrespective of physical distance between leaders and followers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An ecological perspective on leadership theory, research, and practice.

Current theories of leadership are based mainly on the industrial paradigm emphasizing the preeminence of positional leaders and the machine-like qualities of organizations. Evolutionary and attributional biases tend to reinforce the industrial paradigm. The authors propose an ecological theory of leadership that makes 4 important assertions: (a) Effective leadership processes involve temporary resolutions of a tension between the traditional industrial approach and the neglected ecological approach; (b) specific leaders are less important than they appear because the ecological context is more important than what leaders decide to do; (c) organizations are more adaptive when there is a diversity of genuine input into decision-making processes; and (d) leadership itself is an emergent process arising from the human interactions that make up the organization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting the effects of leadership training and experience from the contingency model.

Attempts to reconcile previous findings that leadership experience and training very often do not improve group and organizational performance. Experience and training can be viewed as improving the favorableness of the leadership situation. According to F. Fiedler's contingency model, this should increase the performance of low-least preferred coworker (LPC) leaders in very favorable and unfavorable situations, but decrease the performance of high-LPC leaders. It should increase performance of high-LPC leaders in intermediate situations but decrease that of low-LPC leaders. These hypotheses are supported by analyses of data from previous studies. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Judgeability in person perception: The confidence of leaders.

Leaders are often expected to evaluate their team workers. In the present study, the authors investigated the hypothesis that leaders express social judgments with more confidence than subordinates. Leadership is assumed to play the role of a metainformational cue leading people to feel entitled to judge. In Study 1, supervisors in a Portuguese firm expressed their evaluations of colleagues and superiors. In Study 2, leadership was attributed on the basis of alleged competence. In Study 3, leadership was explicitly attributed on a random basis. The results of the 3 studies support the hypothesis and are discussed within the framework of social judgeability theory (J. P. Leyens, V. Y. Yzerbyt, & G. Schadron, 1992, 1994). The confidence of leaders may become a norm that is constructed by others. Practical implications are discussed. To the same extent that leadership often resides in the eyes of followers, confidence may originate in the mind of leaders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)