Women remain underrepresented in leadership roles, partly because leader-like behaviors conflict with traditional gender role expectations. This incongruity can enhance social backlash, making it harder for women to internalize the identity of leader. As being seen, and seeing oneself, as a leader is central to pursuing and maintaining leadership roles, it is important to understand how the leader identity development process unfolds differently for men and women. We propose that women face greater social costs for engaging in authority-claiming and differentiate two forms of claiming in terms of potential backlash for women: legitimating (leveraging formal role, policies) and collaborative (offering expertise, resources) claiming. In a daily diary study of 77 leaders (579 daily surveys), women were significantly less likely than men to engage in legitimating claiming, though no gender difference emerged for collaborative claiming. As legitimating claiming more effectively elicited follower granting of authority and daily changes in leader identity strength, men may gain a cumulative identity advantage through greater engagement in both agentic and collaborative behaviors. By distinguishing between types of leader claiming, this study highlights a social exchange mechanism contributing to gender disparities in leader identity development and offers insight into the dynamic nature of leader identity.
This introduction to the special issue on leadership science briefly reviews the crucial need for theory testing and replication studies in the field of management broadly, and more specifically, the leadership field. After reviewing the need for this special issue, we review the four papers accepted for publication in Part 1 of this special issue.
Most organizations make promotion decisions based on employees’ prior performance. Despite the prevalence of this performance-based promotion strategy, its validity remains unclear. With this constructive replication, we extend past research by testing competing hypotheses on the relationship between employee performance and future leader performance as derived from three theoretical perspectives (i.e., performance requirements perspective, follower-centric perspective, and Theory of Expert Leadership). We examined our hypotheses in the context of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and gathered data on the entire career of all NBA coaches until 2020 (N = 329), including their prior performance as basketball players. We tested our hypotheses using Bayesian structural equation modelling with latent variables. Overall, our analyses indicated a weak relationship between employee (i.e., player) and leader (i.e., coach) performance that remained stable over time. Overall, our results are in line with the performance requirements perspective. Hence, we recommend to reconsider the use of the performance-based promotion strategy.
This introduction to Part 2 of the special issue on leadership science briefly reviews the four papers accepted for publication in Part 2 of this special issue. All four of the papers included in Part 2 of this special issue exemplify the importance of first time or repeated theory testing and refinements.
Vignette studies present specific challenges for replications, yet vignettes are a popular choice for replication studies in leadership. In our review of eight vignette-based leadership publications, only two were able to fully replicate the original study's findings. We suggest that part of the failure to replicate the results of vignette studies may be due to a misalignment between the vignettes and social reality at the time of data collection. This paper highlights the challenges vignettes present due to societal progression and includes recommendations regarding potential methodological artifacts including the appropriateness of the sample, vignette content, and modality. We first discuss the general challenges with replicating vignette study results, drawing from published replications in the area of leadership, including our personal experience while advancing and publishing two separate replication studies of seminal vignette studies. We introduce the concept of contextually appropriate replication as an additional replication approach, which takes into consideration sample appropriateness, content appropriateness, and modality appropriateness, and clarify opportunities for researchers who choose to pursue replicating vignette studies.
Leader–member exchange differentiation (LMXD) refers to the degree to which leaders develop varying quality relationships with team members. Due to a plague of mixed empirical results and misalignment in the LMXD literature, Buengeler et al. (2021) proposes a conceptual framework that suggests there are different types of LMXD—separation, variety, and disparity—each having distinct effects on team outcomes. This framework has yet to be empirically tested, so we conduct two studies to examine its utility. In Study 1, we conduct a constructive reproduction of Cobb and Lau (2015), reanalyzing their data with LMX disparity (instead of separation) to better align with justice-based theorizing. In Study 2, we extend Kim et al. (2023) by testing whether LMX separation predicts team potency and performance more effectively than team median LMX. Across both studies, LMXD explained incremental variance beyond central tendency scores and showed negative effects on team outcomes. However, LMX disparity outperformed LMX separation—even when theoretically misaligned—raising concerns about the empirical distinctiveness of LMXD types. Our findings support the conceptual value of differentiating LMXD types and theory-measurement alignment, but we highlight challenges in operationalizing them.
Management researchers now have the option of using the path model fit index RMSEA-P as they evaluate their latent variable models to overcome limitations of global fit indices (CFI, RMSEA, SRMR). Two simulation studies of the effectiveness of the RMSEA-P reached different conclusions about its merit, one favorable and the other very unfavorable ( Lance et al., 2016 ). The present research is a constructive reproduction of Lance et al. with analytical improvements. We failed to reproduce their key negative findings that correctly specified models were retained in less than 50% of cases, and incorrectly specified models were retained in over 50% of cases. Instead, using our improved analysis techniques, we found that correct models were identified in 92% of cases and incorrect models were retained in less than 10% of cases. Our results also show the RMSEA-P works best when used with a Traditional Model Selection Strategy.
Adaptive leadership theory decouples leadership identities and behaviors from formal leadership roles, proposing that individuals negotiate who leads and who follows through reciprocated leader–follower actions. The present research tests the core tenets of this theory in the context of formal leader–follower dyads. We examine how formal leaders’ and followers’ claiming and granting behaviors are shaped by factors at the individual level (i.e., formal roles, leadership structure schemas (LSSs)), and relational level (i.e., convergence of LSSs, interaction history). We also assess whether reciprocated leadership claims enhance leader identity salience, independent of formal role. Applying a multi-method approach, combining survey-based measures and behavioral interaction coding data from 86 individuals in 43 dyads (4,262 behavioral units), we found that individuals in formal leader roles claimed leadership significantly more frequently than formal followers, yet LSS did not moderate these behaviors. Reciprocated claims and grants were not significantly linked to leader identity salience. However, early interaction patterns were linked to similar behavioral patterns later, underscoring the role of relational history in shaping leadership dynamics. These findings inform our understanding of leader identity construction in formal dyads, clarify the boundary conditions under which adaptive leadership theory applies, and offer practical guidance for fostering co-constructed leadership processes.
Leader emergence, the process by which an individual becomes influential and is granted a leadership role by others, is essential for the performance of virtual teams (VTs). However, in digitally mediated environments, reduced nonverbal and contextual cues alter how leadership behaviors are expressed, perceived, and granted. Drawing on a realistic accuracy model, we move beyond the leader-centric paradigm by conceptualizing leader emergence in VTs as a socially constructed, context-specific, and dynamic process shaped by the personality traits of both observers and focal individuals. Using a multiwave design and exponential random graph modeling, we examined leader granting across early, intermediate, and late phases in 65 VTs. Our approach advances traditional leader-centric methods, which focus solely on individual-level predictors, and demonstrates the value of network-based, system-level perspectives. The results show that observers high in agreeableness are more likely to grant leadership in the early and late phases. For focal individuals, conscientiousness and extraversion increase the likelihood of being granted as leaders in the intermediate and late phases, whereas agreeableness decreases it, and neuroticism becomes a positive predictor in the late phase. Finally, although leadership structures remain centralized, influence shifts among individuals with different attributes to meet evolving team needs.
Upper echelons theory is one of the dominant perspectives applied to study top executives. Despite significant advances in theoretical and empirical investigations and an explosion of inquiry into this topic over the last decade, knowledge consolidation across different measures, constructs, or levels of analysis is lacking. This article outlines the challenges faced by researchers studying top executives that we believe have contributed to this issue and suggests opportunities for advancement. First, we review upper echelons theory and summarize some of the difficulties in creating and testing theory in this domain. Second, we suggest three key areas for investigation that may help advance the field. Third, we provide practical suggestions for consolidating theoretical knowledge. The aim of this editorial is to encourage contributions to upper echelons theory that develop new testable theory and empirically test its propositions and the robustness of established relationships.
Adopting a paradox (i.e., both-and) mindset, in contrast to a dilemma (i.e., either-or) mindset, is often presented as the approach to handling conflicting expectations. Despite societal progress, many female leaders remain confronted with such conflicting expectations toward their gender and leader role. They are expected to fulfill their (female) gender role by displaying communal behaviors while simultaneously adhering to their leader role, often associated with stereotypically male agency, potentially resulting in agency-communion tensions. This multi-study paper consists of an experimental study ( N Study 1 = 454 women), and a two-wave survey in an organizational setting ( N Study 2 = 167 female leaders, 154 male leaders). We explore determinants (i.e., organizational learning orientation) and postulated benefits (i.e., resilience, identity coexistence, leadership effectiveness) of female leaders’ paradox mindsets toward agency-communion tensions by empirically examining core propositions of a hitherto solely theoretical model by Zheng et al. (2018) . Results indicate that organizational learning orientation facilitates paradox mindset adoption but does not moderate the relationship between agency-communion tensions and paradox mindset adoption. Our studies show mixed findings regarding the postulated benefits of a paradox mindset. This points to necessary refinements of Zheng et al.'s (2018) study model and paradox theory in general.
Although prior research has shown that behavioral and nonbehavioral items are not equivalent, researchers have failed to recognize that these items elicit reliance on different memory processes and predict different outcomes. The typical use of multidimensional scales compounds this problem even further when researchers ignore the multidimensional nature of the construct and smash disparate dimensions based on semantic and episodic memory sources into a single composite score, a practice we refer to as DIMSmash. We conduct a literature review of four popular leadership measures to examine the prevalence of DIMSmash, demonstrate how a memory-based approach to measurement suggests that DIMSmash is ill-advised, and conduct a computer simulation to show that the consequences of DIMSmash are not trivial. We found that the practice of DIMSmash is pervasive; 89% of the reviewed articles collapsed multidimensional leadership measures into a single score, even though the consequences of DIMSmash matter. Proceeding with DIMSmash despite the warning signs yields misleading results that obscure relationships with outcomes, which leads to incorrect conclusions. We suggest that the use of a bifactor model can overcome the limitations of DIMSmash.
Leadership categorization theory (LCT) argues that people develop mental models, or prototypes, for ideal leaders based on leaders they have encountered in the past. Organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion scholars have used LCT to explain why White men are consistently overrepresented in leadership positions. Historically, vignette research has found support for this argument, but recent replications of seminal LCT research have reported divergent findings. One potential explanation for these failed replications stems from social desirability effects. This argument states that because participants desire to behave in a socially desirable manner, detecting discrimination in laboratory or vignette research may be more difficult than it was in the past. To examine this explanation, the current research attempts to replicate Gündemir et al.'s (2019) fourth study because this study showed evidence for (no discrimination toward Black leaders) and against (discrimination toward Asian American leaders) social desirability effects. The current research includes a reproducibility study, a literal replication, and two constructive replications. While we were able to successfully reproduce the original findings using the authors’ data, our replication studies using newly collected data did not show evidence of the primary effects reported in the focal study.
We examined the phenomenon of linguistic ostracism—instances where a focal workgroup member perceives other members of their workgroup have rejected and/or excluded them by using a language they cannot comprehend. In a 2021 article, Fiset and Bhave observed that linguistic ostracism was related to two dimensions of job performance (interpersonal citizenship and deviance) and that disidentification served as an explanatory mechanism for the linguistic ostracism–job performance relationship. We constructively replicate and extend their work in several ways. First, we replicate prior effects on interpersonal citizenship and deviance and extend their work to focus on a third dimension of job performance: task performance. Across two studies, we find that linguistic ostracism was associated with lower task performance. Second, we identify an additional mechanism for the linguistic ostracism–job performance relationship: belongingness need satisfaction. Third, we observe that sinister attributional tendencies moderated the indirect effect of linguistic ostracism on performance via belongingness need satisfaction and disidentification. The pattern of this moderated-mediation effect indicated that employees with high (vs. low) sinister attributional tendencies tend to exhibit decreased performance. Our findings thus offer three extensions to Fiset and Bhave’s work and highlight the need for organizations to recognize linguistic ostracism and proactively manage language diversity at work.
Research shows that idle time at work is a widespread phenomenon that may have detrimental consequences for individuals and organizations. However, the antecedents of idle time have so far been neglected. Based on a theoretical model of idle time, the aim of this study was to investigate antecedents and consequences of idle time, as well as moderators of these relations. We analyzed data provided by n = 1428 employees at 19 measurement points over 2 years. We identified three distinct dimensions of work constraints, each of which was associated with idle time. Job context constraints (e.g., missing information, technical breakdowns, or organizational rules) and market constraints (i.e., a lack of customers or a lack of demand for products or services) were both positively related to idle time, which, in turn, was positively associated with boredom and fatigue. In contrast, interpersonal constraints (e.g., interruptions by others) were negatively related to idle time and indirectly negatively related to boredom and fatigue. The relation between interpersonal constraints and idle time was moderated by proactive behavior in that higher levels of proactive behavior strengthened the negative association. Overall, this study provides preliminary empirical support for the conceptual model of idle time.
Unethical behavior in organizations has garnered considerable scholarly attention, with ethical leadership identified as a key factor in curbing misconduct. However, leaders are not the sole source of social influence—peers also play a profound role in shaping employees’ unethical conduct. While ethical leadership scholars have acknowledged that employees both “look up” to leaders and “look around” to peers for ethical guidance, how these influences, which may converge or diverge, interplay to affect employees’ unethical behavior is insufficiently understood. Drawing on substitutes for leadership and cue consistency theories, we develop competing hypotheses regarding the interaction between ethical leadership and observed peers’ unethical behavior in predicting individuals’ unethical behavior. Two multi-source studies provided converging evidence that perceiving workgroup coworkers engaging in higher levels of unethical behavior strengthened the negative effect of ethical leadership on individuals’ unethical behavior, supporting the hypothesis derived from substitutes for leadership theory. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
Understanding how linguistic styles affect the performance of crowdfunding campaigns is a central question in crowdfunding research. While prior research finds that linguistic styles shape the persuasiveness and ultimately the performance of crowdfunding campaigns, current research overlooks a foundational tenet in sociolinguistic theory: linguistic styles become less persuasive when the communicator and audience share an in-group membership. This study addresses this issue by attempting to replicate the findings of four crowdfunding studies on linguistic styles in a novel and understudied crowdfunding setting—university-based crowdfunding—where campaign creators and audiences share a strong in-group membership. Analyzing 613 crowdfunding campaigns from 73 U.S. universities, we replicated all null findings and only 11% of supported hypotheses from four crowdfunding studies on linguistic styles in rewards- and social-based crowdfunding. These findings reveal that linguistic styles have a minimal impact on the performance of university-based crowdfunding campaigns.
