Among the toughest aspects of most formal organizational leaders' jobs is that they are not just leaders, but also followers. Yet despite the challenges managers face in navigating the potentially clashing expectations associated with these two roles, the majority of previous research treats individuals as either leaders or followers, resulting in a lack of theory on the intrapersonal leader-follower interface. Drawing on a narrative analysis of critical incidents from 180 current and former managers, we examined how conflicts between the leader and follower roles may shape individuals' interpretations of their role responsibilities. We identified four dual role orientations based on managers' beliefs about their joint obligations as followers and leaders, and validated our categorization of these role orientations using a large language model. In addition, managers reported distinct developmental consequences associated with each dual role orientation, including leadership and followership behavior, leadership self efficacy, and organization or role exit. Recommendations for theory and practice are discussed.
We know that two dancers who do not know each other can move fluidly within seconds because they share a learned interaction script (e.g., salsa or tango). In this paper, we theorize and test the idea that the same principle holds for leadership among strangers. Drawing on interaction ritual and interpersonal theory, we hypothesize that leading–following interactions among strangers can emerge when they rely on shared behavioral interaction scripts, whereby dominance invites submissiveness and relational warmth invites warmth. To empirically uncover and test these expectations, we measured actual behavioral interactions of 127 leader–follower dyads on a second-by-second basis during a 15-min task-completion exercise. The results support the presence of a behavioral interaction script, such that (1) manipulated formal power influences the rules of the interaction script (e.g., more powerful interactants generally exhibit higher agency), (2) leaders and followers dynamically take turns in relative dominance and submissiveness over the course of an interaction, and (3) the extent to which interactions followed this “script” predicts indices of relationship quality. We discuss the implications of these findings, namely that leadership in its early phases is not learned ex nihilo, but is instead recognitional in nature.
Over the last five decades, leader compensation has risen substantially, with the median CEO:worker pay ratio skyrocketing from 20:1 to around 268:1. This has raised concerns for both internal and external stakeholders. However, observational studies have difficulty isolating the causal impact of leader pay on employees and other stakeholders due to endogeneity issues. To address this, the present research synthesized findings from 23 experimental studies (11 third-person evaluative tasks, 7 first-person hypothetical scenarios, 5 immersive experiments) to examine how information about leader pay causally influences employee and stakeholder responses. Results indicate that higher leader pay has a significant negative effect on employee outcomes (g = −0.53, 95%CIs [−0.68, −0.38], kstudies = 12, neffect sizes = 83) as well as on external stakeholder outcomes (g = −0.38, 95%CIs [−0.51, −0.26], kstudies = 11, neffect sizes = 57). These negative effects did not depend on whether pay is presented in absolute terms or relative to employee pay. Counterintuitively, providing justification for high pay was ineffective in eliciting more positive responses. Dose-response analysis indicated that detrimental responses appear even at low pay ratios with no evidence of an incrementally compounding penalty. These findings highlight the need to do a better job of balancing the interests and demands of leaders with those of the broad range of stakeholders that they are notionally striving to lead.
The open science movement has gained considerable momentum in advancing the transparency, credibility, and rigor of scientific research across disciplines. Within this broader landscape, leadership scholars have played a prominent role in developing formal guidance to strengthen open science practices in organizational research. To date, most recommendations have focused on quantitative research rooted in post-positivist traditions. However, qualitative scholars working from interpretivist perspectives share core values such as openness, integrity, and reproducibility with open science and enact them through practices grounded in inductive, context-sensitive inquiry. Bringing these two conversations into closer dialogue offers meaningful opportunities for both domains. Leadership research provides a particularly generative context for this exchange, as qualitative methods have influenced the field by illuminating the socially constructed and value-laden nature of leading. Drawing on these contributions, we present a set of 12 established practices through which interpretivist qualitative researchers have historically embodied open science values in leadership research, followed by six additional practices that can further enhance the openness, integrity, and reproducibility of interpretivist scholarship. By articulating how open science principles can be enacted in qualitative paradigms, we show that leadership scholars are well-positioned to extend the open science conversation across methodologies and communities of practice.
With Artificial Intelligence (AI) entering the white-collar workforce at scale, employees will increasingly operate multiple AI agents which, once aligned, can (semi-) autonomously handle a wide array of tasks. Our commentary explores this prospective reality and its implications for employees. Specifically, we argue that employees in these scenarios will effectively have to become vertical multi-level managers, that is, continuously code-switching between the top, middle, and lower management roles when interacting with their AI agents. Against this background, we outline anticipated benefits and potential challenges for the involved employees. Finally, we discuss the implications of this transformative shift for future management research and the requirements we foresee for educational practices within our field.
