Leaving the Office, Leaving the Lead? Conceptualizing Leadership Identity Across Time and Domains

With this presenter symposium we seek to challenge the status quo of how individuals get to see themselves as leaders in organizations. The four presentations expand current conceptualizations of leader identity through the medium of time and across domains, thereby going beyond to-date predominantly static and work-centric approaches. The evidence derived from three empirical presentations contributes to the understanding of long-term and short-term change in leadership identities as well as the predictors of such change including: (a) claiming and granting across domains (work, community, personal); (b) automatic activation of leadership self-schemas; and (c) employee centrality in buy-in networks in organizations. The studies utilize experience sampling, reaction time experiments, and social network analysis, reflecting a range of important advancements in quantitative methodology for a better understanding of identities from a dynamic perspective. The fourth, theoretical presentation develops a novel model that integrates temporal perspectives on leader-follower identities with self-regulatory theory. It offers insightful perspectives on the relevance of time by incorporating long-term development (e.g., employee career stages) as well as short-term changes related to momentary requirements (e.g., project stages) as predictors of leader identity. Two discussants synthesize these theoretical and empirical contributions to address (a) implications for future theorizing and measurement of identities in organizational scholarship, and (b) the development of leadership and followership identities in future managerial and organizational practice. Leader identities across multiple life domains: Examining congruence of leadership claims and grants Presenter: Greg Thrasher; Oakland U. Presenter: Michelle Hammond; Oakland U. Presenter: Benjamin Biermeier-Hanson; Radford U. Tapping Into the Leader Self? Reaction-Time Experiments Testing Leadership Self-Schema Activation Presenter: Karolina Wenefrieda Nieberle; Durham U. Presenter: Susanne Helena Braun; Durham U. Presenter: James Houston; Middle Tennessee State U. Presenter: Robert G. Lord; Durham U. Presenter: Philip A. Allen; U. of Akron The Coevolution of Leader Identity, Social Network Buy-In, and Leader Effectiveness Presenter: Andrew Parker; Durham U. Business School Presenter: Christian Waldstrom; Aarhus U. Understanding Leadership and Followership Self: A Dynamic Perspective of Regulatory Focus and Time Presenter: Dina Van Dijk; Ben Gurion U. of the Negev Presenter: Ronit Kark; Bar Ilan U. Presenter: Marianna Delegach; Sapir Academic College Presenter: Ariel Daniels; Ben Gurion U.