The purpose of the present study was to establish evidence for the suggested integration of the theories of connectionism and leadership. Recent theoretical writings in the field of leadership have suggested that the dynamic representations generated by the connectionist perspective is an appropriate approach to understanding how we perceive leaders. Similarly, implicit leadership theory (ILT) explains that our cognitive understandings of leaders are based on a cognitive structure that we use as a means of understanding and categorizing the behaviors of individuals we believe to be leaders. It was predicted that when asked to select a leader from a group of potential leaders, individuals select the leader based on personal belief alignment when the context of the leader selection is personally relevant, or based on cognitive expectations when the context is low in personal relevance. In addition, when experiencing moments of greater personal relevance, individuals will experience a more dynamic cognitive representation of a leader that those experiencing the moment as less personally relevant. Sixty-seven individuals provided usable data from a repeated measures design that asked participants to record their cognitive representations of a leader, participate in a leader selection task, and provide information about their cognitive representations of a leader after the selection task. The results of the study provide support the expectations of the experimenter and the suggestions of the connectionist perspective. / Master of Science

This research builds on Implicit Leadership Theory, which suggests that a leader's performance is likely to be higher when there is congruence between a follower's prototype of what a leader should be and his or her perception of the leader's behaviour. The essence of effective leadership, according to this theory, is being seen as a leader by others. Data were collected from 196 leaders and 1,738 followers from 23 countries within Cargill Incorporated, a US food and agricultural multinational. The research was conducted in two phases. During the first phase data were collected on followers' desired leadership values and their perception of their leader's behaviour on the same dimensions. These data were used to compute a congruence score based on a weighted sum of absolute differences. The congruence score data formed the heart of an individualised Leadership Fit Report written for each leader in the study showing the extent of congruence across 21 leadership characteristics (see Appendix A). The second phase of the study focused on a subset of 933 followers from five countries testing the two hypotheses. The two hypotheses in Phase Two were partially supported. The first was that congruence between desired leadership values and perceived behaviour leads to high performance of a leader and incongruence leads to lower performance. The second was that the relationship between congruence and leader performance varied by nationality. The cross-cultural test of Implicit Leadership Theory captured in Hypothesis 2 was particularly important to Cargill because it revealed unique and important differences between the five countries included in the second data set. This study found that the nature of the relationship between congruence and leader performance varies significantly between all five countries. More specifically the data suggests that congruence does not always lead to high performance. This study, albeit exploratory, makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions in the following ways. i. A cross cultural test of Implicit Leadership Theory in a multinational organisation with a significant sample size. ii. An existing desired leadership values questionnaire was used and developed further to measure leadership values and leader perception. iii. All 196 leaders received a personalised feedback report showing the level of congruence (or degree of fit) for 21 leadership characteristics. iv. A methodological contribution was made by using Polynomial Regression Equations and Response Surface Methodology to measure the nature of the relationship between desired leadership values, perceived behaviour and leaders' performance. Implicit Leadership Theory was shown to be complex yet very relevant to management practice. The research undertaken was exploratory yet it has created the basis for on going discussion.

This research builds on Implicit Leadership Theory, which suggests that a leader's performance is likely to be higher when there is congruence between a follower's prototype of what a leader should be and his or her perception of the leader's behaviour. The essence of effective leadership, according to this theory, is being seen as a leader by others. Data were collected from 196 leaders and 1,738 followers from 23 countries within Cargill Incorporated, a US food and agricultural multinational. The research was conducted in two phases. During the first phase data were collected on followers' desired leadership values and their perception of their leader's behaviour on the same dimensions. These data were used to compute a congruence score based on a weighted sum of absolute differences. The congruence score data formed the heart of an individualised Leadership Fit Report written for each leader in the study showing the extent of congruence across 21 leadership characteristics (see Appendix A). The second phase of the study focused on a subset of 933 followers from five countries testing the two hypotheses. The two hypotheses in Phase Two were partially supported. The first was that congruence between desired leadership values and perceived behaviour leads to high performance of a leader and incongruence leads to lower performance. The second was that the relationship between congruence and leader performance varied by nationality. The cross-cultural test of Implicit Leadership Theory captured in Hypothesis 2 was particularly important to Cargill because it revealed unique and important differences between the five countries included in the second data set. This study found that the nature of the relationship between congruence and leader performance varies significantly between all five countries. More specifically the data suggests that congruence does not always lead to high performance. This study, albeit exploratory, makes theoretical, methodological and practical contributions in the following ways. i. A cross cultural test of Implicit Leadership Theory in a multinational organisation with a significant sample size. ii. An existing desired leadership values questionnaire was used and developed further to measure leadership values and leader perception. iii. All 196 leaders received a personalised feedback report showing the level of congruence (or degree of fit) for 21 leadership characteristics. iv. A methodological contribution was made by using Polynomial Regression Equations and Response Surface Methodology to measure the nature of the relationship between desired leadership values, perceived behaviour and leaders' performance. Implicit Leadership Theory was shown to be complex yet very relevant to management practice. The research undertaken was exploratory yet it has created the basis for on going discussion.

No description available.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether personal attributes are consistently associated with the emergence of leaders in small groups. Past research on leadership emergence has frequently examined the relationships between individual personal attributes and perceptions of leadership by group members following completion of a single group exercise. The present study extends the literature by taking a multivariate approach to the study of leadership perceptions, by varying group tasks and group membership, and by implementing both perceptual methods of measurement and direct measurement of leadership behavior. One hundred seventy-three undergraduate students participated in small groups to complete two tasks. Participants worked with different group members during each task. The first task emphasized competition and persuasion among group members and the second task emphasized cooperation and information sharing among group members. Following each task, group members rated and ranked all group members on leadership attributes and abilities. Trained observers then coded each of the leader behaviors that occurred during the group interactions and assigned their own objective leadership ranks to the group members. Multiple regression, discriminant analysis, and bivariate correlations revealed that dominance and intelligence were consistently related to both perceptions of leadership by group members and objective observation and coding of leadership behaviors. In addition, perceptions of leadership by group members were found to be related to objective behavioral indices of leadership; thus, a link was created between perceptual and behavioral measures of leadership. In addition, group members who were perceived as possessing prototypical leader traits were consistently identified as the group leaders by group members and trained observers. Implications of the present Study’s results and suggestions for future research in the field of leadership are discussed. / Ph. D.

Bakgrund: Jämställdhetsbarometern (2020) visar att det fortfarande råder stora könsskillnader i det svenska arbetslivet. Att jämställdheten inte är optimal visar bland annat fördelningen av kvinnor respektive män på ledande positioner, där den största skillnaden av andelen kvinnor respektive män på chefspositioner finns inom mansdominerade branscher. Ledarrollen är förknippad med maskulina handlingskraftiga egenskaper som ses som synonymt med den manliga könsstereotypen. Den kvinnliga könssterotypen är i kontrast feminin, och diskrepansen mellan rollerna har resulterat i negativa konsekvenser för kvinnliga ledare. Sverige anno 2021 målas upp som ett jämställt land vilket borde medföra att problemen inte existerar i Sverige som de gör i andra nationella kontext.              Syfte: Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur följare ser på kvinnliga ledare och vilken typ av egenskaper de föredrar hos en ledare i en mansdominerad bransch i Sverige utifrån ett Implicit Leadership Theory, där bedömningen av kvinnliga ledare sätts i relation till Role Congruity Theory. Teoretisk referensram: Studien utgår från empiri inom Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT) och Role Congruity Theory (RCT). ILT är en ledarskapsteori som berör perceptionen av ledare och menar att ledarskap skapas av kognitiva kategoriseringar, som avgör vem som ses som ledare. RCT är en teori som uppkom genom en analys av de deskriptiva aspekterna av könsroller för att förstå hur könsfördomar möjligtvis skadar kvinnliga ledare. Metod: Den kvantitativa undersökningen, som utfördes i den här studien, genomfördes via en enkätstudie och riktades till medarbetare på en organisation inom verkstadsindustrin som hade en kvinnlig produktionsledare som närmsta chef. Slutsats: Det finns signifikanta samband mellan åsikter om kvinnor och andra faktorer, som vi anser berör ledarskap, i mansdominerade branscher. Fördomar verkar vara av betydelse när det kommer till preferensen av maskulina ledare samt om man upplever en kvinnlig ledare som effektiv eller inte. Resultatet från den här studien stödjer tidigare forskning som visade att maskulinitet och femininitet är något som har ett positivt samband till hur följare upplever ledare i relation till effektivitet. Däremot kan inga kausala slutsatser dras. / Background: The Equality Barometer (2020) shows that gender differences are large in  Swedish work life. That equality isn’t optimal shows in the distribution of women, respectively men, in leading positions, where the largest difference in the amount of women respectively men can be seen in director/management level positions in male-dominated industries. The leader role is associated with masculine, agentic, characteristics which is seen as synonymous with the male gender stereotype. The female gender stereotype is, in contrast,feminine, and the discrepancy between roles have resulted in negative consequences for female leaders. Sweden year 2021 is branded as an equal country which should mean that the problems should not exist in Sweden to the same extent as they do in other national contexts. Purpose: The purpose with the study was to investigate how followers view female leaders and what kind of characteristics they prefer a ledare expresses, in a male-dominated industry in Sweden. This will be done from an Implicit Leadership Theory perspective, where the evaluation of female leaders are put in relation to the Role Congruity Theory. Theoretical framework: The study emanates from the empirical work within Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT) and Role Congruity Theory (RCT). ILT is a leadership theory which focuses on the perception of leaders and says that leadership is created out of cognitive categorisations which decide who is seen as a leader and who is not. RCT is a theory which arose from an analysis of the descriptive aspects of gender roles to understand how gender prejudice possibly harms female leaders. Method: The quantitative research, which was conducted in this study, was conducted through a survey and aimed at workers at an organisation within the engineering industry which had a female production manager as their closest boss. Conclusion: There are significant correlations between opinions about women and other factors, which we consider affect leadership, in a male-dominated industry in Sweden. Prejudice appears to be of significance when it comes to preference for masculine leaders and if female leaders are perceived as effective or not. The results from this study support previous research which showed masculinity and femininity as something with a positive 4correlation to how followers perceive leaders in relation to effectiveness. However, nofactitive conclusions can be made.

Män besitter de flesta ledarskapsrollerna och har gjort det sedan länge. På grund av att så mycket som 96% av de högst avlönade ledarrollerna tillhört män inom de flesta sektorer har också ledarskap främst betraktats som ett manligt yrke (Eagly & Karau, 2002:573). Detta har lett till att definitioner av ledarskap återspeglar manliga egenskaper (agentic-egenskaper), såsom dominans och aggressivitet. Kvinnliga egenskaper, såsom att vara hjälpsam och förstående, är uppskattade hos en ledare, men det är inte alltid de kvinnliga egenskaperna räcker till. När kvinnor intar en ledarroll och utstrålar typiska ledaregenskaper, alltså manliga egenskaper, kan det lätt ske att kvinnan inte mottas väl och att fördomar gentemot kvinnliga ledare uppstår. Det kan bero på att typiska manliga ledaregenskaper är långt ifrån de egenskaper en kvinna förväntas ha, vilket kan förklaras utifrån role congruity theory. Eftersom ledarskap sällan i teoretiska sammanhang porträtterar kvinnor, och kvinnor inte bemöts lika väl som män när de besitter en ledarroll kan det tänkas att kvinnor med tiden inte upplever att de är lämpade för ledarroller. Hur kvinnor ser på sig själva som ledare var därför intressant för oss att studera. Dessa tankar ledde oss till problemformuleringen “Hur ser kvinnor på sig själva som ledare och vilka likheter och skillnader kan vi se mellan kvinnors och mäns syn på sig själva som ledare?”. Syftet med studien var att testa tidigare teorier kring ledarskap utifrån våra hypoteser och forskningsfrågor och sedan jämföra svaren mellan kvinnor och män. Vi undersökte hur kvinnor och män ser på sig själva som ledare. Därtill undersökte vi vilka faktorer som kunde påverka individen till att vilja, eller inte vilja, bli ledare. Studien har en tvärsnittsdesign som utgår från ett deduktivt arbetssätt där en kvantitativ undersökning gjorts. Data samlades in med hjälp av en enkätstudie där enkätsvar från 193 respondenter användes vid analysen. Vi fann att det inte fanns en signifikant skillnad mellan kvinnor och män på om de såg sig själva som ledare. Dock fanns bidragande faktorer som kunde påverka om individen var mer eller mindre benägen att se sig själv som en ledare. Dessa var variablerna “förutsättningar” och “sociala aspekter”. De flesta respondenter föredrog inte ett specifikt kön som ledare, dock så fanns det en statistisk signifikant minoritet som prefererade att ledaren skulle vara av ett specifikt kön. Där gällde generellt att män föredrog manliga ledare och kvinnor föredrog kvinnliga ledare, vilket stödjer tidigare forskning av Eagly och Karau (2002). Därtill såg vi att respondenterna ansåg att den idealtypiska ledarens viktigaste egenskaper var att vara pålitlig, ansvarstagande, förstående, att kunna anpassa sig till olika situationer och se till andras välbefinnande. Två av dessa egenskaper är kvinnligt kopplade (communal-egenskaper) och resterande tre är könsneutrala. Därav stödjer vår studie tidigare forskning om att kvinnliga egenskaper är eftertraktade. / Men have dominated the leadership positions throughout history and thereby formed the definition of leadership. The qualities of a leader are commonly associated with male leadership qualities (agentic). The aim of this study was to investigate differences between women and men in their view on leadership through a web- based survey. Specifically, their tendency to see themselves as leaders, what factors affect their will to be leaders, and what qualities they value in a leader. A statistical analysis showed that there was not a significant difference between how women and men perceived themselves as leaders. However, some factors were found to contribute to if the individual could see themselves as a leader and those were “having the right conditions” and “social aspects”. Most of the respondents did not prefer a specific gender of a leader. Those who did, seemed to prefer a leader of the same gender as themselves. The leadership qualities that the respondents considered most important were being reliable, responsible, understanding, able to adapt to different situations, and caring for the wellbeing of others. Two of these qualities were linked to female leadership qualities (communal) and the remaining three were gender neutral. This means that our findings support previous research that states that communal qualities are sought after.

This research outlines a conceptual framework and data analysis process to examine multisource feedback (MSF) rater group differences from a leadership assessment survey, after testing the measures for equivalence. MSF gathers and compares ratings from supervisors, peer, followers and self and is the predominant leadership assessment tool in the United States. The results of MSF determine significant professional outcomes such as leadership development opportunities, promotions and compensation. An underlying belief behind the extensive use of MSF is that each rater group has a different set of implicit leadership theories (ILTs) they use when assessing the leader, and therefore each group is able to contribute unique insight. If this is true, research findings would find rater group consistency in leadership assessment outcomes, but they do not. A review of group comparison research reveals that most empirical MSF studies fail to perform preliminary data exploration, employ consistent models or adequately test for measurement equivalence (ME); yet industry standards strongly suggest exploratory methods whenever data sets undergo changes, and misspecified models cause biased results. Finally, ME testing is critical to ascertain if rater groups have similar conceptualizations of the factors and items in an MSF survey. If conceptual ME is not established, substantive group comparisons cannot be made. This study draws on the extant MSF, ILT and ME literature and analyzes rater group data from a large, application-based MSF leadership database. After exploring the data and running the requisite MI tests, I found that the measures upheld measurement invariance and were suitable for group comparison. Additional MI tests for substantive hypotheses support found that significant mean differences did exist among certain rater groups and dimensions, but only direct report and peer groups were consistently significantly different in all four dimensions (analytical, interpersonal, courageous and leadership effectiveness). Additionally, the interpersonal dimension was the most highly correlated with leadership effectiveness in all five rater groups. The overall findings of this study address the importance of MSF data exploration, offer alternative explanations to the disparate leadership MSF research findings to date and question the application use of MSF tools in their current form.

Submitted by Gustavo Moreira Tavares (gustavo.gmt@hotmail.com) on 2016-05-05T20:25:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Gustavo Tavares - MSc Thesis 2016.pdf: 1175635 bytes, checksum: 195b027ba9e3ef81b9ebb9753d2fcd73 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by ÁUREA CORRÊA DA FONSECA CORRÊA DA FONSECA (aurea.fonseca@fgv.br) on 2016-05-20T15:43:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Gustavo Tavares - MSc Thesis 2016.pdf: 1175635 bytes, checksum: 195b027ba9e3ef81b9ebb9753d2fcd73 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2016-06-07T18:13:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Gustavo Tavares - MSc Thesis 2016.pdf: 1175635 bytes, checksum: 195b027ba9e3ef81b9ebb9753d2fcd73 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-07T18:13:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gustavo Tavares - MSc Thesis 2016.pdf: 1175635 bytes, checksum: 195b027ba9e3ef81b9ebb9753d2fcd73 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-28 / Although research on Implicit Leadership Theories (ILT) has put great effort on determining what attributes define a leader prototype, little attention has been given to understanding the relative importance of each of these attributes in the categorization process by followers. Knowing that recognition-based leadership perceptions are the result of the match between followers’ ILTs and the perceived attributes in their actual leaders, understanding how specific prototypical leader attributes impact this impression formation process is particularly relevant. In this study, we draw upon socio-cognitive theories to explore how followers cognitively process the information about a leader’s attributes. By using Conjoint Analysis (CA), a technique that allows us to measure an individual’s trade-offs when making choices about multi-attributed options, we conducted a series of 4 studies with a total of 879 participants. Our results demonstrate that attributes’ importance for individuals’ leadership perceptions formation is rather heterogeneous, and that some attributes can enhance or spoil the importance of other prototypical attributes. Finally, by manipulating the leadership domain, we show that the weighting pattern of attributes is context dependent, as suggested by the connectionist approach to leadership categorization. Our findings also demonstrate that Conjoint Analysis can be a valuable tool for ILT research.

This longitudinal study evaluates the role of a follower's self-concept and implicit leadership theories on the interpretation of transformational leadership behaviors and the development of leader-member exchange. Leadership behaviors were hypothesized as antecedents to leader-member exchange. The hypotheses draw upon the social cognition theory of self-verification. Implicit leadership theories were evaluated as absolute differences between actual and recognized leadership behaviors. Both implicit leadership theories and self-concepts were tested for moderation of the leadership behaviors and leader-member exchange. Additional dependent variables included turnover intentions, organizational identification, and perceived organizational support. A key contribution of this research is the application of these variables to new organizational entrants. Two-hundred and ten new followers at a single organization completed three surveys upon organizational entry, 30 days post hire, and approximately 90 days post hire. Structural equation modeling was utilized to conduct confirmatory factor analyses and the development of the measurement and structural models. Leadership behaviors were significantly related to the development of leader-member exchange. Leader-member exchange also fully mediated the leadership behaviors. The collective and relational self-concept levels were correlated with leader-member exchange but failed to reach significance in the full structural model. Implicit leadership theories and absolute difference scores were significantly related to leader-member exchange development. Neither the self-concept nor implicit leadership theories moderated the relationship between leadership behaviors and leader-member exchange. Leader-member exchange had significant effects on all of the outcome variables.