RELATIONS MODEL
David A. Kenny and Stefano Livi
ABSTRACT
The social relations model (SRM; Kenny, 1994) explicitly proposes that leadership simultaneously operates at three levels of analysis: group, dyad, and individual (perceiver and target). With this model, researchers can empirically determine the amount of variance at each level as well as those factors that explain variance at these different levels. This chapter shows how the SRM can be used to address many theoretically important questions in the study of leadership and can be used to advance both the theory of and research in leadership. First, based on analysis of leadership ratings from seven studies, we find that there is substantial agreement (i.e., target variance) about who in the group is the leader and little or no reciprocity in the perceptions of leadership. We then consider correlations of leadership perceptions. In one analysis, we examine the correlations between task-oriented and socioemotional leadership. In another analysis, we examine the effect of gender and gender composition on the perception of leadership. We also explore how self-ratings of leadership differ from member perceptions of leadership. Finally, we discuss how the model can be estimated using conventional software.
Multi-Level Issues in Organizational Behavior and Leadership Research in Multi-Level Issues, Volume 8, 147–191
Copyright r 2009 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 1475-9144/doi:10.1108/S1475-9144(2009)0000008008 147
INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a complex phenomenon that can be explained using a variety of models. In spite of the impressive amount of empirical findings in more than 7,500 articles reviewed by Bass (1990), however, leadership research has not accumulated many consistent results. Part of the explanation for this failure is that scholars have been influenced by periodic fashions in research theory (Chemers, 2000), fluctuating from leader characteristics and perceptual factors of leadership to a more complex view integrating cultural and contextual factors at a wider level of analysis. As a result, leadership research might appear to some as disconnected and directionless (Zaccaro &
Klimoski, 2001) with little cross-fertilization of ideas (Van Vugt, 2006).
These criticisms have forced leadership researchers to make efforts both to build a theoretical integration of current knowledge (Chemers, 2000) and to find conceptual and methodological instruments able to empirically clarify the relative weight of different approaches at the correct level of analysis (Livi, Kenny, Albright, & Pierro, 2008; Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, &
Dansereau, 2005).
At least three levels have been postulated to be important for leadership:
the individual, the dyad, and the group. (Culture could potentially be viewed as a fourth level, but it is very often at the level of individual when groups contain members of different cultures.) Moreover, the individual level can be conceptualized in two ways: as the target (i.e., who is perceived to be a leader) and as the perceiver (i.e., who is judging leadership). The statistical model considered in this chapter examines leadership at all three of these levels. Before we discuss that model, we review theories of leadership at these levels to enhance understanding of the conceptual, as opposed to statistical, meaning of these different levels.
Perhaps, the dominant view is that leadership is the level of the target (the individual). In these theories, leadership depends on a stable characteristic that may be linked to a consistent behavioral disposition, an internal characteristic of the person (i.e., a personality trait), or shared perception about leadership (i.e., a prototype). From this point of view, the oldest scientific approach to creating a psychological explanation of leadership is based on individual differences and is rooted on the nineteenth-century notion of Carlyle’s great man theory of leadership (Chemers, 2000). This theory proposed that the individual characteristics of a leader distinguish leaders from subordinates or an effective leader from inadequate ones, regardless of the situation (group, culture, or organization) or personal relationships with followers.
The most traditional view of the individual differences approach of leadership is based largely on studies that correlate ratings of leadership with the targets’ personality characteristics. The focus on traits had declined afterStogdill (1948), and others reported the unreliable results of reported traits and found that no trait consistently predicted leadership, but interest in the trait approach has since been revived. For example, studies have shown that leadership demonstrates a substantial stability of leadership across situations (Bono & Judge, 2004;Foti & Hauenstein, 2007;Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991). Moreover, the meta-analysis byLord, De Vader, and Alliger (1986) found that some traits do consistently predict leadership.
Research on this topic found consistent evidence that some traits are systematically associated with leadership emergence and effectiveness – namely, intelligence, dominance, masculinity, adjustment, conservatism, social sensitivity, self-monitoring, extraversion, and efficacy, among others (Chemers, 2000;Lord et al., 1986;Zaccaro et al., 1991). Scholars continue to have a strong interest on leader personality, as evidenced by the fact that 12% of articles about leadership still focus on this topic (Bono & Judge, 2004).
Another fertile line of research examining individual characteristics of leaders highlights the importance of behavioral styles (Bass & Avolio, 1993).
Beginning with the pioneering work of Bales (Bales & Strodtbeck, 1951) on task and socioemotional leadership, research has pointed to two main clusters related to leader behavior: consideration and initiation of structure (Hemphill, 1950). Behavioral observations from laboratory studies show that leader emergence is clearly associated with behaviors such as talkativeness (Dabbs & Ruback, 1987; Mullen, Salas, & Driskell, 1989) and interruptions (Hall, Coats, & LeBeau, 2005;Malloy & Janowski, 1992;
Ng, Brooke, & Dunne, 1995). Moreover, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the examination of more complex styles of leadership, such as charismatic leadership (House & Shamir, 1993) and transformational leadership (Bass & Avolio, 1993). Successful charismatic leaders gain their position by exhibiting self-confidence, task ability, emotional expressiveness, and conviction in their beliefs, and they are able to induce in their subordinates a high level of loyalty, intellectual stimulation, and considera-tion (Bass, 1990).
Although individual differences in personality or in behavioral styles can influence leadership emergence, other authors posit that certain variations emerge as a function of the context (e.g., group or organization) in which the leader is embedded. These theories vary in placing anywhere from a strong to a moderate emphasis on context, depending on the relative
influence attributed to the leader. In essence, these theories emphasize other levels besides the target.
A variety of theories attempt to describe leadership behavior in a more dynamic, interpersonal system of perceivers and the perceived. The cognitive perspective to leadership has emphasized that leadership is as much a property of the person who is doing the perceiving as it is a property of the person who is being perceived (Norris-Watts & Lord, 2004). According to Calder’s (1977) attribution theory, leadership is an inferred disposition or internal quality based on shared beliefs about a leader’s behaviors and traits that affect members’ perceptions, information encoding, and retrieval of relevant information (Kenney, Blascovich, & Shaver, 1994). Attributions play a prominent role in most implicit theories of leadership as well as in Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich’s (1985) theory about the romance of leadership. In these models, the perceiver’s schemas guide the perception of a target more than the target’s actual behaviors. In this way, leadership traits are not a stable property of a person, but rather a perceptual abstraction that followers use to categorize leaders and to make sense of the leader’s behavior (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004).
Following categorization theory (Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984), the prototype of leadership is an abstract conception or representation of the most representative leader (Phillips, 1984). The attributes of a particular leader, both traits and behaviors, are compared to the prototypic attributes of a preexisting leader category (Rush & Russell, 1988). Prototypes are also used by leaders as a vehicle for expressing their behavior and to manage their leadership perception. The result is a holistic, context-free, implicit theory of leadership (Epitropaki & Martin, 2004).
Interestingly, recent developments of these theories, such as the connectionist models of leadership (Lord, Brown, & Harvey, 2001), hypothesize that the contextual constraints play a more important role, suggesting that strong variation across and within perceivers is a function of different contexts (e.g., when the context changes or is based on their experience;Brown & Lord, 2001). The social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001;Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) emphasizes that a leader’s effectiveness heavily depends on that leader’s similarity to the group’s prototype. In this way, leadership perceptions vary among groups depending not only on the leader fit to the group prototype, but also on the group identification of the followers (Cicero, Pierro, & van Knippenberg, 2007). Thus, these theories of leadership perception suggest that if an organization or a workgroup shares a common knowledge of leadership owing to shared cultural values, members should agree about who is and who
is not the leader in the group. Conversely, if group members are involved in different socialization processes or if leaders have different functions for different followers, less agreement will be apparent.
Classic contingency theories, such asFiedler’s (1978)contingency theory, or path-goal theory (House, 1971) and normative decision theory (Vroom &
Yetton, 1973), assume that leadership effectiveness depends on fit between the leader’s personal characteristics and style, and the demands of the situation. For example, Fiedler’s theory assumes that leader effectiveness is a joint function of leader’s personal style (task or relationship oriented) and situational control (the ability of a leader’s relations to provide follower clarity in group tasks and authority). Relationship-oriented leaders are predicted to be more effective when they have a moderate control over the situation, whereas task-oriented leaders are more effective when they have low or high control.
Other theories have pointed out that the contingency is at a dyadic level between leader and follower, and that the development of the relationship is maintained through the exchange of valued resources (Hollander, 1958).
Thus, leadership is viewed as a reciprocal process in which leader and follower exist in a mutual relationship, such that leadership cannot be determined independently of followership (Chemers, 1997; Hogg, 2005;
Hollander, 1992; Messick, 2005). Beginning with the early intuition of Hollander (1958)in his theory of idiosyncratic credit, many theories have emphasized that leadership is a process that involves followership and reciprocal action between leader and follower – as in leader–member exchange theory (Yukl, 1994) or vertical dyad linkage theory (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975). For example, the leader–member exchange theory assumes that leaders have different relationships with different subordinates;
as a consequence, leadership effectiveness depends on a dyadic relationship between leader and follower (Levine & Moreland, 1998).
Finally, other theories give more importance to context and, therefore, emphasize effects at the group level (Emrich, 1999). For instance, Lord, Binning, Rush, and Thomas (1978)showed that greater levels of leadership are perceived when a group is successful than when it fails. Schyns and Sanders (2003)demonstrated that mood can affect the perception of leader-ship.Pierro, Mannetti, De Grada, Livi, and Kruglanski (2003) showed the positive effect of temporal pressure in groups on leadership perception.
According to the theory of substitutes of leadership (Kerr, 1977; Kerr &
Jermier, 1978), environmental, social, and organizational factors all strongly influence task performance and are able to reduce the necessity of leadership: Subordinates (e.g., ability, experience), task (e.g., low
ambiguity), and organization (e.g., group cohesion, support by supervisors, organizational formalization) may all potentially render the function of leadership unnecessary. Thus, leadership varies as a function of type of organization, the structure, and group characteristics in which the leader operates.
Other researchers have emphasized cultural factors that affect leadership perception and the expressions of leader’s and followers’ personal and common needs (Ayman & Chemers, 1991). In this case, successful leaders are able to help followers to reach goals and personal needs, but those needs are oriented by socialized values that are settled at the cultural level (Chemers, 2000).
With some notable exceptions (Brown & Lord, 2001), few theories of leadership have explicitly hypothesized effects due to the perceiver, although some measures of the implicit theories of the leadership recently developed assume differences in the way individuals perceive the leadership prototypes (e.g.,Epitropaki & Martin, 2004). If, for some people, their prototype would be easier to match than it would be for others, these perceivers would see more leadership than others.