Comprehensive lecture notes from the Leadership in Organizations (P_MLEAORG) course written in English. This course is part of the Master Work & Organizational Psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). Examples and images are used to make the text/terms clearer.
Leadership in Organizations
Lecturer: Mark van Vugt
Lecture 1: 29 okt 2024
Why Leadership? Origins and Evolution
Leadership is a process whereby one individual, the leader, influences others, the followers,
to engage in joint activities and/or achieve joint goals
There is no one good leader for all situations, characteristics of good leaders depend
on the context, situation, environment, culture and more
Spending money on leadership development does not necessarily increase confidence
in leadership or in leaders, there is in fact a negative correlation
There is a lot of industry about leadership that is mostly not
evidence-based, leadership development programs cost around 20
billion euros per year, but very few are being evaluated.
Most of these programs are anecdotal (not necessarily true or reliable, based on personal
accounts), from successful CEO’s to management gurus. A lot of books/programs are based
on modern trends and just state what people want to hear at that moment.
The science of leadership:
There is a narrow focus on the people in charge, but what about the followers?
Leader selection is assumed to be a rational process, but is it really?
There is a lot of focus on leadership in formal organizations looking at formal
managers, but a lot of leadership happens elsewhere, for example sports teams
The ‘romance’ of leadership bias, we over glorify the idea of leadership and think it is
responsible for more than the actual part
The ‘romance’ of leadership bias is an attributional bias towards the importance of
leadership in the functioning of organizations and the ability of leaders to control and
influence organizational outcomes
It is the tendency to view leadership as the most important factor for the success or
failure of organizations
People have the tendency to immediately blame the leaders and not consider any
environmental or external causes
Learning goals: get insight into the history of leadership research and into the major schools
in leadership theory, understand the evolutionary and biological origins of leadership, learn
about leadership in traditional societies and understand the common misperceptions and the
realities about leadership.
Leading individuals emerge from history, because the time is right, the time was right to be
evolving a new theory. The right person on the right time (zeitgeist theory).
1
,Old history of leadership research focuses on two contrasting theories, the ‘great man theory’
and the ‘zeitgeist theory’ of leadership
The great man theory refers to the belief that leaders are born with innate qualities
rather than being made through experience, so leaders are born and not made,
individuals rise to positions of power due to inherent traits rather than acquired skills
The zeitgeist theory refers to the belief that leaders and the characteristics that they
exhibited were product of social circumstances during a specific time, leaders are
products of the social conditions and spirit of their time, rather than driving forces
themselves (leadership = person x situation)
100 years of leadership research, ranging from 1920 to 2020:
Trait approaches to leadership, focus
on personality and IQ, around the
1920s
Behavioral school of leadership,
focus on what leaders actually do
(Ohio-studies)
Contingency approach to leadership,
focus on the person and environment
relationship and the interest in
followership, around the 1960s/1970s
Contextual approach to leadership, focus on the role of cultural factors, emerging
around the 1980s because people started to travel the world
Sceptic school of leadership, the romance of leadership (the importance of leadership)
Relational approaches to leadership, LMX (leader-member exchange) and the quality
of the leader-follower relationship
New leadership school, focus on charismatic, visionary and transformational
leadership, emerging around the 1990s
Information processing approach to leadership and followership, the cognitive
revolution and implicit leadership theories
Evolutionary, biological and neuroscience school of leadership-genes, hormones,
brains and evolutionary processes
, According to the evolutionary, biological and neuroscience approach, leadership is a universal
cross-species phenomenon.
It states that leadership is a coordination device and that there are no leaders without
followers
Innate mental algorithms to follow in evolutionarily-relevant contexts, different
contexts activate different leader prototypes
Leadership and leader preferences are genetically and socially transmitted (cultural)
The evolutionary leadership theory is focused on searching for simple, adaptive follower
heuristics, for example:
Input: dangerous environment, self-protection
is required
Followership mechanism: following a leader is necessary and will help to survive,
select an individual that can protect me and the group
Adaptive outcomes: endorse a physically strong leader
Is there a gene for leadership? Probably not, there are a lot of complex traits (like leadership)
that are determined by thousands of genes, so it is highly unlikely that we will find a gene for
leadership.
However, genes may be responsible for some broad personality traits associated with
leadership, for example extraversion or conscientiousness, these traits are to some extent (40-
60%) heritable.
Do we have a brain for leadership? Probably not, according to neuroscience, it is unlikely to
find specific brain regions associated with leadership because it is not concentrated in the
brain
Neural connectivity may be associated with differences in traits associated with
leadership, for example cognitive fluidity, default mode network
Fluctuating or base line hormones may be associated with traits associated with
leadership, for example testosterone or cortisol
Lecture 2: 30 okt 2024
How to Study Leadership? Research Methods (Guest Lecture)
Examples of research methods to study leadership are surveys, interviews, Vignette
experiments, coordination games, biographical approaches, secondary data, cognitive tasks,
eye-tracking, neuroimaging, hormones, AI and big data.
Surveys and interviews consist of validated questionnaires and (semi) structured interviews,
this could be on paper or online. Researchers use thresholds and criteria to classify responses
Research questions focus on identifying effective leadership behaviors and to classify
behaviors
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