Theories of leadership
Mechanisms:
Social learning theory: mediator
Perceived organizational support: mediator
Social identity salience: moderator
Self-efficacy: mediator
Lecture 1:
Mechanism of leadership
The most important aspects of leadership are people and everything associated with them.
What makes someone a leader: ILT we have a notion in our head of what a leader should
be like. If someone fits this picture we see them as a leader. → extraversion, confident,
charismatic.
input (work) --> Mechanism inside the black box (why does the behavior change) → output
(reward)
Leader-focused research often directly links leader behaviors to organizational outcomes (often
related to followers), implicitly assuming a relationship of some sort between leaders and followers
behaviors. However such an approach often fails to answer how, and why certain behavior works.
,A mechanism is the mediation variable *there are many different mechanisms.
The leader does something → that influences the mechanism → the behavior of the
follower changes → this has an influence on the outcome (e.g. work effectiveness)
Reading 1:
Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing.
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Brown, Trevino, & Harrison
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597805000397
Leaders should be a key source of ethical guidance for employees → Social learning
theory is a theoretical basis for understanding ethical leadership. In seven interlocking studies, the
viability and importance of this construct are tested.
Three constructs in organizational behavior (OB) that have the potential to overlap with ethical
leadership:
1. Transformational/charismatic leadership
“transforming” leaders inspire followers by aligning their own and their followers’ value systems
toward important moral principles. Four dimensions;
1. inspirational motivation,
2. idealized influence,
, 3. individualized consideration
4. and intellectual stimulation.
Of those, idealized influence has an ethical component. Namely, this means transformational
leaders are role models for followers to emulate, they can be counted on to do the right thing.
Leader cognitive moral development is positively related to transformational leadership. However,
transformational leaders can be unethical if they are motivated by selfishness instead of altruism
and if they use power inappropriately.
* Ethical leaders likely use both transformational and transactional leadership approaches to
influence followers’ behavior.
2. Leader honesty
Honesty is seen as one of the many characteristics that differentiated ethical and unethical leaders.
Honesty contributed to one aspect of ethical leadership, namely the ‘moral person aspect’ of
leaders.
3. Considerate or fair treatment
Leader behaviors reflecting a concern for people and fair treatment of employees contributed to
perceptions of ethical leadership.
Ethical leadership is related to these other leader styles and characteristics, but none of these
(transformational/charismatic leadership, leader honesty, and leader considerate/fair treatment) is
broad enough to encompass all that an ethical leader is seen to do.
Ethical leadership as social learning
A social learning perspective on ethical leadership proposes that leaders influence the ethical
conduct of followers via modeling. The term modeling covers a broad range of psychological
matching processes, including observational learning, imitation, and identification. Employees can
learn what behavior is expected, rewarded, and punished via role modeling. Leaders are an
important and likely source of such modeling;
- By virtue of their assigned role,
- Their status and success in the organization,
- Their power to affect the behavior and outcomes of others.
High standing in a “prestige hierarchy” and the ability to control rewards both contribute to
modeling effectiveness.
For leaders to be perceived as ethical leaders and to influence ethics-related outcomes,
- they must be perceived as attractive, credible, and legitimate. They do this by engaging in
behavior that is seen as normatively appropriate (e.g., openness and honesty) and
motivated by altruism (rather than selfish behavior)
*Altruistic motivation behavior includes honesty, consideration of others, and fair treatment of
employees)
- Ethical leaders must also gain followers’ attention to the ethics message by
engaging in explicit ethics-related communication and by using reinforcement
to support the ethics message. → the structuring of work environments.
Social learning theory argues that consequences (rewards and punishments) facilitate learning
in an anticipatory manner. They inform individuals about the benefits of the modeled (ethical)
behavior and the costs of inappropriate behavior.
→ ethical leaders become social learning models by rewarding appropriate and disciplining
inappropriate conduct and by doing so in a way that is perceived to be fair.
People can learn new information and behaviors by watching other people. This is known as
observational learning or learning from observing a role model. Necessary conditions are:
, - attention
- retention
- reproduction
- motivation
types of observational learning:
1. Inhibition: a feeling of embarrassment or worry that prevents you from saying or doing
what you want
2. Disinhibition: is saying or doing something on a whim, without thinking in advance of what
could be the unwanted or even dangerous result.
Study 7 is the most important:
Study 7 demonstrates the ethical leadership scale’ incremental prediction over idealized
influence . The ELS uniquely predicts relevant outcomes beyond II-B.
Ethical leadership provided unique prediction of important group-level outcomes, while the
idealized influence component of transformational leadership did not: supervisor
effectiveness, satisfaction with supervisor, extra effort and willingness to report
problems. → proactive behavior.
Discussion
The research contributes to the understanding of ethical leadership by offering social learning as
the key theoretical perspective in defining it.
Social learning theory suggests that ethical leadership should influence employees’ ethical conduct
at work because ethical leaders are attractive and legitimate models who attract and hold followers’
attention.
Ethical leaders convey the importance of ethical behavior by role modeling and they use the
reward system to hold employees accountable.
We demonstrated that employees whose supervisor is perceived to be an ethical leader are more
willing to engage in proactive behavior such as reporting problems to management.
