Summary of the article "License to Fail? How Leader Group Prototypicality Moderates the Effects of Leader Performance on Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness" written by Giessner, Knippenberg & Sleebos
Summary: License to Fail? How Leader Group Prototypicality Moderates the Effects of Leader
Performance on Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness – Giessner, Knippenberg & Sleebos
Leaders are often directly associated with the performance of their team or organization. Consequently,
the follower’s perception of leadership effectiveness are influenced by the performance information.
When the performance is successful, leaders are considered as more effective and vice versa. However,
it seems that this is not always the case: this article argues that the follower’s evaluation of the leader’s
effectiveness is not only influenced by the performance, but also moderated by characteristics of the
leader.
The ‘romance of leadership’ perspective refers to the follower’s evaluation of leadership effectiveness
after performance feedback.
The authors of this article (1) extend this romance by the leader group prototypicality: the leader’s
representativeness of the group identity. It is about the role of shared group membership of leaders and
followers. In addition they (2) extend the social identity analysis of leadership by including leader
performance as an important influence on leadership effectiveness evaluations.
Previous research showed that leaders of well-performing teams are evaluated as better on behaviors
like initiation of structure and consideration than leaders of low-performing teams. However, those
researches failed to take into account the role of shared group membership of the leader and followers.
The social identity approach can explain this influence of shared group membership on evaluations.
The social identity approach states that individuals perceive the social world in terms of social
categories. People define themselves not only on the basis of their individual characteristics and their
interpersonal relations (personal identity), but also in terms of characteristics of an in-group to which
they belong (social identity or collective self) in comparison to an out-group. This group membership can
shape people’s cognitions, feelings and behavior.
Research has shown that leaders who behaviorally affirm the social identity of the group (i.e. behavior
that is in line with the group’s norms and values) receive less negative credits after an crisis than leaders
who were identity-negating (i.e. behavior that did not correspond with the group’s values and norms).
The social identity approach does not only make predictions in terms of how a leader should behave,
but also in terms of how a leader is generally perceived. A central concept in this is group prototypicality
(the extent to which the leader is seen to embody the group identity or group prototype). The group
prototype describes group membership appropriate attributes in a specific context. Leaders who are
perceived more prototypical are perceived to be more effective.
In addition, there is the leadership categorization theory, in which leader prototypes are understood as
context-specific structures reflecting the traits and behaviors of effective leaders. In this prototypicality
refers to, to what extent the leaders behavior is congruent with the ‘standard behavior of leaders’: the
more a leader matches the prototype of an effective leader, the more favorable leadership perceptions
are.
Both in social identity theory and leadership categorization theory the prototypes are seen a
representation of a category. Those two theories complement each other. The evaluation process of
both is the same, but the reference points differ (prototypes of group versus prototypes of general
leadership categories). When group salience is high, the former theory is more important and when
group salience is low, the latter theory. This research uses the social identity theory explanation.
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