Theories of Leadership & Management
Summary of PPT, articles and personal notes
Lisalotte Bos – October 2024
Week 1: Mechanisms
Mediator: the reason for the effect. E.g., curiosity creates discovery and discovery leads to learning. It
must be a causal result of the independent variable and a cause antecedent of the dependent variable.
Moderator: contextualizing the effect. E.g., curiosity impacts learning. We understand a positive effect.
Distractions can affect this. You can have curiosity but with many distractions this dampens the positive
relationship between curiosity and learning.
Exercise → well-being → weight loss
Does exercise lead to well- being? Yes, thus mediator.
Exercise → caloric intake → weight loss
Does exercise lead to caloric intake? Yes, sports make you hungry thus mediator.
Exercise → age → weight loss
Can exercise lead to age? No, thus moderator. Age is not impacted by exercise.
Exercise → prior weight → weight loss
Can exercise lead change prior weight? No effect because it happened before the exercise so it must be
a moderator or a control variable!
4 ways to acquire knowledge:
- Intuition → taking the busy route with people on terraces rather than dark alley.
- Authority → stop sign
- Experience → recognize the Arc de Triomphe because you have been to Paris before.
- Reasoning (science) → theories
Behaviourism: input leads to output → ring a bell and give a dog food → dog will come when you ring
the bell.
However, this does not explain WHY. The ‘why’ is the mechanism that leads to the output. Good
communications lead to good results, but WHY? Lee & Wei 2008 rise the issue of failing to answer how
and why certain behaviour work when researching organizational outcomes.
Social Learning Theory – Bandura
People can learn by watching others. Learn vicariously.
Observation inhibition: you see others doing something and fail, so you do not do it. Observation
disinhibition: you see someone doing it, so you must be able to do it too.
Bandura argues four principles within SLT that are required for learning:
1. Attention (stimuli focus): to be able to learn, one must be focused.
2. Retention (rehearse encode): information must be stored for later use.
, 3. Motor reproduction (practice feedback): when a focused learner has retained information, they
have to reproduce the behaviour.
4. Motivation (reward reinforce): learner must be motivated to repeat behaviour.
Brown et al. (2004) suggests in their paper (ethical leadership: a social learning perspective for construct
development and testing) that employees who supervisor is perceived as an ethical leader are more
willing to engage in proactive helpful behaviour such as reporting problem to management. Reasons for
this are:
- SLT suggest that ethical leadership should influence employees’ ethical conduct because ethical
leaders are attractive and legitimate models who attract and hold followers’ attention.
- Ethical leaders convey importance of ethical behaviour by role modelling. Subsequently they
use the reward system to hold employees accountable.
Leaders’ ethical behaviour → social learning → Followers’ ethical behaviour
INPUT meditation theoretical mechanism OUTPUT
Leaders is: Follower is:
- interested in employees - giving extra effort
- Fair - willing to report problems
- Ethical example
- Listen to employees
- Defines success by process
The ethical behaviour of leaders is learned by followers by means of social learning resulting in
followers displaying ethical behaviour.
A mediation theoretical mechanism explains process in which two variables are related → sheds light
on mechanism at play. A moderating theoretical mechanism affects the strength and direction of the
relationship → reveals context in which relationships are strengthened or weakened.
Social Identity Theory – Tajfel
SIT refers to a person’s sense of who they are based on their group memberships. The groups people
belong to are an important source of pride and self-esteem. Being part of a group gives us a sense of
social identity: a sense of belonging.
➔ A person often has multiple group memberships and thus identities: Ajax fan, dog person,
academic, mother etc.
When social identity is salient, people begin to act as representatives of a group rather than just as
individuals. Your social identity does not only describe you; it also can predict someone’s behaviour.
Tajfal (1971) found that when creating two groups immediate predejuces occur without adding meaning
to these groups. → minimal group paradigm. Sherif (1954) found that shared goals can overcome
intergroup conflict: robbers cave experiment: water valve was broken, groups worked together to fix is.
Tajfal and Turner propose with SIT that group formation goes through three stages:
1. Self-categorization: categorize yourself as part of a group - ingroup (yours) vs. outgroup
(others).
2. Social identification: culture, norms, values – adopting identity of the group.
3. Social comparison: comparing the group to other groups – ingroup favouritism.
, ➔ Social comparison comes from the need for self-esteem. If ajax wins, I win because I am part
of Ajax.
SIT & Leadership
Leadership effectiveness rest on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group
(representative of group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behaviour (behaviour perceived to
benefit group. → when a leader fits in the group by means of social identification (looking like group
members and/or behaving the same) the support for the leader is bigger.
Leaders’ prototypicality → Social Identity Salience → Followers’ endorsement
INPUT moderating theoretical mechanism OUTPUT
It works the other way around as well: low social salience: people don’t care as they don’t look like the
group either.
➔ Because the effect of social identity salience can either strengthen or weaken followers’ support
for the leader, the mechanism is a moderating.
The Reciprocity principle & POS
Humans have a strong sensitivity to fairness and can easily detect unfairness. Reciprocity is an essential
principle in building and maintaining healthy relationships. There are three types of reciprocity:
1. Generalized: doing good and having faith it will come back e.g., Karma.
2. Balanced: keeping it even. E.g., You give me a birthday gift so I give you a birthday gift.
3. Negative: training to gain more than what is giving. E.g., revenge.
Reciprocity is also considered as the first principle of persuasion → e.g., when you receive a gift from
World Nature Foundation you are more likely to make a donation as people have the need to reciprocate
→ they gave you something so you feel the need to give something back.
Perceived Organizational Support: the degree to which employees believe the organisation values their
input, cares about their well-being and fulfils socio-economic needs.
➔ This directly contributes to the need to reciprocate: if you feel a high level of organisational
support, you are like to ‘return the favour’ and increase your commitment to the organisation.
Again, this works the other way around as well: if you do not feel valued or supported you will
reciprocate by showing low commitment towards the company.
o Mediating mechanism because it explains why receiving certain things (e.g., care,
attention) leads to increased commitment. → explain relationship between X and Y.
o Can also be a moderating mechanism because it can change a certain relationship.
Social Exchange Theory – Blau
Blau (1964) argues that every social interaction is an exchange shaped by reciprocity. Either tangible or
not. Thus, every human relationship is based on cost, rewards, profits and losses. There are three core
assumptions of SET:
1. Social actors engage in activities to obtained desired goals.
2. All social activities involve costs: time and energy are also costs. Not only monetarily.
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