Chapter 8: Relational and Distributed Theories of Leadership Flashcards
self-concept
how we perceive ourselves through attitudes, values, perceptions, emotion
Follower-centric approaches cultivate the opinion that followers’ self-concept
directly influences the leader–follower relationship and effectiveness, which has given rise to relational and distributed leadership theories.
Studying micro aspects of human interaction is rooted in work on the sociology of mind first enunciated by
the German sociologist Georg Simmel and developed by the American philosopher and social psychologist George Herbert Mead
For Simmel, society is
constituted of a web of interactional forces between individuals and groups, and his focus on the concept of reciprocity emphasized that every single social phenomenon has meaning only through its relationships with others.
Dyad
Group of 2 people
Triad
Group of three members, more stable then a diad
In general, the larger the size of the group,
the more its members can become dissimilar to each other, and the more independence and intellectual development can take place. This phenomenon has obvious implications for leading work teams.
human intersubjectivity
a myriad of human interactions, individual self-reflection and meaning that is modified through social interaction
symbolic interactionism
After his death, Mead’s work became known as this
The premise of relational leadership is that
leadership is a two-way influence relationship between a leader and a follower, and the quality of the relationship affects attitudes and behaviours
The relational leadership theory argues that leadership effectiveness hinges on the
ability of a leader to create high-quality relationships with others in the organization.
Relational leadership defintion
A social influence process through which emergent coordination … and change … are constructed and produced
ontology debates
which is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of social reality
Two ontological debates are of particular relevance to organizational researchers, and these revolve around two questions:
‘Does social reality exist independent of our perceptions?’ and ‘Is what passes for reality merely a set of mental constructions?’
The more we affirm ‘yes’ to the first question,
the more we move towards the positivist position
Scholars holding this view maintain that there is such a thing as social reality, and the job of the researcher is to discover what that reality is
The more we affirm ‘yes’ to the second question,
the more we move towards the social constructionist position.
Scholars holding this view empathize with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) famous adage that there are no facts, only interpretations.
Ontological debates also revolve around two other questions:
‘Is social reality largely fixed, something that individuals and groups have to confront but over which they have little or no control, akin to the weather?’
and
‘Is social reality not necessarily pre-existing but fluid, and open to be shaped by individuals and groups through their social interactions and agency?’.
Leadership theorists looking at relationships through a positivist prism treat leaders and followers as
stable entities who have different roles in the organizational context.
Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory
focuses on the quality of the dyadic relationship between a leader and an individual
It argues that because followers are uniquely different, leaders should establish a special relationship with each of his or her followers, rather than treating followers as a homogeneous group.
The quality of LMX can be affected by
leader attributes, such as emotional intelligence, the personality trait agreeableness, ethical behaviour, and support for HRM policies
LMX is both a dyadic and dialectical process,
and therefore in order to understand it consideration must be given to the interactional variables between leader and follower
Perception is an example of an interactional variable
Perceived high LMX quality is
positively related to feelings of energy in followers, which, in turn, are related to greater involvement in creative work
psychological contract
the informal set of expectations and understandings between leader and follower
Early LMX research of dyads found two broad types of relationships:
1) those that were based on expanded role responsibilities, which were labelled the in-group
2) a second type of relationships that was based on restricted role responsibilities, which were labelled the out-group
Just how a leader chooses who falls into an ‘in’ or ‘out’ group is ambiguous,
but there is evidence that in-group members have attitudes, personality and demographic characteristics that are similar to their leader
Members of the in-group
receive more information, support and attention from their leader than do out-group members.
Whereas in-group followers
go ‘beyond the contract’ and do extra tasks for the leader, members of the out-group usually work to contract and leave work at the designated time
A number of prescriptions stem from this analysis:
a leader may offer certain followers increased involvement in decision making and/or creative work. In turn, these followers may reciprocate by expending even more energy on and having a greater commitment to their work goals. If this happens, such followers become members of the in-group.
Less privileged employees who are not offered such a special relationship become members of an _____
out-group
Leadership theorists, adopting a positivist perspective, have produced three distinct streams of work:
(1) perceived LMX differentiation (Hooper and Martin, 2008);
(2) relative LMX (Hu and Liden, 2013);
(3) group-level LMX differentiation
In contrast, scholars adopting a constructionist position view relationships through a socio-cultural prism
Here self-concept is important
The constructionist approach to understanding the nature of relationships draws heavily from
classical social theorists
In particular, Mead’s analysis of the social self is predicated on the belief that ‘individuals’, through language, social interaction and processes of socialization, learn to develop ‘selves’ within society
From a constructionist perspective, leadership does not exist as an entity
rather it emerges through processes of interaction and co-construction.
There are core orienting principles that seem to be embedded in current conceptualizations of relational leadership:
intersubjectivity,
dialogue,
reflectiveness and
sensemaking
Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)
examines the relationship between the human mind (what individuals think and feel) and activity (what individuals do).
It rests on the assumption that consciousness is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual’s social and cultural experience
Sensemaking
shapes human relationships, with the premise that social reality is an ongoing achievement that arises from efforts to establish order and understand the events that occur
The crux of distributed theories of leadership is that
the role of the leader as a ‘sense giver’ is not determined by the leader’s position in the organizational hierarchy, but by the two-way relationship between leader and follower.
The theory conceptualizes relational leadership as emergent, negotiated and co-constructed through ongoing interaction – a sensemaking process
Distributed leadership theories shifts the focus from
hierarchy to heterarchy; from heroic to ‘post heroic’ leadership
Heterarchy
The idea is that leadership resides not solely in senior individuals at the top of the organization, but in every person who, in one way or another, takes on the role of leader in a group or team
The notion of distributed leadership is not a new concept, although it is called different things in the literature, including
‘dispersed’ (Gordon, 2010), ‘co-leadership’ (Vine et al., 2008), ‘shared’ (Conger and Pearce, 2009) and ‘rotated’ or ‘team’ leadership.
Distributed theories of leadership do not disavow vertical leadership, but propose that gifted leaders
‘lead from behind’ by empowering their subordinates
Distributed leadership
Researchers have conceptualized distributed leadership as an interactive process disassociated from the organizational hierarchy
the idea of ‘levels’ of leadership linked to different levels of strategic decision making
distributed leadership involves people with less power engaged in operational activities, which, it is argued, can help the development of employee cohesion and vision building
distributed leadership has a positive relationship with performance outcomes
Teams and team leadership
employment relationship is characterized by teamworking, flexibility and employee ‘voice’ mechanisms.
self-management work teams (SMWT) movement
proclaimed the need for redesigning organizations to allow members to undertake a wider range of tasks, including self-inspection, decision making and leadership responsibilities
High-performance team working is generally enacted through mutual leader–follower reciprocation:
leaders develop high-commitment and trust-building work practices, and, in return, subordinates experience higher levels of job autonomy, involvement and leadership engagement
Job design
process of assigning tasks to a job, including the interdependency of those tasks to other jobs.
In its current phase of development, research on relational and distributed leadership has made several positive contributions to our understanding of leadership
First, LMX theory has significantly increased our understanding of leadership processes through its focus on dyadic and group relationships
Second, the relational constructionist lens offers new insights into relationships beyond the dyad to multi-member networks of relationships, which increase in complexity as the group or team increases in numbers.
Third, a strength of distributed/shared leadership is that it appears to be an important predictor of positive performance outcomes at individual, group or team, and organizational levels of analysis
However, scholars have identified a number of conceptual and methodological weaknesses of relational and distributed leadership
First, LMX theory still remains ambiguous in its explanation of how the dyadic relationship develops.
Second, it is unclear how single dyads affect each other and how, for example, income inequality in dyadic relationships affects overall group outcomes. Income inequality is high in the UK: FTSE CEOs earn on average 386 times more than workers on the national living wage
Third, research has shown that workforce diversity and diversity-related policies and practices contribute to organization performance (Ng and Stephenson, 2017), but there is a paucity of empirical research on how diversity affects dyadic and group relationships.
Turning to the limits of distributed and shared leadership theories, there are several issues to consider.
First, there is debate among critical workplace scholars regarding the tendency of leadership researchers not to give sufficient consideration to economic (i.e. profit or cost-reduction targets) imperatives and asymetrical power relations
Second, while Wassenaar and Pearce (2018) conclude that there are many precursors that are likely to develop team leadership, there appears to be a marked insufficiency of research evidence about the extent of change in the practices, particularly outside the domain of education, which give expression to the central concepts of shared leadership
Finally, while evidence mounts that high-quality LMX relationships (e.g. Martin et al., 2016) and team leadership (e.g. Pearce et al., 2014) can have positive effects on performance outcomes, numerous observers recognize significant methodological challenges.
