Stefano Livi, David A. Kenny Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception: A Social Relations Analysis

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 2 Background It’s important of clearly specify the level(s) of analysis at which leadership phenomena are expected to exist theoretically. (Yammarino et al., 2005). Which is the correct level of analysis in leadership? –Individual (perceiver or target)? Dyadic? Group?

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 3 Implicit level of analysis in Leadership theories 1) Individual 1) Individual: Leadership reflect individual differences: Target level: perceptions based on personal characteristics (i.a. Gardner, 1995) or behavioral styles (cfr. Bass & Avolio, 1993). Perceiver: Leadership as property of the person who is doing the perceiving: Calder’s Attribution Theory (1977), Romance of leadership (Meindl et al., 1985). 2) Dyadic 2) Dyadic: Leadership as a reciprocal process in which leader and follower exist in a mutual relationship: Leader ‑ Member Exchange (Yukl, 1994); Vertical Dyad Linkage Theory (Dansereau et al., 1975), Social Identity Theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001), Social Categorization Theory (Lord et al., 1982), Recurrent Model of Leadership (Lord & Hall, 2005). 3) Group 3) Group: group context affects amount of leadership perception: e.g. leadership is perceived when a group is successful than when it fails (Lord et al., 1978).

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 4 AIMS The main contribution of this research is to examine of the sources of variance for leadership across several studies, applying the Social Relations Model (SRM) to leadership perception (Kenny, 1994). The SRM can be used to empirically determine the amount of variance in a particular measure at individual (both target or perceiver), dyadic and group level. SRM assume that we have a group of persons and each person in the group rates every other member in the group on leadership

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 5 Social Relations Model Within the SRM, there are five random variables which are each a source of variance: Group: Differences among groups in how much leadership is perceived. Perceiver: Differences among individuals in how much leadership they perceive in others, in general. Target: Differences among individuals in how much each is perceived as a leader, in general by the others. Relationship: Idiosyncratic perceptions of the extent to which someone is a leader. Error: Measurement noise in the judgment of leadership.

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 6 Results Study (920 ss. in 180 groups) Stable Variance PerceiverTargetRelationship Campbell et al Dabbs & Ruback Task-oriented Dabbs & Ruback Socio-emotional Dabbs, Ruback, & Evans Lord et al Malloy & Janowski Montgomery Ruback, Dabbs, & Hopper Task-oriented Ruback, Dabbs, & Hopper Socio-emotional Average

ESA WC June 2007LIVI & KENNY - Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in Leadership Perception Pagina 7 Discussion and Conclusions In sum, we find that 1.Target is the dominant component in the perception of leadership by group members (39%) 2.Relationship (19%) and Preceiver (10%) variance have a non- trival amount of variance explained 3.Group variance is inconsistent A complete account of the Leadership must simultaneously treat the construct at all levels. Now that we have tools such as multilevel modeling and the SRM, we may be better able to understand the complexities of this most interesting construct. Part of the results are in press: Livi, S., Kenny D.A, Albright L., Pierro A. (in press). A Social Relations Analysis of Leadership. The Leadership Quarterly.