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Occupational self-efficacy is an important resource for individuals in organizations. To be able to compare the occupational self-efficacy of employees across different countries, equivalent versions of the standard instruments need to be made available in different languages. In this article, the authors report on the structural and construct validity of an instrument that assesses occupational self-efficacy across five countries (Germany, Sweden, Belgium, United Kingdom, Spain), based on an overall sample of N =1,535. The instrument can be recommended for comparative use in German, Swedish, Belgian, Spanish, and British organizational contexts.

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In the present study we analyzed cultural variations of managerial gender typing, i.e., that managers are perceived as possessing traits that are part of the masculine stereotype.Management students of both sexes from three different countries-Australia, Germany, and India-estimated the percentage to which one of three stimulus groups, i.e., executives-ingeneral (no gender specification), male executives, or female executives, possesses personoriented and task-oriented leadership traits. Participants also rated the importance of these characteristics for the respective group. Furthermore, another group of participants described themselves regarding the two types of traits and their importance for themselves. Altogether, the results indicate a less traditional view of leadership compared to previous findings, which is very similar in all three countries. Nevertheless, there exists an interculturally shared view of a female-specific leadership competence according to which women possess a higher person orientation than men. The self-descriptions of the female and male management students regarding person-and task-oriented traits were found to be very similar.

This experimental study examined the influence of followers' personal characteristics on their perception of leadership. Participants were 175 students who selfrated several personality scales (extraversion, neuroticism, personal need for structure, and occupational self-efficacy) at Time 1. Two weeks later, participants were divided into two groups and were presented a vignette about a transformational or a nontransformational leader. Subsequently, respondents were asked to rate the described leader's behavior on the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Results revealed that followers high in extraversion tended to perceive more transformational leadership, and showed a more positive evaluation of transformational leadership than did followers with low extraversion. Moreover, perceived transformational leadership predicted the acceptance of a leader, but followers' personality traits did not moderate the relationship between perceived transformational leadership and acceptance.

In this introductory editorial, we provide a brief overview of the history of individual difference research in leadership. We explain the major challenges that trait research faced, and why it was revived primarily because of methodological advancements. Next, we argue that leadership individual difference research is at a cusp of a renaissance. We explain why we are at this cusp and what researchers should do reify the renaissance in terms of theoretical extensions of trait models, the application of robust methodological advancements, and the development of process models linking distal (i.e., traits) predictors to proximal predictors (e.g., behaviors, skills, attitudes), and the latter to leader outcomes. We then summarize the papers we accepted for the special issue, and conclude with an optimistic note for leadership individual difference research.Keywords: leadership, traits, individual differences, personality, intelligence, multilevel models, process models. 3 The idea of a special issue on leader individual differences emerged following a symposium hosted in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 2009. From the discussions with the invited panel, presenters, and participants, the general consensus was that individual-differences research in leadership was at a critical juncture; a new genre of theories and the application of new methods would reignite interest in what has so far been a productive area of research with particular importance for practice.Our interest in editing this special issue was to provide a forum for new theory and novel findings on the general topic of leadership and individual differences both from a leader and a follower perspective. As all those who study individual differences know, this area of research has had a tumultuous history in general psychology (Kenrick & Funder, 1988;Mischel, 1977) as well as in leadership research (House & Aditya, 1997).At this time, there is still debate on what constitutes a trait (Jackson, Hill, & Roberts, 2012), whether personality is measured broadly enough (K. , 2008, whether big-five type inventories are casting too long a shadow over other individual differences that could also contribute to predicting outcomes (Day & Schleicher, 2006), and whether alternative conceptions of intelligence matter (Fiori & Antonakis, 2011).The notion of individual differences in leadership goes back a long way: The ancient Greeks took leader selection (as well as development) very seriously. For example, in the Republic (Plato & Jowett, 1901), Plato noted "we are not all alike; there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations" (p. 50).With respect to leadership Plato said that: "There will be discovered to be some natures who ought to . . . be leaders in the State; and others who are not born to be [leaders], and are meant to be followers rather than leaders" (p. 175). He acknowledged that "The 4 selection [of leaders] will be no easy matter" (p. 56), and how right he was. This point is particularly salient nowadays, g...

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Relationship-based leadership 2 AbstractThe relationship quality that develops between leaders and those designated as followers is of longstanding interest to researchers and practitioners. The purpose of the present paper is to review the more recent developments in the field of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to identify specific issues related to leader-member agreement and follower consensus that have potentially important theoretical and practical implications. We introduce the concept of LMX excellence, which involves high-quality LMX, high leader-member agreement as well as high group consensus in LMX quality. We outline how leaders and followers' behaviour as well as context can enhance or hinder the development of LMX excellence and conclude with an overview of the practical and theoretical implications as well as future research needs.Relationship-based leadership 3The relationship quality that develops between leaders and those designated as followers continues to be a significant topic of interest for leadership researchers and practitioners.Although the leader is the typical focus in much of the leadership-related research (e.g., leader personality traits, behaviours, styles, decisions, and so on), there is longstanding attention to the interactions between leaders and followers in forming and maintaining leadership processes going back to the influential early work of Weber . Although leadership research has advanced beyond Weber, this attention continues to evolve in terms of promoting a more systematic approach to relational or relationship-based leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006).The most prominent approach that focuses on leader-follower relationships is that of LeaderMember Exchange (LMX), originally introduced as the Vertical Dyad Linkage model (Danserau, Graen, & Haga, 1975).The explicit focus of LMX is on the quality of the dyadic exchange that develops between leaders and followers (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). The LMX approach was one of the first systematic leadership theories to include the follower in leadership processes. Although one focus is on the reciprocal exchange between a leader and a follower, the theory also acknowledges that both parties contribute to the development and maintenance of the ongoing relationship quality. Meta-analytic research has shown that high quality relationships are associated with positive work-related outcomes, such as follower satisfaction, commitment, and performance (Gerstner & Day, 1997) as well as citizenship behaviour (Ilies,...