No abstract

Despite being seen as a "model minority," Asian Americans remain underrepresented in organizational leadership roles in North America. The existing and limited research on this topic has primarily focused on external barriers to Asians' advancement (e.g., discrimination); however, little is currently known regarding potential internal barriers that this group may also experience-and why they may arise. Across two crosssectional survey studies using undergraduate student samples (Study 1: n Asians = 205, n Whites = 290; Study 2: n Asians = 105, n Whites = 176), we consistently found that Asian Canadians reported lower affective motivation to lead and leadership self-efficacy compared to their White Canadian peers. Integrating intrapsychic versus social structural perspectives on group differences in leadership with research on implicit leadership and followership theories to explore potential explanations, these differences appeared to be driven by intrapsychic processes (i.e., personal views of the self) rather than social structural influences (i.e., metastereotypes or how others stereotype one's racial group); however, both traits typically associated with leaders and followers seem to play a role in this process. Specifically, Asian Canadians had lower self-perceptions on agency-related traits associated with followership (i.e., more conforming), in line with commonly held stereotypes about Asians, and lower self-perceptions on competence-related traits associated with leadership and followership (i.e., less intelligent and more incompetent), counter to prevalent stereotypes about Asians. Overall, this exploratory research substantiates that Asians in North America may also face significant internal barriers to pursuing leadership roles and uncovers additional complexities that warrant future examination. Public Significance StatementAsians are currently underrepresented in North American leadership roles. We explore whether this Asian-White leadership gap may be due, in part, to Asians' greater hesitancy in pursuing leadership roles than their majority group counterparts and why this occurs. Asian Canadian students were less motivated to lead and confident in leading than White Canadian students, and this may be because Asian Canadians perceived themselves as more conforming and less competent compared to how White Canadians viewed themselves.