Implicit Leadership and Followership Theories “in the wild”: Taking stock of information-processing approaches to leadership and followership in organizational settings

Creative Leadership: A Multi-Context Conceptualization

“…Socio-cognitive approaches to leadership (e.g., Epitropaki & Martin, 2004;Epitropaki et al, 2013;Lord & Maher, 1991;Shondrick, Dinh & Lord, 2010; and creativity (e.g., Christensen, Drewsen & Maaløe, 2014;Hass, 2014;Sternberg, 1985) open up exciting possibilities for creative leadership and may help resolve the paradox indicated in our introduction: On the one hand, prior studies (e.g., highlighted the importance of creative thinking skills for creative leadership; on the other hand, studies of Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) and Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs) have revealed a striking absence of the trait "creative" from existing lists of ILTs and IFTs (e.g., Offermann et al, 1994;Sy, 2010). As a matter of fact, in Lord, Foti, and De Vader's (1984) list the trait 'creative' was included in the non-leader attributes list which clearly implies that creativity is not perceived as a core characteristic of leadership .…”

“…Despite the growing realization that creativity is a central ability for leaders in promoting change (Shalley & Gilson, 2004), there is a striking absence of the trait 'creative' from existing lists of Implicit Leadership Theories (e.g., Epitropaki & Martin, 2004;Epitropaki, Sy, Martin, Tram-Quon & Topakas, 2013;Offermann, Kennedy & Wirtz, 2004;, and creative individuals are less likely to emerge as leaders (Kark, Miron-Spektor, Kaplon & Gorsky, 2012;Mueller, Goncalo, & Kamdar, 2011). Most organizations tend to promote executives who preserve the status quo, do not take risks, and stick to useful and working solutions Mueller et al, 2011), although many organizations claim that creative leadership is essential to them.…”

The Review of the Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs)

“…Yip (2013), based on the combination of XY theory and attribution theory, puts forward that the structure of implicit followership can be divided into motivation and capability. The measurement tool is Y theory scale compiled by Kopelman et al, 2010. Tram-Quon (2013 divided the implicit followership into two categories: positive and negative, and measured the implicit followership by the two indirect methods of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and projective approach respectively.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that personality is a source of variation in individual cognitive patterns. Epitropaki et al (2013) pointed out that extraversion in the big five personality is the key factor to predict the implicit followership prototype, which helps individuals construct active (positive) implicit followership prototypes. Values will affect the individual's cognitive behavior pattern, so that values may affect the implicit followership prototype construction of the individual.…”

“…This study explores how leaders and employees interact with each other in the context of organizational leadership from the perspective of "leadership" and "employees". From 2013 to 2016, there were many articles about IFTs (Epitropaki et al, 2013;Junker & van Dick, 2014;Xu, Li, & Cao, 2015;Yang & Peng, 2015). In addition, The Leadership Quarterly, a leading international journal on leadership and followership, launched a special journal about IFTs in 2014 (Foti et al, 2014).…”