The Leader-in-Social-Network Schema: Perceptions of Network Structure Affect Gendered Attributions of Charisma

Abstract

Please scroll down for article-it is on subsequent pagesWith 12,500 members from nearly 90 countries, INFORMS is the largest international association of operations research (O.R.) and analytics professionals and students. INFORMS provides unique networking and learning opportunities for individual professionals, and organizations of all types and sizes, to better understand and use O.R. and analytics tools and methods to transform strategic visions and achieve better outcomes. For more information on INFORMS, its publications, membership, or meetings visit C harisma is crucially important for a range of leadership outcomes. Charisma is also in the eye of the beholder-an attribute perceived by followers. Traditional leadership theory has tended to assume charismatic attributions flow to men rather than women. We challenge this assumption of an inevitable charismatic bias toward men leaders. We propose that gender-biased attributions about the charismatic leadership of men and women are facilitated by the operation of a leader-in-social-network schema. Attributions of charismatic leadership depend on the match between the gender of the leader and the perceived structure of the network. In three studies encompassing both experimental and survey data, we show that when team advice networks are perceived to be centralized around one or a few individuals, women leaders are seen as less charismatic than men leaders. However, when networks are perceived to be cohesive (many connections among individuals), it is men who suffer a charismatic leadership disadvantage relative to women. Perceptions of leadership depend not only on whether the leader is a man or a woman but also on the social network context in which the leader is embedded.

Emergent Leadership Structures in Informal Groups: A Dynamic, Cognitively Informed Network Model

“…Recent work looked at how interpersonal perceptions (DeRue et al, 2015), beliefs that groups are best led by a single or by multiple leaders (Leadership Structure Schemas, DeRue & Ashford, 2010), and person-in-situation schemas (e.g., Leader-in-SocialNetwork schema, Brands, Menges, & Kilduff, 2015) affect emergent leadership structures. We examine the impact of relational schemas on the evolution of leadership structures.…”

Analysing the Role of Social Visits on Migrants’ Social Capital: A Personal Network Approach

“…In such instruments, a given individual, usually referred to as ego or the focal person, is asked to report the relationships existing between all individuals in a group (Krackhardt, 1987). Various studies have successfully used a cognitive network approach for studying not only face-to-face interactions but also discussion networks (Marsden, 1987), friendship ties (Pittinsky & Carolan, 2008), advice and instrumental support provision (Krackhardt & Kilduff, 2002), emotional closeness, support and liking (Freeman & Webster, 1994;Kenny, Bond Jr, Mohr, & Horn, 1996;Widmer, 2016) or leadership and hierarchy (Brands, Menges, & Kilduff, 2015). Overall, the aim of such studies is not so much about testing the accuracy of non-behavioural measures of interactions (Coenders, Kogovšek, Hlebec, & Coromina, 2014), but rather to see how cognitive patterns about interactions relate to critical dimensions of social embeddedness such as social class, gender, statuses and roles in various organisations or groups (Brands, 2013).…”

Reading the Face of a Leader: Women with Low Facial Masculinity Are Perceived as Competitive

“…Implicit leadership theories are not fixed, but rather adjust according to a given context such that different contexts give rise to different prototypical expectations about leaders (Brands, Menges, & Kilduff, 2015). The biosocial model of leadership posits the contingency that preferences for high facial masculinity apply particularly in situations that involve greater conflict, competition, and aggression, whereas preferences for comparatively lower facial masculinity apply in more peaceful, cooperative settings (Little et al, 2007;Spisak, Dekker, et al, 2012).…”

“…Thus, situational demands activate different leadership prototypes, and people consequently prefer leaders whom they expect to have characteristics suited to that situation (Little, 2014). The contingency advanced by the biosocial model of leadership (Spisak, Homan, et al, 2012) therefore suggest a person-in-situation schema (Brands et al, 2015) that favors masculine-looking leaders in competitive contexts. In such contexts, both men and women who lack facial masculinity may fail to meet people's assumptions, as suggested by leadership categorization accounts of implicit leadership theories (Hogue & Lord, 2007), gender research and, particularly, by role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002).…”

“…Although this approach is increasingly common (Bohannon, 2011) and the data thus collected tend to be of similar or better quality than the data collected in laboratory studies (Buhrmester et al, 2011), there is a need to ensure that participants followed the instructions and provided meaningful answers. In line with other recent organizational research using online panels (Brands et al, 2015), we thus checked the quality of the data prior to our analyses, based on four criteria. Specifically, we established that participants' responses would be excluded if (1) participants' response time was longer than 2 SD above the mean, as extended response times may imply that distractions occurred during participation; (2) participants had the same IP address, as this would indicate repeated participation; (3) a participant's response pattern indicated a lack of attention to the questionnaire items (e.g., all images were selected from just one side of the screen); or (4) participants incorrectly answered an attention check question 3 that was included in the assessment of demographics toward the end of the questionnaire.…”