Stefano Livi, David A' Kenny

1
Group, Dyadic and Individual Levels in
Leadership Perception A Social Relations
Analysis

• Stefano Livi, David A. Kenny

2
Background

• Its 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?

3
Implicit level of analysis in Leadership theories

• 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 Calders Attribution
  Theory (1977), Romance of leadership (Meindl et
  al., 1985).
• 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 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).

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

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.

6
Results
7
Discussion and Conclusions

• In sum, we find that
• Target is the dominant component in the
  perception of leadership by group members (39)
• Relationship (19) and Preceiver (10) variance
  have a non-trival amount of variance explained
• 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.