How do leadership motives affect informal and formal leadership emergence?

• Author: Yair Berson,Gil Luria
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1836
• Date: 01 October 2013
• Published date: 01 October 2013

How do leadership motives affect informal and

formal leadership emergence?

GIL LURIA

1†

AND YAIR BERSON

2

*

,†

1

Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences, Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

2

Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Summary To what extent and in what ways do leadership motives of potential leaders predict their informal and formal

leadership assignments? To address these questions, we conducted two studies in a military setting. In the first

study (n= 215), we examined a mediated-moderation model in which we hypothesized that the motivation to

lead (MTL) of candidates to an elite unit would predict their teamwork behaviors and their tendency to

emerge as leaders of their peers. We further hypothesized that cognitive ability would interact with MTL

to predict teamwork behaviors and that teamwork behaviors would mediate the relationship between this

interaction and leadership emergence. In Study 2, we followed up 60 candidates who were selected to the unit

and examined whether MTL would predict the extent to which they achieved formal leadership roles. The

findings of Study 1 supported the hypotheses included in the moderated mediation model. In Study 2, as

expected, MTL predicted formal leadership emergence. We discuss several theoretical implications of these

findings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: motivation to lead (MTL); informal leadership emergence; formal leadership emergence;

teamwork behaviors; cognitive ability

One of the key issues that concerns leadership researchers is how to evaluate the leadership potential of individuals

(Gough, 1984, 1990; Hogan, Curphy, & Hogan, 1994; Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984; Mann, 1959; Stogdill, 1948).

What are the distinguishing traits and motives of those who will become informal leaders of their peers? What

characterizes individuals who achieved formal positions, such as CEOs, supervisors, or military commanders?

And, most importantly, how and under what conditions do such traits explain their chances to emerge as leaders?

The topic of linking leader traits and leadership outcomes has received considerable attention in the last decade

(e.g., Foti & Hauenstein, 2007; Hoffman, Woehr, Maldagen-Youngjohn, & Lyons, 2011; Judge, Bono, Ilies, &

Gerhardt, 2002; Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009; Smith & Foti, 1998). In this work, we chose to focus on

leadership motives, which are context-specific leadership traits (Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Kark & Van Dijk, 2007;

Van Iddekinge, Ferris, & Heffner, 2009). The study of motives dates back to the 1970s, and much work has

examined such motives, in particular dominance and need for power, and linked them with outcomes such as

leadership emergence (e.g., Hoffman et al., 2011; Judge et al., 2002; Lord, De Vader, & Alliger, 1986). Although

these works laid the foundations for the study of leader motives, with the exception of a few studies (e.g., Anderson

& Kilduff, 2009), most research on leadership motives did not focus on the processes by which the motives of

potential leaders predict their emergence as leaders as well as their future leadership assignments (Zaccaro, 2007;

Zaccaro, Gulick, & Khare, 2008; Zaccaro, Kemp, & Bader, 2004).

The purpose of this study is to fill this void in the leader-trait literature by offering a theoretical model that

introduces mechanisms that explain how and under what conditions leadership motives will predict informal

and formal leadership emergence. In line with traditional work on motives (e.g., Vroom, 1960), we suggest that

*Correspondence to: Gil Luria, Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences, Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.

E-mail: gluria@univ.haifa.ac.il

†

Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this manuscript.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 27 July 2011

Revised 09 September 2012, Accepted 24 September 2012

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 995–1015 (2013)

Published online 10 October 2012 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1836

Research Article

leadership motives interact with cognitive ability to predict leadership outcomes. We draw on socioanalytic theory

(e.g., Hogan & Holland, 2003) to argue that individuals who are highly motivated to lead will seek to influence

others by demonstrating behaviors that promote their status as leaders. We examine in a moderated mediation model

whether the interaction of leadership motives and cognitive ability will predict leadership emergence through

teamwork behaviors (i.e., behaviors associated with cooperating with teammates; Stevens & Campion, 1994), while

taking into consideration the role of task competence as another potential mediator.

In order to address our research goals, we conducted two field studies by using independent sources of raters and

methods in which we examined leadership motives by using a relatively new construct of motivation to lead (MTL;

Chan & Drasgow, 2001). As we specify later, the MTL integrates some of the traditional components of leadership

motives (i.e., dominance) with the more recently introduced social-normative and non-calculative motivations

(Chan, Rounds, & Drasgow, 2000).

Leadership traits and motives

Trait theories of leadership argue that leadership depends on the personal qualities of leaders (Judge et al., 2002;

Stogdill, 1948; Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991). Despite ebbs and flows in the study of leadership traits, research

on traits has been prominent throughout the history of leadership research (Zaccaro, 2007). Following the

introduction of the Five Factor Model of Personality (Goldberg, 1990), there has been a resurgence of interest in

associating personality traits with leadership outcomes (e.g., Judge et al., 2002; Zaccaro, 2007). In particular, three

meta-analyses (Hoffman et al., 2011; Judge et al., 2002; Lord et al., 1986) found links between general and specific

personality dimensions, and leader emergence and effectiveness (Judge et al., 2002).

With some variations, the results of these meta-analyses suggest that extraversion and in particular the facets of

self-confidence, dominance, and sociability were the strongest predictors of leadership emergence. The results of

the analysis of Judge et al. (2002) indicated that with respect to extraversion, “measures of dominance and

sociability better predicted leadership than did overall measures of Extraversion”(p. 774). Hoffman et al. (2011) also

found that energy, self-confidence, and dominance were “narrow conceptualizations of individual differences that

are more closely matched to the criterion domain (and thus) should engender the strongest relationship (with

leadership outcomes)”(p. 20). Overall, the meta-analytic findings and reviews point to a family of related predictors

of leadership emergence that are “conceptually similar constructs under different labels”(Hoffman et al., 2011,

p. 21), such as dominance and need for power.

Dominance, regarded by abundant research as a strong predictor of leadership, is defined as “the tendency to

behave in assertive, forceful, self-assured ways”(Anderson & Kilduff, 2009, p. 491). Dominant individuals tend

to be more active in groups, speak assertively, and make direct eye contact (e.g., Aries, Gold, & Weigel, 1983).

Research on dominance associated it, among other things, with influencing group members in experimental and field

settings as well as with employee occupational advancement (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; Harms, Roberts, & Wood,

2007; Hogan, Rybicki, & Borman, 1998). In a study of a military sample, dominance was found to distinguish

between leaders and non-leaders (Rueb, Erskine, & Foti, 2008).

Related to the trait of dominance are motives that reflect individuals’needs to influence and achieve, in particular

the need for power (e.g., McClelland, 1975). Scholars (e.g., McAdams & Olson, 2010) view motives as

particularized and contextualized personality dimensions that link with behaviors better than general personality

dimensions. Motives reflect choices and plans which individuals make that are consistent with their identity and

needs. For example, McClelland (1975) offered three basic needs of individuals, represented in the motives for

achievement, power, and intimacy (Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen, & Duncan, 1998). Although all of these

motives have been linked with leadership outcomes, the need for power, defined as “the desire to have an

impact...to be strong and influential”(McClelland & Burnham, 2003, p. 120), was the strongest predictor.

Despite their predictive power, both dominance and the need for power tend to underspecify important aspects of

leader motives. For example, Anderson and Kilduff (2009) noted that “trait dominance is unrelated to many of the

996 G. LURIA AND Y. BERSON

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 34, 995–1015 (2013)

DOI: 10.1002/job