How To Achieve Leadership Emergence?the Hard And Easy Pathways To Leadership Emergence

Leadership emergence refers to the degree to which an individual with no formal status or authority is perceived by one or more team members as exhibiting leaderlike influence.As a form of informal leadership,leadership emergence has become a much-discussed topic of interest in recent years in the field of organizational management research due to its significance in enabling organizations to adjust to the ever-changing competitive environment and gaining a lasting competitive edge.Prior research into the antecedents of leadership emergence,such as traits,behaviors,and contexts,has yielded relatively fruitful results.However,there is still a lack of a clear and systematic answer to the core research question of how individuals emerge as leaders.The reasons are threefold.First,previous research has failed to adequately address the distinction between distal and proximal antecedents of leadership emergence,making it difficult to identify the critical predictors of leadership emergence.Existing studies have discussed the impact of distal(e.g.,individual traits),semi-distal(e.g.,motivation to lead)and proximal(e.g.,behaviors)factors on leadership emergence in isolation,without exploring the potential influence of distal or semi-distal factors on leadership emergence through proximal factors.Although motivation to lead has been identified as a predictor of leadership emergence,existing studies have only examined the direct relationship between the two,without exploring the behavioral mechanisms and boundary conditions of this relationship.Second,previous research has only broadly explored the impact of behavior on leadership emergence,without focusing on the impact of performance,a behavior that is consistent with expected organizational values,thus creating a vague association between performance and leadership emergence.Performance denotes individuals’ contribution to their team,and thus has a substantial influence on their status in the teams.This influence is gradually intensified with the growing intensity of interpersonal cooperation;however,it has not been taken into account in earlier studies.Third,previous research has mainly concentrated on the impact of non-political behaviors on leadership emergence,rather than political behaviors such as impression management,resulting in a partial comprehension of the behavioral antecedents of leadership emergence.Although scholars are beginning to recognize the importance of impression management in leadership emergence,the discussion about this relationship is still in its infancy.Therefore,the question of what behavior can serve as a transmission mechanism that passes the influence of motivation to lead to leadership emergence remains an important issue to be addressed.This thesis develops a theoretical framework based on implicit leadership theory,with the aim of more systematically examining the behavioral mechanisms and boundary conditions of the relationship between motivation to lead to lead and leadership emergence relationship.The framework views motivation to lead as an employee’s self-concept,behavioral mechanisms as an employee’s leader identity claiming behaviors,and leadership emergence as the result of peers’ leader identity granting behavior.This thesis conducted two sub-studies based on this framework to explore two research questions:(1)what behavioral strategies do individuals choose to achieve leadership emergence in response to motivation to lead and which of these behavioral strategies significantly influence their leadership emergence,i.e.,the indirect relationship between motivation to lead and leadership emergence and its mechanisms;and(2)under what conditions does motivation to lead motivate individuals to make specific behavioral choices to achieve leadership emergence and when do these specific behaviors significantly influence leadership emergence,i.e.,the boundary conditions of this indirect relationship.The main contents of the two sub-studies include: Study one investigated the hard pathway of leadership emergence,i.e.,the influence of motivation to lead on leadership emergence through “doing good”(in-role performance,creative performance)and “being good”(organizational citizenship behavior),and the moderating role of employees’ construal level in this indirect relationship.Study two examined the easy pathway of leadership emergence,i.e.,the influence of motivation to lead on leadership emergence through“showing strength”(self-promotion,intimidation)and “showing weakness”(ingratiation,exemplification,supplication),and the moderating role of employees’ political skill in this indirect relationship.Both of the two sub-studies employed a questionnaire survey method with multiple waves and multiple sources(self-report,supervisor-report,peer-report)to collect field sample data from various industries and test the research hypotheses.In Study one,a total of 1,220 valid questionnaires were collected,including 251 self-report,251 supervisor-report,and 718peer-report questionnaires.In Study two,1,243 valid questionnaires were collected,including305 self-report and 938 peer-report questionnaires.By analyzing the data,this thesis has drawn the following conclusions:(1)Individuals with strong motivation to lead would opt for the “showing strength”(self-promotion,intimidation)and “showing weakness”(ingratiation,exemplification,supplication)strategies of the “easy” pathway to attain leadership emergence rather than opting for the “hard” pathway.(2)For the three behavioral choices of the “hard” pathway,creative performance and organizational citizenship behavior can exert a significantly positive impact on leadership emergence,with creative performance having a more influential impact than organizational citizenship behavior.In-role performance,however,is not significantly related to leadership emergence.(3)For the five impression management behavioral choices of the easy pathway,no behaviors have a significant impact on leadership emergence.(4)Construal level moderates the relationship between motivation to lead and creative performance,as well as the relationship between motivation to lead and organizational citizenship behavior such that for employees with higher construal level,the link between motivation to lead and creative performance is positive;for employees with lower construal level,the link between motivation to lead and organizational citizenship behaviors is negative.Nonetheless,its moderating role in the relationship between motivation to lead and in-role performance is not significant.(5)Construal level significantly moderates the indirect relationship between motivation to lead and leadership emergence via creative performance such that for employees with higher construal level,the positive indirect relationship is significantly positive;for those with lower construal level,this indirect relationship is not significant.(6)Political skill significantly moderates the relationship between self-promotion and leadership emergence such that for employees with higher political skill,self-promotion exerts a positive impact on leadership emergence;for those with extremely low political skill,self-promotion exerts a negative impact on leadership emergence.(7)Political skill significantly moderate indirect relationship between motivation to lead and leadership emergence via self-promotion such that for employees with higher political skill,the positive indirect relationship is stronger;for those with lower political skill,this indirect relationship is not significant.This thesis explores the impact of two distinct behavioral pathways,driven by motivation to lead,on leadership emergence in the Chinese cultural context.These pathways include the hard pathway of “doing good” and “being good” and the easy pathway of “showing strength”and “showing weakness”.It has important theoretical implications as follows:First,this thesis delves into the behavioral mechanism of the relationship between motivation to lead and leadership emergence,an important topic that has been discussed but not extensively explored.By combining motivation theory with leadership theory and distinguishing the semi-distal and proximal antecedents of leadership emergence,this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the influential factors of individual leadership emergence and uncovers the black box of the relationship between motivation to lead and leadership emergence.Second,this thesis draws on implicit leadership theory to examine the impact of individual’s motivation to lead on their behavioral choices and their subsequent leadership emergence,highlighting the unique value of the individual’s self-concept(motivation to lead)in the process of leadership emergence.This enlarges the application of implicit leadership theory and provides a novel outlook on the behavioral logic of leadership emergence.Third,the thesis constructs a dual behavioral path model based on the Chinese cultural context,which reveals the influence of different behavioral paths on leadership emergence in a more systematic way.It rectifies the inadequacies of existing studies that have been mainly conducted in Western contexts,emphasizing behavior rather than performance,and non-political behaviors rather than political behaviors.Besides,it is expected to promote the study of behavioral influences on leadership emergence in terms of breadth and depth.This thesis also has far-reaching practical implications for both individuals and organizations.For individuals,the findings not only help to decipher the individual career advancement process in the Chinese organizational context,but also provide aspiring individuals with practical behavioral strategies to achieve leadership emergence.For organizations,these findings may assist organizations in improving their talent selection and employment processes,creating an environment where capable individuals are in positions that allow them to maximize their talents,while preventing the appointment of individuals who are unworthy of their positions.