Informal Leadership Status and Individual Performance: The Roles of Political Skill and Political Will
Abstract
Informal leadership has been a topic of growing interest in recent years, with the recognition that much remains to be known about this phenomenon. In the present study, an integrative social–political conceptualization of informal leadership is proposed and tested. The research question was tested through individual self-report survey questions, a network-based consensus informal leadership measure whereby each employee identified informal leaders in their network, and individual performance provided by the organization. Specifically, the mediated moderation test demonstrated that employees high in political will, as operationalized by power motivation, were more likely to be collectively recognized as informal leaders than those low in political will, and the performance of these informal leaders was found to be contingent on their political skill. By capturing informal leadership using a consensus measure, the results of this study provide a first look at informal leadership in an organizational setting, not team or group. Furthermore, the current research offers a social network—political conceptualization of informal leadership in organizations that contributes to theory, research, and practice.
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Biographies
Brooke A. Shaughnessy is an assistant professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in the Institute for Leadership and Organization, Munich, Germany. She earned her PhD in management from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research investigates individual differences and diversity in leadership, negotiations, and organizational contexts. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Managerial Psychology, and European Journal of Social Psychology. She also has experience translating her research to practice with the media attention from her work on bullying as well as her more recent work on small talk in negotiations.
Darren C. Treadway is an associate professor of organization and human resources in the School of Management at the University at Buffalo where he is a research fellow in the Center for Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness. He received a PhD from Florida State University and an MBA from Virginia Tech. His research interests include social influence processes in organizations, with particular reference to organizational politics, political skill, leadership, and workplace toxicity. His research has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Relations.
Jacob W. Breland is an assistant professor of management and international business at the University of Southern Mississippi where he specializes in human resource and organizational behavior management. His research interests include organizational politics and power, organizational fit, and social networks, and his work has been published in such peer-reviewed outlets as Journal of Management, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, and Career Development International. He has also presented his research at Academy of Management, Southern Management Association, and Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology conferences.
Pamela L. Perrewé is the Haywood and Betty Taylor eminent scholar of business administration, professor of sport management, and distinguished research professor at Florida State University. She has focused her research interests in the areas of job stress, coping, organizational politics, and social influence. She has fellow status with the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and Southern Management Association. Furthermore, she is the lead editor of an annual series titled Research in Occupational Stress and Well-Being published by Emerald.
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Article first published online: August 6, 2016
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