How earlobes can signify leadership potential

Evolutionary biologists have learned that people with greater “genetic fitness,” as manifested by a high degree of left-right body symmetry, are not just considered better looking but also tend to be healthier, more intelligent, and more dominant than others. They’re the classic alphas who rise to the top of rigidly hierarchical organizations such as the military. But our research shows that people with subtle asymmetries—for example, imbalances in ear or finger length—are often better “transformational” leaders, able to inspire followers to put self-interest aside for the good of the group. Furthermore, teams they lead outperform teams whose leaders have more-symmetrical bodies. These findings add a new twist to the debate about whether effective leaders are born or made. We believe it’s not asymmetry per se that positions people to be good transformational leaders. Instead, we argue, these individuals’ childhood responses to others’ perceptions shape them for success.

Imagined relationships: political leadership in contemporary democracies

The image and style of political leaders are important elements of leadership, and of politics generally. They are related to both political culture and institutions, and are framed in ritual and ceremony. In democratic policies, where there is choice rather than coercion, the mediation of leadership/people relations creates imagined relationships between imagined leaders and their equally imagined interlocutors, the people or the electorate (who also, of course, actually exist). These relationships form part of the political process. By identifying, and adapting, classical Aristotelian distinctions in rhetorical studies, we can better understand this element or moment of the process, in particular the creation of an imagined intimacy in contemporary politics between leaders and followers. Political science should draw upon other disciplines and subdisciplines such as political psychology, cultural studies, rhetorical analysis, and social anthropology in order to understand how mediated relationships are inscribed into political institutions and exchange.

The role of self-regulation as a meta-competency in developing leaders: a longitudinal field experimental study

The question of how to develop leaders so that they are more effective in a variety of situations, roles and levels has inspired a voluminous amount of research. While leader development programs such as executive coaching and 360-degree feedback have been widely practiced to meet this demand within organisations, the research in this area has only scratched the surface. Drawing from the past literature and leadership practices, the current research conceptualised self-regulation, as a metacompetency that would assist leaders to further develop the specific competencies needed to perform effectively in their leadership role, leading to an increased rating of leader effectiveness and to enhanced group performance. To test this conceptualisation, a longitudinal field experimental study was conducted across ten months with a pre- and two post-test intervention designs with a matched control group. This longitudinal field experimental compared the difference in leader and team performance after receiving self-regulation intervention that was delivered by an executive coach. Leaders in experimental group also received feedback reports from 360-degree feedback at each stage. Participants were 40 leaders, 155 followers and 8 supervisors. Leaders’ performance was measured using a multi-source perceptual measure of leader performance and objective measures of team financial and assessment performance. Analyses using repeated measure of ANCOVA on pre-test and two post-tests responses showed a significant difference between leader and team performance between experimental and control group. Furthermore, leader competencies mediated the relationship between self-regulation and performance. The implications of these findings for the theory and practice of leadership development training programs and the impact on organisational performance are discussed.

Le prix de l'individualité. Maine de Brian, Samuel Taylor Coleridge et la volonté: Deux postétités distinctes

This thesis is concerned with Maine de Biran’s and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s conceptions of will, and the way in which both thinkers’ posterities have been affected by the central role of these very conceptions in their respective bodies of thought. The research question that animates this work can therefore be divided into two main parts, one of which deals with will, while the other deals with its effects on posterity. In the first pages of the Introduction, I make the case for a comparison between two philosophers, and show how this comparison can bring one closer to truth, understood not in objective, but in subjective terms. I then justify my choice by underlining that, in spite of their many differences, Maine de Biran and Samuel Taylor Coleridge followed comparable paths, intellectually and spiritually, and came to similar conclusions concerning the essential activity of the human mind. Finally, I ask whether it is possible that this very focus on the human will may have contributed to the state of both thinkers’ works and of the reception of those works. This prologue is followed by five parts. In the first part, the similarities and differences between the two thinkers are explored further. In the second part, the connections between philosophy and singularity are examined, in order to show the ambivalence of the will as a foundation for truth. The third part is dedicated to the traditional division between subject and object in psychology, and its relevance in history and in moral philosophy. The fourth part tackles the complexity of the question of influence, with respect to both Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s cases, both thinkers being indebted to many philosophers of all times and places, and having to rely heavily on others for the publication, or the interpretation of their own works. The fifth part is concerned with the different aspects of the faculty of will, and primarily its relationship with interiority, as incommensurability, and actual, conditioned existence in a certain historical and spatial context. It ends with a return to the question of will and posterity and an announcement of what will be covered in the main body of the thesis. The main body is divided into three parts:‘L’émancipation’, ‘L’affirmation, and ‘La projection’. The first part is devoted to the way Maine de Biran and Samuel Taylor Coleridge extricated themselves from one epistemological paradigm to contribute to the foundation of another. It is divided in four chapters. The first chapter deals with the aforementioned change of paradigm, as corresponding to the emergence of two separate but associated movements, Romanticism and what the French philosopher refers to as ‘The Age of History’. The second chapter concerns the movement that preceded them, i.e. the Enlightenment, its main features according to both of our thinkers, and the two epistemological models that prevailed under it and influenced them heavily in their early years: Sensationism (Maine de Biran) and Associationism (Coleridge). The third chapter is about the probable influence of Immanuel Kant and his followers on Maine de Biran and Coleridge, and the various facts that allow us to claim originality for both thinkers’ works. In the fourth chapter, I contrast Maine de Biran and Coleridge with other movements and thinkers of their time, showing that, contrary to their respective thoughts, Maine de Biran and Coleridge could not but break free from the then prevailing systematic approach to truth. The second part of the thesis is concerned with the first part of its research question, namely, Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s conceptions of the will. It is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is a reflection on the will as a paradox: on the one hand, the will cannot be caused by any other phenomenon, or it is no longer a will; but it cannot be left purely undetermined, as if it is, it is then not different from chance. It thus needs, in order to be, to be contradictorily already moral. The second chapter is a comparison between Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s accounts of the origin of the will, where it is found that the French philosopher only observes that he has a will, whereas the English philosopher postulates the existence of this will. The comparison between Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s conceptions of the will is pursued in the third chapter, which tackles the question of the coincidence between the will and the self, in both thinkers’ works. It ends with the fourth chapter, which deals with the question of the relationship between the will and what is other to it, i.e. bodily sensations, passions and desires. The third part of the thesis focuses on the second part of its research question, namely the posterity of Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s works. It is divided into four chapters. The first chapter constitutes a continuation of the last chapter of the preceding part, in that that it deals with Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s relations to the ‘other’, and particularly their potential and actual audience, and with the way these relations may have affected their writing and publishing practices. The second chapter is a survey of both thinkers’ general reception, where it is found that, while Maine de Biran has been claimed by two important movements of thoughts as their initiator, Coleridge has been neglected by the only real movement he could have, or may indeed have pioneered. The third chapter is more directly concerned with the posterities of Maine de Biran’s and Coleridge’s conceptions of will, and attempts to show that the approach to, and the meaning of the will have evolved throughout the nineteenth century, and in the French Spiritualist and the British Idealist movements, from an essentially personal one to a more impersonal one. The fourth chapter is a partial conclusion, whose aim is to give a precise idea of where Maine de Biran and Coleridge stand, in relation to their century and to the philosophical movements and matters we are concerned with. The conclusion is a recapitulation of what has been found, with a particular emphasis on the dialogue initiated between Maine de Biran and Coleridge on the will, and the relation between will and posterity. It suggests that both thinkers have to pay the price of a problematic reception for the individuality that pervades their respective works, and goes further in suggesting that s/he who chooses to found his individuality on the will is bound to feel this incompleteness in his/her own personal life more acutely than s/he who does not. It ends with a reflection on fixedness and movement, as the two antagonistic states that the theoretician of the will paradoxically aspires to.

A multilevel investigation of the mediating role of trust in the relationships between leadership and follower outcomes

The following research project investigated the mediating effects of individual trust in the relationships between eight leadership dimensions and follower motivation and efficacy. The research comprised of a total of three studies of which two are individual level analyses investigating the above relationship for individual followers, while the final study established the relationship between the eight dimensions and collective efficacy and group cohesion. A new measure of trust — collective vertical trust — was developed and tested and formed the mediator for the final study. The findings showed that leadership is indeed mediated through trust on both individual and collective level in the majority of relationships. In addition it was shown that individual and collective vertical trust are significantly related. Finally, the final study showed an absence of a significant relationship between trust on both the individual and collective level and organizational performance. The findings contributed to existing research in various ways: 1) the mediating effect of individual trust was established for eight separate leadership dimensions; 2) the studies established that while the indirect effects of leadership on follower motivation are similar amongst all age groups and levels of work experience, more work experienced individuals draw their beliefs in their abilities (i.e., self-efficacy) from alternative sources than leadership or trust in the leader; 3) a new measure of collective trust —collective vertical trust was established; 4) the mediating effect of collective trust was shown to be crucial in leadership effects on collective efficacy and group cohesion; and finally 5) a leadership measure initially designed for executive leaders was refined and tested for non-executive leaders.

Expatriate managers adjustment and its impact on subordinates reactions: a cross cultural leadership study of Kenya and Ethiopia

Research on culture, leadership and adjustment shows that societal culture influences leadership in such a way that it can impact on expatriate managers' effectiveness and adjustment in a new culture. In previous research, cultural background, personality, motives or behaviour of expatriate managers and their followers' reactions to them have been investigated in Europe, America and Asia. However, little attention has been paid on research on expatriate managers in African cultures especially in Eastern Africa. The present study represents an attempt to address the gap by examining how societal culture, leadership and adjustment success are interrelated for expatriate managers in Kenya and Ethiopia. Questionnaire data were obtained from a) local middle managers (N=160) for studying societal culture and leadership in Kenya and Ethiopia, b) expatriate managers in non-governmental organizations - NGOs (N=28) for studying expatriate managers' personality, motives and adjustment success and c) their immediate subordinates (N=125) for studying the expatriate managers' behaviours and their subordinates' reactions to them. Additionally, expatriate managers were interviewed and responses were coded for implicit motives, experiences and adjustment. SPSS was used to analyse data from questionnaires to obtain cultural and leadership dimensions, leader behaviour and subordinate reactions. The NVIVO computer based disclosure analysis package was used to analyse interview data. Findings indicate that societal culture influences leadership behaviours and leadership perceptions while the expatriate managers' motives, behaviours, personality and the cross cultural training they received prior to their assignment impact on the expatriates' adjustment success and on subordinates' reactions to them. The cultural fit between expatriate managers' home country (19 countries) and the target country (Kenya or Ethiopia) had no significant association with adjustment success but was positively related to expatriate behaviour and negatively associated with subordinates reactions. However, some particular societal practices - obviously adopted by expatriates and transferred to their target country - did predict subordinates' commitment, motivation and job satisfaction. Furthermore, expatriates' responsibility motivation was positively related to their adjustment success. Regarding leadership behaviours and effectiveness, expatriate' supportive behaviours predicted subordinates' job satisfaction most strongly. Expatriate managers expressing their management philosophies and experience shed light on the various aspects of adjustment and management of NGOs. In addition, review of Kenyan and Ethiopian cultures and the NGO context in these countries offers valuable information for expatriate managers. This study's general imphcation for Cross Cultural Management and lnternational Human Resources Management is that the combination of culture general and culture specific knowledge and reflections on Eastern Africa countries can inform senior management and international HR staff about the critical issue of what to include in training, coaching, and actual experience in a particular host country in order to ensure effective leadership. Furthennore, this knowledge is expected to influence expatriate managers' behaviour modification to enhance positive subordinate reactions. Questions about how to prepare expatriate managers and subordinates to work more competently and sensitively across cultures are addressed. Further theoretical implications, limitations of the study and directions for future research are also addressed.

Leadership in American Evangelical churches:an explanatory theory

DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION AT ASTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES WITH PRIOR ARRANGEMENT This study is about leadership in American Evangelical Churches, which as a sub-set of American Christianity, are growing, while American Christianity as a whole is in decline. As a result evangelicalism is quickly becoming the dominate iteration of American Christianity. It is anecdotal that well led churches grow while poorly led churches do not, yet no one has identified what leadership, in the evangelical church context, is. Researchers have investigated a number of aspects of church leadership (much of it without identifying whether or not the churches under investigation were evangelical or not) but no one has put forth a unified theory linking these aspects together. The purpose of this research is to address that gap and develop a theory that explains how evangelicals view leadership in their local churches. In this study of three churches, dissimilar in size and governance, a purely qualitative approach to data collection and analysis was employed. The study involved 60 interviews that sought points-of-view from top and mid-level leadership along with congregant followers. The study borrowed heavily from Glaser and Strauss (1967) Grounded Theory approach to data analysis. The results developed a theory which provides a unified explanation of how leadership actually works in the three evangelical churches. Several implications for practice are discussed as to the theory's usefulness as a method of leadership education and evaluation. An original discovery was found that an individual's incumbency within the organization was identified as a social power. Limitations to this research are the limitations generally imputed to purely qualitative research in that questions are raised about the theory's applicability to evangelical churches beyond the three studied. The suggestions for further research involve addressing those limitations

Measurement of implicit leadership theories and their effect on leadership processes and outcomes

The leadership categorisation theory suggests that followers rely on a hierarchical cognitive structure in perceiving leaders and the leadership process, which consists of three levels; superordinate, basic and subordinate. The predominant view is that followers rely on Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) at the basic level in making judgments about managers. The thesis examines whether this presumption is true by proposing and testing two competing conceptualisations; namely the congruence between the basic level ILTs (general leader) and actual manager perceptions, and subordinate level ILTs (job-specific leader) and actual manager. The conceptualisation at the job-specific level builds on context-related assertions of the ILT explanatory models: leadership categorisation, information processing and connectionist network theories. Further, the thesis addresses the effects of ILT congruence at the group level. The hypothesised model suggests that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) will act as a mediator between ILT congruence and outcomes. Three studies examined the proposed model. The first was cross-sectional with 175 students reporting on work experience during a 1-year industrial placement. The second was longitudinal and had a sample of 343 students engaging in a business simulation in groups with formal leadership. The final study was a cross-sectional survey in several organisations with a sample of 178. A novel approach was taken to congruence analysis; the hypothesised models were tested using Latent Congruence Modelling (LCM), which accounts for measurement error and overcomes the majority of limitations of traditional approaches. The first two studies confirm the traditional theorised view that employees rely on basic-level ILTs in making judgments about their managers with important implications, and show that LMX mediates the relationship between ILT congruence and work-related outcomes (performance, job satisfaction, well-being, task satisfaction, intragroup conflict, group satisfaction, team realness, team-member exchange, group performance). The third study confirms this with conflict, well-being, self-rated performance and commitment as outcomes.

Do left and right asymmetries of hemispheric preference interact with attention to predict local and global performance in applied tasks?

Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes. © 2012 Copyright Psychology Press Ltd.

The effects of transformational leadership behaviours on follower outcomes:an identity-based analysis

The aim of this study was to explore two of the mechanisms by which transformational leaders have a positive influence on followers. It examined the mediating role of follower's leader and group identification on the associations among different transformational leader behaviours and follower job satisfaction and supervisor-rated job performance. One hundred and seventy-nine healthcare employees and 44 supervisors participated in the study. The results from multilevel structural equation modelling provided results that partially supported the predicted model. Identification with the leader significantly mediated the positive associations between supportive leadership, intellectual stimulation, personal recognition, in the prediction of job satisfaction and job performance. Leader identification also mediated the relationship between supportive leadership, intellectual stimulation, personal recognition, and group identification. However, group identification did not mediate the associations between vision leadership and inspirational communication, in the prediction of job satisfaction and job performance. The results highlight the role of individualized forms of leadership and leader identification in enhancing follower outcomes.

Feature analysis of spammers in social networks with active honeypots:a case study of Chinese microblogging networks

In this poster we presented our preliminary work on the study of spammer detection and analysis with 50 active honeypot profiles implemented on Weibo.com and QQ.com microblogging networks. We picked out spammers from legitimate users by manually checking every captured user's microblogs content. We built a spammer dataset for each social network community using these spammer accounts and a legitimate user dataset as well. We analyzed several features of the two user classes and made a comparison on these features, which were found to be useful to distinguish spammers from legitimate users. The followings are several initial observations from our analysis on the features of spammers captured on Weibo.com and QQ.com. ¦The following/follower ratio of spammers is usually higher than legitimate users. They tend to follow a large amount of users in order to gain popularity but always have relatively few followers. ¦There exists a big gap between the average numbers of microblogs posted per day from these two classes. On Weibo.com, spammers post quite a lot microblogs every day, which is much more than legitimate users do; while on QQ.com spammers post far less microblogs than legitimate users. This is mainly due to the different strategies taken by spammers on these two platforms. ¦More spammers choose a cautious spam posting pattern. They mix spam microblogs with ordinary ones so that they can avoid the anti-spam mechanisms taken by the service providers. ¦Aggressive spammers are more likely to be detected so they tend to have a shorter life while cautious spammers can live much longer and have a deeper influence on the network. The latter kind of spammers may become the trend of social network spammer. © 2012 IEEE.

Embodying who we are:leader group prototypicality and leadership effectiveness

Leadership is a process enacted in the context of a shared group membership, and leadership effectiveness is contingent on followers' perceptions of the leader as a group member. Addressing this role of group membership, the social identity theory of leadership puts leader group prototypicality, the extent to which the leader is perceived to embody group identity, center-stage in leadership effectiveness. I review empirical research in leader group prototypicality, concluding there is a robust empirical basis for the key propositions of the social identity theory of leadership. I also identify newer developments that extend and enrich the social identity analysis of leadership, including attention to the roles of uncertainty, leader fairness, leader–follower relationship, leader self-perceived prototypicality, and leadership of creativity and innovation.

The role of self-regulation in developing leaders:a longitudinal field experiment

A longitudinal field experiment examined a leader self-regulation intervention in teams engaged in a Business Strategy Module (BSM) of a University course. The BSM, which is an integral part of the degree programme, involved teams of four or five individuals, under the direction of a leader, working on a (simulated) car manufacturing task over a period of 24. weeks. Various aspects of team performance contributed towards module assessment. All leaders received multi-source feedback of leader task-relevant capabilities (from the leader, followers and module tutor). Leaders were randomly allocated into a self-regulation intervention (15 leaders, 46 followers) or control (25 leaders, 109 followers) conditions. The intervention, which was run by an independent coach, was designed to improve leaders' use of self-regulatory processes to aid the development of task-relevant leadership competencies. Survey data was collected from the leaders and followers (on three occasions: pre- and two post-test intervention), team financial performance (three occasions: post-test) and a final team report (post-test). The leader self-regulation intervention led to increased followers' ratings of leader's effectiveness, higher team financial performance and higher final team grade compared to the control (non-intervention) condition. Furthermore, the benefits of the self-regulation intervention were mediated by leaders' attaining task-relevant competencies. © 2013.

Trust in leader-follower relationships:how and when trust building enhances dyadic and organisational outcomes

Guided by theory in both the trust and leadership domains, the overarching aim of this thesis was to answer a fundamental question. Namely, how and when does trust-building between leaders and followers enhance leader-member exchange (LMX) development and organisational trust? Although trust is considered to be at the crux of the leader-follower relationship, surprisingly little theoretical or empirical attention has been devoted to understanding the precise nature of this relationship. By integrating both a typology of trustworthy behaviour and a process model of trust development with LMX theory, study one developed and tested a new model of LMX development with leader-follower trust-building as the primary mechanism. In a three wave cross-lagged design, 294 student dyads in a business simulation completed measures of trust perceptions and LMX across the first 6 months of the LMX relationship. Trust-building was found to account for unexplained variance in the LMX construct over time, while controlling for initial relationship quality, thus confirming the critical role of the trust-building process in LMX development. The strongest evidence was found for the role of integrity-based trust-building behaviour, albeit only when such behaviour was not attributed to insincere motives. The results for ability and benevolence-based trustworthy behaviour revealed valued insights into the developmental nature of trustworthiness perceptions within LMX relationships. Thus, the pattern of results in study one provided a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the dynamic interplay between trust and LMX. In study two, leader trust-building was investigated cross-sectionally within an organisational sample of 201 employees. The central aim of this study was to investigate whether leader trust-building within leader-follower relationships could be leveraged for organisational trust. As expected, the trust-building process instigated by members in study one was replicated for leaders in study two. In addition, the results were most consistent for benevolence-based trust building, whereas both integrity- and ability-based trust-building were moderated by the position of the leader within the organisation’s hierarchy. Overall, the findings of this thesis shed considerable light on the richness of trusting perceptions in organisations, and the critical role of trust-building in LMX development and organisational trust.