How authentic leadership influences team performance:the mediating role of team reflexivity

This study examines how authentic leadership influences team performance via the mediating mechanism of team reflexivity. Adopting a self-regulatory perspective, we propose that authentic leadership will predict the specific team regulatory process of reflexivity, which in turn will be associated with two outcomes of team performance; effectiveness and productivity. Using survey data from 53 teams in three organizations in the United Kingdom and Greece and controlling for collective trust, we found support for our stated hypotheses with the results indicating a significant fully mediated relationship. As predicted the self-regulatory behaviors inherent in the process of authentic leadership served to collectively shape team behavior, manifesting in the process of team reflexivity, which, in turn, positively predicted team performance. We conclude with a discussion of how this study extends theoretical understanding of authentic leadership in relation to teamwork and delineate several practical implications for leaders and organizations

Response rates in organizational science, 1995-2008: A meta-analytic review and guidelines for survey researchers

This study expands upon existing knowledge of response rates by conducting a large-scale quantitative review of published response rates. This allowed a fine-grained comparison of response rates across respondent groups. Other unique features of this study are the analysis of response enhancing techniques across respondent groups and response rate trends over time. In order to aid researchers in designing surveys, we provide expected response rate percentiles for different survey modalities. We analyzed 2,037 surveys, covering 1,251,651 individual respondents, published in 12 journals in I/O Psychology, Management, and Marketing during the period 1995-2008. Expected response rate levels were summarized for different types of respondents and use of response enhancing techniques was coded for each study. First, differences in mean response rate were found across respondent types with the lowest response rates reported for executive respondents and the highest for non-working respondents and non-managerial employees. Second, moderator analyses suggested that the effectiveness of response enhancing techniques was dependent on type of respondents. Evidence for differential prediction across respondent type was found for incentives, salience, identification numbers, sponsorship, and administration mode. When controlling for increased use of response enhancing techniques, a small decline in response rates over time was found. Our findings suggest that existing guidelines for designing effective survey research may not always offer the most accurate information available. Survey researchers should be aware that they may obtain lower/higher response rates depending on the respondent type surveyed and that some response enhancing techniques may be less/more effective in specific samples. This study, analyzing the largest set of published response rates to date, offers the first evidence for different response rates and differential functioning of response enhancing techniques across respondent types

Women leaders in the political field in Scotland:A socio-historical approach to the emergence of leaders

Drawing on a contextualised case, we present a specific approach to leadership studies that brings together history, sociology and politics. We start with the following event. In August 2015, the election of Kezia Dugdale as leader of the Labour Party meant that, for the first time the leaders of the three main political parties in the Scottish Parliament were women. We approach the study of this significant leadership event, first, through a critique of aspects of leadership studies as a field. We next consider the potential for socio-historical approaches in understanding this event. Then, as a contextualised example of this alternative approach to studying leadership, we apply Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts – in particular the political field – in order to historicise the conditions of possibility of this event. Finally, we consider issues of power and gender in relation to how the leaders position themselves in relation to their parties and to each other within the political field. In so doing, we contribute to critical leadership studies by developing and demonstrating a socio-historical approach that can help us to identify processes of organisation and change in relation to the emergence of leaders