Editorial on the Research Topic: What Is Wrong With Leader Emergence

Aycan, Z

Chan, KY

Ozbilgin, MF

Frontiers in Psychology

PubMed

Aycan, Zeynep

Ozbilgin, Mustafa F.

Chan, Kim Yin

PubMed Central

Editorial: What Is Wrong With Leader Emergence?

Brunel University Research Archive

EDITORIALpublished: 20 May 2022doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.884629Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 May 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 884629Edited and reviewed by:Peter Harms,University of Alabama, United States*Correspondence:Zeynep Aycanzaycan@ku.edu.trSpecialty section:This article was submitted toOrganizational Psychology,a section of the journalFrontiers in PsychologyReceived: 26 February 2022Accepted: 02 May 2022Published: 20 May 2022Citation:Aycan Z, Ozbilgin MF and Chan KY(2022) Editorial: What Is Wrong WithLeader Emergence?Front. Psychol. 13:884629.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.884629Editorial: What Is Wrong WithLeader Emergence?Zeynep Aycan 1,2*, Mustafa F. Ozbilgin 3 and Kim Yin Chan 41Department of Psychology, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey, 2 Faculty of Management, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey,3 Brunel Business School, Brunel University London, London, United Kingdom, 4Nanyang Business School, NanyangTechnological University, Singapore, SingaporeKeywords: emergence, effectiveness, agency, competence, leadershipEditorial on the Research TopicWhat Is WrongWith Leader Emergence?“Who tends to become leaders or assume leadership roles?” and “Are leaders born ormade?”—these questions drove research interest on leader emergence (LE) that began at a timeof Great Man theory when the assumption was that certain individuals were pre-destined to lead.These questions led to trait, behavioral, contingency, social-cognitive, relational and managementresearch on LE over the last century. Interest in LE continues today, driven by organizational needsfor managerial selection and real-world concerns for social change. Concerned with the rise ofauthoritarian leaders during WWII, Northway (1946) asked: “how do leaders emerge and moreespecially, how do the demagogues and charlatans, of whom we are now world weary, arise?” (p.190). Half a century later, Hogan et al. (1994) used LE research findings to explain “Why are there somany flawed leaders?” Today, researchers continue to explain why dominant, authoritarian leadersseem to attract follower support in times of uncertainty despite the presence of other respectable,“prestige” candidates (e.g., Kakkar and Sivanathan, 2017; see also, Harms et al., 2018). Samdanisand Özbilgin (2020) remind us that even atypical leaders are naively trusted to nominate successorswho would promote workforce diversity and workplace democracy.“What’s wrong with LE?” was our tongue-in-cheek recognition that the past century’s socialscientific journey focused on LE in social settings did in fact produce important insights thatchallenged the originating questions and their assumptions. Besides the 1980s realization thatleader emergence and leader effectiveness are two different criteria of leadership with differentlevels of measurement (cf. Lord et al., 1986), social psychological LE research (e.g., Hollander, 1961)also contributed to today’s basic understanding that “leadership is not only about the leader”, thatleadership concerns collective, shared and relational processes that are not solely dependent onindividual leader emergence or actions. Hanna et al. (2021) recently called formoremultilevel studyof leadership emergence in organizations to incorporate individual LE processes with the unit-leveldynamics and emergent states.Researchers like Acton et al. (2019) have raised concerns with the lack of conceptual andoperational clarity and the apparent incoherence of LE research, largely dominated by thequantitative correlational and experimental research traditions of scientific psychology. Whilesome studies operationalize LE via objective indicators like leadership role occupancy, others useproxies like nomination by others or ratings of “leaderlike-ness”. Studies also vary in the extent offormality-informality of leadership roles.Concerned with the context-free/blind nature of positivist psychological research, we wondered:What is the range of research interests on LE today? We were particularly interested in studiesexamining leadership emergence in real world social settings. We are thus delighted to curatenine papers for this Research Topic with a mix of conceptual and empirical papers (includingquantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods studies). In this Research Topic, Popper providesAycan et al. Editorial: Leader Emergenceevolutionary, psychodynamic and social psychologicalarguments for why leader emergence occurs naturally.Taking a more agentic approach to LE (cf. Aycan and Shelia,2019), Kennedy et al. show how motivations to lead mediate therelationship between the bright and dark personality traits andleadership intention. Auvinen et al. show the impact of leaders’motivation to lead on follower well being. Karakulak et al. exploregender differences in opt-out and push-out processes in LE fromthe lenses of emotions (i.e., worries about leading).Focusing on processes underlying LE, Chang et al. show howvalues-based leadership is unlikely to emerge if left to naturalprocesses or chance; they suggest mechanisms and boundaryconditions for values-based leadership to emerge. Samdanis andLee show how the processes of achievement and ascription canhelp us appreciate creative leader emergence in the social networkcontext of “Art Worlds”. Bracht et al. focus on social learningprocesses involved in individual leader development, which isone context in which LE occurs. Qualitative research by Myezaand April explains how the motivation NOT to lead amongBlack professionals in post-Apartheid South Africa is shapedby specific historical, societal, generational, inter-racial groupcontexts. Finally, Ozcan reminds us that leadership is socially-constructed and is not only about the leader’s traits and qualities;that cultural meanings/mental models of leadership shape thekind of leader-centered or collective leadership that emerges insocial organizations.Together, these papers echo many of the fundamentallessons learned from academic and practical interestin “why LE matters and what is wrong with it”. Theyremind us of the limitations of our conceptualizations,theoretical lenses, methodological approaches and de-contextualized treatment of issues in real world contexts.This Research Topic also inspires us to investigate thepathways to emergence of fine leaders and avoidance offlawed ones.AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSKC contributed to the writing of the editorial. ZA, MO, and KCcontributed equally to the idea generation and conceptualizationof the editorial. All authors contributed to the article andapproved the submitted version.REFERENCESActon, B. P., Foti, R. J., Lord, R. G., and Gladfelter, J. A. (2019). Putting emergenceback in leadership emergence: a dynamic, multilevel, process-orientedframework. Leadership Q. 30, 145–164. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.002Aycan, Z., and Shelia, S. (2019). “Leadership? no, thanks!” a new construct: worriesabout leadership. Eur. Manage. Rev. 16, 21–35. doi: 10.1111/emre.12322Hanna, A. A., Smith, T. A., Kirkman, B. L., and Griffin, R. W. (2021). Theemergence of emergent leadership: a comprehensive framework and directionsfor future research. J. Manage. 47, 76–104. doi: 10.1177/0149206320965683Harms, P. D., Wood, D., Landay, K., Lester, P., and Vogelgesang-Lester, G. (2018).Autocratic leaders and authoritarian followers revisited: a review and agendafor the future. Leadership Q. 29, 105–122. doi: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.12.007Hogan, R., Curphy, G. J., and Hogan, J. (1994). What we know aboutleadership: effectiveness and personality. Am. Psychol. 49, 493.doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.49.6.493Hollander, E. P. (1961). “Emergent leadership and social influence,” in Leadershipand Interpersonal Behavior, eds L. Petrullo and B. M. Bass (New York: Holt,Rinehart & Winston), 30–47.Kakkar, H., and Sivanathan, N. (2017). When the appeal of a dominant leaderis greater than a prestige leader. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 114, 6734–6739.doi: 10.1073/pnas.1617711114Lord, R. G., De Vader, C. L., and Alliger, G. M. (1986). A meta-analysisof the relation between personality traits and leadership perceptions: anapplication of validity generalization procedures. J. Appl. Psychol. 71, 402.doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.71.3.402Northway, M. (1946). Sociometry and some challenging problemsof social relationships. Sociometry 9, 187–198. doi: 10.2307/2785004Samdanis, M., and Özbilgin, M. (2020). The duality of an atypical leader indiversity management: the legitimization and delegitimization of diversitybeliefs in organizations. Int. J. Manage. Rev. 22, 101–119. doi: 10.1111/ijmr.12217Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in theabsence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as apotential conflict of interest.Publisher’s Note: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authorsand do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those ofthe publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated inthis article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed orendorsed by the publisher.Copyright © 2022 Aycan, Ozbilgin and Chan. This is an open-access articledistributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided theoriginal author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the originalpublication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice.No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with theseterms.Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 May 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 884629

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Editorial: What Is Wrong With Leader Emergence?

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