Journal of Managerial Psychology 21(4) Self-leadership 9781846630019, 9781846630002

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17/05/2006

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ISSN 0268-3946

Volume 21 Number 4 2006

Journal of

Managerial Psychology Self-leadership Guest Editor: Christopher P. Neck

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Journal of Managerial Psychology

ISSN 0268-3946 Volume 21 Number 4 2006

Self-leadership Guest Editor Christopher P. Neck

Access this journal online ______________________________

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Editorial advisory board ________________________________

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Introduction James Werbel _________________________________________________

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Two decades of self-leadership theory and research: past developments, present trends and future possibilities Christopher P. Neck and Jeffery D. Houghton ________________________

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The importance of self- and shared leadership in team based knowledge work: a meso-level model of leadership dynamics Michelle C. Bligh, Craig L. Pearce and Jeffery C. Kohles _______________

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Maximizing organizational leadership capacity for the future: toward a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity Trudy C. DiLiello and Jeffery D. Houghton __________________________

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A cross-cultural perspective of self-leadership Jose´ C. Alves, Kathi J. Lovelace, Charles C. Manz, Dmytro Matsypura, Fuminori Toyasaki and Ke (Grace) Ke _____________________________

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS continued

An investigation of the generalizability of the Houghton and Neck Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire to a Chinese context Mitchell J. Neubert and Ju-Chien Cindy Wu _________________________

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The forgotten follower: a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership Seokhwa Yun, Jonathan Cox and Henry P. Sims Jr ___________________

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Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 p. 268 # Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD

Professor Neil Anderson Department of Work and Organization Psychology, University of Amsterdam Professor Chris Argyris Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, USA Professor Yehuda Baruch School of Management, University of East Anglia, UK Professor Frank Bournois Universite´ Panthe´on-Assas, Paris II, France Professor Cary Cooper Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster Martin Euwema Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands Professor Adrian Furnham Professor of Psychology, University College London Professor Hugh P. Gunz Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario Dr Frank Heller Tavistock Institute, UK Professor Geert Hofstede Institute for Research on Intercultura Co-operation, The Netherlands Professor Paul Iles Teesside Business School, UK Professor Jim Jawahar College of Business, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA Professor Andrew Kakabadse Cranfield School of Management, UK, Founding Editor of Journal of Managerial Psychology Dr Bruce Kirkcaldy International Centre for the Study of Occupational and Mental Health, Du¨sseldorf, Germany Professor Harold J. Leavitt Stanford University, USA Professor Manuel London Harriman Hall, NY, USA Professor Dr Wolfgang Mayrhofer Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria Professor Greg Northcraft Department of Business Administration, College of Business, University of Illinois, USA Dr Francisco Gil Rodriguez Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain Professor Zhong-Ming Wang Hangzhou University, China

Professor Yochanan Altman London Metropolitan University, UK Dr Dean Bartlett University of North London, UK Dr Gayle Baugh University of West Florida, USA Professor Ce´leste Brotheridge De´partment d’Organisation et Resources Humaines, Universite´ Du Que´bec a` Montre´al Dr Adrian Carr School of Applied Social and Human Sciences, University of Western Sydney, NSW Dr Stuart Carr Industrial/Organisational Psychology Programme Poverty Research Group, Massey University, New Zealand Professor Kerry Carson Department of Management, Moody College of Business, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA Alf Crossman The University of Surrey, UK Dr Patricia Hind Ashridge Management College, UK Professor Henry S.R. Kao University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Dr Ute-Christine Klehe Programmagroep A&O Psychologie, Amsterdam Dr Robert Kovach and Brett Seamons RHR International Co., London, UK Dr Peter Liu Verity International Ltd, Toronto Dr Michael Morley University of Limerick, Ireland Dr Chris Rees University of Manchester, UK Dr Ramon Rico Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain Alain M. Roger IAE de Lyon, Universite´ Jean Moulin, Lyon Dr Raymond Saner and Dr Lichia Yiu Centre for Socio-Economic Development, Geneva, Switzerland Dr Rene´ Schalk Tilburg University, The Netherlands Dr Ruth Simpson School of Business and Management, Brunel University, UK Dr Sherry E. Sullivan Bowling Green State University, USA Dr Shay Tzafrir University of Haifa, Israel Dr Daniel Vloeberghs University of Antwerp, Belgium Dr Jacob (Yaacov) Weisberg Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Introduction

Introduction This special issue of self-leadership emerged quickly when I assumed the role as Editor of JMP. I was casting about for special topics, contacting people, and Chris Neck came up with this topic. We agreed that the papers would not go through the normal review process and be subject to my reviews only. In spite of this modification of the review process, I am very pleased with this group of manuscripts on self-leadership. The authors took my comments seriously and significant changes were made to most manuscripts. As described by Neck and Houghton in this issue, self-leadership is a normative or prescriptive model of empowering employees. There is no single psychological theory that accounts for the way it operates. The manuscripts in this issue are intended to create some new excitement regarding self-leadership research, and it is my hope that this special issue will do that. The articles in this issue are filled with propositions that should encourage researchers to pursue this topic in more depth. They cover a breadth of literature such as self-regulation and creativity. Hopefully scale development processes are highlighted that will urge others to follow this research agenda. In sum, I would like to thank Chris Neck for putting together a team of outstanding scholars for this special issue. Efforts like this help to advance the field.

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James Werbel

Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 p. 269 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/0268-3946.htm

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Two decades of self-leadership theory and research Past developments, present trends, and future possibilities

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Christopher P. Neck Department of Management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA, and

Jeffery D. Houghton Department of Management Science, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas, USA Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough review of self-leadership literature past and present, including a historical overview of how the concept was created and expanded as well as a detailed look at more recent self-leadership research trends and directions. The paper also presents a theoretical and conceptual explanation and differentiation of the self-leadership concept relative to other related motivational, personality, and self-influence constructs. Design/methodology/approach – Self-leadership research and related literatures of motivation, personality and self-influence are discussed and described in order to present the current state of the self-leadership body of knowledge and to suggest future directions to explore and study. Findings – It is suggested that self-leadership is a normative model of self-influence that operates within the framework of more descriptive and deductive theories such as self-regulation and social cognitive theory. Research limitations/implications – While self-leadership research composes an impressive body of knowledge, it is a domain of study that has been under-investigated in some aspects, both empirically and conceptually. Practical implications – This paper suggests several future directions that researchers can undertake to advance self-leadership knowledge. Originality/value – This paper fills a void in the organizational literature by reviewing the body of self-leadership knowledge, by stating how self-leadership is a distinctive theory in its own, and by presenting directions for future self-leadership research. Keywords Leadership, Empowerment, Motivation (psychology), Management techniques Paper type Conceptual paper

Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 pp. 270-295 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946 DOI 10.1108/02683940610663097

Self-leadership (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004) is a process through which individuals control their own behavior, influencing and leading themselves through the use of specific sets of behavioral and cognitive strategies. The concept of self-leadership first emerged in the mid-1980s (e.g. Manz, 1983, 1986), as an expansion of self-management (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1980), which was rooted in clinical self-control theory (e.g. Cautela, 1969) and inspired by Kerr and Jermier’s (1978) notion of “substitutes for leadership”. Over the past two decades, the self-leadership concept has enjoyed considerable popularity, as evidenced by the large number of practitioner-oriented self-leadership books and articles

on the subject (e.g. Blanchard, 1995; Cashman, 1995; Manz, 1991; Manz and Sims, 2001; Sims and Manz, 1996; Waitley, 1995). Moreover, self-leadership has earned the respect of many academics, as reflected by a plethora of theoretical and empirical self-leadership journal publications (e.g. Anderson and Prussia, 1997; Houghton et al., 2003a; Manz and Sims, 1987; Markham and Markham, 1995, 1998; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a; Neck et al., 1996; Prussia et al., 1998; Roberts and Foti, 1998; Stewart et al., 1996; Williams, 1997), and by coverage in a growing number of management and leadership textbooks (e.g. Kreitner and Kinicki, 2003; McShane and Von Glinow, 2005; Nahavandi, 2006). Business executives have also embraced self-leadership concepts through training programs designed to increase self-leadership skills and behaviors in the workplace (e.g. Neck and Manz, 1996a; Stewart et al., 1996). The purpose of this paper is to provide a thorough review of self-leadership literature past and present, including a historical overview of how the concept was created and expanded as well as a detailed look at more recent self-leadership research trends and directions. We will also provide a theoretical and conceptual explanation and differentiation of the self-leadership concept relative to other related motivational, personality and self-influence constructs such as self-regulation, self-management, conscientiousness and emotional intelligence. Finally, we will also suggest some directions for future self-leadership research, including discussions of which aspects of self-leadership have been under-investigated in the past and which aspects hold the most promise for future investigation. Self-leadership: definition and overview Self-leadership is a self-influence process through which people achieve the self-direction and self-motivation necessary to perform (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004). Self-leadership consists of specific behavioral and cognitive strategies designed to positively influence personal effectiveness. Self-leadership strategies are usually grouped into the three primary categories of behavior-focused strategies, natural reward strategies and constructive thought pattern strategies (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 2001; Prussia et al., 1998). Behavior-focused strategies strive to heighten an individual’s self-awareness in order to facilitate behavioral management, especially the management of behaviors related to necessary but unpleasant tasks (Manz and Neck, 2004). Behavior-focused strategies include self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reward, self-punishment and self-cueing. Self-observation involves raising one’s awareness of when and why one engages in specific behaviors. This type of self-awareness is a necessary first step toward changing or eliminating ineffective and unproductive behaviors (Mahoney and Arnkoff, 1978, 1979; Manz and Sims, 1980; Manz and Neck, 2004). Armed with accurate information regarding current behavior and performance levels, individuals can more effectively set behavior-altering goals for themselves (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 1980). A large body of research suggests that the process of setting challenging and specific goals can significantly increase individual performance levels (Locke and Latham, 1990). Self-set rewards, coupled with self-set goals, can aid significantly in energizing the effort necessary to accomplish the goals (Mahoney and Arnkoff, 1978, 1979; Manz and Sims, 1980; Manz and Neck, 2004). Self-rewards may be something simple or intangible such as mentally congratulating oneself for an important accomplishment, or something more concrete like a special vacation at the completion of a difficult project.

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Self-punishment or self-correcting feedback should consist of a positively framed and introspective examination of failures and undesirable behaviors leading to the reshaping of such behaviors. The excessive use of self-punishment involving self-criticism and guilt can be detrimental to performance and should be avoided (Manz and Sims, 2001). Finally, concrete environmental cues can serve as an effective means of encouraging constructive behaviors and reducing or eliminating destructive ones (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 1980, 2001). Lists, notes, screensavers and motivational posters are just a few examples of external cues that can help keep attention and effort focused on goal attainment. In short, behavior-focused self-leadership strategies are designed to encourage positive, desirable behaviors that lead to successful outcomes, while suppressing negative, undesirable behaviors that lead to unsuccessful outcomes. Natural reward strategies are intended to create situations in which a person is motivated or rewarded by inherently enjoyable aspects of the task or activity (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 2001). There are two primary natural reward strategies. The first involves building more pleasant and enjoyable features into a given activity so that the task itself becomes naturally rewarding (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 2001). The second strategy consists of shaping perceptions by focusing attention away from the unpleasant aspects of a task and refocusing it on the task’s inherently rewarding aspects (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 2001). Both strategies are likely to create feelings of competence and self-determination, two primary mechanisms of intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985). To summarize, natural reward strategies are designed to help create feelings of competence and self-determination, which in turn energize performance-enhancing task-related behaviors. Constructive thought pattern strategies are designed to facilitate the formation of constructive thought patterns and habitual ways of thinking that can positively impact performance (Manz and Neck, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992). Constructive thought pattern strategies include identifying and replacing dysfunctional beliefs and assumptions, mental imagery and positive self-talk. Individuals should first examine their thought patterns, confronting and replacing dysfunctional irrational beliefs and assumptions with more constructive thought processes (Burns, 1980; Ellis, 1977; Manz and Neck, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992). In addition, negative and destructive self-talk should be identified and replaced with more positive internal dialogues. Self-talk is defined as what people covertly tell themselves (Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a) and involves mental self-evaluations and reactions (Ellis, 1977; Neck and Manz, 1992). By carefully analyzing self-talk patterns, negative or pessimistic self-talk can be suppressed or eliminated and replaced with more optimistic self-dialogues (Seligman, 1991). Finally, mental imagery is the symbolic and covert cognitive creation of an experience or task prior to actual overt physical muscular movement (see also Driskell et al., 1994; Finke, 1989; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a). Individuals who envision successful performance of an activity in advance of actual performance are more likely to perform successfully when faced with the actual task (Manz and Neck, 2004). In support of this assertion, Driskell et al. (1994) performed a meta-analysis of 35 empirical studies and found a significant positive effect for mental imagery on individual performance.

Self-leadership: development, expansion and applications The self-leadership concept first appeared in a 1983 practitioner-oriented book (i.e. Manz, 1983) that expanded upon the existing concept of self-management (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1980). The seminal academic work on self-leadership appeared three years later in the Academy of Management Review (i.e. Manz, 1986). This article laid the basic theoretical foundations of self-leadership and presented the basic self-leadership strategies outlined above, although the constructive thought pattern strategies were somewhat underdeveloped at this point. Throughout the latter part of the decade and into the early 1990s, the self-leadership concept was applied to two primary areas: (1) self-managing teams; and (2) empowering leadership. The emerging self-managing teams literature of the late 1980s often prescribed self-leadership among team members as an integral part of the self-managing process (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1986, 1987, 1994; Manz, 1990a). About this same time, leadership theorists were beginning to explore the concept of empowerment (e.g. Conger and Kanungo, 1988) as a possible alternative to the heroic leadership model of the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, the concept of SuperLeadership, the process of leading others to lead themselves, was introduced as an effective means for empowering followers and creating self-leaders (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1989, 1991; Manz, 1990b, 1991, 1992a). The first empirical study to examine self-leadership in an organizational setting was published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1987 and examined the role of self-leadership in the context of both empowering leadership and self-managing teams (Manz and Sims, 1987). This study suggested that the most effective external leaders of self-managing work teams are those that engage in behaviors that facilitate self-leadership strategies such as self-observation, self-goal setting and self-reward (Manz and Sims, 1987). A few years later, self-leadership’s constructive thought pattern strategies were more fully developed and expanded under the label “thought self-leadership” (e.g. Manz and Neck, 1991; Neck and Manz, 1992). The practical usefulness of the more fully developed thought self-leadership strategies was later demonstrated in a training-intervention based field study (Neck and Manz, 1996a). The results of this study suggest that individuals who received the thought self-leadership training experienced increased mental performance, positive affect (enthusiasm), job satisfaction and decreased negative affect (nervousness) relative to those not receiving the training (Neck and Manz, 1996a). Throughout the remainder of the 1990s and into the new century, self-leadership theorists have made application of self-leadership concepts within a variety of contextual settings including: . spirituality in the workplace (Neck and Milliman, 1994); . performance appraisals (Neck et al., 1995); . organizational change (Neck, 1996); . total quality management (Neck and Manz, 1996b); . self-leading teams (Neck et al., 1996); . entrepreneurship (Neck et al., 1997a); . diversity management (Neck et al., 1997b);

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job satisfaction (Houghton and Jinkerson, 2004; Roberts and Foti, 1998); non-profit management (Neck et al., 1998); goal setting/goal performance (Godwin et al., 1999; Neck et al., 2003); the United States Army (Neck and Manz, 1999); team performance (Stewart and Barrick, 2000); team sustainability (Houghton et al., 2003b); succession planning (Hardy, 2004); and ethics (VanSandt and Neck, 2003).

In addition, over the past decade and a half, a number of popular books on self-leadership and SuperLeadership have been published, with a significant amount of success (e.g., Manz and Sims, 1989, 1994, 2001; Sims and Manz, 1996). The book Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence has become the quintessential text on the subject and is currently in its fourth edition (Manz, 1992a; Manz and Neck, 1999, 2004; Neck and Manz, n.d.). Self-leadership criticisms Although it has enjoyed an enduring and expanding popularity based on a strong intuitive appeal, self-leadership has not been without developmental problems and criticisms. For instance, the majority of self-leadership research has been conceptual with relatively few empirical studies examining self-leadership in organizational settings. This lack of extensive empirical research may be due in part to the fact that a valid self-leadership measurement scale has been slow to development. The first published self-leadership assessment instrument, Anderson and Prussia’s (1997) Self-Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ), was based to a large extent on self-leadership assessment prototypes created by Manz and Sims (1991; Manz, 1992a) and represented an excellent preliminary effort in self-leadership scale development. Nevertheless, the Anderson and Prussia SLQ suffered from a number of psychometric problems and required further refinement. More recently, a Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ; Houghton and Neck, 2002) has been presented and has shown a greater degree of reliability and construct validity than the earlier SLQ. The RSLQ was created by eliminating or rewriting ambiguous items from the Anderson and Prussia SLQ and by integrating additional items from a previously unpublished self-leadership assessment instrument (i.e. Cox, 1993). Additional data is needed to fully assess the reliability and validity of the RSLQ. Nevertheless, preliminary applications indicate that the RSLQ may prove to be an effective self-leadership measure with positive potential for facilitating additional empirical self-leadership research. Perhaps the most common criticism of self-leadership is that it is conceptually indistinct from and redundant with classic theories of motivation such as self-regulation. As outlined above, self-leadership consists of a broad set of strategies that may be useful in leading to greater personal effectiveness. Many of these self-leadership strategies are founded upon other established theories of motivation and self-influence. Thus, some theorists have questioned the extent to which self-leadership is a unique and distinguishable construct with respect to these related motivational and personality constructs, while others have suggested that

self-leadership is a mere repackaging of individual differences already explained by previously existing personality constructs such as conscientiousness (e.g. Markham and Markham, 1995, 1998; Guzzo, 1998). For instance, Markham and Markham (1998, p. 197) claim that “one of the major stumbling blocks of self-leadership theory is its uniqueness when compared to more traditional views of similar psychological processes”. Likewise, Guzzo (1998, p. 214) has expressed concern as to whether “self-leadership is distinguishable from other, existing psychological constructs such as the personality dimension of conscientiousness”. In addition, Markham and Markham (1995, p. 198) suggest that “it is possible that various aspects of self-leadership simply recast previous personality traits”. When critics suggest that self-leadership overlaps with other classic theories of motivation, they fail to understand that self-leadership is a normative model rather than a descriptive or deductive theory. Normative theories, which are common in applied fields such as business, are prescriptive and emphasize how something should be done. In contrast, deductive or descriptive theories seek to explain the basic operation of various phenomena, but generally stop short of providing specific normative advice for managing a particular process. As Hilton (1980) has suggested, normative and descriptive theories often take differing perspectives in examining the same phenomenon. Indeed, descriptive theories can often help to explain how and why the prescriptions of normative theories operate. The realistic job previews (RJPs) literature provides a good example of a beneficial interaction between normative and descriptive theory. RJPs (e.g. Dugoni and Ilgen, 1981; Reilly et al., 1981; Wanous, 1973) is a normative concept that has long been accepted as an effective practical tool for reducing employee turnover. For many years, however, the reasons why RJPs work and the theoretical mechanisms through which they operated were not entirely clear (Hom et al., 1998). In response, Hom and his colleagues (Hom et al., 1998, 1999) have recently attempted to clarify and delineate the theoretical contexts and mechanisms through which RJPs influence employee turnover. In the following sections we will respond to self-leadership critics in a similar manner by providing a theoretical and conceptual explanation of the self-leadership concept relative to several related theories of motivation. Specifically, we will argue that self-leadership is a normative concept that provides certain behavioral and cognitive prescriptions while operating within and through the theoretical contexts provided by self-regulation, social cognitive, self-control and intrinsic motivation theories. We will further suggest that self-leadership represents a unique constellation of strategies that are founded upon, related to, and yet distinct from these various theories as well as from various personality traits. Although previous efforts have been made to conceptually distinguish self-leadership from related psychological constructs (e.g. Houghton et al., 2004; Manz, 1990b; Neck, 1998; Neck and Manz, 1996b; Williams, 1997), the present discussion will go well beyond these in both scope and depth. Self-leadership theoretical contexts Self-leadership and self-regulation Self-leadership strategies operate within the larger theoretical framework of self-regulation. Drawing from literature in the field of cybernetics (e.g. Ashby, 1961; Clark, 1996; Wiener, 1948) and based on linkages suggested by Powers (1973), Carver

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and Scheier (1981, 1998) have presented a broad self-regulatory explanation of how behavior happens. According to this view, the self-regulation process is analogous to the operation of a mechanical thermostat. The thermostat senses temperature variations relative to a given standard and signals appropriate action to reduce the discrepancy. Similarly, within the process of behavioral self-regulation (Carver, 1979; Carver and Scheier, 1981, 1998), a sensor monitoring performance in the environment yields a signal that is compared to a set standard or desired state. If discrepancy or error exists, then a behavioral change is facilitated through an adjustment of effort. Alternatively, the standard for behavior can be cognitively re-evaluated and adjusted downward to meet the level of performance. In either case, the objective is the reduction of the discrepancy between the actual performance level and the standard or goal. In addition, self-regulation theory suggests a hierarchical organization of the self-regulatory system in the form of superordinate and subordinate feedback loops or goals (Carver and Scheier, 1998; Powers, 1973). This hierarchy of goals ranges from systems concepts such as a globalized sense of the idealized self (see also Burke, 1991; Klein, 1987), to overarching principles of what a person wants to be, to more specified programs of behavior that indicate what a person should do in order to conform to higher-level principles, and finally, to specific sequences of behavior that facilitate program goal attainment (Carver and Scheier, 1998). Self-regulation theory further assumes that goals at the various hierarchical levels function simultaneously in shaping behavior but that there is a natural upward drift toward higher levels of goal abstraction as a person becomes more comfortable with his or her behavior (Vallacher and Wegner, 1985, 1987). Likewise, there appears to be a complementary downward drift toward more concrete goals in response to difficulties in maintaining behavioral regulation in the context of higher levels of abstraction (Carver and Scheier, 1998). Self-regulation theory also suggests that when faced with problems and discrepancies in progressing toward goal attainment, those individuals who are confident or hopeful (i.e. possess positive expectancies for goal attainment) tend to persist or even increase their efforts, while those who lack confidence or hope (i.e. possess negative expectancies for goal attainment) tend to search for the availability of alternative goals or disengage altogether (Carver and Scheier, 1981, 1998). Thus, a key component in self-regulation theory is the concept of confidence or hope as manifested in terms of performance-related expectancies. Although disengagement from unattainable goals is a necessary and vital part of the self-regulation process, cognitive distortions of feedback leading to lower than warranted levels of confidence and related expectancies can result in premature goal disengagement and other self-regulatory dysfunctions such as binge eating or alcoholism (Carver and Scheier, 1998). Finally, self-regulation theory distinguishes between a promotion and a prevention self-regulatory focus (e.g. Carver, 2001; Carver and Scheier, 1998; Higgins, 1987, 1989, 1996, 1998; Higgins et al., 1994). A promotion focus operates on the basis of accomplishments, hopes and aspirations, thus regulating the presence and absence of positive outcomes (Higgins, 1998). This type of focus is closely associated with the concept of an ideal self-guide, which represents the attributes a person would ideally like to possess (Higgins, 1987, 1989). In contrast, a prevention focus operates on the basis of safety, responsibility and obligations, thus regulating the absence and presence of negative outcomes (Higgins, 1998). The prevention focus is closely

associated with the concept of ought self-guides, which represent the attributes that a person believes they should or ought to possess (Higgins, 1987, 1989). Although broadly conceptualized as an individual difference variable, regulatory focus may also vary across momentary situations (e.g. Higgins, 1996, 1998). In short, self-regulation theory is a broad descriptive view of human behavior that seeks to explain how behavior happens. According to this viewpoint, however, self-regulatory processes do not always operate smoothly nor do they always lead to successful performance outcomes and goal attainments. Indeed, as Latham and Locke (1991, p. 240) have suggested, “although people are natural self-regulators in that goal-directedness is inherent in the life process, they are not innately effective self-regulators”. Some theorists have even used the term “self-regulatory failure” to describe extreme examples of breakdowns in the self-regulatory process (e.g. Baumeister and Heatherton, 1996; Baumeister et al., 1994; Kirschenbaum, 1987). While self-regulation theory specifies the existence and likelihood of dysfunctions in self-regulation, it prescribes few strategies for increasing self-regulatory effectiveness. In contrast, self-leadership, operating within self-regulation’s broad theoretical framework for understanding behavior, prescribes specific behavioral and cognitive strategies designed to enhance individual self-regulatory effectiveness. Self-leadership strategies may enhance self-regulatory effectiveness in a number of important ways. For instance, the behavior-focused strategy of self-observation can lead to a heightening of self-awareness and increases in self-focus. Research evidence suggests that an increase in self-focus can promote increases in task focus and ultimately in task performance (e.g. Carver, 1975; Wicklund and Duval, 1971). In addition, increased observation of one’s own behavior can provide a more accurate and richer interpretation of feedback loops, leading to the identification of specific behaviors that should be changed, enhanced or eliminated relative to goal attainment. Likewise, self-goal-setting may have a positive effect on self-regulatory processes. Goal setting research (e.g. Locke and Latham, 1990) has demonstrated that performance is better when goals are difficult and specific than when they are easy and vague. Indeed, in the absence of an intentional goal-setting process, individuals tend to “satisfice” (Simon, 1955), adopting goals that are less than optimal but seem adequate for the given situation (Carver and Scheier, 1998, p. 66). In contrast, difficult and specific goals tend to result in increased effort and better task performance. Thus, through conscious and intentional self-goal-setting processes, individuals may increase self-regulatory effectiveness in terms of increased effort and better performance outcomes. Finally, self-rewards, self-punishment and self-cueing each have a certain potential for enhancing self-regulation. In order for a goal to be meaningful, it must be both valuable and attainable (e.g. Carver and Scheier, 1998). The creation of self-reward contingencies increases the value of goal achievement, thereby leading to increased effort and persistence toward goal attainment. In like manner, by providing detailed feedback regarding goal-performance discrepancies, self-punishment and self-cueing each may further enhance the efficacy of self-regulatory processes. Natural reward strategies are particularly useful in improving self-regulatory performance relative to self-determined or intrinsic goals (Deci and Ryan, 1985), or what Carver and Scheier (1998) have called individual or personal goals. Strategies such as incorporating more pleasant and enjoyable features into a given task or focusing attention on a task’s inherently rewarding aspects help to make even

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externally imposed or coercive goals seem less controlling and more internalized, intrinsic and personal. Such goal internalization may lead to improved self-regulatory processes. Much like the behavior-focused and natural reward strategies, constructive thought strategies also demonstrate potential for improving self-regulatory effectiveness. For example, the strategy of evaluating and challenging dysfunctional beliefs and assumptions may have a positive effect on self-regulatory feedback processes. Individuals often distort feedback to be closer to what they expect to see or want to see (Carver and Scheier, 1998). Mental distortions such as mind reading, extreme thinking, overgeneralization and mental filters (Burns, 1980; Carver and Scheier, 1998; Manz and Neck, 2004) lead to feedback distortion and ultimately, impaired self-regulatory processes. By confronting the beliefs and assumptions that lead to distortion and replacing them with more realistic and less dysfunctional ones, feedback may become less distorted and self-regulation more effective. Self-talk and mental imagery strategies also have particular application for improving individual self-regulation. As outlined above, a key component in self-regulation is the concept of confidence as reflected in the form of expectations of success or failure. Confidence can be defined in terms of both perceptions of personal capabilities (i.e. self-efficacy; Bandura, 1986, 1991) and external situational factors (Carver and Scheier, 1998). When confidence is unwarrantedly low, individuals may prematurely disengage effort toward goal attainment. Such a premature disengagement may result from a failure to adequately assess current feedback (as discussed above) or from inaccurate performance expectancies. When faced with problems or difficulties individuals “tend to turn automatically to previously encoded sources of information about expectancies” (Carver and Scheier, 1998, p. 221). This process has been described as a “residual sense” (Carver and Scheier, 1998) and as “habitual ways of thinking” or “thought patterns” (Manz and Neck, 1991, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a). Often, when the residual sense is in the form of doubt or inadequacy or when thought patterns are pessimistic or obstacle-oriented, individuals will give up and disengage effort at the first sign of trouble or adversity without realizing that the present obstacle is minor and relatively easy to overcome (Carver and Scheier, 1998; Manz and Neck, 1991, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a). Positive self-talk and mental imagery strategies are intended to facilitate optimistic or opportunity-oriented thought patterns which may lead to greater persistence in the face of challenges and difficulty (Manz and Neck, 1991, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a). Finally, research evidence (e.g. Neck and Manz, 1996a; Prussia et al., 1998) suggests that self-leadership strategies such as positive self-talk and mental imagery may increase self-efficacy levels, a primary determinant of confidence and performance expectancies, potentially leading to more effective self-regulation and increased performance (Carver and Scheier, 1998). According to self-regulation theory, standards are simply assumed to exist and little attention is paid to how standards are determined. In an organizational setting, self-regulatory standards are based primarily on existing organizational standards and objectives. As long as organizational policies, rules and procedures are followed, deviation reduction will occur. Thus, in the short run, the process of deviation reduction becomes relatively automatic and self-perpetuating (Neck and Manz, 1996b). Given a continuum ranging from complete external influence to complete internal

influence (see also Manz, 1990b; Neck and Manz, 1996b), self-regulation falls closer to the complete external influence end of the spectrum. As outlined above, self-leadership strategies may be useful in helping the individual to set and manage self-regulatory standards, thereby improving self-regulatory effectiveness and increasing the degree of internal influence. In summary, self-leadership strategies operate within the broader theoretical context of self-regulation. Specific self-leadership strategies may serve to increase self-regulatory effectiveness by improving self-focus, goal-setting processes, goal valence and saliency, feedback processes, and task-related confidence or performance expectancies. In short, self-leadership does not represent an alternate theoretical view of self-influence, but rather a complimentary set of strategies designed to improve the self-regulation process. Self-leadership and social cognitive theory Self-leadership also operates within the context of Bandura’s (1986, 1991) social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory suggests that human behavior may be best explained by a triadic reciprocal relationship among internal influences, external influences and behavior. Together with self-regulation theory, this reciprocal determinism view provides the other major conceptual framework upon which self-leadership strategies are based (Manz, 1986). Much like self-regulation theory, social cognitive theory suggests that the basic structure of the self-regulatory system is comprised of processes involving self-monitoring, self-judgments and self-reactions. But whereas self-regulation deals primarily with the concept of discrepancy reduction, social cognitive theory proposes a system of discrepancy production followed by discrepancy reduction. The basic assumption is that individuals have control over setting their own performance standards. Based on past performance experiences, people will set performance goals in such a manner as to create discrepancy. The production of discrepancy mobilizes and induces efforts to subsequently reduce discrepancy. When discrepancies are eliminated, higher standards are set and the process begins again. Social cognitive theory also differs from self-regulation in terms of self-reactions. According to Bandura and Cervone (1986), three types of self-influences mediate the relationship between goals and performance. These influences are self-satisfaction, self-efficacy and the regulation of internal standards. Self-regulation theory focuses primarily on the internal regulation of standards. Social cognitive theory, in contrast, stresses the importance of the self-reactive influences of satisfaction and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a key construct within social cognitive theory. Self-efficacy describes a person’s self-assessment of the capabilities necessary to perform a specific task (Bandura, 1986, 1991; Gist, 1987). Self-efficacy can influence aspirations, effort, persistence and thought-patterns. The concept of self-efficacy is of particular importance to self-leadership. Indeed, a major objective of all self-leadership strategies, particularly natural reward and thought pattern strategies, is the enhancement of self-efficacy perceptions in advance of higher performance levels (e.g. Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a; Prussia et al., 1998). High levels of task-specific self-efficacy lead to higher performance standards (Bandura, 1991), greater effort and greater persistence in the pursuit of goals and objectives, and ultimately greater effectiveness (e.g. Bandura and

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Cervone, 1983, 1986). Empirical evidence tends to support the usefulness of self-leadership strategies in promoting self-efficacy perceptions. For instance, Frayne and Latham (1987; Latham and Frayne, 1989) demonstrated a positive relationship between self-management training and self-efficacy for reducing absenteeism. Furthermore, Neck and Manz (1996a) reported a significant difference in self-efficacy levels between a group that had received self-leadership training and a non-training control group. More recently, Prussia and colleagues (Prussia et al., 1998) examined the role of self-efficacy as a mediator of the relationship between self-leadership strategies and performance outcomes. Their results indicated significant relationships between self-leadership strategies, self-efficacy perceptions and task performance. Taken together, these findings suggest that self-efficacy may function as the primary mechanism through which self-leadership strategies affect performance. Self-leadership, self-management and self-control Inspired by the concept of “substitutes for leadership” (Kerr and Jermier, 1978), self-management (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1980; Luthans and Davis, 1979; Andrasik and Heimberg, 1982) also operates within the framework of self-regulation theory by providing specific strategies for managing one’s own behaviors in an effort to regulate discrepancy from set standards (Manz, 1986). Self-management is founded upon concepts of self-control originally developed in clinical psychology (e.g. Cautela, 1969; Mahoney and Thoresen, 1974; Thoresen and Mahoney, 1974; Mahoney and Arnkoff, 1978, 1979). Self-management has been described as a process through which an individual chooses a less attractive (i.e. apparent low probability) but perhaps ultimately more desirable behavior from among short-run alternatives (Manz, 1986; Manz and Sims, 1980). Thus, according to self-management, undesirable short-run behaviors are energized by a focus on desirable long-term consequences (Manz and Sims, 1980). Several specific strategies of self-control have been presented in the clinical literature. These strategies include self-observation, self-goal setting, cueing strategies, self-reinforcement, self-punishment, and rehearsal (Mahoney and Arnkoff, 1978, 1979). These strategies were originally used in clinical settings in order to manage addictive or self-destructive health-related behaviors (e.g. smoking cessation or eating disorders). These strategies were subsequently adapted to organizational settings and relabeled “self-management” by organizational theorists (Luthans and Davis, 1979; Manz and Sims, 1980; Andrasik and Heimberg, 1982). Later, these same strategies of self-control and self-management became the basis for self-leadership’s behavior-focused strategies (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004). In short, self-management consists of a set of strategies designed to help a person manage behavior with respect to reducing discrepancies from immediate externally set standards. Self-management does not, however, facilitate the assessment of the standards themselves. Thus, while self-management provides ample self-influence in terms of how discrepancy reduction should be approached, it provides little self-influence in terms of what should be done and why (Manz, 1986; Neck and Manz, 1996b). In other words, the purposes and importance of the given standards are not addressed by self-management. In contrast, self-leadership is a more encompassing approach to self-influence than self-management (Manz, 1986). Self-leadership merges the behavioral strategies

suggested by self-management and self-control with cognitive strategies based on the concepts of intrinsic motivation and constructive thinking. Self-leadership addresses not only the reduction of discrepancy from performance standards, but also the purposes and appropriateness of the standards themselves (Manz, 1986). Thus, according to self-leadership, the discrepancy reduction process is based on internalized, superordinate standards of behavior rather than on immediate, short-run operating standards (Manz, 1986). Superordinate or higher-level standards for self-influence provide specific reasons for self-managed behaviors. For example, rather than merely focusing on attaining a certain goal, one might evaluate the validity and appropriateness of the goal within a greater context beyond the immediate situation. By focusing on the reasons for behavior and by incorporating both cognitive and behavioral strategies, self-leadership theory represents a substantially higher level of self-influence than self-management. Self-leadership therefore subsumes self-management and specifies additional sets of cognitive-oriented strategies designed to influence behavioral outcomes. Self-leadership also goes beyond self-management by addressing the superordinate standards (i.e. the reasons) for behavior. Self-leadership and intrinsic motivation Self-leadership strategies have also been significantly informed by the concept of intrinsic motivation. While self-management emphasizes extrinsic rewards (i.e. outcomes such as praise, recognition, and self-reinforcement using external reward contingencies), self-leadership extends beyond this perspective to focus on the natural rewards that result from the performance of the task or activity itself (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004). Self-leadership’s conceptualization of natural rewards is based primarily on the intrinsic motivation literature (e.g. Deci, 1975), particularly Deci and Ryan’s (1985) cognitive evaluation theory. Building on the work of White (1959) and deCharms (1968), cognitive evaluation theory suggests that the need for competence and the need for self-determination are the primary mechanisms that drive intrinsic motivation. The need for competence involves the need to exercise and extend one’s capabilities, while the need for self-determination involves the need to feel free from pressures such as contingent rewards (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Cognitive evaluation theory contends that individuals will seek to find and overcome challenges in an effort to increase feelings of competence and self-determination. Feelings of competence and self-control (i.e. self-determination) are a central part of self-leadership’s conceptualization of natural rewards (Manz and Neck, 2004). According to self-leadership, to the extent that activities and tasks can be chosen, structured or perceived in ways that lead to increased feelings of competence and self-determination, task performance will be enhanced. Finally, although natural reward strategies are generally more effective, self-reward strategies utilizing external reward contingencies (as suggested by self-management) may be more helpful in situations lacking natural or intrinsic rewards (Manz and Neck, 2004). That is to say, given a task that is inherently unpleasant or tedious (i.e. a task lacking intrinsically motivating aspects), external self-reward contingencies become particularly appropriate and effective. Nevertheless, most tasks have at least some potential to be naturally rewarding. Thus, for most tasks or activities, natural reward strategies will be more effective and generally preferable.

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Self-leadership and personality As mentioned earlier, some theorists (e.g. Guzzo, 1998; Markham and Markham, 1998) have questioned whether self-leadership is unique and distinguishable with respect to certain personality traits such as conscientiousness. Self-leadership is usually conceptualized as learned behavior rather than as a fixed trait (Manz, 1986) and self-leadership proponents have generally ignored personality and individual difference factors. Some advocates (e.g. Neck and Manz, 1992; Neck et al., 1995) have even implied that personality traits may be unrelated to self-leadership effectiveness, citing a study (Turner et al., 1982) that found no relationship between extraversion and performance for individuals using mental imagery (a self-leadership strategy). In contrast, Williams (1997) has suggested that a variety of personality traits are likely to be associated with self-leadership skills in meaningful ways. In particular, Williams (1997) proposed positive associations between self-leadership skills and extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, general self-efficacy, internal locus of control and self-monitoring. Empirical evidence provides some support for the existence of relationships between self-leadership and various personality concepts. For example, Williams et al. (1995) have shown significant relationships between self-management and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers and McCaulley, 1985) trait preferences of extraversion, judging, and sensing. In addition, Stewart and his colleagues (Stewart et al., 1996) demonstrated significant correlations (p , 0:01) between conscientiousness, neuroticism, and supervisor evaluations of self-leadership behaviors. On the other hand, the findings of Stewart and his colleagues (Stewart et al., 1996) seem to suggest that self-leadership is nonetheless a distinct concept from personality. Their findings revealed an interaction effect between conscientiousness and self-leadership training such that those scoring lowest in conscientiousness subsequently showed the greatest increase in self-leadership behaviors as a result of the training. This lends support to the assertion that self-leadership behaviors are amenable to change (e.g. Manz, 1986), while personality characteristics are relatively stable across both time and situation (e.g. Block, 1981; Conley, 1985; Costa and McCrae, 1988. If self-leading behaviors are malleable while personality is not, then these concepts may not be synonymous. Self-regulation theory would also seem to indicate that self-leadership may operate apart from personality influences. In contrast to personality traits, one’s self-regulating tendencies may vary across situations (Carver and Scheier, 1998; Higgins, 1998). For instance, although people may have established tendencies, regulatory focus varies from promotion to prevention across momentary situations (Higgins, 1996, 1998). In so much as self-leadership strategies operate within the general framework of self-regulation, it seems reasonable to suggest that people may vary their utilization of self-leadership strategies separate and apart from the influences of their fixed personality traits. Based on the theoretical and empirical evidence outline above, it would appear that self-leadership dimensions are distinct from, yet related to, certain key personality traits. Houghton et al. (2004) have recently provided some additional empirical evidence in support of this position. They reported significant relationships between the three self-leadership strategy dimensions and the personality traits of extraversion

and conscientiousness. Nevertheless, a comparison of the hierarchical factor structures of self-leadership and a constellation of personality traits (including extraversion and conscientiousness) utilizing factor analysis and structural equations modeling techniques suggested that the three self-leadership strategy dimensions are distinct from personality traits, particularly at lower levels of abstraction (Houghton et al., 2004). In the preceding sections we have argued that self-leadership, while related to and sometimes predicated upon similar psychological processes, is a unique concept that may be distinguished from other concepts of self-influence and personality. More specifically, we have suggested that self-leadership is a normative constellation of behavioral and cognitive strategies that operates within theoretical frameworks provided by more descriptive theories including self-regulation, social cognitive, self-control, and intrinsic motivation theories. We have also contended that self-leadership is conceptually distinct from related personality traits such as extraversion and conscientiousness. We have provided theoretical and empirical arguments and rationale in support of our positions, supplemented by available empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the extent of the uniqueness of self-leadership and its value for understanding and shaping one’s behavior is a question that should be further addressed by future empirical research. In the following section, we will continue by providing an overview of some of the primary predictable outcomes or dependent variables associated with the self-leadership concept. Self-leadership predictable outcomes/mechanisms The self-leadership literature has suggested a number of predictable outcomes or dependent variables thought to be associated with the application of self-leadership strategies. These include commitment, independence, creativity/innovation, trust, potency, positive affect, job satisfaction, psychological empowerment and self-efficacy. These outcomes may serve as the mechanisms that affect individual, group and organizational performance. Although we have previously mentioned some of these possible outcomes, we will now provide a more detailed overview of the primary self-leadership predictable outcome variables. Commitment and independence Commitment and independence are two of the more commonly suggested outcome variables in the self-leadership literature (e.g. Houghton and Yoho, 2005; Manz and Sims, 2001). Individuals engaging in self-leadership often develop a sense of ownership over their tasks and work processes. As a result, self-leading individuals may demonstrate higher levels of commitment to their tasks, goals, teams or organizations than individuals who are not engaging in self-leadership (e.g. Bligh et al., 2006; Houghton and Yoho, 2005; Manz and Sims, 2001). Likewise, individuals practising self-leadership may experience greater feelings of control and autonomy, leading to heightened levels of independence in behavior and decision making (Manz and Sims, 2001). In contrast, individuals who are not actively practising self-leadership may become dependent on external influences from traditional leaders to guide their actions, becoming increasingly incapable of independent thought and action (Houghton and Yoho, 2005). Although these outcomes have often been suggested in the literature, no empirical examinations to date have attempted to substantiate these

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claims. Future researchers should undertake to examine these hypothesized relationships in greater detail. Creativity and innovation Creativity may be defined as the development of original, novel, appropriate and useful ideas, while innovation implies the subsequent implementation of creative concepts within in an organizational (e.g. Amabile et al., 1996). Self-leadership proponents have often suggested relationships between self-leadership and creativity/innovation (e.g. DiLiello and Houghton, 2006; Houghton and Yoho, 2005; Manz and Sims, 2001). As DiLiello and Houghton (2006) suggest, many critical concepts from the creativity literature may be related to self-leadership. For example, autonomy and self-determination are key components of both creativity and self-leadership (DiLiello and Houghton, 2006). Yun et al. (2006) have provided empirical evidence suggesting that the need for autonomy may be positively related to individual self-leadership practices and autonomy is often identified as an essential component in individual creativity (e.g. Amabile, 1996). For a more detailed overview of the relationships between self-leadership and creativity/innovation, see DiLiello and Houghton (2006). As these authors suggest, additional research is needed to further clarify the relationships between self-leadership and creativity/innovation. Trust and team potency Self-leadership has often been presented as a critical component for facilitating team effectiveness, particularly in self-managing teams with no formal internal leader (e.g. Houghton et al., 2003a, 2003b; Manz and Sims, 1987, 1994; Neck et al., 1996). Of particular note, trust and team potency have been suggested as two possible self-leadership outcomes that may have important implications for team effectiveness (Bligh et al., 2006). Trust generally refers to the belief that others will be honest, upholding commitments and declining to take unfair advantage when given an opportunity (e.g. Cummings and Bromiley, 1996). Team potency is a belief jointly held among team members that the team can be effective in accomplishing its goals and objectives (Guzzo, 1998). See Bligh et al. (2006) for an in-depth discussion of this issue and presentation of a model detailing the relationships between self-leadership, trust and potency in a team context, along with propositions for future research in this area. Positive affect and job satisfaction Positive affect and job satisfaction are two additional predictable self-leadership outcomes that have been advanced in the literature. In a field study of a group of employees at America West airlines, Neck and Manz (1996a) found significant relationships between a thought self-leadership training intervention and subsequent levels of both positive affect (enthusiasm) and job satisfaction. More recently in a separate empirical study, Houghton and Jinkerson (2004) reported a significant relationship between self-leadership’s constructive thought strategies and job satisfaction as mediated by the absence of dysfunctional thought processes and by subjective well-being (happiness). Although these studies provide good preliminary support for these relationships, future research should continue to investigate the role of self-leadership in shaping positive affect and job satisfaction.

Psychological empowerment Psychological empowerment is yet another commonly predicted outcome of self-leadership. Indeed, self-leadership has often been proclaimed as a primary mechanism for facilitating empowerment (e.g. Houghton and Yoho, 2005; Manz, 1992; Prussia et al., 1998). For example, Shipper and Manz (1992) have presented a case study that portrays self-leadership as an integral part of the empowerment of the employees at W.L. Gore and Associates. Self-leadership may enhance feelings of empowerment by creating perceptions of meaningfulness, purpose, self-determination, and competence (Lee and Koh, 2001). More precisely, the behavior-focused strategies of self-observation, self-goal setting and self-reward can foster feelings of self-determination and competence, while natural reward strategies are aimed at increasing feelings of competence, self-control and purpose (Manz and Neck, 2004, pp. 42-4). Because the purported relationship between self-leadership and psychological empowerment has yet to be fully explored in the literature, we strongly encourage future research in this direction.

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Self-efficacy Self-efficacy is perhaps the single most commonly mentioned self-leadership outcome variable (e.g. Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996a, b; Prussia et al., 1998). As we have discussed in detail in an earlier section, empirical research (e.g. Neck and Manz, 1996a, b; Prussia et al., 1998) has provided significant evidence in support of self-efficacy as the primary mechanism through which self-leadership affects performance. Nevertheless, this is yet another area that could benefit from additional empirical investigation. To summarize our arguments to this point, we have suggested that self-leadership is a normative concept that may operate within several theoretical contexts including self-regulation theory, social cognitive theory, intrinsic motivation theory and self-control theory. We have further suggested that the application of self-leadership strategies may result in a number of predictable outcomes/performance mechanisms, including commitment, independence, creativity, innovation, trust, team potency, positive affect, job satisfaction, psychological empowerment and self-efficacy. We believe that these outcome variables, in turn, may lead to higher levels of individual, team and organizational performance. Figure 1 provides a visual overview of these suggested relationships.

Figure 1. A model of self-leadership theoretical contexts and performance mechanisms

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Current trends and future research directions After more than two decades of self-leadership theory and research, the field continues to move in new and exciting directions. Current trends in self-leadership research include intercultural/international issues, self-leadership contingency factors, executive health/fitness and shared leadership. The intercultural and international aspects of self-leadership have not been fully explored to date. Self-leadership has developed largely within the context of the culture of the USA. As a result, the usefulness and applicability of self-leadership should be examined across a variety of international settings. Indeed, such efforts are already underway. For example, Georgianna (2005) recently reported a number of significant differences in the use of self-leadership strategies between US and Chinese students. In a similar vein, Neubert and Wu (2006) examine the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Houghton and Neck (2002) Revised Self-leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ) in a Chinese context. This study investigates the extent to which self-leadership dimensions are generalizable across cultures, as well as addressing the issue of how to measure the existence and development of self-leadership practices across cultures. Finally, Alves et al. (2006) examine the culturally bounded nature of leadership and explore the applicability of self-leadership theory across cultures by drawing on Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) cultural dimensions framework to address the question of how self-leadership may be understood and practised in other cultures. Another current trend in self-leadership research concerns self-leadership contingency factors. Although proponents have generally encouraged the use of self-leadership strategies across a wide variety of situations, some researchers have questioned whether self-leadership should be encouraged across all types of situations. For example, Markham and Markham (1998, p. 199) have raised the issue as to whether self-leadership is “a universally applicable theory that will work with all employees under all circumstances” or “a contingency theory that best fits certain boundary conditions”. As a matter of fact, self-leadership theorists have often admitted that encouraging follower self-leadership may not be universally appropriate. For instance, Manz and Sims (2001, pp. 63-4) have stated that “it is naı¨ve to assume that relying on self-leadership is always appropriate [. . .] several important situational factors influence the appropriateness of attempts to develop self-leadership in followers”. In response these concerns, Houghton and Yoho (2005) have recently presented a comprehensive contingency leadership model that specifies when and under what circumstances self-leadership should be encouraged by organizational leaders. The model suggests that certain key contingency factors, including follower development, situational urgency and task structure, dictate which of several leadership approaches, including directive, transactional, transformational and empowering, should be chosen. Each specific leadership approach in turn results in a specific combination of predictable outcomes, which include the level of follower involvement, dependence, creativity and psychological empowerment. Along the same lines, Yun et al. (2006) present an alternative contingency model of leadership in which the interaction between the leadership approach and follower need for autonomy can influence subsequent follower self-leadership. The results of their study support the view that specific attributes of the follower can be an important element within a contingency view of leadership.

In addition to these possible research directions, the realm of self-leadership might need to be expanded beyond behavioral and cognitive elements to include physiological components as well. In other words, a comprehensive view concerning the potential of individuals to truly self-lead themselves certainly must be impacted by their fitness level and nutritional habits. The work of Neck and Cooper (2000) and Neck et al. (2004), suggesting that “fit” leaders are more productive leaders, is a step in this direction. Finally, one of the more exciting and promising areas of current self-leadership research relates to shared leadership. Shared leadership is an ongoing process of mutual influence that occurs when the members of a team share traditional leadership roles and responsibilities (e.g. Pearce, 2004). Recently, Houghton et al. (2003a) presented a model that explains the role of SuperLeadership and self-leadership in facilitating shared leadership in teams. In short, this model suggests that an empowering leadership approach from the external vertical leader will encourage team member self-leadership, which in turn will enhance self-efficacy perceptions among team members for sharing leadership roles. Pearce and Manz (2005) have further elaborated on the importance of self- and shared leadership operating in combination, particularly in the context of knowledge work. Bligh et al. (2006) expand even further in this direction to examine the relationships between self- and shared leadership in the context of team-based knowledge work, presenting a model that links self- and shared leadership as important antecedents to knowledge creation in team-based environments. Future self-leadership research should continue along the lines of these current trends. In particular, future empirical research effort should be focused on further examinations of the intercultural aspects of self-leadership, self-leadership contingency and outcome factors, and the role of self-leadership within the shared leadership process. Future self-leadership research should also empirically investigate the way in which self-leadership processes operate within the larger theoretical contexts of self-regulation, social cognitive, intrinsic motivation and self-control theories. For instance, future research should directly examine the effectiveness of self-leadership strategies in improving self-regulation. Although self-leadership strategies are generally portrayed as efficacious for improving self-focus, goal-setting processes, goal valence and saliency, feedback process and task-related confidence or performance expectancies, very little empirical research has examined these relationships. Thus, research endeavors should examine the extent to which self-leadership strategies facilitate improvements in measurable aspects of the self-regulatory process. Future research should also examine the distinctiveness of self-leadership strategy dimensions at the measurement level in a comparison of scales designed to measure self-leadership, such as Houghton and Neck’s (2002) Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire, and instruments designed to directly measure self-regulatory processes, such as a revised version of Kuhl’s (1994) action-state orientation scale (Diefendorff et al., 2000). Future self-leadership research should also strive to investigate empirically the relationships between self-leadership and the predictable outcome variables discussed above. In particular, researchers should expand on the work of Prussia et al. (1998) to delineate more clearly the role of self-efficacy as a primary mechanism through which self-leadership strategies influence various performance outcomes. To the extent that

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the role of self-leadership strategies can be differentiated from the mechanisms through which they operate, self-leadership’s distinctive yet harmonious identity within its various theoretical frameworks may be better understood. Finally, future self-leadership research should also continue to investigate specific relationships between personality and self-leadership. In particular, future researchers should investigate the relationships between self-leadership and other personality characteristics of interest such as general self-efficacy, self-esteem, locus of control, and self-monitoring (see also Williams, 1997). In conclusion, two decades after its conception, self-leadership continues to show impressive potential for application in today’s fast-paced and highly technical competitive environments characterized by flexible and decentralized organizational types. As organizational members at all levels are encouraged to take more and more responsibility for their own jobs and work behaviors, the ability for these workers to successful lead themselves will become increasingly critical. As self-leadership strategies are acknowledged as having value beyond related psychological concepts, empirical research in the self-leadership domain may be advanced and our understanding and application of this useful self-influence concept will continue to expand in the context of twenty-first century organizational settings.

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Vallacher, R.R. and Wegner, D.M. (1987), “What do people think they’re doing? Action identification and human behavior”, Psychological Review, Vol. 94, pp. 3-15. VanSandt, C.V. and Neck, C.P. (2003), “Bridging ethics and self leadership: overcoming ethical discrepancies between employee and organizational standards”, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 43, pp. 363-87. Waitley, D. (1995), Empires of the Mind: Lessons to Lead and Succeed in a Knowledge-Based World, William Morrow, New York, NY. Wanous, J.P. (1973), “Effects of raelistic job preview on job acceptance, job attitudes, and job survival”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 58, pp. 327-32. White, R.W. (1959), “Motivation reconsidered: the concept of confidence”, Psychology Review, Vol. 66, pp. 297-333. Wicklund, R.A. and Duval, S. (1971), “Opinion change and performance facilitation as a result of objective self-awareness”, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 7, pp. 319-42. Wiener, N. (1948), Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Williams, R.L., Verble, J.S., Price, D.E. and Layne, B.H. (1995), “Relationship of self-management to personality types and indices”, Journal of Personality Assessment, Vol. 64, pp. 494-506. Williams, S. (1997), “Personality and self-leadership”, Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 7, pp. 139-55. Yun, S., Cox, J. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2006), “The forgotten follower: a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 374-88. Corresponding author Christopher P. Neck can be contacted at: [email protected]

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A meso-level model of leadership dynamics Michelle C. Bligh School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, USA

Craig L. Pearce Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, USA, and

Jeffrey C. Kohles College of Business Administration, California State University San Marcos, San Marcos, California, USA Abstract Purpose – To address the increasing need for novel approaches to leadership that deal with the challenges organizations face as they flatten, diversify, and confront increasingly complex problems. Design/methodology/approach – A meso-level theoretical model is developed that outlines the relationship between self- and shared leadership, focusing on the intermediary processes of trust, potency, and commitment that may lead to the development of shared leadership and ultimately more innovative knowledge creation. Findings – Nine propositions are developed, addressing the relationships between self- and shared leadership, concluding with some of the theoretical and practical implications of the model and specific recommendations for future empirical work in this area. Research limitations/implications – An important boundary condition of the model is that it assumes team and organizational incentives are in place to encourage team building and the facilitation of team over individual achievements. Practical implications – Conceptualizing leadership in this way leads to numerous unanswered questions regarding how team dynamics influence, and are influenced by, various forms of leadership (including lateral, upward, and downward influence attempts). Greater dialogue between the team dynamics literature and the leadership literature may lead to new insights into how shared leadership is influenced by a variety of team characteristics, including team ability, size, member maturity, familiarity, likeability, cohesion, etc., all of which are potential areas for future research. Originality/value – Important research questions that stem from consideration of these two theories in concert will prove critical in understanding the complex interrelationships among self-leadership, shared leadership, and the creation of new knowledge in today’s complex and dynamic organizations. Keywords Leadership, Team working, Shared leadership, Knowledge organizations, Trust Paper type Research paper Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 pp. 296-318 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946 DOI 10.1108/02683940610663105

Research on team innovation and performance has become increasingly important as organizations move to flatter, more diverse ways of organizing and are forced to develop creative solutions to complex problems. More specifically, the implementation

of cross-functional and self-managed work teams has created new challenges, particularly in organizations that have traditionally rewarded vertical leadership and individual innovation and performance. As Seers et al. (2003, p. 96) assert, “self-managed teams constitute one of the most prominent features of post-industrial era organizations”. As more and more organizations turn to team approaches in both profit and non-profit arenas, the study of team leadership and performance has become critical (Pearce et al., 2004). In particular, the increasing emphasis on team-based knowledge work, or work that involves significant investment of intellectual capital by a group of skilled professionals, is forcing us to expand our traditional models of leadership, as vested in one individual, to encompass more complex models of leadership, that include such concepts as self- and shared leadership (Houghton et al., 2003). However, the implementation of team-based knowledge work is not always associated with increased effectiveness (e.g. Ashley, 1992; Verespej, 1990), and teams often fail to live up to their potential due to their inability to smoothly coordinate team members’ actions and the lack of effective leadership to guide this process (Burke et al., 2003). As a result, it is important to develop models of team leadership that are more predictive of successful outcomes such as knowledge creation and productivity. One promising development in the area of team leadership is the construct of shared leadership. Shared leadership is defined as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both” (Pearce and Conger, 2003, p. 1). A prominent distinction between shared leadership and more traditional forms of leadership is that the influence processes involved may frequently include peer or lateral influence in addition to upward and downward hierarchical influence processes. Particularly in cross-functional teams which lack hierarchical authority, or have a formally appointed leader who is highly dependent on the team members’ unique knowledge, skills, and backgrounds, shared leadership may be a powerful and potentially successful form of leadership. However, theoretical and empirical work is just beginning to explore the antecedents and consequences of shared leadership. In particular, we have little insight into how individual-level constructs that members bring to the team may influence the development constructs such as shared leadership at the group or team level. In this article, we suggest that self-leadership may be one potential individual level antecedent of shared leadership that is particularly worthy of exploration. Self-leadership is defined as “a process through which people influence themselves to achieve the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform” (Houghton et al., 2003, p. 126). Both self-leadership and shared leadership have received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners. In recent years, however, with the exception of Houghton et al. (2003) and Pearce and Manz (2005), there has been relatively little attention devoted to how processes of self-leadership might be theoretically and empirically linked to shared leadership. Manz and Sims (1987, p. 119) suggest that in the context of self-managing work teams the leader’s role becomes a commitment “to the philosophy that the teams should successfully complete necessary leadership functions for themselves”. Similarly, Pearce (2004) suggests that shared leadership is the manifestation of fully developed empowerment in teams, in which team members engage in simultaneous, ongoing, and mutual influence processes. As

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such, these authors explicitly address the need to shift the focus of leadership from a single leader engaged in primarily unidirectional influence processes to multiple leaders engaged in more fluid, reciprocal and more dynamic influence processes. We argue that through the development of self-leadership, team members can develop the intermediate behaviors and prerequisites necessary to engage in increased levels of shared leadership, resulting in more effective team knowledge creation. Houghton et al. (2003) contend that self-leadership should play an important role in the facilitation of shared leadership, yet the processes through which effective self-leaders learn to take on shared leadership roles have only begun to be explored. As both concepts focus on the leadership capabilities of followers, exploring the theoretical relationships between these two theories may provide important synergistic outcomes, particularly in influencing successful knowledge creation. Seers et al. (2003, p. 80) point out that current research has been “largely silent on theoretical reasons for why influence should come to be wielded and reciprocated in any sustained or patterned way across multiple members of work groups”. Fletcher and Ka¨ufer (2003) similarly suggest that the microprocesses within social interactions have been largely ignored in the leadership literature. Accordingly, we offer a number of theoretical reasons for reciprocated shared influence in teams in hopes of moving to address this gap in the literature. In essence, our model provides a cross-level or meso approach that integrates individual-level and group-level concepts. Cross-level or meso theories explicitly concern “the relationship between independent and dependent variables at different levels” (Rousseau, 1985, p. 20). The need for multilevel research has been frequently voiced in the organizational literature (House and Rousseau, 1992; Rousseau and House, 1994), and many scholars have suggested that greater attention to levels issues will strengthen organizational theory development and research (Klein and Dansereau, 1994). In addition, multilevel theory development is an important and necessary next step in order to “connect the dots” in the organizational literature, making explicit the links between constructs that have not been previously linked (Klein et al., 1999, p. 248). In practice, however, few models to guide such research exist, in part due to the multiple barriers that hinder multilevel theory building (see Klein et al., 1999; Klein and Kozlowski, 2000). In this article, we emphasize the processual nature of the relationship between self- and shared leadership across levels of analysis, arguing that trust, potency, and commitment are crucial intermediary concepts that are both manifested by individual team members and subsequently interpreted by other organizational members, influencing their behaviors in turn. We argue that these intermediary constructs may undergo a shift in levels over time; thus, for example, self-leadership skills may encourage individuals who have initially independent work attitudes such as trust, commitment and potency to coalesce in these attitudes over time, forming a more homogeneous group that is united by these shared attitudes. In turn, the development of common attitudes and work beliefs is likely more conducive to the development of shared leadership. Applied in this way, our model is fundamentally a meso approach, as it emphasizes the interdependence of individuals in constructing organizational meanings and outcomes (Rousseau and House, 1994) and represents a level change from the individual level to a group “wholes view” (see Dansereau et al., 1999, p. 347). Thus, we argue that our framework makes some headway toward

developing a meso-approach to the relationship between individual-level values and behaviors and their effects on team interactions. In the next section, we briefly review the literature on self-leadership, focusing particular attention on some of the potential outcomes that may result when teams are comprised of individuals that utilize a variety of self-leadership strategies. Building on the conceptual model of Houghton et al. (2003), we subsequently develop a meso-level theoretical model that outlines the relationship between self- and shared leadership, focusing on some of the intermediary processes that may lead to the development of shared leadership (see Figure 1). We conclude with some of the theoretical and practical implications of this theoretical model, as well as some specific recommendations for future empirical work in this area.

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From self-management to self-leadership Manz and Sims (1980) define self-management as the degree to which an individual takes responsibility for the managerial aspects of his or her job above and beyond the mere execution of traditional role responsibilities, such as working toward pre-set goals and the self-administration of consequences such as rewards and punishments. Self-management can serve as a substitute for either traditional leader-initiated behaviors or the need for more structurally imposed controls on behavior (i.e. rules and procedures). Self-leadership expands on self-management behaviors, incorporating control and regulation components, as well as emphasizing the importance of intrinsic motivation resulting from the inherent rewards of completing a task. In short, self-management incorporates leadership substitutes addressing how to complete a given task, while self-leadership incorporates what should be done and why, in addition to addressing how the task should be completed (Manz, 1992). Self-leadership thus encompasses the processes through which individuals influence themselves to self-direct and self-motivate their own performance (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 1999). As Markham and Markham (2002) note, these concepts may also be extended to the team level of analysis. Self-leadership has garnered increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners interested in the application of behavioral and cognitive self-leadership strategies to performance outcomes (Blanchard, 1995; Cashman, 1995; Manz, 1992;

Figure 1. The importance of selfand shared leadership in team-based knowledge work: a meso-level model of leadership dynamics

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Manz and Neck, 1999; Manz and Sims, 1989, 1994, 2001; Sims and Manz, 1996; Waitley, 1995). Self-leadership strategies are rooted in theories of self-regulation, self-control, and self-management, and have been divided into three categories: (1) behavior-focused strategies; (2) natural reward strategies; and (3) constructive thought pattern strategies (see Houghton et al., 2003, for an overview). Behavior-focused strategies include self-observation, self-goal setting, self-reward, self-correcting feedback, and practice. Natural reward strategies, in contrast, occur when a team member engages in an activity for its own intrinsic value, and is motivated by the task itself (see Manz and Neck, 1999). Finally, constructive thought pattern strategies, or thought self-leadership, involve positive and habitual ways of thinking that facilitate overall enhanced performance. These strategies may include mental imagery, positive self-talk, and self-analysis and correction of belief systems (Manz and Neck, 1999). According to Neck and Manz (1992), individuals tend to fall into one of two habitual thinking patterns: opportunity thinking or obstacle thinking. While opportunity thinking entails viewing situations in terms of challenges, opportunities, and constructive ways to handle difficult situations, obstacle thinking focuses on negative aspects of situations, insurmountable challenges, and reasons to give up, retreat from, or otherwise avoid situations. In the next section, we argue that when increased levels of self-leadership strategies are utilized within a team, team members are more likely to trust one another, believe that the team will be able to accomplish its goals, and ultimately be more committed to the team itself. Self-leadership and trust, potency, and commitment An important assumption of our model is that team members are strongly influenced by the interactions that they have with one another within the team environment, which can potentially impact team members’ collective thoughts, behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes. According to Weick (1979), a singular human act invites a response by a party affected by the change (the interact), which then calls for a response by the first individual (the double interact). In cybernetics research, this process would be characterized as a simple feedback loop, in which an activity initiates a chain of activities that impact the original situation. Accordingly, we articulate how the expression of effective self-leadership on the part of team members can result in an important shift from individual-level independence concerning work attitudes to team-level homogeneity in members’ levels of trust, potency and commitment. Trust. Trust is defined as an individual’s or group’s belief that another individual or group will make efforts to uphold commitments, will be honest, and will not take advantage given the opportunity (Cummings and Bromiley, 1996). Trust has been cited as the variable with the strongest potential influence on interpersonal and group behavior (e.g. Golembiewski and McConkie, 1975). As a result, understanding the determinants of trust in teams can be an important key to fostering team effectiveness. While the concept of trust has received a great deal of attention in the literature, trust is often treated as a blanket term for all aspects of interpersonal affiliation and risk-taking. However, it is important to distinguish between two relatively different types of trust that may develop between organizational actors: affective-based trust

and cognitive-based trust (McAllister, 1995). Affective-based trust is based on high levels of citizenship behaviors and frequent social interactions, and leads to the open exchange of information and increased tendency to reveal sensitive personal information, knowledge, and ideas. In contrast, cognitive-based trust develops when an organizational member perceives that another actor has demonstrated reliable role performance in the past and possesses satisfactory professional credentials (McAllister, 1995). Therefore, mutual cognitive-based trust may develop as team members succeed in performing complex roles, bringing excellent educational qualifications to the team, applying relevant special training, or revealing prior experiences that they can bring to bear on team tasks. According to Chowdhury (2005, p. 313), high levels of cognitive-based trust allow the evaluating team member to more readily “engage in collaborative work and seek knowledge from those he or she trusts”. The two types of trust may have varying effects on team-level functioning. With affective-based trust, individuals develop strong links of personal values and emotional ties toward each other. This improves their understanding of each other as individual team members and creates a climate of emotional openness where individuals are less concerned about their own vulnerabilities or fears that other members may exploit them for individual outcomes. The resulting social intimacy also helps them develop shared values, perceptions and mental models. With cognitive-based trust, on the other hand, team members are more likely to experience improved professional relationships and enhanced collaborations concerning team tasks and activities (Chowdhury, 2005). Mayer et al. (1995) posit that an individual’s beliefs about a partner’s trustworthiness are based on the outcomes of their past risk-taking with that partner. As others have argued, it is not individual human actions but individuals’ responses to each other’s actions, which comprise the foundation of social systems, organizations and teams (e.g. Masuch, 1985). We suggest that the extent to which fellow team members engage in self-leadership strategies is likely to positively affect team interactions, resulting in the development of higher team levels of cognitive-based trust over time. More specifically, team members’ behavior-focused self-leadership strategies can act as tangible signals to other team members that they are making efforts to uphold commitments, are honest, and do not take advantage of other team members: the very foundations of trust (Cummings and Bromiley, 1996). For example, through self-observation, a team member can potentially identify team behaviors that should be modified, intensified, or eliminated for the team’s benefit. Or he or she might engage in self-goal setting, in which the team member decides that he or she will, for example, contribute at least one new idea per team meeting. Alternately, a team member may rehearse or practise team-related skills before he or she is actually required to perform them (for example rehearsing an important presentation of the team’s work prior to delivering the formal presentation). Each of these self-leadership behavioral strategies potentially communicates important information to other team members about the relevance and qualifications of the team member and his or her performance, and will likely lead to increasing levels of trust in the individual who displays effective self-leadership. In turn, as additional team members display effective self-leadership and garner trust the phenomenon seems likely to ultimately morph into trust in the team as a whole. Thus, when perceived within a team setting, behavior-focused self-leadership strategies can minimize the inherent risk of

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interacting with other team members. If a self-leading team members’ behavior is maladaptive, he or she can engage in self-observation, self-correcting feedback, and practice in order to change the behavior; if the team faces new obstacles, the self-leaders will focus on ways to overcome them, rather than engaging in dysfunctional behaviors that may jeopardize the team’s success or simply leave other team members “in the lurch”. As team members engage in behavioral self-leadership strategies they are likely to send positive signals to other members that they are trustworthy contributors to the team’s functioning. According to Chowdhury (2005), although both affective- and cognitive-based team trust significantly influence team knowledge sharing, cognitive-based trust demonstrates a stronger influence on complex knowledge sharing than that of affective-based trust. Thus, in cross-functional teams in which knowledge sharing is critical, cognitive-based trust may be an important determinant of team effectiveness. In addition, research on the initial trust paradox (McKnight et al., 1998) finds that trust is surprisingly high in initial stages of a relationship. These findings suggest that when team members engage in self-leadership, they will be able to capitalize on initially high “default” levels of trust in order to build even higher levels of cooperation and mutual understanding within the team through demonstrating their professional capabilities and relevant past experiences. Based on both initial baseline levels of trust and positive interactive team processes that are likely to result when members engage in self-leadership, we suggest: P1.

Higher levels of self-leadership will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of team cognitive-based team trust.

Potency. In addition to facilitating higher levels of team trust, self-leadership may also directly result in higher levels of self-efficacy, which seems likely to ultimately translate, in the aggregate, into higher levels of team potency. Potency is the collective belief within a team that it can be effective (Guzzo et al., 1993). Potency and collective efficacy are highly related, as both deal with the concept of confidence at the team level (Shamir, 1990). Pearce et al. (2002) present evidence that potency and effectiveness are reciprocally and longitudinally related; however, they point out that more research is needed to clarify the relationship between potency and team effectiveness across organizations. We argue that one of the critical components in the development of a sense of team potency may be self-leadership, and individual self-efficacy is likely to be an important first step on the avenue through which self-leadership results in greater team potency. First and foremost, the array of behavioral, cognitive, and natural reward strategies that comprise self-leadership are likely to result in greater feelings of individual self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as a personal belief concerning “one’s capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3). Contrary to more global perceptions of the self (i.e. self-esteem and self-concept), self-efficacy is task specific: individuals may have high self-efficacy for some tasks and low self-efficacy for others. As a result, “self-efficacy is defined and measured in the context of relatively specific behaviors in specific situations or contexts” (Maddux, 1995, p. 8).

According to self-leadership theory, “a primary objective of all three categories of self-leadership strategies is the enhancement of self-efficacy perceptions, which should in turn lead to higher levels of performance” (Houghton et al., 2003, p. 126; see also, Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 1999; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996; Prussia et al., 1998). In addition, there is a great deal of empirical evidence to suggest that self-leadership strategies are instrumental in increasing self-efficacy perceptions (Latham and Frayne, 1989; Neck and Manz, 1996, Prussia et al., 1998). According to Houghton et al. (2003, p. 131), “substantial empirical evidence supports the effectiveness of self-leadership strategies in increasing self-efficacy perceptions”. Self-leaders utilizing constructive thought pattern strategies are more likely to focus on the positive attributes of the team’s task, focusing on the inherent opportunities that the team faces and how positive performance might benefit the team as a whole. Similarly, behavioral self-leadership such as self-goal setting and self-reward can help team members attain “small wins” that lead to an increased sense of self-efficacy. And finding ways to focus on the positive aspects of the team’s task can lead to increased motivation to achieve and an increased sense that he or she can be successful within the team environment. According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is a major determinant of people’s choice of activities, how much effort they will expend in those activities, and how long they will sustain effort in dealing with stressful situations, obstacles, or setbacks. Hill et al. (1987) point out that those with high self-efficacy for a given task are more likely to choose to engage in the task, will expend a greater amount of effort in accomplishing the task, and will sustain that effort for a longer period of time. In addition, people with high self-efficacy for a task perceive less stress when attempting to accomplish the task (Murphy et al., 1996), set higher personal goals (Bandura and Cervone, 1983), and are more apt to visualize success at the task (Wood and Bandura, 1989) than those with lower self-efficacy. Given previous theoretical and empirical evidence that self-leadership skills are associated with higher levels of self-efficacy, we suggest that self-leadership skills may result in higher individual perceptions of team potency as well. In fact, potency has been defined as a construct between self-efficacy and collective motivation (Gil et al., 2005). In addition, previous research suggests that shared perceptions of team potency develop over time, and substantial team interaction is required before team members develop homogeneous perceptions about the team (Jung and Sosik, 2003). As team members with high self-leadership skills interact with one another longitudinally, they communicate their individual beliefs that they are interested in the task, willing to expend large amounts of effort to accomplish that task, and will persevere in the face of setbacks and obstacles. In addition, team members with behavioral, cognitive, and natural reward strategies will likely address any dysfunctional thought processes or lack of confidence in the team’s ability to perform the task. Over time, these behavioral, cognitive, and natural reward strategies are likely to lead to increasingly homogeneous beliefs about the teams potency, resulting in a levels shift from individual perceptions of the self-efficacy and team potency to commonly shared understanding of the team’s potency as a whole: P2.

Higher levels of self-leadership will be significantly and positively related to team potency.

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Commitment. The past few decades have seen a remarkable proliferation of research interest in organizational commitment (Meyer et al., 1993). The construct has been included in empirical work spanning a large number of disciplines and research areas, and several reviews of commitment theory and research have been conducted (e.g. Morrow, 1983; Mathieu and Zajac, 1990; Griffin and Bateman, 1986; Reichers, 1985; Mowday et al., 1982; Meyer and Allen, 1991). These reviews emphasize the multitude of definitions and operationalizations of organizational commitment, and suggest that commitment is a complex concept that takes many forms and has many foci (e.g. Becker, 1992; Gordon and Ladd, 1990; Reichers, 1986; Steffy and Jones, 1988). Cohen (2003) argues that work commitment is a multidimensional concept consisting of elements of commitment to specific objects such as one’s organization, work group, occupation, union and job. As a result, team commitment can be conceptualized as separate and unique from organizational or occupational commitment. According to Cohen (2003), a multidimensional approach to commitment reflects the reality that people in the workplace are exposed to more than one commitment at a time. Therefore, their behavior may be affected, sometimes simultaneously, by several commitments. Further, “employees may be affected differently by different foci of commitment, resulting in the need to conceptually and empirically distinguish different commitment constructs” (Cohen, 2003, p. 15). Mowday et al. (1979) argue that organizational commitment is characterized by at least three related factors: (1) a strong belief in, and acceptance of, the organization’s goals and values; (2) a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and (3) a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization. As such, commitment is conceptualized as “stable over time”, and as an active relationship with an organization rather than passive loyalty. Thus, commitment is seen as a deep attachment to an organization that is not affected by day-to-day events. Other researchers have offered slightly different definitions of organizational commitment. For example, O’Reilly and Chatman’s (1986, p. 493) approach to commitment focuses exclusively on the psychological components of commitment, which they label compliance, identification, and internalization. Similarly, Meyer and Allen (1991) suggest that studies of commitment could be organized around three broad themes: (1) commitment as an affective attachment to the organization (affective commitment); (2) commitment as a perceived cost associated with leaving the organization (continuance commitment); and (3) commitment as an obligation to remain in the organization (normative commitment). Bishop et al. (2000) argue that team commitment can be defined in a similar fashion to organizational commitment. Specifically, like organizations, teams develop goals and values that members may accept; team members may choose to exert varying degrees of effort on the team’s behalf; and individual members may have varying levels of desire to maintain their team membership. Furthermore, employees may experience a

high level of commitment to one of these foci (i.e. the organization or team) and not the other, both, or neither (Becker et al., 1996; Bishop and Scott, 2000). Previous research suggests many positive team outcomes are related to the level of an individual’s commitment to both the organization and to his or her work team (Becker, 1992; Bishop and Scott, 2000; Bishop et al., 2000), suggesting that understanding the antecedents of team commitment is an important area of research. Self-leadership may lead to higher levels of team commitment through a number of avenues. First and foremost, members who engage in thought self-leadership are more likely to believe strongly in the team’s goals and values, and communicate those beliefs to other team members. Thought self-leadership has been argued to include three primary strategies: self-analysis and improvement of belief systems, mental imagery of successful performance outcomes, and positive self-talk (Houghton et al., 2003; Manz and Neck, 1999). To the extent that team members engage in this kind of influence over their team-focused cognitions, their beliefs are likely to become more firmly embedded in the team’s goals and values. Similarly, self-leadership theory suggests that individuals who engage in thought self-leadership tend to become opportunity thinkers, and tend to exert greater effort and persistence in dealing with challenges and difficulties. The result is a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the team, one of the three basic tenets of commitment (Mowday et al., 1979). Such team members are more likely to focus on positive aspects of the team’s task, mentally shift attention to the aspects of the task that they find most enjoyable, and as a result be more committed to its goals and the efforts necessary to achieve those goals. Finally, team members who engage in self-leadership strategies are likely to evidence a strong desire to maintain membership in the team. Through the creation of positive self-talk, natural rewards, and imagery of successful performance outcomes, individuals with self-leadership strategies are more likely to persevere in the face of setbacks, be motivated to achieve the team’s goals, and have a strong attachment to the team as a result. Thus, to the extent these self-leadership strategies are behaviorally and verbally communicated to other team members over time, we would expect a levels shift from commitment of an individual to the team to more widespread commitment by multiple individuals to the team and ultimately to unified and shared team commitment: P3.

Higher levels of self-leadership will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of team commitment.

Shared leadership as the nexus of the knowledge creation process Shared leadership involves dynamic, interactive influence processes among and between individuals in teams (Pearce and Conger, 2003, p. 1). Shared leadership thus offers a concept of leadership practice as a team-level phenomenon where behaviors are enacted by multiple individuals rather than solely by those at the top or by those in formal leadership roles. In addition, shared leadership focuses on leadership as a social process, or “a dynamic, multidirectional, collective activity, that like all human action and cognitive sense-making, is embedded in the context in which it occurs” (Fletcher and Ka¨ufer, 2003, p. 23). According to Fletcher and Ka¨ufer, this definition of shared leadership encourages a more explicit focus on the egalitarian, collaborative, mutually enacted, and less hierarchical nature of leader-follower interactions. While self-leadership focuses on the development of independence, self-sufficiency, and the ability to create and set one’s own goals and monitor progress toward those

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goals, shared leadership focuses on the ability to connect with others in achieving team or group objectives. In addition, while self-leadership focuses on how employees can operate with as little influence from supervisors as possible, shared leadership focuses on how interpersonal influence operates between members of a team. Rather than conceptualizing leadership as the unidirectional application of influence from formal leaders to followers, shared leadership represents a conceptualization of leadership characterized by the serial emergence of temporary leaders, depending on the task(s) facing the team and the knowledge, skills and abilities of the team members. In shared leadership, influence is therefore fluid and often reciprocal, and team members take on the leadership tasks for which they are best suited or are most motivated to accomplish. Conditions facilitating shared leadership: the role of trust, potency, and commitment The theoretical reasons for why influence should be shared and reciprocated in a sustained manner among team members have only recently begun to receive attention (Seers et al., 2003). Previous researchers have suggested a number of conditions and proposed antecedents that may facilitate shared leadership in teams, including group, task, and environmental characteristics that attempt to address issues of when shared leadership is likely and when it is required (Seers et al., 2003). Specifically, Pearce and Sims (2000) argue that specific team characteristics, (i.e. team member ability, the size of the team, member maturity, and familiarity), task characteristics (i.e. urgency, complexity, need for creativity and interdependence), and environmental characteristics (i.e. organizational support systems and rewards) are more conducive to the rise of shared leadership. In addition, Pearce (2004) has developed practical advice for facilitating the development of shared leadership, including specific training on how to engage in responsible and constructive leadership, how to give and receive influence, as well as basic teamwork skills such as goal setting, status reporting, and citizenship behaviors. We argue that the development of the self-leadership capabilities of team members sets into motion the meso-level processes that result in higher collective-levels of trust, potency, and commitment, which in turn facilitate the sustained sharing of mutual influence within the team that comprises shared leadership. In other words, we expect self-leadership to initially influence individual team members’ trust, self-efficacy and commitment, which over time evolve into similar, collectively held beliefs regarding team trust, team potency, and team commitment. These assertions are further bolstered by previous research that suggests the increase in duties, responsibility, autonomy and authority associated with self-leadership is linked to other positive team outcomes such as intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1989), job satisfaction (Lawler, 1982) and increased effort (Manz, 1992). Rousseau and House (1994) remind us that it is through the avenues of “bottom up” effects that organizational members play a role in shaping their teams and their organizations, and that individual predilections can become work group, departmental, team, or organizational norms. For example, organizational members who share a belief that teamwork is desirable can form the basis of a team-oriented culture through processes of social construction, ongoing interaction patterns, and shared values. Rousseau and House (1994, p. 24) also point out that “the more unstructured, ambiguous, or novel the situation, the more influence lower level processes will have”.

Following this reasoning, we argue that particularly in team-based knowledge work, in which teams are faced with novel situations, unfamiliar territory, and increasingly complex problems, it is all the more likely that we will observe such meso-level effects. In other words, over time, individual levels of trust, potency, and commitment are likely to transcend their individual-level roots and, through bottom-up meso-level processes, transform and become manifest at the team level of analysis. While increased levels of team trust, potency and commitment may ultimately result from higher levels of self-leadership exhibited by team members, when considering outcomes such as knowledge creation, the development of shared leadership may represent a critical next step. Self-leadership allows team members the autonomy and authority to set goals, develop strategies, and self-manage, but may continue to entail relatively fixed roles for team members. With the development of shared leadership, team members become comfortable enough to truly give and receive mutual influence when confronted with varying tasks, allowing them to move fluidly among different types of leader behavior, including directive, transactional, transformational and empowering behavior. Trust. Because influence involves power, the ability to share influence necessitates some level of basic trust in other team members’ motives and abilities. An individual who does not feel that other team members uphold commitments, are honest, or that she might be taken advantage of if she allows peer influence, is unlikely to accept others’ influence; to do so would involve an unacceptable level of risk. Although previous research has suggested a number of interpersonal variables that may facilitate shared leadership, the role of trust has yet to be adequately explored. For example, the work of Feldman (1973) suggests that group members may facilitate shared leadership to the extent that they perceive each other as likeable. Pearce and Sims (2000) suggest that team members who have reached a certain level of familiarity are more likely to engage in shared leadership. Still other researchers have focused on group cohesion, or the forces that attract members to a group (Cartwright, 1968). Building on these previous assertions, we argue that higher levels of cognitive-based trust, influenced in part by team members’ self-leadership strategies, will be more predictive of shared leadership than familiarity, likeability, or length of interaction among team members. Trust develops through frequent and meaningful ongoing interactions, where team members become comfortable and open in sharing their individual experiences and contributions, where ideas and assumptions can be challenged without fear or risk of repercussion, and where diversity of opinion is valued over cohesion (Holton, 2001). According to Quinn et al. (1996), encouraging shared interests, commonly held values, and collectively satisfying solutions are essential to leveraging the potential of knowledge workers. Shared leadership involves the ability to engage in constructive lateral influence, to give and receive feedback, and be at times both an effective leader and an effective follower. These behaviors will likely be facilitated to the extent that the team has reached a level of mutual cognitive-based trust that allows team members to engage in these behaviors within an environment of mutual respect and understanding for one another’s professional capabilities (Holton, 2001). Establishing trust has been argued to be a fundamental aspect of the successful formation and growth of any new team (Senge et al., 1994), and we suggest cognitive-based trust is a critical condition for the kind of mutual influence that characterizes shared leadership:

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P4.

Higher levels of cognitive-based team trust will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of shared leadership.

Potency. In addition to trust, team potency also seems likely to result in higher levels of shared leadership. Houghton et al. (2003, p. 131) argue that through the use of self-leadership strategies, “team members can effectively increase their self-efficacy beliefs for undertaking various leadership roles and responsibilities within the team”. Thus, increasing perceptions of the team’s potency are likely to imbue team members with the confidence that they have the necessary skills to engage in shared leadership. This is consistent with Pearce and Sims’ (2000) assertion that shared leadership is more likely when group members are highly skilled in their assigned tasks; however, we assert that team members must also have the collective confidence that these skills are present and likely to be effective in order to facilitate shared leadership in any sustained way. Gil et al. (2005) argue that where the demand for change brings uncertainty and risk, it is likely that the more self-confident teams will more readily accept this uncertainty with a positive impact on group processes (i.e. climate, and especially the climate of innovation). In addition, if team members are low in a collective sense of team potency for sharing leadership responsibilities, they are likely to be unwilling and perhaps even unable to undertake leadership activities within the team. In other words, shared leadership is more likely to be facilitated to the extent that team members have both the skills and the desire to engage in mutual influence (Perry et al., 1999). According to Houghton et al. (2003, p. 126), “the reluctance or inability of team members to embrace the shared leadership concept can be a major hindrance to its effective implementation”. Burke et al. (2003) similarly argue that within the context of shared leadership, collective efficacy or potency is highly relevant because it reflects an attitude of confidence concerning the abilities of fellow teammates. They go on to point out that “when more than one individual will occupy the leadership role, as with shared leadership, it is necessary that fellow team members have confidence in the ability of each member assuming the leadership role at any given time” (Burke et al., 2003, p. 115). Without this base level of confidence in one another’s abilities, team members are unlikely to accept the influence attempts of their peers. Thus, the development of team potency, in part fostered by the self-leadership skills and strategies of individual team members, is likely to be an important predictor of the levels of subsequent shared leadership within the team. P5.

Higher levels of team potency will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of shared leadership.

Commitment. Finally, we suggest that commitment to the team is likely to be an important facilitator of shared leadership as well. To the extent that team members truly buy into the values, beliefs, and goals of the team, they may also be more open to alternate, non-traditional, and perhaps even at times slightly uncomfortable forms of achieving those goals. As Seibert et al. (2003) point out, neither group members nor formal leaders can always be assumed to share organizational goals and objectives, and the same tenet applies at the team level. Thus, high levels of commitment to the team’s values and goals may be even more critical for teams engaging in shared leadership. In other words, in order to create an environment in which team members are comfortable giving and receiving influence, all members must be strongly

committed to the team for the team’s sake. If high levels of commitment are not present, team members are likely to be highly reluctant and even uncomfortable without a more formal source of power that “keeps members on track” in the absence of a psychological attachment to the team itself. Seibert et al. (2003, p. 177) similarly argue that in the context of shared leadership, the “relationship between the behavioral influence strategies used in the group and aspects of group effectiveness may be mediated by member’s task commitment”. Building on this previous work, we propose: P6.

Higher levels of team commitment will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of shared leadership.

Shared leadership and knowledge creation We have argued that the strategies inherent in self-leadership are likely to foster higher levels of trust, potency, and commitment in team members. In turn, we have suggested that these intermediary meso-processes are instrumental in facilitating a team context in which members are comfortable with shared influence processes. However, we do not assume that shared leadership is ideal for every team environment. In contrast, our model suggests that there may be characteristics unique to knowledge work that impact the degree to which shared leadership proves to be more effective than traditional vertical leadership. Specifically, we argue that the development of shared leadership may be particularly critical when dealing with complex tasks in which the active engagement of multiple team members may be critical in solving a problem, or when innovation and knowledge creation is critical to team success. Knowledge work, or work that requires the intellectual capital of skilled professionals, is increasingly becoming dependent on teams in which the knowledge of several individuals must be integrated to create true innovation (Cox et al., 2003). It is more and more difficult for any individual leader to have all of the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to lead all aspects of knowledge work, and as a result, knowledge creation is highly dependent on the ability to coordinate and integrate the ideas and abilities of individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and approaches. Shared leadership has been shown to be an important predictor of team effectiveness (e.g. Pearce and Ensley, 2003; Pearce and Sims, 2002; Pearce et al., 2004). However, according to Pearce and Manz (2005), shared leadership is most essential for organizations that require continuous innovation in order to offer the best products and services to their customers, as well as to remain competitive in quickly changing environments. Traditional, more hierarchical forms of leadership, which center on the individual in the formal leadership role as being the primary source of knowledge, skills, and answers to emerging problems, do not encourage optimal knowledge creation. When team members are encouraged to lead themselves and share influence with their peers in defining problems, making decisions, solving problems and identifying opportunities and challenges both now and in the future, creativity and innovation is more likely to result. P7.

Higher levels of shared leadership will be significantly and positively related to higher levels of knowledge creation.

However, there are several factors that may affect the relationship between levels of shared leadership and knowledge creation. Specifically, we argue that the more

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interdependent the tasks of team members are, the greater the relationship may be between shared leadership and knowledge creation. Task interdependence is defined as the degree to which goal accomplishment requires completing related or dependent subtasks (Cox et al., 2003; Steiner, 1972). Previous research has demonstrated that teams outperform individuals on tasks involving greater integration and interconnectedness (Latane´ et al., 1979), and multiple and fluid leadership influence tactics are likely to be critical in interdependent tasks involving the display of leadership by multiple team members in order to take full advantage of team members’ competencies (see Pearce, 2004). Liden et al. (1997) found that the relation between empowerment at the group level and influence in decision-making and group performance were moderated by task interdependence; for low task-interdependent groups, performance at the team level suffered as the team was empowered. These findings prompted Seibert et al. (2003) to suggest that the degree of task interdependence should be examined for its moderating role between shared leadership and team effectiveness. Based on this previous work, we suggest that task interdependence may also play an important moderating role in the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge creation. Specifically, the higher the interdependence involved, the more important shared leadership becomes, such that interdependent teams of workers who share the leadership process tend to outperform individual workers when tasks are interconnected and integrated: P8.

Increased task interdependence will strengthen the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge creation.

In addition, there is ample evidence to suggest that the greater the complexity of the task, the greater the importance of shared leadership. As tasks increase in complexity, there is less likelihood that the competencies, knowledge, skills, and abilities to lead the team in completing the task successfully will reside in a single individual. Therefore, as the task increases in complexity, the leadership challenges increase as well, necessitating leadership skills in a growing variety of realms (i.e. technical, cognitive, social, boundary spanning, etc.) (Cox et al., 2003; Kerr and Jermier, 1978). Thus, we posit that increased task complexity will moderate the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge creation, such that shared leadership will prove increasingly critical as teams confront more complex tasks. In organizations involved with advanced technology, often requiring teams of knowledge workers that integrate their intellectual capital to accomplish the required work, shared leadership may be particularly critical. In such contexts, the idea that a single leader can know everything that is necessary to lead all aspects of the work process is often unrealistic, and individual employees frequently need to step forward as their expertise and the demands of the task require. Both Cox et al. (2003) and Kruglianskas and Thamhain (2000) have argued that a departure from the conventional leadership hierarchy is necessary as tasks increase in complexity, technology, and require specialized skills. Similarly, Seers et al. (2003, p. 93) suggest that “a complex task, or multiple tasks, may require multiple exchange relationships among members”. In addition, we have argued that the willingness and confidence to take on part of the leadership role requires high levels of team trust, potency, and commitment from the knowledge workers involved. It is one thing to possess the knowledge and expertise to help guide a particular aspect of the work process, but

quite another to have the motivation, initiative and skills needed to provide leadership. Thus, the more complex the work involved, the more likely it is that shared leadership will be needed for optimal knowledge creation: P9.

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Increased task complexity will strengthen the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge creation.

Implications and directions for future research According to Houghton et al. (2003, p. 135), “the sharing of leadership roles among team members can be a key factor in maximizing the effectiveness of team based structures”. However, the realities of facilitating shared leadership in employees who have been trained and seasoned in traditional hierarchical structures with individual accountability and incentives may be difficult to realize. For this reason, research into the antecedents of shared leadership may be critical in realizing effective team-based structures, particularly as environments continue to favor more flexible, responsive organizations. As Hooker and Csikszentmihalyi (2003, p. 218) state: The implications for the future seem clear. As more work becomes knowledge work, work within organizations will likely become more flexible and varied. This in turn will require teamwork of a new kind, one that is conducive to the expression of creativity and innovation. Decentralized forms of leadership will become more necessary and so will shared forms of leadership.

As a result, exploring individual, group, and organizational factors that are conducive to shared leadership is critical for future research. We have offered a theoretical model that examines how an individual factor, self-leadership, may help foster intermediary processes conducive to shared leadership; additional theoretical work is necessary to explore factors at the team, organizational, industry and national levels that may be more or less supportive of the development of shared leadership. Another promising area for researchers lies at the intersection of leadership and team dynamics. Although beyond the scope of this paper, our model is consistent with a shift toward conceptualizing leadership less as the behaviors and characteristics of individuals and more as a social process that is embedded in a context of team dynamics and social interaction (e.g. Bligh and Meindl, 2004; Bligh et al., 2004; Pearce and Conger, 2003; Shamir and Howell, 1999). From this perspective, leadership is viewed as a process that occurs both within and through social relationships and networks of influence (see also Fletcher and Ka¨ufer, 2003). Conceptualizing leadership in this way leads to numerous unanswered questions regarding how team dynamics influence, and are influenced by various forms of leadership (including lateral, upward, and downward influence attempts). For example, greater dialogue between the team dynamics literature and the leadership literature may lead to new insights into how shared leadership is influenced by a variety of team characteristics, including team ability, size, member maturity, familiarity, likeability, cohesion, conflict, differentiation, and stage of team development, all of which are potential areas for future research. An important consideration of our model is that it explicitly involves meso-level research that necessitates both individual-level and team-level data collection. Following Markham and Markham’s (1995, p. 357) advice, “the conduct of research from a levels-of-analysis perspective requires a conformance between the level of

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referent in any survey question, the level of measurement from which the data are collected, the level (or levels) at which the statistical analyses are conducted, and the level of analysis for theory building”. Thus, future research must explore the extent to which the variables of interest are level-specific (i.e. do not transcend a single level of analysis), isomorphic, or cross-level effects. As Rousseau and House (1994) point out, one cannot just assume isomorphism – the idea that processes or relationships that hold true at one level of analysis will necessarily hold true at another level of analysis. As a result, empirical research is necessary to examine: . how individual employees mature into self-leaders; . whether or not a meso-level empirical relationship exists between self-leadership on the part of team members and team-level trust, potency, and commitment; and . whether there is indeed a subsequent effect of these team-level variables on shared leadership. We have proposed that the development of an individual level construct, self-leadership, will, through meso-level effects, result in higher levels of team trust, potency, and commitment, which in turn will facilitate a team environment in which potentially novel and even risky forms of shared leadership may emerge. We do not, however, suggest that self-leadership will always have positive qualities for team building. Given that self-leadership is so individualistic in orientation, the development of extremely high self-leadership skills could potentially inhibit an employee’s ability to effectively interact with others. Stated differently, there is nothing inherently team focused about self-leadership, and to the extent that an individual engages in behavior-focused strategies, natural reward strategies, and constructive thought strategies solely for personal gain or individual reasons, team-building processes would likely be negatively affected. Thus, an important limitation of our model is that it assumes team and organizational incentives are in place to encourage team building and the facilitation of team over individual achievements. In addition, the use of peer-based performance assessments and team-level rewards may be necessary conditions for the relationship between self-leadership and shared leadership. Over 45 years ago, Peter Drucker noted the rise of the knowledge worker, suggesting that knowledge is the new currency of work and “putting knowledge to work” is one of the primary challenges facing modern organizations (Drucker, 1959, 1995). Throughout this paper, we have argued that knowledge management is critical to team innovation and effectiveness, and have suggested that shared leadership may be critical to the development of knowledge creation in teams. Although both self-leadership and shared leadership explicitly address the need for novel approaches to leadership that address the new challenges that organizations face as they flatten, diversify, and confront increasingly complex problems that necessitate bringing together knowledge workers with diverse backgrounds and experiences, there has been little theoretical or empirical attention devoted to the relationship between these two theories. Our conceptual model attempts to address this void, suggesting some initial meso-level theoretical relationships and areas for future empirical research. Although research into team productivity and effectiveness has made great strides, many basic questions still remain unanswered. Specifically, do teams with greater levels of self-leadership on the part of the individual members develop increased trust in the members of the team, potency that the team can accomplish its tasks, and

commitment to the team? Second, are these positive outcomes (i.e. higher levels of team trust, potency and commitment) associated with increased shared leadership? And further, does an associated increase in shared leadership, particularly in teams facing high levels of interdependence and task complexity, result in greater knowledge creation? These and other important research questions that stem from consideration of these two theories in concert may prove critical in understanding the complex interrelationships among self-leadership, shared leadership, and the creation of new knowledge in today’s complex and dynamic organizations. References Ashley, S. (1992), “US quality improves but Japan still leads (study by Ernst & Young and American Quality Foundation)”, Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 24, pp. 114-26. Bandura, A. (1997), Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, W.H. Freeman, New York, NY. Bandura, A. and Cervone, D. (1983), “Self-evaluative and self-efficacy mechanisms governing the motivational effects of goal systems”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 45, pp. 1017-28. Becker, T.E. (1992), “Foci and bases of commitment: are they distinctions worth making?”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 232-44. Becker, T.E., Billings, R.S., Eveleth, D.M. and Gilbert, N.L. (1996), “Foci and bases of employee commitment: implications for job performance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 464-82. Bishop, J.W. and Scott, K.D. (2000), “Organizational and team commitment in a team environment”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, pp. 439-50. Bishop, J.W., Scott, K.D. and Burroughs, S.M. (2000), “Support, commitment, and employee outcomes in a team environment”, Journal of Management, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 1113-32. Blanchard, K. (1995), “Points of power can help self-leadership”, Manage, Vol. 46 No. 3, p. 12. Bligh, M.C. and Meindl, J.R. (2004), “The cultural ecology of leadership: an analysis of popular leadership books”, in Messick, D.M. and Kramer, R.M. (Eds), The Psychology of Leadership: New Perspectives and Research, LEA Press, Athens, pp. 11-52. Bligh, M.C., Kohles, J.C. and Meindl, J.R. (2004), “Charisma under crisis: presidential leadership, rhetoric, and media responses before and after the September 11th terrorist attacks”, The Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 211-39. Burke, C.S., Fiore, S.M. and Salas, E. (2003), “The role of shared cognition in enabling shared leadership and team adaptability”, in Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (Eds), Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 103-22. Cashman, K. (1995), “Mastery from the inside out”, Executive Excellence, Vol. 12 No. 12, p. 17. Cartwright, D. (1968), “The nature of group cohesiveness”, in Cartwright, D. and Zander, A. (Eds), Group Dynamics, 3rd ed., Harper & Row, New York, NY. Chowdhury, S. (2005), “The role of affect- and cognition-based trust in complex knowledge sharing”, Journal of Managerial Issues, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 310-27. Cohen, A. (2003), Multiple Commitments in the Workplace: An Integrative Approach, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Cox, J.F., Pearce, C.L. and Perry, M.L. (2003), “Toward a model of shared leadership and distributed influence in the innovation process: how shared leadership can enhance new product development, team dynamics and effectiveness”, in Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A.

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Maximizing organizational leadership capacity for the future Toward a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity

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Trudy C. DiLiello Defense Acquisition University, Port Hueneme, California, USA, and

Jeffery D. Houghton Department of Management, Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas, USA Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and present a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon existing theoretical and empirical evidence the paper develops and presents a conceptual model of the relationships between self-leadership, innovation, creativity, and organizational support. The paper also presents research propositions based upon the relationships suggested by the model. Findings – The model suggests that individuals with strong self-leadership will consider themselves to have more innovation and creativity potential than individuals who have weak self-leadership, and that individuals who have innovation and creativity potential will be more likely to practise innovation and creativity when they perceive strong support from the workplace than individuals who perceive weak support from the workplace. Research limitations/implications – Future researchers should examine empirically the linkages suggested by this model along with other relationships asserted or implied by the creativity and self-leadership literature as summarized in the paper. Practical implications – The model suggests that organizational leaders would be well advised to encourage the practice of self-leadership among the members of organizations while striving to build work environments that support of creativity and innovation at the group, supervisor, and organizational levels. Originality/value – This paper makes a valuable contribution to both the self-leadership and creativity literatures by being one of the first to examine the relationships between these important organizational concepts. Keywords Leadership, Innovation, Creative thinking, Modelling Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction The strategy for achieving transformation in the Department of Defense must begin with an effort to transform the overall culture into one where innovation and informed risk taking are encouraged and rewarded (Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Force Transformation, 2004).

Innovation and creativity are generally considered to be critical competencies for improving organizational staying power (e.g. Amabile, 1988; Kanter, 1983; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1997; Utterback, 1994; Woodman et al., 1993). Creativity theory suggests

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that when a working environment facilitates idea generation, knowledge sharing and creative problem solving, individuals in that environment are more likely to generate creative ideas that involve unique concepts or new applications of existing concepts. Creative ideas can be used for problem resolution, process improvements and the development of new services and/or products. Researchers also suggest that individual creativity is essential to organizational innovation (Amabile, 1988; Woodman et al., 1993), which in turn is imperative to long-term organizational survival and success (Kanter, 1983; Tushman and O’Reilly, 1997; Utterback, 1994). In order to enhance the chances of long-term survival, organizations should focus on supporting individual creativity in the workplace (Amabile, 1988; Cummings et al., 1975; Woodman et al., 1993). Individual creativity consists of two distinct elements: (1) creative potential; and (2) creative behavior (Hinton, 1970). Creative potential refers to an individual’s creative skills and abilities. Creative behavior or creative output, on the other hand, is the measured result of creative efforts. Creative potential may never be realized as creative behavior if an organization’s work environment does not foster creativity (Hinton, 1968). An organization that does not encourage innovation and creativity will likely have significant untapped resources. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is a good example of an organization that has acknowledged the importance of creativity and innovation. The DoD’s ability to develop and sustain a competitive advantage while fulfilling its mission of averting enemy terrorization depends in large part on the extent to which it can “develop new capabilities” (Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Force Transformation, 2004, p. 2). The DoD has recently acknowledged the need for change within the military and the “organizations and processes that control, support, and sustain them” (Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Force Transformation, 2004, p. i), and leveraging creativity and innovation has been identified by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as the most effective approach for facilitating the changes necessary for maintaining its strategic position. Furthermore, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the DoD have identified 27 Universal Leadership Competencies for the civilian workforce that focus on anticipating, leading and adapting to change. The DoD understands that ongoing cultural transformation, including the development of leadership skills at all organizational levels, is critical for sustaining a long-term competitive advantage (Office of the Secretary of Defense/Office of Force Transformation, 2004). In the past, organizations like the DoD have utilized a traditional top-down command-and-control leadership style. Although there are times and situations when this leadership style is appropriate, circumstances are increasingly dictating a need for a shift of focus toward internal leadership skills that can help individuals make smart decisions in the absence of traditional external leadership. Knowing and influencing oneself has become a fairly common leadership theme in recent years (Bennis, 1994; Drucker, 1999; Goleman et al., 2002; Senge, 1990; Yukl, 2002). The concept of self-leadership (e.g. Neck and Houghton, 2006) suggests that an individual who engages in self-evaluation, replacing ineffective behaviors and negative thought processes with more effective behaviors and positive thought processes, can enhance

personal accountability and improve professional performance. Self-leadership research also suggests that improving individual effectiveness can positively impact organizational outcomes (e.g. Manz and Sims, 1980, 2001; Manz and Neck, 2004; Houghton and Neck, 2002). Creativity and self-leadership may be related to one another in important ways that can synergistically enhance organizational leadership capacity for the future. The purpose of this paper is to develop and present a model of the relationships between self-leadership and innovation/creativity. In short, our model will suggest that strong self-leaders are more likely to have higher levels of innovation and creativity potential than weak self-leaders. The model will further suggest that employees with innovative and creative potential are more likely to practise innovation and creativity when they perceive support in the workplace. Such a model may be of great benefit to organizations, such as the DoD, that are seeking to adapt to change through the creativity and innovation of a workforce of self-leaders. Creativity and innovation Creativity is an elusive construct that is difficult to define. Theorists do not agree entirely on a single definition, but various definitions share a number of common themes. Guilford (1950, p. 452) stated that “the creative person has novel ideas” and will submit “uncommon, yet acceptable, responses”. Sternberg and Lubart (1999, p. 3) define creativity as “the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task constraints)”. Barron and Harrington (1981, p. 442) use the terms “novel”, “originality”, and “far-reachingness” in their definition of creativity, while Martindale (1989, p. 211) suggests that creativity “must be original, it must be useful or appropriate for the situation [. . .] and it must actually be put to some use”. Likewise, Amabile (1983, p. 360) has suggested that “a product or response will be judged as creative to the extent that (a) it is both a novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable response to the task at hand”. The terms “novel”, “appropriate”, and/or “acceptable” are widely used in the definitions of creativity found in the literature. Based on a composite of these definitions, creativity may be generally defined as the formation of novel, appropriate and useful ideas by individuals or small groups (see also Amabile et al., 1996; Woodman et al., 1993). By contrast, innovation usually refers to the implementation of creative ideas in an organizational context (e.g. Amabile et al., 1996). Thus, individual and team creativity serve as the origin of organizational innovation (Amabile et al., 1996). In considering the definition of creativity, it is important to make a distinction between creativity in the context of truly novel ideas and creativity in the context of problem solving. Although both types of creativity are important to most organizations, creative problem solving is a more common type of creativity that is more accessible to most people and more widely applicable in organizational settings. As Reiter-Palmon and Illies (2004) have suggested, creative problem solving may play a key role in maintaining an organization’s competitive advantage by helping its members to effectively address the unique and poorly defined problems they commonly encounter. Creative problem solving techniques can be used by both individuals and groups and can be placed on a creativity continuum ranging from safe, paradigm preserving techniques such as brainstorming, to more imaginative and

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expressive paradigm-breaking techniques such as guided fantasy (McFadzean, 1998). Individuals and group facilitators should choose techniques with regard to situational constraints and previous problem solving experience (McFadzean, 1998). For example, inexperienced groups or individuals may be uncomfortable with more advanced paradigm breaking techniques (McFadzean, 1998). Because creative problem solving requires extensive efforts on the part of organizational members, creative and innovative outcomes are unlikely to occur without a significant amount of organizational support for creative processes (Reiter-Palmon and Illies, 2004). From a practical standpoint, organizations often need to actively facilitate a climate that supports creativity and innovation. This can be a challenging process for some organizations, but different models of creativity suggest a number of important concepts that organizational leaders should consider in building a social-psychological climate that encourages creative effort. Although there are many models of creativity in the literature, we will provide an overview of three of the more prominent models that represent ideas from three of the more important conceptual areas within creativity theory: (1) motivation; (2) traits/characteristics; and (3) social relationships. One primary model of creativity was developed by Amabile (1988, 1996), and focuses largely on the factors that facilitate and motivate creative behaviors. Specifically, Amabile (1988) suggests that three components comprise individual creativity in a given domain: (1) domain-relevant skills or expertise (innate skills); (2) creativity-relevant processes (learned abilities); and (3) intrinsic task motivation (task attitudes). Domain-relevant skills, or expertise, comprise the possible responses that the individual has to draw upon in facing a given problem or situation. These include factual knowledge such as principles and opinions, technical skills that may be required in a specific domain, and “special domain-relevant talents that may contribute to creative productivity” (Amabile, 1983, p. 363). Domain-relevant skills are comprised of innate skills as well as those obtained through education, both formal and informal (Amabile, 1988). Even if domain-relevant skills are high, if individuals are lacking in creativity-relevant processes they will be unlikely to produce creative outcomes (Amabile, 1988). Creativity-relevant processes include: . personality; . cognitive style; . work style; and . the use of heuristics for exploring new cognitive pathways (Amabile, 1996). Personality traits associated with creativity-relevant processes are similar to self-discipline and include delay of gratification, perseverance, and independence

(Amabile, 1983). Cognitive style includes the ability to understand complexities, “to break set during problem-solving” (Amabile, 1996, p. 88), and suspend judgment. Cognitive style also includes being able to see things differently from others (Amabile, 1996). Work style includes the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996), to use “productive forgetting”, to replace unsuccessful solutions with new ones, to persist during the hard times, and to sustain high energy levels, effort and productivity (Amabile, 1996). Creativity-relevant skills and processes can be enhanced by training and experience in idea generation and creative thinking. Of the three components in the Amabile model, intrinsic motivation seems to be the most extensively studied (Amabile, 1996; Deci and Ryan, 1985; Shalley and Oldham, 1985; Shalley et al., 1987; Woodman et al., 1993). Intrinsic motivation is considered a primary driver for creativity at the individual level. Early evidence suggested that intrinsic motivation supported creativity while extrinsic motivation constrained creativity (Amabile, 1985; Amabile et al., 1994; Deci and Ryan, 1985; Rosenfield et al., 1980). More recently, this principle has been revised somewhat to reflect the possibility that extrinsic motivation may not always inhibit creativity. More specifically, when extrinsic motivation is seen as controlling it may be detrimental to creativity, but when extrinsic motivation is viewed as informational or enabling it may in fact be conducive to creativity, particularly when coupled with high initial levels of intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1996). Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation need not work in opposition, especially with regard to entrepreneurial creativity. Entrepreneurial creativity seems to require a synergistic motivation that includes both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation focused on competence and skill development (Amabile, 1997). A second model of individual creativity has been presented by Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989) and supplemented by Woodman et al. (1993). This model focuses on how the person, with his or her cognitive abilities and personality, is influenced by both antecedent conditions and the situation, which has both contextual and social influences. These elements then impact creative behavior, which in turn leads to consequences that provide feedback to the person and help shape contextual influences. Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989) have identified internal locus of control as a characteristic that is often present in highly creative people. Individuals with an internal locus of control believe that their outcomes result primarily from their own actions (Lefcourt, 1976; Rotter, 1966; Woodman and Schoenfeldt, 1989). In contrast, individuals with an external locus of control believe that they have little or no control over what happens to them and that rewards are more likely to be a result of chance, fate, luck, or someone else’s actions (Lefcourt, 1976; Rotter, 1966; Woodman and Schoenfeldt, 1989). Woodman et al. (1993) also make reference to other personality characteristics associated creativity that have also been identified by other creativity theorists including Amabile (1988) and Barron and Harrington (1981). Some of these characteristics include: . persistence; . curiosity; . interest in complexity; . preference for autonomy; . high energy;

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. .

self-confidence; and an impression of oneself as creative, a concept similar to the idea of creative self-efficacy (Tierney and Farmer, 2002).

The repeated mention of these personality characteristics helps to solidify our understanding of the determinants of individual creativity. Cognitive factors included in the Woodman et al. (1993) model include the abilities and skills involved in idea production, the ability to scrutinize the critical factors of a situation without being distracted, and the ability to produce limitless ideas combined with the ability to work through the problem-solving process and implement a solution. The model also includes divergent and convergent thinking, concepts considered critical to creativity and problem solving processes (Morrison, 1992; Kirton, 2003; Woodman et al., 1993). Indeed, empirical research suggests that training employees in creative thinking can result in improved attitudes toward divergent thinking (Woodman et al., 1993), which has important implications for creativity training aimed at improving performance. Finally, Woodman et al. (1993) expanded on the original Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989) creativity model by adding the concepts of knowledge, intrinsic motivation and expertise. Again, intrinsic motivation is identified “as a key element in creativity” (Woodman and Schoenfedt, p. 300). In this model, intrinsic motivation is described as the pleasure one gets from the involvement in the creative task itself, which serves as a type of reward. A third model of individual creativity is based on Ford’s (1996) concept of multiple social domains. Ford presents a theory of individual creative action that proposes that “creative and habitual actions are conceptually independent, competing behavioral options” (Ford, 1996, p. 1117). He suggests that the individual will be more likely to choose familiar habitual actions unless certain motivations and conditions support creative actions. This model suggests that an intentional pursuit of creativity must be present before expectations and emotions can influence individual creative action. Furthermore, creativity should be expected from those who are intrinsically motivated to be creative. According to Ford, a person develops expectations based on previous experiences, which influence receptivity beliefs toward future experiences. He identified effective communication, reward systems, availability of resources and tolerance of ambiguity as receptivity beliefs that are associated with creative performance. For example, if an individual is punished for an idea that fails to solve a problem, the individual would probably not contribute any additional ideas to solve the current or future problems. Conversely, if an individual is acknowledged for an idea that helps to solve a problem, that person would have a positive receptivity belief about contributing problem-solving ideas and would be more likely to continue to contribute ideas in the future. Ford (1996) also suggests that capability beliefs are related to both self-esteem and confidence. Such beliefs in one’s creativity skills and abilities have been referred to as creative self-image (Ford, 1996) and creative self-efficacy (Tierney and Farmer, 2002). Creative self-efficacy is defined “as the belief one has the ability to produce creative outcomes” (Tierney and Farmer, 2002, p. 1138). People lacking in belief in their own creative capabilities will have little or no incentive to act (see also Bandura, 1997), and beliefs can have a major influence on subsequent behavioral intentions (see also Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). Receptivity beliefs, capability beliefs and emotions in

particular are likely to impact an individual’s motivation for taking creative action (Ford, 1996). Much like Amabile’s (1988) model, Ford (1996) suggests three influences that help shape a person’s capacity for engaging in either creative or habitual action. Domain-related knowledge includes “prior learning, especially when it produces diverse knowledge, improves an individual’s ability to acquire new knowledge and to utilize that knowledge in creative ways” (Ford, 1996, p. 1124). In Ford’s model, intelligence is posited to have an impact on creativity but less impact at higher levels of creativity. Behavior skills and abilities can impact creative action when specific skills are required for performance. Creative-thinking abilities include divergent-thinking, the use of association, analogies, metaphors and intuition. Ford differentiates his theory from those of previous creativity theorists proposing an interplay among these domains along with competition between habitual and creative action. At the individual level, Amabile (1988), Woodman et al. (1993) and Ford (1996) include similar components within their theories of creativity. Knowledge, personality, high energy levels, divergent thinking, creativity skills and intrinsic motivation are frequently reported as contributing to individual creativity. Table I summarizes several of the key components suggested by these theoretical models. It is also important to note that at the individual level there is a difference between creativity potential (Hinton, 1970) and the ability to utilize these skills and abilities as measured by creative performance (Amabile, 1996; Cummings et al., 1975) or creative behavior (Hinton, 1968). Comparing individual creativity potential to practised innovation and creativity will identify whether there is a difference, or a gap. If there is a gap between creativity potential and practised creativity, this could suggest a bad “fit” between the person and the job, assuming that the job requires some level of creativity (Cummings and Oldham, 1997; Farmer et al., 2003; O’Reilly et al., 1991). However, because most jobs can benefit from creative problem solving and idea generation and because all individuals are seen as having some capacity for creativity (Guilford, 1950; Maslow, 1970), such a gap is more likely to suggest that the organizational culture does not support innovation and creativity (Amabile et al., 1996; Cummings et al., 1975; Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993).

Characteristic Autonomy Independence Internal locus of causality Internal locus of control Intrinsic motivation Self-confidence Self-determination Self-discipline Self-efficacy Self-image (creative) Self-regulation

Amabile (1988, 1996) £ £ £ £

Creativity Woodman et al. (1993)

Ford (1996)

Self-leadership Manz and Sims (2001)

£

£ (implied) £ (implied)

£ £ £ £

£ £

£ £ £ £

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£ (implied) £ £ £ (implied) £ £

Table I. Theoretical relationship between creativity and self-leadership

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Self-leadership With its emphasis on improving individual effectiveness, self-leadership strives to address a number of the challenges that face organizations looking to thrive in the twenty-first century. Manz and Sims (1980) have made the case that leaders in organizations should develop individuals’ abilities to manage or lead themselves in the workplace. This form of leadership is sometimes called “SuperLeadership”, and is defined as leading others to lead themselves (Manz and Sims, 2001). There is a limit to the amount of control that supervisors and work conditions can have over the workers in a work environment (Manz and Sims, 1980). The rest of the control, or motivation to work, comes from within the individual (Herzberg et al., 2003; Manz and Sims, 1980; Sergiovanni, 1992). When employees are trained and empowered to perform as self-managed employees, supervisors can focus on longer-term issues because their role has shifted away from detailed oversight and control. Self-leadership is generally described as a self-influence process that helps individuals develop the self-direction and self-motivation necessary to perform effectively in the workplace (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004). Self-leadership prescribes specific behavioral and cognitive strategies that may be divided into three primary categories: (1) behavior focused strategies; (2) natural reward strategies; and (3) constructive thought strategies (e.g. Houghton and Neck, 2002). For a more detailed overview of self-leadership and its components, see Neck and Houghton (2006). Self-leadership training can help prepare the workforce for the ever-changing challenges of the twenty-first century work environment. Among the challenges that have been examined in the context of self-leadership research are diversity management (Neck et al., 1997) and goal performance (Godwin et al., 1999). Generally, empirical self-leadership research suggests that individuals who utilize self-leadership strategies are more likely to improve their individual performance and, by extension, organizational performance, than a person who does not use self-leadership strategies (Neck and Manz, 1996). Self-leadership strategies appear promising for enhancing organizational capacity in the face of the challenges of the twenty-first century. More specifically, we view self-leadership as an important organizational tool for building a social and psychological climate that encourages creative problem solving. In short, we suggest that an organization which encourages self-leadership is likely to experience higher levels of creative processes among its members and less of a gap between potential and practised innovation and creativity. Toward a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity A model of the relationships between self-leadership, innovation and creativity, and environmental support for creativity and innovation is shown in Figure 1. In this section, we will discuss the various components of the model and present research propositions for each of the relationships suggested. Theorists have often suggested a relationship between self-leadership and creativity (e.g. Manz and Sims, 2001). Table I provides a summary of some of the key concepts from the creativity literature that may be related to self-leadership. One relationship that can clearly be mapped between creativity and self-leadership involves

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Figure 1. The impact of self-leadership on innovation and creativity

autonomy and self-determination. Autonomy is identified as being essential to individual creativity (Amabile, 1996; Barron and Harrington, 1981; Woodman et al., 1993). Autonomy orientation is a major factor in identifying the degree to which an individual experiences a sense of self-determination and intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985), which are primary features of natural rewards in self-leadership (Manz and Neck, 2004). Indeed, empirical research suggests that an individual’s need for autonomy can subsequently influence the extent to which the individual engages in self-leadership (Yun et al., 2006). Other relationships between creativity and self-leadership have also been suggested. For example, Houghton and Yoho (2005) have suggested a relationship between individual self-leadership and subsequent levels of individual independence and creativity, while Kazan and Earnest (2000) reported a significant relationship between an internal locus of control and individual self-leadership. Finally, as Manz and Sims (2001) suggest, the “SuperLeadership” or empowering leadership style (leading others to lead themselves) brings out the best in others so that they will become “stronger through their initiative, creativity, and real contributions” (Manz and Sims, 2001, p. 5). Some of the strategies listed for SuperLeaders are conceptually similar to strategies recommended for supporting creativity, including the encouragement of learning from mistakes, sharing information, collaborating with others, and working interdependently. SuperLeaders promote creativity rather than conformity. Indeed, Mumford and Connelly (1999) have suggested that creativity may be one of the most essential aspects of effective organizational leadership. It takes creative thinking, challenging the status quo, and a different style of leadership to redesign bureaucratic processes (Katz and Kahn, 1978). The traditional organization with rigid procedures is not equipped to respond to change and “tends to limit creativity and innovation” (Denhardt and Aristigueta, 1996, p. 682), the very skills necessary for facilitating change efforts of great magnitude. The encouragement of follower self-leadership represents a new leadership style that may help to promote organizational climates that support innovation and creativity. This empowering approach to leadership is becoming an important strategic step toward meeting the needs of the rapidly changing work environment in the twenty-first century:

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Employees high in self-leadership are more likely to have higher innovation and creativity potential than employees who are low in self-leadership.

P1a. High individual need for autonomy is likely to be positively related to both self-leadership and innovation and creativity potential.

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P1b. Independence is likely to be positively related to both self-leadership and innovation and creativity potential. P1c. Internal locus of control is likely to be positively related to both self-leadership and innovation and creativity potential. P1d. Feelings of self-determination and intrinsic motivation are likely to be positively related to both self-leadership and innovation and creativity potential. Work group support for innovation and creativity Factors that impact individual creativity are thought to have a similar impact on work groups (Amabile, 1988). Therefore, creativity will likely be higher if the work group perceives that they have a choice in how to accomplish the task at hand. Because creative teamwork may be essential for maintaining a competitive advantage, Thompson (2003) has identified four threats to creativity in work groups: (1) social loafing; (2) conformity; (3) production blocking; and (4) downward norm setting. Thompson goes on to present a matrix of concepts, ranging from team member diversity to creating a work playground, which suggests ten specific strategies for dealing with the four threats to creativity. Woodman et al. (1993, p. 304) discuss group creativity as a separate level of analysis, warning that even though the group creativity is a function of the individual creativity, it is not “the simple aggregate of all group members’ creativity”. Group creativity is influenced by a variety of factors, including diversity, cohesiveness, size, problem-solving strategies and social information processes. Although group and individual creativity function separately and at different levels of analysis, there is little doubt that they are nonetheless interrelated. It seems highly likely that individual creativity will affect overall group creativity, just as group creativity can impact the creativity of individuals. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to suppose that individuals will engage in more creative processes if they perceive strong creative support from their work group. P2.

Employees who have innovation and creativity potential are more likely to practice innovation and creativity when they perceive strong work group support than employees who perceive weak work group support.

Supervisor’s support for innovation and creativity In order to cultivate innovation and creativity in the workplace, certain leadership behaviors should be practised. The majority of the supervisory practices that enhance

creativity are similar to the basic literature on effective leadership (Bass and Avolio, 1994). This literature suggests that individual creativity relies heavily on the effectiveness of the supervision provided to the workforce. The main practices that leaders should embrace to support and encourage innovation and creativity in the workplace include: . encouraging employees to challenge the status quo; . having an open attitude towards risk taking; . being able to use mistakes as learning opportunities; . using and sharing knowledge and information; . focusing on continuous learning; . conducting fair and informative evaluations; . rewarding creative performance; . practising participatory management; and . being self-reflective. Although this is certainly not an exhaustive list, it does provide some insights into the common practices of effective leaders. The ability to encourage employees to question the status quo is one way that effective leaders stay focused on facilitating change and improvement (Amabile, 1996; Bass and Avolio, 1994; Cummings and Oldham, 1997; Kouzes and Posner, 1995; Senge, 1990; Woodman et al., 1993). When leaders invite employees to question the status quo they are building an environment in which employees feel comfortable sharing innovative ideas (Argyris, 1999). In contrast, a focus on maintaining the status quo fosters an unwillingness to change the way things are normally done, which can inhibit creativity and minimize original thinking and new ideas (Amabile, 1988). Effective leaders must also be willing to take risks and encourage risk taking among their employees (Amabile, 1996; Bass and Avolio, 1994; Woodman et al., 1993). If leaders punish employees when they fail or make mistakes, it is unlikely that employees will experiment or test new ideas. Leaders need to show employees that there are great lessons to be learned from mistakes (Amabile, 1996; Bass and Avolio, 1994; Bennis, 1994). In addition, effective leaders should provide opportunities for continuous learning for their employees as well as for themselves (Argyris, 1999; Bennis, 1994; Kouzes and Posner, 1995; Meister, 1998; Senge, 1990). The knowledge worker is committed to and dependent upon information as currency. The organization that is focused on leveraging innovation and creativity requires knowledge sharing (Drucker, 1999; Manz and Sims, 2001). The fair, positive and informative evaluation of and reward for performance is repeatedly cited as positively influencing intrinsic motivation and enhancing creative performance (Amabile, 1996; Cummings and Oldham, 1997, p. 28; Woodman et al., 1993). If an individual feels threatened by negative feedback or receives incompetent feedback, he or she will be less likely to volunteer for additional tasks, less likely to take risks and less likely to try something new. Amabile (1996, p. 261) encourages the use of rewards for creative efforts “even when the ultimate result may not have been profitable”. Rewards should acknowledge employee competence and should never be used to control or bribe. Furthermore, the practice of involving the workforce in

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decision-making can be a very effective way to increase employee feelings of belongingness and job satisfaction leading to enhanced creativity (Amabile, 1996; Woodman et al., 1993). Leader oversight should be loose and non-controlling because “controlling supervisor behaviors shift an employee’s focus or attention away from his or her own ideas and toward external concerns” (Cummings and Oldham, 1997, p. 28). Peters and Waterman (1982) suggest a loose-tight environment that can maintain managerial control as needed while still allowing for an environment that supports innovation. Likewise, Woodman et al. (1993) suggest that a democratic and collaborative leadership style best supports group creativity. The concept of knowing oneself has been given many terms in the leadership literature. The common theme is that in order to be an effective leader, one must have an intimate knowledge of oneself and must be able to self-reflect, self-evaluate and self-direct (Bennis, 1994; Drucker, 1999; Goleman et al., 2002; Heifetz, 1994; Kouzes and Posner, 1995; Kuhnert, 1994; Manz and Sims, 2001; Yukl, 2002). This practice should be openly modeled as the behavior that the supervisors want employees to emulate. This practice is essential to a learning organization (Argyris, 1999; Senge, 1990) and is advocated in the self-leadership literature as well (Manz and Neck, 2004; Manz and Sims, 2001). It is imperative that supervisors be aware of the practices that influence self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation because these are critical factors in influencing individual action. Supervisors looking to support and encourage innovation and creativity are challenged “to consistently empower the individual processes that facilitate creative action” (Ford, 1996, p. 1136). These supervisory practices can have a direct impact on individual creativity and organizational innovation: P3.

Employees who have innovation and creativity potential are more likely to practice innovation and creativity when they perceive strong supervisor support than employees who perceive weak supervisor support.

Organizational support for innovation and creativity Amabile (1988) has identified many elements that create an environment in which individuals and teams feel encouraged to be creative. In order to build this environment the organization must clearly demonstrate “that creativity and innovation are valued by focusing communication within the organization on the excitement and potential of the ideas being generated and the work being accomplished” (Amabile, 1996, p. 262). Practices at the organizational level are crucial to individual creativity (Amabile, 1988) and task motivation has been found “to depend strongly on the work environment” (p. 133). Therefore, organizational qualities that influence individual creativity must be the focus in order to enhance overall organizational innovation. These qualities include organizational motivation, resources, and innovation management practices. Organizational motivation toward innovation is determined by the vision established by top management and the behaviors they reward. Organizational motivation involves setting an acceptable level of risk before challenging the status quo. The organization that supports innovation displays a progressive, directional strategic plan for the future. Resources include the people of the organization and all their vast knowledge, skills and talents. These resources should entail all the equipment, support and training that employees need to do their jobs. Innovation requires an investment, and funds need to be made available to provide necessary resources. Skills in innovation management include the leadership skills needed to

support individual creativity, including the ability to create feelings of autonomy in the workforce and ongoing informative feedback focused on employee competence. The organization should eliminate unnecessary layers of management, provide generous rewards for creative behavior, and encourage the use of cross-functional work groups. Amabile (1996) has suggested that individual creativity feeds organizational innovation and, reciprocally, that the work environment impacts individual creativity. “The evidence suggests that much can be done to enhance and maintain creativity by establishing stimulating, supportive, and positively challenging environments” (Amabile, 1996, p. 262). Likewise, Woodman et al. (1993, p. 309), state “that individual, group, and organizational characteristics have an impact on the creative process and situation, resulting in the creative product for the organization”. Building on the Woodman and Schoenfeldt (1989) model, Woodman et al. (1993) suggest several relationships between individual, group and organizational creativity, resulting in a creative outcome that considers contextual and environmental influences. For instance, training can improve idea generation and problem-solving skills, thereby encouraging creativity at the organizational level. Multiple researchers have suggested that organizations should “legitimize conflict, stimulate participation, and rely on intrinsic rather than extrinsic rewards” (Woodman et al., 1993, p. 306) in order to support and encourage innovation and creativity (Amabile, 1996; Katz and Kahn, 1978; Kouzes and Posner, 1995). According to Woodman et al. (1993, p. 310), important aspects of the organizational culture include “resource availability, organizational mission and strategy, reward policies, structure, and technology”. They also summarize the type of workplace environment that supports creativity: “when leadership is democratic and collaborative, structure is organic rather than mechanistic, and groups are composed of individuals drawn from diverse fields or functional backgrounds” (Woodman et al., 1993, p. 302). As outlined earlier, Ford (1996) has presented a multiple social domains model of creativity that attributes organizational creativity to socialized organizational action. Ford suggests that creative action within an organization is the multiplicative product of sense making, motivation, knowledge and ability. According to Ford (1996, p. 1128), there are two “important influences on an organization’s ability and desire to support creative actions and innovation”. The first important influence, absorptive capacity, occurs at the individual and organizational levels and includes the ability to identify useful information that can be used constructively. Information, in the form of relevant knowledge, needs to be able to flow freely across units to various organizational actors. Absorptive capacity assists the organization in being able to identify and “accurately evaluate the viability of creative actions, which, in turn, provides greater incentives to invest in promising initiatives” (p. 1128). The second important influence, disposition toward risk, seems to depend on higher aspiration levels that can impact “an organization’s willingness to pursue creative and risky courses of action” (Ford, 1996, p. 1129). Because risk involves the possibility for failure and the loss of resources, organizations have to determine the level of risk they are willing to accept. This is probably why hierarchical organizations have a tendency to select conservative rather than creative actions (Ford, 1996). Organizations can fall victim to routine and institutional processes leading to constraints that “hinder both creative and habitual action” (Ford, 1996, p. 1130). Thus, the fear of disrupting routine may serve as a major obstacle to change.

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Ford’s model further proposes “that motivation, domain-related skills and creative ability interact within organizational level domains to generate intentional creative actions” (Ford, 1996, p. 1134). Knowledge, trust, communication skills and capabilities are “uniquely important to organizational creativity” (Ford, 1996, p. 1124). Ford goes on to suggest that the organization, not unlike individuals, will be faced with “competing behavioral options” (Ford, 1996, p. 1134), where sense-making, motivation, levels of domain and habitual actions will have to be measured and assessed against intentional creative action and innovative solutions. Ford concludes that, much like individuals, organizations will most likely choose routine over creative actions. Finally, Mumford and Gustafson (1988) suggest a number of conditions that should be present for a work environment to support innovation and creativity. The organization should provide meaningful rewards and encourage the “exploration of alternative points of view” (Mumford and Gustafson, 1988, p. 38). It should also support autonomy and risk taking. In addition, top-level management should “instill strong values, beliefs, and assumptions that encourage creativity” (Tesluk et al., 1997, p. 31). Tesluk et al. (1997) also emphasize the need for top-level management to go beyond merely talking about these values and follow through with their actions. Innovation is imperative to organizational survival and success and individual creativity is critical to organizational innovation. Management must ensure that the organizational environment is conducive to enhancing individual creativity: P4.

Employees who have innovation and creativity potential are more likely to practice innovation and creativity when they perceive strong organizational support than employees who perceive weak organizational support.

P5.

Employees who perceive high levels of support from the work environment are less likely to experience a gap between innovation and creativity potential and practised innovation and creativity than employees who perceive lower levels of support from the work environment.

Summary of the model relationships Because a strong self-leader is predicted to be a self-motivated, positive thinker, the model suggests that he or she is more likely to consider him or herself to have high creativity potential. As a strong self-leader with high creativity potential, the model predicts that this type of individual will also be more likely to practise innovation and creativity in the workplace than a weak self-leader. In addition, it is less likely that there will be a difference between having creativity potential and practising innovation and creativity if the individual perceives support from the workplace as shown in the model. A gap between individual creativity potential and the ability to practise using those skills and abilities may suggest untapped resources that, when utilized, can benefit both the individual and the organization reciprocally. Practical implications and future research directions In this paper we have presented a preliminary model of the relationships between self-leadership, innovation and creativity, and environmental support for creativity and innovation. This paper makes a valuable contribution to both the self-leadership and creativity literatures by proposing the nature of the relationships between these important organizational concepts. The model and propositions we have presented

also have significant implication for organizational leaders. In short, our model suggests that organizations would be well advised to encourage the practice of self-leadership among its members while striving to build work environments that support of creativity and innovation at the group, supervisor, and organizational levels. To the extent that organizations can successfully construct these types of supportive structures while encouraging independence, autonomy and self-leadership, they will be able to effectively reduce the gap between innovation and creativity potential and practiced innovation and creativity. The model and propositions presented here also have good potential for serving as a framework for future empirical research. Future researchers should examine empirically the linkages suggested by our model along with other relationships asserted or implied by the creativity and self-leadership literature as summarized in Table I. Although the relationships proposed in the model will be of primary interest to future researchers, the influence of concepts such as autonomy, independence, internal locus of control, intrinsic motivation in the context of self-leadership, creativity and innovation will also merit additional attention. Future researchers should also consider examining the interactions of self-leadership, creativity and innovation in the context of problem solving and decision-making. Organizations that encourage creativity and self-leadership as an approach to problem solving and decision-making may experience significant productivity increases resulting from employees working smarter rather than harder. To be more specific, an empirical study could be conducted in which the workforce members of an organization such as the DoD would be surveyed using individual level self-reported measures of self-leadership, creativity potential, ability to practise creativity, and the perception of support for innovation and creativity in the workplace. By conceptualizing and measuring all model components at the individual level, problems with multiple levels of analysis could be avoided. Regression analysis or structural equations modeling could then be utilized to examine the relationships between self-leadership and innovation and creativity. The extent to which innovation and creativity potential mediates the relationship between self-leadership and practised innovation and creativity would be of particular interest. The results of such a study would add to the body of empirical research on self-leadership and creativity, while promoting additional empirical research examining the relationship between the two constructs. The impact of these findings could be useful in the advancement of leadership development training in organizations attempting to adapt to rapidly changing environments such as those faced by the DoD. The present goal for the DoD and other similar organizations is to be able to continually self diagnose and respond to needed changes as the environment changes. A workforce with strong self-leaders working in environments that support innovation and creativity could synergistically assist organizations like the DoD in maintaining an all-important competitive advantage. The impact of these changes may be critical in transforming the DoD and similar organizations in the face of a wide range of twenty-first century challenges.

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Thompson, L. (2003), “Improving the creativity of organizational work groups”, Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 96-109. Tierney, P. and Farmer, S.M. (2002), “Creative self-efficacy: its potential antecedents and relationship to creative performance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 45 No. 8, pp. 1137-48. Tushman, M. and O’Reilly, C.A. III (1997), Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Utterback, J.M. (1994), Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Woodman, R.W. and Schoenfeldt, L.F. (1989), “Individual differences in creativity: an interactionist perspective”, in Glover, J.A., Ronning, R.R. and Reynolds, C.R. (Eds), Handbook of Creativity, Plenum Press, New York, NY. Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E. and Griffen, R.W. (1993), “Toward a theory of organizational creativity”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 293-321. Yukl, G. (2002), Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Yun, S., Cox, J. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2006), “The forgotten follower: a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 374-88. Corresponding author Trudy C. DiLiello can be contacted at: [email protected]

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Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA

Jose´ C. Alves Kathi J. Lovelace School of Business and Leadership, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington, USA

Charles C. Manz and Dmytro Matsypura Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA

Fuminori Toyasaki Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and

Ke (Grace) Ke Babin School of Business, University of Arkansas, Monticello, Arkansas, USA Abstract

Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 pp. 338-359 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946 DOI 10.1108/02683940610663123

Purpose – Seeks to understand how differences in national cultures impact on the understanding and meaning of the concept of self-leadership and its application. Design/methodology/approach – First, research at the intersection of culture and leadership and Hofstede’s culture framework are reviewed. Then the main components of self-leadership theory are introduced, and how Hofstede’s framework can be used to re-analyze them given differences across cultures is discussed. Findings – While self-leadership remains, in general, a valid concept, its understanding and application is likely to differ across cultures. Specifically, high power distance raises the importance of the symbolic value of tasks and correspondent covert processes of self-leadership, high uncertainty avoidance makes more explicit the importance of non-rational and intuition-based thought processes, collectivism shows the relevance of social relations, femininity reiterates the importance of social relations and non-rational processes, and long-term orientation introduces the importance of making time an explicit element. Research limitations/implications – There is a need for further research on self-leadership that investigates the roles of social and cultural relations, communication and language, multilevel interdependencies, and ethics. Empirically there is need for developing a self-leadership instrument that is relevant and applicable across cultures. Practical implications – This paper should facilitate appreciation of a contingency perspective of self-leadership that requires different modes of application across cultures. Originality/value – This paper helps fill a gap in the self-leadership literature. In particular, it can facilitate greater understanding of this concept in cultures other than the USA, where it originated. Keywords Leadership, Cross-cultural studies, National cultures, United States of America Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction The study of culture and leadership has steadily developed as a research stream since the mid-1990s (Dickson et al., 2003). This development includes a wide array of perspectives, such as global leadership (e.g. Adler, 1997), leadership across nations (e.g. House et al., 2004), and leadership within multicultural organizations and environments (e.g. Connerley and Pederson, 2005). Research analyzing the application of leadership theories across cultures suggests that leadership practices are culturally bound. In fact, Adler (1997) states that there are no universal theories of leadership. In this paper we investigate this premise by examining the culturally bounded nature of leadership and exploring the applicability of self-leadership theory across cultures. Specifically, this paper draws on Hofstede’s (1980, 2001) cultural dimensions framework to address the question of how self-leadership may be understood and practised in cultures other than its US origin. Given the current trend of globalization it is increasingly likely that individuals will work within different cultures. In these situations, the question arises as to whether individuals who practise self-leadership within their native culture will be able to continue to do so in other cultural contexts or, alternatively, to what extent their understanding and practice of self-leadership will need to change and adapt. We believe that a cross-cultural consideration of self-leadership is a worthwhile pursuit to explore the ways in which the practice of self-leadership may be shaped by culture-dependent ways of thinking and acting. Thus, our purpose is to understand how differences in national cultures (Hofstede, 1980, 2001) impact on the concept of self-leadership, as we know it today (Neck and Houghton, 2006). To that end, we first provide a brief overview of research in the intersection of culture and leadership. We then introduce the main components of self-leadership theory and review Hofstede’s cultural framework. Finally, we discuss how Hofstede’s dimensions of national culture can be used to re-analyze the components of self-leadership theory in non-US cultures. Our research contributes to the literature by providing a first step toward increasing the relevance of self-leadership theory to other cultures. As such, it addresses Hofstede’s (2001) and Adler’s (1997) calls for more local and cultural specific theories of management and organizations. Culture and leadership According to Nancy Adler (1997, p. 174), there are numerous definitions of leadership but “there are no global leadership theories”. None of the existing theories, she adds, can be considered a universal theory of leadership because they reflect an American perspective and practices that are based on its own cultural values. To illustrate this Adler (1997, pp. 174-5) states that: For example, based on 221 definitions of leadership from the twentieth century, Rost (1991) concluded that leadership has most frequently been seen as rational, management-oriented, male, technocratic, quantitative, cost-driven, hierarchical, short-term, pragmatic, and materialistic. Not surprisingly, many of these listed descriptors reflect some of the core values of American culture. For example, relative to people from most other cultures, Americans tend to have a more short-term orientation (e.g., they emphasize this quarter’s results and daily reported share prices), a more materialistic orientation (e.g., forty percent of American managers still think that “the bottom line” is the criterion for corporate health, whereas in no other nation can find even thirty percent of its managers who take this view;

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see Hampden-Turner, 1993), and a more quantitative orientation (e.g., emphasizing measurable contributions and results rather than relying on less easily quantified qualities such as success in relationship-building).

Adler implies that the definition of leadership has been problematic because of having not paid sufficient attention to various research issues, including theoretical viewpoints, methodology, and the people concerned. Likewise, the notion of culture is not without controversies. In reviewing the notion of culture, Hofstede (2001) identified many sources of these controversies. For him culture is such a complex, multi-level, and multi-disciplinary concept that for practical reasons social scientists tend to focus only on some of its aspects, which “has had the unfortunate side effect of overspecialization” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 20). Hofstede observed that to understand this complexity it would be necessary to do an ideal study of culture with a combination of “idiographic and nomothetic, emic and etic, qualitative and quantitative elements” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 26). However, he adds, this may not be possible and, for practical reasons at least, it forces researchers to make choices. Given the nature of these two concepts – culture and leadership – it is unsurprising that their intersection has given rise to a variety of research questions, controversies, and demands for further studies (Dickson et al., 2001; McCall, 2001). We illustrate this with three examples. First, looking at culture from a gender perspective, Adler (1997) pointed out that there is a feminization of global leadership, not only due to the increasing number of women in leadership positions but also because of the relevance and wide expansion of certain leadership traits and qualities that have traditionally been connoted as feminine, such as cooperation, participation, and relational styles. In other words, for Adler (1997) global leadership cannot be defined any more in terms of the masculine ideal or the American ethos. This makes us think whether self-leadership needs also to be reconsidered, particularly in light of two dimensions of culture proposed by Hofstede: individualism/collectivism and masculinity/femininity. Second, Blunt and Jones (1997) argued that Western models of leadership are not applicable to East Asian and African developing countries, mainly because of differences in viewpoints regarding authority, loyalty and interpersonal relations. Similarly, we are led to consider whether self-leadership maintains the same meaning in other cultures given two other dimensions of culture: power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Third, drawing on Hofstede’s work, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) program provides a comparison of implicit leadership theories in 62 nations (House et al., 2004). The GLOBE program is a cross-cultural longitudinal research project that develops “an empirically-based theory to describe, understand, and predict the impact of specific cultural variables on leadership and organizational processes and the effectiveness of these processes” (House et al., 2002, p. 4). Given that GLOBE is a longitudinal project, we are also intrigued in whether the last dimension of Hofstede’s work – short- versus long-term orientation – is also relevant to explain self-leadership in other cultures. We know already that it may not be possible to have an ideal study of culture (Hofstede, 2001), so it is not surprising when scholars point out theoretical and methodological limitations of the GLOBE project while emphasizing the need for further research (Scandura and Dorfman, 2004). It is in this spirit that we also consider

the study of self-leadership in other cultures to be worthy of reflection and discussion. Similar to the GLOBE project and other cross-cultural management studies, we draw on Hofstede’s work (1980, 2001) as our main culture framework. Self-leadership This section addresses three sets of questions: (1) What is the origin of self-leadership, what does it mean, and how different it is from other related concepts? (2) How and why is the concept of self-leadership complex? (3) How can we develop a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership? Origins of self-leadership The concept of self-leadership emerged out of the notion of self-management and relates to the process of influencing oneself (Manz, 1983, 1986, 1992; Manz and Neck, 1999, 2004; Manz and Sims, 1990, 2001). Neck and Houghton (2006) provide a comprehensive historical overview of the concept and how it is different from related concepts including self-regulation and self-management. According to Neck and Houghton (2006), self-regulation theory is a descriptive framework to explain how people behave, whereas self-management is a prescriptive framework to suggest how people should behave. However, both these theories do not indicate what types of behaviors should be done and why, which is the concern of self-leadership theory. Generally speaking, self-leadership aims at the enhancement of personal effectiveness through three categories of individual-level strategies: (1) behavior-focused strategies; (2) natural reward strategies; and (3) constructive thought strategies (Houghton and Neck, 2002; Neck and Houghton, 2006). According to Neck and Houghton (2006), behavioral-focused strategies aim at management of behaviors, and include: . self-observation, or increase of one’s awareness about when and why to act; . self-goal setting, or the decision about what goals to pursue and how should be pursued; . self-rewards, or compensations to energize oneself; . self-punishment, or constructive self-feedback; and . self-cueing, or external signaling. The category of natural rewards strategies aim the increase of feelings of competence and self-determination through the enhancement and focus on enjoyable task features. Finally, constructive thought processes aim the creation of positive thinking through the reduction of dysfunctional beliefs and assumptions, the reduction of negative self-talk, and increase of positive self-image. In our view, the practice of self-leadership requires individuals to use strategies from all three categories above – behavioral, natural rewards, and constructive

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thought. Nevertheless, being a practice-oriented theory, we believe that individuals who exercise self-leadership will put more or less effort into certain strategies depending on the contexts and situations where they are involved, and as these situations unfold over time. One could suggest that the self-leadership model functions as an integrated whole but its functioning is like loose coupling systems, the parts of which are joined by “few common or weak common variables” (Weick, 1979, p. 111). Moreover, we think that this holistic perspective of self-leadership is valid in every culture but the selection and use of specific strategies may differ. In other words, the intensity and association between components of the self-leadership model is not fixed. Complexity of self-leadership Despite a focus on the individual, we would like to point out that various self-leadership scholars have recognized the importance of multilevel analysis in developing theoretical work (e.g. Bligh et al., 2006) as well as empirical work (e.g. Yun et al., 2006). Given our interest in integrating self-leadership and culture, we discuss the levels of analysis of these concepts and explore ways to integrate them. Self-leadership is mostly concerned in explaining ways to enhance organizational performance through individual-dependent thinking and acting. Thus self-leadership can be considered as an entry point (at the individual level) for organizational analysis. To illustrate this it is worth to see how scholars have drawn on self-leadership to propose ways to enhance various organizational processes and functions including, for example, empowering leadership in self-managing teams (Manz and Sims, 1987), team-based knowledge work (e.g. Bligh et al., 2006), or organizational innovation and creativity (DiLiello and Houghton, 2006). However, self-leadership has not been applied to higher organizational levels, in particular national culture. One possible reason for this is the inexistence of a universal measurement scale. In this regard, Neubert and Wu (2006) have made a first step to develop a self-leadership scale for the Chinese context. At first glance, one might think that self-leadership and national culture operate at different levels of analysis – the individual and the nation, respectively. However, as we have discussed above, both concepts draw on theoretical frameworks that cross multiple levels. Our view here is that, traditionally, each concept has preferred a certain level as a starting point of organization analysis: individual level for self-leadership and nation level for national culture. Yet both concepts have drawn on theories and borrowed ideas situated at other levels. Self-leadership draws on self-management and self-regulation theories, more focused at the group and organizational levels respectively. National culture accepts that individuals and societies may influence national culture, respectively personal and societal levels. Developing a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership We think that a cross-cultural perspective of self-leadership is necessarily a multi-level analysis with entry points at micro and/or macro levels. To illustrate this we explore the theoretical relationship between self-leadership and culture by considering two supporting theories of self-leadership: (1) intrinsic motivation theory; and (2) social cognitive theory.

First, according to Remedios and Boreham (2004) individuals are said to be intrinsically motivated, as opposed to externally motivated, when they feel that they: . have an effect on the environment (White, 1959); . are authors of their own actions (deCharms, 1968); or . have autonomy (Deci, 1975). In sum, intrinsic motivation is based on one’s opportunity to act with purpose. The implied notion of purpose suggests that people assign values to thinking, feeling, and acting, which as we mentioned before is seen by Hofstede as the foundation of culture, a “collective mental programming”. Second, social cognitive theory explains human behavior as a system of interrelationships among internal influences, external influences, and behavior that alternates the production with reduction of dysfunctions, and vice versa, tending towards equilibrium (Bandura, 1986). As such it accounts for the interrelation among cognitive, social, and behavioral dimensions of self-leadership. Since a “collective mental program” is a system of values that results from the interrelation between thinking, feeling, and acting, we could infer that culture refers also to an interaction between social, cognitive, and behavioral aspects. Note also that the definition of culture as a “collective programming of the mind” implies all three dimensions: (1) collective captures the social dimension; (2) programming is representative of the behavioral dimension; and (3) the mind alludes to the cognitive dimension. The overlap of these theories indicates a strong link between self-leadership theory and national culture. To conclude, in our view it is not only possible but also desirable that a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership is developed, since there are significant links between both theoretical streams. We next analyze the ways in which self-leadership is likely to be understood, and in particular, how it may be applied differently across cultures. This analysis will utilize Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions: (1) power distance; (2) uncertainty avoidance; (3) individual (collective); (4) masculine (feminine); and (5) future orientation. Hofstede’s approach to culture According to Dickson et al. (2003) the most recognized (and criticized) culture dimensions in leadership research are those proposed by Hofstede (1980, 2001). Other dimensions have also been used to study culture, namely by Schwartz (1999), Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997), Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961), and those in the GLOBE program (House et al., 2004). Yet in this paper we focus on Hofstede’s framework, both because of its conceptual clarity and its broad visibility in the literature. In this section we firstly present Hofstede’s definition of culture and then

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discuss some of its premises that in our view are relevant for a cross cultural analysis of self-leadership. According to Hofstede culture is a “collective mental programming: it is that part of our conditioning that we share with other members of our nation, region or group but not with members of other nations, regions or groups” (1983, p. 76). This definition reveals Hofstede’s humanistic view, which is supported by his critique of rational organization theories that fail to account for non-controllable political dimensions. Such viewpoint had been exposed in a prior article when he stated that “[i]n political situations, there is no consensus about goals, and replacing the organizational reality by a model which treats people as means is no longer allowed.” (Hofstede, 1978, p. 460). Hofstede’s definition of culture is based on various assumptions, three of which we consider relevant to our study because of their implications to theory, research, and practice of self-leadership in other cultures. These assumptions are: (1) human behavior is predictable; (2) culture is a multilevel phenomenon; and (3) managerial practices are influenced by communication and cooperation. First, Hofstede considers that culture, mind, values, and behavior predictability are all interrelated. Human behavior is to some extent predictable because it is based in culture, a “mental programming” that is extremely stable over time in the absence of radical social events such as trade, technological breakthroughs, and economic or political dominance (Hofstede, 2001). The mind is a major concept in Hofstede’s concept of culture: “the mind stands for the head, heart, and hands – that is thinking, feeling, and acting, with consequences for beliefs, attitudes, and skills”. In turn this implies that “systems of values are a core element of culture” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 10) where value is “a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 5). Though values are invisible, Hofstede considers that culture as systems of values is manifested in symbols, heroes, rituals, and practices, and as such they can be observed, compared, and somehow predicted. Such predictability can be explored through cultural comparisons based on fundamental human problems common to most societies (nations). However, the identification of cultural differences does not mean that one can fully describe a culture since “there is no commonly accepted language to describe such a complex thing as ‘culture’” (Hofstede, 1983, p. 77). Furthermore, culture does not correspond to the sum or combination of the five cultural dimensions. Instead these dimensions merely constitute a tool to grasp the values that define the collective programming of the mind (Hofstede, 2001). To emphasize predictability of culture, though in imperfect ways, Hofstede suggests that the collective programming of the mind resembles Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus”: Certain conditions of existence produce a habitus, a system of permanent and transferable tendencies. A habitus . . . functions as the basis for practices and images . . . which can be collectively orchestrated without an actual conductor (Bourdieu, 1980, pp. 88-9, cited in Hofstede, 2001, p. 4).

Self-leadership scholars should not neglect this idea, for it suggests that self-leadership may be different across cultures and amenable to be predicted.

Second, though Hofstede defined culture as a group-level phenomenon, he is aware that it interacts with individual and societal level constructs. As a group-level phenomenon he stated that “culture determines the uniqueness of a human group in the same way personality determines the uniqueness of an individual” (2001, p. 10). Furthermore, “culture as [collective] mental programming is also a crystallization of history in the minds, hearts, and hands of the present generation” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 12). Yet he recognizes that culture can be shaped by constructs operating at lower level (individual) and upper level (societal) constructs, since for him culture and people are mutually shaped over time, and just as people can move to new cultural spaces (social groups) they can also modify through practice (namely structure and functioning of institutions) their notion of culture. Regarding this mutual influence between people and culture, Hofstede mentioned that the institutions-versus-culture debate often seen among sociologists versus anthropologists/psychologists is a non-issue since in his view “institutions reflect minds and vice versa” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 20). This idea of levels of analysis is important for self-leadership to the extent that it gives us a way to link micro- to macro-level constructs. This brings us to the third premise about managerial practice. Hofstede (1998) was also interested in explaining the kind of managerial practices that may affect employees’ attitudes and organizational culture. From his studies he concluded that there is no relationship between managerial practices and employee attitudes or organizational culture, except for practices in the area of communication and cooperation. This means that language (verbal or non-verbal) and social interaction are two important factors in changing employees’ attitudes. This finding may have important implications for both the theory and practice of self-leadership. For self-leadership theory one cannot neglect the particularities of language and social relations, since people from different cultures may elicit distinct patterns between what they do, think, or say (thinking, feeling, and acting). For practice we may be able to understand better how to be a more effective self-leader depending on the levels of importance of language and social relations in different cultures. Having discussed Hofstede’s definition of culture, we need to know what exactly makes cultures different. In our view, the first assumption about the predictability of human behavior supports a major premise of our study that self-leadership in other cultures may still abide by certain behavioral and cognitive patterns, which though unknown today, may be understood in the future. The second assumption regarding the multilevel of the phenomena suggests a way to further investigation of self-leadership across cultures. Last, the premise about communication and cooperation indicates the research focus for cross-cultural analyses of self-leadership and suggests two areas for developing practical applications of self-leadership in other cultures. Five dimensions of national culture Departing from philosophical debates about the dualities of general/specific and different/similar, Hofstede proposes five independent dimensions of national culture that represent “fundamental problems of society” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 1). These dimensions are: (1) power distance; (2) uncertainty avoidance;

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(3) individualism (collectivism); (4) masculinity (femininity); and (5) future orientation (long-term versus short-term). In this section we describe each of these and raise questions regarding their relevance to a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership, which we develop in the following section. Power distance refers to the “different solutions to the basic problem of human inequality” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 29). According to Hofstede (1980), inequality is generally related to the weights and status that societies put in matters such as prestige, wealth and power. In terms of organizations, adds Hofstede, inequality in power is inevitable and functional and is usually manifested in hierarchical (subordinate-superior) relations. Specifically, power distance can be observed in three aspects of decision making: (1) styles of decision making; (2) types of decision making; and (3) fear to disagree with superiors. In other words, power distance is concerned with who decides what in organizations and how that decision process is made. Self-leadership assumes that individuals have some autonomy and decision-making capacity to set and perform towards their own goals. However, this cultural dimension raises concerns about the extent that is really possible, namely in countries with power distance higher than the USA. Uncertainty avoidance is related to the “level of stress in a society in face of unknown future” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 29). Everyone perceives uncertainty but the ways people use to cope with it are different. These are based on mechanisms and institutions such as technology, law, and religion. In organizations, uncertainty is often related to the environment (not controlled by the organization) and common coping mechanisms include technology, rules, and rituals (Hofstede, 1980). Another characteristic of uncertainty that we also consider relevant for self-leadership is about how we measure it. Hofstede suggests that we look at three indicators: (1) rule orientation; (2) stress; and (3) employment stability. Regarding this last indicator, Hofstede observed that individuals rely on both rational (logical and normative) and non-rational (sense-making and descriptive) mechanisms. Since self-leadership today consists essentially of rational strategies (behavioral and cognitive), we wonder whether we should also consider non-rational, intuition-based strategies in cultures with higher uncertainty avoidance than that of the USA. Individualism versus collectivism is about the “integration of individuals into primary groups” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 29). It is manifested in the ways people from different societies live together, for example nuclear families, extended families, or tribes. Moreover, it reflects people’s expectations to take care of themselves or receive care from their peers (Hofstede, 1980). These societal values are transferred to organizations in different ways. In individualist societies, employees and managers are

expected to work and decide for themselves and they are rewarded on an individual basis. In collective societies, workers tend to cooperate more, make more collective decisions, and perform better in groups. Thus the individualism/collectivism dimension is based on the degree of reliance on social relationships to perform organizational work. Considering that self-leadership assumes individuals to have degrees of autonomy in setting their own goals, this cultural dimension questions the extent that self-leadership is likely to happen in cultures that are more collectivistic than the USA. Masculinity versus femininity refers to the “division of emotional roles between men and women” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 29). Masculinity and femininity result from socialization processes and should be viewed as poles of a continuum. Masculinity refers to societies that value assertiveness, toughness, material and economic aspects of life. Femininity represents cultures that emphasize nurturing, care for others, social relationships, and quality of life. In other words, masculinity emphasizes tasks whereas femininity focuses on relations. In masculine cultures, men and women tend to have distinct roles; men are expected to focus on performance while women are expected to focus on relationships. Hofstede (1980) mentions that in masculine societies business organizations tend to have masculine goals and promote men, whereas hospitals tend to have feminine goals and promote more women to nurturing-type positions. In feminine societies men and women are expected to have similar roles, promotion is merit-based, quality of life and people are important, and both men and women are expected to care about job performance and relationships. Furthermore, in feminine cultures, women have less resistance in accessing jobs, getting promotions, and balancing career and family life (Hofstede, 2001). As a concept developed in the USA, a masculine society, it is not surprising that self-leadership emphasizes the enhancement of personal effectiveness that is mostly based on tasks. However, this cultural dimension raises the question of whether self-leadership in more feminine cultures should consider personal effectiveness also based on relationships. The relevance for self-leadership of the tasks versus relationships duality will be discussed later. As regards long-term versus short-term orientation, future orientation is related to “the choice of focus for people’s efforts: the future or the present” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 29). This dimension was found from a Chinese Values Survey that included items about personal stability and respect for tradition, values that are common in Asian cultures and Confucianism. It refers to whether people’s time focus is long-term or short-term oriented. Hofstede (2001) suggests that people working in settings with long-term orientation emphasize the development of social relationships and market positions, link up business and family issues, and draw high levels of satisfaction from daily human relations. In contrast, employees in organizations with a short-term orientation draw less satisfaction from daily human relations, tend to separate family and business issues, and usually focus on short-term results. Self-leadership studies have already considered time as a control factor, namely in studies about self-leadership development (e.g. Neck et al., 1997). However, because self-leadership is originated in a short-term, masculine culture it may not fully represent values that are based on social relationships. Thus we are led to think whether self-leadership research should consider time as a specific variable of interest for cultures with longer-term orientation than the USA.

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Following Hofstede’s (2001) observation that to avoid ethnocentrism researchers should not to use their discretion to reduce theoretical frameworks, we decided in our study to include all five dimensions of culture. We think that a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership with fewer dimensions of culture demands a prior empirical demonstration. To do otherwise might result in overlooking parts of self-leadership in non-US cultures that we are unaware of. Before doing a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership, we need to know more about this concept, its theoretical foundations and components. Cross-cultural view of self-leadership In developing cross-cultural perspectives of management and organization theories one has to consider two related issues. On the one hand we have to minimize our cultural biases (ethnocentrism), and on the other hand we have to think whether theories can be applied to other contexts, and if so how. To avoid ethnocentrism at the empirical level researchers can draw on multiple local theories, methods, and research. At the theoretical level, this may be even more difficult because researchers have necessarily to make choices in function of their knowledge and resources available (Hofstede, 2001). This paper addresses the first issue by involving a team of researchers with different cultural backgrounds. Considering self-leadership as a self-influencing process and a set of strategies aiming at the enhancement of one’s performance, we have to believe that this theory may be applied to most societies. The contrary would be to assume the stagnation of human kind. This does not mean that we see the extension of self-leadership to other cultures as unproblematic. Indeed, we think that some notions, such as self-influence and individual performance, will need to be discussed by non-Western scholars, but the essence of self-leadership remains: individuals can positively shape their own practices. We mentioned above that self-leadership model functions as a loose coupling system, with few common variables or weak common variables, depending on the context and situation. Thus, in looking at the components of self-leadership from a cross-cultural perspective our interest was to know what variables would be strengthened or weakened when the model is dislocated to non-US cultures. It is important to stress that self-leadership is a US-originated model and thus it is grounded in the US cultural values that have been defined by Hofstede. At this stage our analytical question is the following: what are the conceptual effects of changing each of the cultural dimensions of the current self-leadership model? Our analysis (Table I) was done in two steps. We first review the consequences of each cultural dimension for leadership, management, and organizations. Then, taking US culture as a reference, we discuss the effect of each cultural dimension on the components of self-leadership. Our interest is not to discuss the meaning of self-leadership in the cultures studied by Hofstede, since this would require an exhaustive discussion of self-leadership for every possible combination of cultural dimensions. Moreover, our interest is not to make an analysis of self-leadership by geographical regions since, as Hofstede found, neighboring countries may have similarities regarding two or three dimensions but never for all dimensions. This happens because national cultures have unique historical roots (Hofstede, 2001). Instead, our interest is to explore how the variation in each cultural dimension, using US culture as reference, may impact on the current

High power distance raises the importance of the symbolic value of tasks and correspondent covert processes

Hong Kong: low (25)

Greece: high (112)

Sweden: low (5)

US: moderate/high (62)

MAS Emotional roles

High uncertainty avoidance makes explicit non-rational, intuition-based thought processes Collectivism shows the relevance of social relations rather than only tasks

China: high (118)

US: low (29)

LTO Time focus

Femininity reiterates the Long-term orientation importance of social makes time an explicit relations and and major factor non-rational, intuition processes

How will self-leadership change in non-US cultures?

US: high (91)

US: low (46)

US: low-moderate (40) The Philippines: high (94)

IDV Integration in groups

UAI Unknown future

PDI Human inequality

Notes: PDI, power distance index; UAI, uncertainty avoidance index; IDV, individualism index; MAS, masculinity index; LTO, long-term orientation index

Self-leadership Behavioral focused strategies Self-observation Self-goal setting Self-rewards Self-punishment Self-cueing Natural rewards strategies Enhancement of enjoyable tasks Focus on enjoyable tasks Constructive thought processes Reduction of dysfunctional beliefs Reduction of negative self-talk Increase of positive self-image

Cultural dimensions

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Table I. Cultural analysis of self-leadership components

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notion of self-leadership. For example, the US culture has the highest individualism score, so our interest is to understand what effects a collectivist culture may have on self-leadership components. We will repeat this procedure for each cultural dimension and based on our discussion we will make some propositions. Power distance Hofstede (2001, p. 82) observed that “the popular management literature on leadership often forgets that leadership can exist only as a compliment to ‘subordinateship’”. This implies that power distance is an essential aspect of leadership and it is manifested in leader-follower relationships. Some could argue that self-leadership does not apply to cultures with high power distance because it does not allow significant room for individuals’ autonomy. We think that this is a false problem because what may be different in these cultures is the nature of social relations and how they occur in practice. For Hofstede high power distance is found in organizations characterized by centralized decision structures, control structures, career dissatisfaction, and vertical leadership styles. In contrast, low power distance is found in organizations with flat structures, openness, career satisfaction, and consultative, horizontal leadership styles. After reviewing several leadership studies that draw on Hofstede’s work, Dickson et al. (2003) observed that in hierarchical societies subordinates are more reluctant to challenge their superiors and leaders are expected to elicit patterns of authoritative behavior. For example, added Dickson et al. (2003), in cultures with high power distance, transformational leadership tends to be directive in nature, whereas in cultures with low power distance it tends to be more participative. The suggestion that transformational leadership may be applied with different styles, more directive or participative, suggests to us this may also apply to other types of leadership, particularly to self-leadership. And that such variation in leadership styles may be explained by the influence of culture. As we saw before, power distance in organizations can be observed in decision-making: styles of decision-making, types of decision making, and fear to disagree with superiors. The US culture has low power distance and individuals have large latitude to practise self-leadership. In other words, they have considerable flexibility, autonomy, and decision-making capacity to set and perform towards their own goals. High power distance may challenge these practices by accentuating more vertical leadership styles, reducing the scope of decision making, and increasing workers’ fear of repercussions. For the sake of precision and clarity let’s think about The Philippines, one of the countries with the highest power distance (Hofstede, 1980). We do not negate that workers and managers in The Philippines have less power than in countries with low power distance; however, we think that this reduction is not as large as expected. In our view, what changes is the nature of the relationships and how it impacts on organizational practices. Specifically, it is known that in low power distance cultures (many Asian and South-American countries) people tend to rely considerably in informal channels to meet people, get information, gain legitimacy, and exercise influence. Moreover, in these cultures action tends to be more covert and symbolic. In other words, in high power distance countries the material and explicit aspects of decision making are reduced, whereas its symbolic and implicit ones increase. In these low power distance cultures, in comparison to low power distance

ones, there is a shift from overt to covert environments and from formal to informal styles. This suggests that the symbolic and subjective components of self-leadership will be emphasized (namely self-observation, self-cueing, and constructive thought processes) while the material and objective aspects (self-goal setting, self-rewards, natural rewards) will be minimized. In sum, we propose that the practice of self-leadership in cultures with high power distance is likely to be more shaped by social hierarchical forces than in cultures with low power distance. High power distance is likely to contribute to a more restricted and contingent form of self-leadership where the extent of self-influence practised that is independent of cultural expectations and norms is more limited. Thus self-leadership will rely more on symbolic rather than material aspects. Cultures where power distance is low will have a more individually unique and autonomous form of self-leadership. This implies that although the concept of self-leadership remains valid, its application to cultures with high power distance will be more contingent to local norms and cultural expectations. P1a. Individuals in cultures with higher power distance are more likely to practise restricted/contingent self-leadership. P1b. Individuals in cultures with lower power distance are more likely to practise autonomous self-leadership. Uncertainty avoidance To Hofstede (1980) organizations with high uncertainty avoidance tend to have vertical leadership styles characterized by control practices, rationality, and a lack of confidence and belief in employee’s leadership abilities. In contrast, organizations with low uncertainty avoidance tend to adopt more collective leadership styles that are distinguished by factors such as the transformational role of the leader, employees’ participation in decision making, and optimism about employees’ abilities to lead. Empirical research suggests that societies with high uncertainty avoidance tend to be more controlling, less delegating and less approachable than those with low uncertainty avoidance (Dickson et al., 2003). High uncertainty avoidance societies value leadership styles that promote planning, career stability, formal rules, and the development of expertise. In contrast, low uncertainty avoidance cultures value more flexibility, innovation, job mobility, and general rather than specialized skills (Dickson et al., 2003). This means that leaders in high uncertainty avoidance environments may emphasize characteristics such as planning and formal rules (emphasis on rules and norms), while in low uncertainty avoidance societies they may prefer innovation and flexibility (entrepreneurial spirit). In organizations, environmental uncertainty is the most prevalent type of uncertainty and it is minimized through technology, rules, and rituals. Our concern is about how this uncertainty reflects at the individual level and how people handle it. We saw that uncertainty can be assessed through employees’ rule orientation, employment stability, and work-related stress. Moreover, we also learned that individuals rely on both rational (logical and normative) and non-rational (intuition, sense-making, and descriptive) processes. The non-rational aspects may be important in our analysis because self-leadership consists essentially of rational strategies (behavioral and cognitive).

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In Hofstede’s study, the USA appears as having low uncertainty avoidance, which means high willingness to take risks. In contrast, countries like Greece, Japan, or Argentina have high uncertainty avoidance. (Note that uncertainty avoidance may not be directly correlated with economic development, since we may have countries as different as Japan and Greece both with high uncertainty avoidance.) Hofstede suggests that there is no single explanation for differences in uncertainty avoidance, but rather a combination of factors unique to each country. Nevertheless, Hofstede (1980, p. 171) found that the countries showing both low uncertainty avoidance and high masculinity are primarily the Anglo countries. Moreover, he suggests that willingness to take risks may be related to motivation, although he could not find systematic evidence for this. Thus, we suggest that leaders in low uncertainty avoidance settings will have higher levels of intrinsic motivation. In contrast, high uncertainty avoidance contexts place more restrictions on individuals and cause limitations that are self-imposed cognitively. Given the complexity surrounding uncertainty avoidance we think that it is better to discuss self-leadership on a country-by-country basis. Let’s consider the case of Greece, which according to Hofstede (1980, 2001) is one of the countries with highest uncertainty avoidance. Greece organized the Olympic Games of 2004, an event that boosted the country’s image, pride, and economy. Yet the investments made to build the necessary infrastructures were of such dimensions that some people say they will be difficult to recover. This example shows high willingness to take risks, as well as the combination of rational and non-rational processes. According to Hofstede this may be considered one of those unique events, on a par with war and technology, which are capable of changing culture. In this case, the Games may have lowered the uncertainty avoidance of Greece’s culture. Thus we conclude that low uncertainty avoidance may be more related with non-rational processes than rational processes. Cultures that tend to rely greatly on rationality may be more reluctant to take risks. This is somehow a new contribution to self-leadership, because until now it has focused mostly on rational processes. We believe that the consideration of self-leadership in cultures with higher uncertainty avoidance in comparison to the US will tend to focus even more on rational aspects of the model, while de-emphasizing non-rational processes such as self-cueing (intuition) and self-image (identity-based). If this is true then self-leadership should also include non-rational, intuition-based strategies. In fact, the introduction of non-rational processes in self-leadership may help explaining why countries such as the USA have simultaneously low uncertainty avoidance and high innovation and creativity rates. P2a. Individuals in cultures with higher uncertainty avoidance are more likely to practice normative self-leadership. P2b. Individuals in cultures with lower uncertainty avoidance are more likely to practice entrepreneurial self-leadership. Individualism (collectivism) Empirical studies suggest that preferences for leaders with individual or collective characteristics vary according to cultures (Dickson et al., 2003). In collective cultures people tend to identify themselves with leaders’ goals and purposes, share the vision of the organization, and show higher levels of loyalty. In individualist cultures, people are

expected to be self-motivated and satisfy their own interests; moreover, they are short-term, and goals- and rewards-oriented. Jung and Avolio (1999) compared the levels of idea generation in terms of culture and leadership styles. They concluded that in individualist cultures people who work with transactional leaders generate more ideas than those who work with transformational leaders, but in collectivist cultures transformational leaders perform better. This finding suggests that relationships rather than transactions play an important role in collective cultures. In organizations, this cultural dimension reflects the extent that people rely on social relationships to work, take decisions, perform, and be rewarded. As a US-based theory, it is not surprising that self-leadership considers flexibility and autonomy as its cornerstones. However, as Neubert and Wu (2006) have shown, it is also possible to find self-leadership in collectivistic cultures, particularly in China, though some of its components become less relevant (self-observation, self-cueing, natural rewards, and reduction of dysfunctional beliefs). So the question of interest here is not whether self-leadership remains valid in collectivist cultures, but rather what components will change or whether new ones need to be created. In our view, self-leadership in collectivist cultures will have to address not only task-based performance but also relations-based performance. Note, however, that social relations in collectivistic cultures, in contrast to individualist cultures, have to be understood differently, particularly in terms of “extended” relations. “Extended” relations refer not to the number but to the nature of those relations, more specifically to an expectation to give or receive support from another person. The level of expectations is determined by social rules, norms, or traditions. For example, in China these social rules are based on various types of hierarchical relations, namely father/son, teacher/student, older/younger sibling, and manager/worker. People on both sides of these relationships are expected to play their roles in giving or receiving support. This does not mean that self-leadership is not valid in collectivistic cultures. On contrary, people in those cultures set and attain their goals having into account the existing social rules, so they still exercise self-leadership but they place more emphasis on relations rather than tasks or transactions. In a different way, we could say that the meaning of “self” differs in individualist and collectivist cultures. In individualist cultures, “self” is considered to be “the totality of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and physical, of a person” (Corsini, 1999, p. 875). In collectivistic cultures, “self” includes not only personal attributes but also rights and duties associated with social positions of the person. According to Neubert and Wu (2006), the components of self-leadership prevalent in a collectivist society are self-goal setting, self-reward, self-punishment, self-talk, and self-image. The fact that natural rewards were not found as significant in Neubert and Wu’s research may indicate that in collectivistic cultures the Revised Self Leadership Questionnaire should include items about natural rewards that reflect a collectivist notion of “self” that is based on relations rather than tasks. In sum, we propose that self-leadership in collectivist cultures is grounded in social rules, norms, and traditions, while in individualist cultures it is shaped more by personal interests and material rewards. Theoretically it can be said that in collectivist environments an individual’s cognitive processes are very much shaped by group relationships, whereas in individualistic settings cognitive processes are mostly self

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imposed. In other words, self-leadership in collectivist cultures may be understood and applied on the basis of social relations, while in individualistic cultures it is essentially centered on the person. Before concluding this section, it is important that we clarify the distinction between self-leadership in collectivist societies and shared leadership. Shared leadership theory explains the performance of groups with high levels of interpersonal influence and suggests that various members of the group will assume the role of leader depending on the situation (Bligh et al., 2006). In contrast, self-leadership in collectivist societies is concerned with performance of individuals, whose actions and thinking are guided not by other individuals (low interpersonal influence) but by culture-dependent expectations associated with different types of relationships. In other words, shared leadership focuses on group performance and is based on tasks and transactions, whereas self-leadership in collectivist societies emphasizes individual performance and is based on relational values. Adding to this, we would say that self-leadership in individualistic societies accentuates more task- and transactional-based values, including legal, economic, and technological. .

P3a. Individuals in individualistic cultures are more likely to practise personal-centered self-leadership. P3b. Individuals in collectivist cultures are more likely to practise relations-centered self-leadership. Masculinity (femininity) The gendering of work practices is, according to Hofstede, a result of cultural conventions. For him, “management is an Anglo-Saxon concept developed in the masculine British and American cultures” (Hofstede, 2001, p. 313), which implies that management in other cultures may not necessarily be masculine. Regarding leadership, Hofstede (2001) also points out that feminist cultures will have “feminist heroes” and masculine cultures will have “masculine heroes”. In particular, in feminine cultures the ideal leader (or “manager hero”) is intuitive and seeks consensus and cooperation; in masculine cultures, the manager hero is supposed to be assertive, decisive, and aggressive (Hofstede, 2001). Traditionally, masculine emotions reflect assertiveness, toughness, material and economic aspects of life, while feminine emotions reflect nurturing, social relations, and quality of life. In terms of organizations, masculinity refers to organizational practices that differentiate between men’s and women’s emotional roles, whereas femininity refers to organizational practices that promote similar emotional roles for men and women. As a concept that originated in the USA, self-leadership reflects a degree of masculinity, which is particularly evident in the natural rewards component for its emphasis on tasks rather than relationships. The behavioral-focused and constructive thought strategies do not reveal a clear inclination for masculinity or femininity. Thus, when applying self-leadership to a feminine culture, for example Sweden, one might want to consider natural rewards that are based on both tasks and relations. Moreover, we hypothesize that people in feminine cultures will develop an array of behavioral and cognitive strategies that is distinct from masculine cultures. We believe that people in feminine cultures are as interested in improving their own performance as are people in

masculine cultures. However, the way they think and act puts more weight on subjective, intuition-oriented conditions such as care, nurturing and relationships.

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P4a. Individuals in masculine cultures are more likely to practise material-based self-leadership. P4b. Individuals in feminine cultures are more likely to practise relational-based self-leadership. Future orientation Cultures with long-term orientation value the development of social positions, the mix of business and family issues, and most things emerging from long-term relationships. In contrast, cultures with short-term orientation create clearer boundaries between family and business matters and are more concerned with immediate results. As such we are not surprised that self-leadership studies, mostly developed in the USA (short-term orientation culture), have not recognized time as having more conceptual importance. However, in our view, self-leadership in long-term oriented cultures (e.g. China) necessarily has to include time in all its components. For example, self-observation is a behavioral strategy that aims the increase of awareness regarding when to act and why. Researchers should bear in mind that long-term oriented people may “give time” for “things to happen” before taking any decision simply because they give different value to time (Miles, 2003). This suggests that their self-observation strategy develops over longer periods of time than those of short-term oriented individuals. Moreover, as Miles (2003) observed, we often hear Westerners saying that “time is money”, meaning that they expect issues to be solved in relatively short time periods, but other cultures, such as the Chinese, consider that time is not “of the essence” in important interactions. This situation is reflected, for example, in Chinese and Western negotiation styles. Why do Chinese negotiators consider time as important to “reach the best solution” while Westerners often consider that “time should not be wasted”? Moreover, time itself may be a source of natural reward in long-term oriented cultures. In regard to self-leadership, the future orientation dimension should be considered together with other culture dimensions, namely masculinity versus femininity and individualism versus collectivism, because they are interrelated. Given our discussion above regarding these dimensions, we propose that long-term orientation resembles and enhances the characteristics of feminine and collective cultures: focus on social relationships. Likewise, short-term orientation shares similarities with masculinity and individualist cultures (i.e. focus on tasks). As such we could say that self-leadership may be exercised with different degrees of future orientation depending on cultural characteristics. P5a. Individuals in cultures with long-term orientations are more likely to practise long-term self-leadership. P5b. Individuals in cultures with short-term orientations are more likely to practise short-term self-leadership. Using Hofstede’s culture dimensions within the self-leadership context has identified some important considerations and opportunities for applying self-leadership cross-culturally. Table II provides a summary of our analysis of self-leadership

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through Hofstede’s culture dimensions and identifies the proposed types of self-leadership practices that are likely to occur in different cultures. These definitions and propositions form the groundwork for applying self-leadership across diverse cultures. Conclusions In this paper we have reviewed Hofstede’s culture dimensions and examined self-leadership from this cross-cultural perspective. Given its definition we consider self-leadership to be a quasi-universal theory: a set of behavioral and constructive strategies aiming the enhancement of personal effectiveness. Three main conclusions can be drawn from our analysis. First, the examination of self-leadership from a global perspective should not be made independent of cultural dimensions as its application is indeed dependent on them. Second, considering self-leadership through each of Hofstede’s culture dimensions suggests that the components of self-leadership should take into consideration that: . high power distance raises the importance of the symbolic value of tasks and correspondent covert processes; . high uncertainty avoidance makes more explicit the importance of non-rational, intuition-based thought processes; . collectivism shows the relevance of social relations; . femininity reiterates the importance of social relations and non-rational processes; and . long-term orientation introduces the importance of making time an explicit element (see Table I). Third, a cross-cultural analysis of self-leadership calls for change, adaptation, and extension of its current components. Emerging from this analysis is the strong likelihood that self-leadership can have quite different meanings across cultural contexts. Moreover, our cultural analysis of self-leadership suggests that self-leadership is conceptually robust and may have a broad range of application. In our view, some of the features of self-leadership may actually be highly related with other leadership theories. A notable example of this is shared leadership (Pearce and Conger, 2003a, b). For example, as outlined in Table II, the individualist (collectivist) dimension suggests that self-leadership can range from individual-centered to group-centered. On the other hand, the masculine (feminine) dimension suggests that self-leadership may vary from material-based to relational-based. So self-leadership in collectivist and/or feminine cultures may

Table II. The practice of self-leadership through Hofstede’s culture dimensions

Hofstede’s culture dimensions

High

Features of self-leadership Low

Power distance Uncertainty avoidance Individualist-collectivist Masculinity-femininity Future orientation

Restricted/contingent self-leadership Normative self-leadership Personal-centered self-leadership Material-based self-leadership Long-term self-leadership

Autonomous self-leadership Entrepreneurial self-leadership Relations-centered self-leadership Relational-based self-leadership Short-term self-leadership

conceptually significantly overlap with the notion of shared leadership. Just as Pearce and Conger (2003b) question whether shared leadership can exist in all cultural settings, we have raised questions about the form, nature, and relevance of self-leadership in other cultures and developed testable propositions. Further theoretical and empirical research is needed to investigate the practice of self-leadership in other cultures. At the theoretical level, we identify four potential research areas. The first is about the role of relationships in self-leadership. Until now self-leadership has focused more on effective performance of tasks rather than in the effective fulfillment of social and cultural expectations. We believe that this is an important area for future research. The second area of research concerns the role of communication and language in self-leadership. A better understanding of self-leadership in other cultures requires us to consider thinking and language as interrelated and mutually influenced concepts. Moreover, we should also investigate whether the relation between language and thinking is the same for every culture. Third, as we and other researchers have observed, self-leadership is a multilevel phenomenon and as such there should more research explain interdependencies between levels. Finally, as with any type of cross-cultural analysis, we think that there should be more research about the role of ethics and self-leadership. At the empirical level, in line with Neubert and Wu (2006), we think that there is need for country-by-country studies that develop an instrument of self-leadership that is relevant and applicable to other cultures. References Adler, N.J. (1997), “Global leadership: women leaders”, Management International Review, Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 171-96. Bandura, A. (1986), Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Bligh, M.C., Pearce, C.L. and Kohles, J.C. (2006), “The importance of self- and shared leadership in team based knowledge work: a meso-level model of leadership dynamics”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 296-318. Blunt, P. and Jones, M.L. (1997), “Exploring the limits of Western leadership theory in East Asia and Africa”, Personnel Review, Vol. 26 Nos 1/2, p. 6. Bourdieu, P. (1980), Le sens pratique, Editions de Minuit, Paris. Connerley, M.L. and Pederson, P.B. (2005), Leadership in a Diverse and Multicultural Environment: Developing Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Corsini, R.J. (1999), The Dictionary of Psychology, Brunner-Mazel, Philadelphia, PA. deCharms, R. (1968), Personal Causation: The Internal Affective Determinants of Behavior, Academic Press, New York, NY. Deci, E.L. (1975), Intrinsic Motivation, Plenum Press, New York, NY. Dickson, M.W., Den Hartog, D.N. and Mitchelson, J.K. (2003), “Research on leadership in a cross-cultural context: making progress, and raising new questions”, Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 14, pp. 729-68. Dickson, M.W., Hanges, P.J. and Lord, R.G. (2001), “Trends, developments and gaps in cross-cultural research on leadership”, in Mobley, W.H. and McCall, M.W. (Eds), Advances in Global Leadership, Elsevier Science, Oxford, pp. 75-100.

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DiLiello, T.C. and Houghton, J.D. (2006), “Maximizing organizational leadership capacity for the future: toward a model of self-leadership, innovation and creativity”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 319-37. Hampden-Turner, C. (1993), “The structure of entrapment: dilemmas standing in the way of women managers and strategies to resolve these”, paper presented at the Global Business Network Meeting, New York, NY, December 9-10. Hofstede, G. (1978), “The poverty of management control philosophy”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 3, July, pp. 450-61. Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA. Hofstede, G. (1983), “The cultural relativity of organizational practices and theories”, Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 14, Fall, pp. 75-89. Hofstede, G. (1998), “Attitudes, values and organizational culture: disentangling the concepts”, Organization Studies, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 477-92. Hofstede, G. (2001), Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations, 2nd ed., Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Houghton, J.D. and Neck, C.P. (2002), “The revised self-leadership questionnaire: testing a hierarchical factor structure for self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 17, pp. 672-91. House, R., Javidan, M. and Dorfman, P. (2002), “Understanding cultures and implicit leadership theories across the globe: an introduction to project GLOBE”, Journal of World Business, Vol. 37, pp. 3-10. House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P.W. and Gupta, V. (Eds) (2004), Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Jung, D.I. and Avolio, B.J. (1999), “Effects of leadership style and followers’ cultural orientation on performance in group and individual task conditions”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 42 No. 2, pp. 208-18. Kluckhohn, F.R. and Strodtbeck, F.L. (1961), Variations in Value Orientations, Row, Peterson, IL. McCall, M.W. (2001), “Introduction: international perspectives on leadership: a leopard in the dark woods”, in Mobley, W.H. and McCall, M.W. (Eds), Advances in Global Leadership, Elsevier Science, Oxford, pp. 9-47. Manz, C.C. (1983), The Art of Self-Leadership: Strategies for Personal Effectiveness in Your Life and Work, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Manz, C.C. (1986), “Self-leadership: toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp. 585-600. Manz, C.C. (1992), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Neck, C.P. (1999), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Neck, C.P. (2004), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, 3rd ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1987), “Leading workers to lead themselves: the external leadership of self-managing work teams”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, pp. 106-28. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1990), SuperLeadership, Berkeley Books, New York, NY.

Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2001), New SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Miles, M. (2003), “Negotiating with the Chinese: lessons from the field”, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 453-72. Neck, C.P. and Houghton, J.D. (2006), “Two decades of self-leadership theory and research: past developments, present trends, and future possibilities”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 270-95. Neck, C.P., Smith, W. and Godwin, J. (1997), “Thought self-leadership: a self-regulatory approach to diversity management”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 12, pp. 190-203. Neubert, M.J. and Wu, J.-C.C. (2006), “An investigation of the generalizability of the Houghton and Neck Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire to a Chinese context”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 360-73. Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (2003a), “All those years ago: the historical underpinnings of shared leadership”, in Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (Eds), Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership, Sage Publications, London, pp. 1-18. Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (2003b), “A landscape of opportunities: future research on shared leadership”, in Pearce, C.L. and Conger, J.A. (Eds), Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership, Sage Publications, London, pp. 285-303. Remedios, R. and Boreham, N. (2004), “Organizational learning and employees’ intrinsic motivation”, Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 219-35. Rost, J.C. (1991), Leadership for the Twenty-First Century, Praeger, New York, NY. Scandura, T. and Dorfman, P. (2004), “Leadership research in an international and cross-cultural context”, Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 15, pp. 277-307. Schwartz, S.H. (1999), “A theory of cultural values and some implications for work”, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Vol. 48, pp. 23-47. Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C. (1997), Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business, 2nd ed., Nicholas Brealey, London. Weick, K.E. (1979), The Social Psychology of Organizing, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. White, R.W. (1959), “Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence”, Psychological Review, Vol. 66, pp. 297-333. Yun, S., Cox, J. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2006), “forgotten follower: a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 374-88. Corresponding author Jose´ C. Alves can be contacted at: [email protected]

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An investigation of the generalizability of the Houghton and Neck Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire to a Chinese context Mitchell J. Neubert and Ju-Chien Cindy Wu Baylor University, Waco, Texas, USA Abstract Purpose – Seeks to examine the psychometric properties and construct validity of the Houghton and Neck Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ) in a Chinese context. Design/methodology/approach – The RSLQ was administered to 559 Chinese employees of a large petroleum transportation company. Analyses included reliability assessments, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and tests of association with creativity and performance. Findings – The RSLQ did not uniformly generalize to a Chinese context. The best fitting model included the self-leadership dimensions of goal-setting, visualizing successful performance, self-talk, self-reward, and self-punishment. The modified RSLQ was positively associated with creativity and in-role performance. Research limitations/implications – Although this study supports some components of self-leadership generalizing to a Chinese context, the results suggest that further validation work is required on the RSLQ. Practical implications – Managers will be well served to understand which dimensions of self-leadership are generalizable across cultures, and how to measure the existence and development of such practices. Originality/value – This research makes a significant contribution to research on self-leadership by investigating the generalizability of the RSLQ to working adults in a non-Western culture. Keywords Leadership, Cross-cultural studies, China Paper type Research paper

Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 pp. 360-373 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946 DOI 10.1108/02683940610663132

The importance of self-leadership to organizations is self-evident. Employee self-leadership practices can determine whether an individual performs well or fails (Manz, 1986; Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996; Prussia et al., 1998; Stewart et al., 1996). Self-leadership may be critical to overcoming resistance to change in the face of the inherent uncertainty and stress of dynamic organizations (Neck, 1996). Furthermore, self-leadership may serve as a substitute for leadership from other sources (Manz and Sims, 1980). As conceptualized by Manz (1986), self-leadership is built upon theories of self-regulation, self control, self-management, and cognition to arrive at a set of intra-individual strategies for behaviors, use of natural rewards, and constructive thoughts. In other words, self-leadership draws upon a rich history of psychological theory to fine tune the process of intentionally influencing one’s performance. Within self-leadership, behavioral strategies include using goal-setting, self-assessment, cueing, and reward and punishment to promote effective behavior and discourage ineffective behavior (Manz and Neck, 2004). Further, natural reward strategies are designed to leverage intrinsic motivation to enhance performance (Manz and Neck, 2004). Finally,

constructive thought strategies involve visualizing performance, engaging in positive self-talk, and examining individual beliefs and assumptions (Neck and Manz, 1996; Neck et al., 1995). Based on the work of Manz (1986, 1992) and Manz and Sims (1987, 1991), three measures of self-leadership have been developed to date: (1) Cox’s (1993) initial measure; (2) Anderson and Prussia’s (1997) alternative measure; and (3) Houghton and Neck’s (2002) revised measure based on the two former measures. Each study made valuable contributions to establishing the construct validity of a self-leadership measure; yet, all these studies involved the use of student samples in the USA. In response to the call for more construct validity research (Houghton and Neck, 2002), the current study takes the next step in establishing construct validity by testing Houghton and Neck’s measure in a sample of working adults in another culture. Furthermore, self-leadership is compared against two variables posited to be within the nomological network of self-leadership.

Self-leadership measurement Three self-report measures of self-leadership have been developed and rigorously examined for construct validity. Cox (1993) developed a 34-item self-leadership questionnaire consisting of eight factors with alpha reliabilities ranging from 0.69 to 0.93. Subsequent use of this measure by Roberts and Foti (1998) yielded an alpha reliability for the full scale of 0.91. Subsequently, Anderson and Prussia (1997) developed an alternative 50-item scale with ten factors, a few of which exhibited low levels of reliability. Noting the value of these preliminary studies as well as some deficiencies in construct validity, Houghton and Neck (2002) built upon the previous scales to develop the Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ). Working from the Anderson and Prussia scale, Houghton and Neck eliminated ambiguous items that loaded on factors other than what was theoretically posited, dropped a factor related to self-withholding that was deemed to diverge from the Manz’s (1986) conceptualization of self-leadership, reworded a few items, and added items from Cox’s scale to enhance the natural rewards dimension. The resulting RSLQ has the following nine factors: (1) self-goal setting; (2) self-reward; (3) self-punishment; (4) self-observation; (5) self-cueing; (6) natural rewards; (7) visualizing successful performance; (8) self-talk; and (9) evaluating belief and assumptions.

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In comparative exploratory factor analyses of student responses, the RSLQ demonstrated greater factor stability and significantly higher factor reliabilities than the Anderson and Prussia scale. The reliabilities of the nine underlying sub-scales ranged from 0.74 to 0.93. In a second independent student sample, confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the best fitting model included three interrelated higher order factors that match the theoretical dimensions of behavioral strategies, natural rewards, and constructive thoughts, and subsumed the nine underlying factors in a theoretically consistent manner. Subsequent testing of the RSLQ in another student sample confirmed that the factor structure was stable and distinct from personality variables (Houghton et al., 2004). In total, research to establish the construct validity of measures of self-leadership is still in its preliminary stages. Although appropriate for this stage of research, the reliance on student samples is a limitation that should be addressed (Houghton and Neck, 2002). Furthermore, given the diversity of today’s organizations and the increasingly global competitive environment, self-leadership measures should be evaluated in cultures outside the USA. One such culture is China. Chinese culture Our research tests self-leadership theory in a Chinese setting where employees are attempting to perform in an increasingly dynamic work context. Despite massive economic reforms that have positioned China as a significant global power in the marketplace, China remains one of the least studied regions by management scholars (Tsui et al., 2004). One extensive study that analyzes the culture of China is the recent GLOBE study that compares 62 cultures across nine cultural dimensions (House et al., 2004). The results of the GLOBE study indicate that inhabitants of China on average exhibit scores on performance orientation, collectivism (institutional and organizational), humane orientation, and uncertainty avoidance that are above the mean of all countries, scores on future orientation and power distance that is near the mean, and scores on assertiveness and gender egalitarianism that are below the mean. Across all the GLOBE dimensions, China exhibited the highest scores on collective dimensions (House et al., 2004). Chinese employees are influenced by a collective culture that deemphasizes self in deference to the group (Hofstede, 1997; Triandis, 1995). Although collectivism has been shown to impact the influence of leadership on employee attitudes (Walumbwa and Lawler, 2003), it is not clear how the collectivistic culture of China will impact self-leadership. Whereas self-leadership theory is inherently individualistic in its conceptualization, in collectivist cultures achievement motivation is generally socially oriented (Triandis, 1995). That is, Chinese employees are likely to focus on the performance of the group over concerns about individual performance. This difference in performance focus is evident in a comparison of US and Chinese information technology employees; Chinese employees placed less value on rapid career advancement and having a motivating boss than did US employees (King and Bu, 2005). Although Chinese employees are highly collective, they also have a high performance orientation that suggests they are still likely to engage in some self-leadership practices, but possibly in a collective manner (House et al., 2004). For example, self-leadership is a critical function of the collective processes of self-managed teams (Neck et al., 1996). Therefore, self-leadership practices like goal setting that have

been demonstrated to operate in a collective environment may generalize to China (Locke and Latham, 1990; O’Leary-Kelly et al., 1994). Another reason self-leadership practices may generalize to China is that the practices may be universal. Again, goal setting is a good example. Locke (1997, p. 376) suggests that goal-directedness is “a cardinal attribute of the actions of all living organisms”. Self-talk is another dimension of the Houghton and Neck measure that has some evidence of generalizing to another culture (Schneider, 2002). Nonetheless, evidence of cross-cultural generalization of the dimensions of self-leadership is limited. In sum, our main objective is to test the cross-cultural construct validity of the Houghton and Neck self-leadership measure without regard to specific hypotheses regarding the generalizability of specific dimensions. Relationships to creativity and in-role performance Construct validity, in part, is demonstrated through the empirical confirmation of theoretical relationships to other constructs. In the current examination of the cross-cultural generalizability and construct validity of the Houghton and Neck (2002) self-leadership measure, we also compare self-leadership to performance constructs. Self-leadership is conceptualized as intra-individual practices that enhance performance (Manz, 1986; Manz and Neck, 2004). As such, each component of self-leadership has its roots in research supporting its contribution to performance. For example, the impact of goal setting on performance is one of the most robust findings in psychology (Locke and Latham, 1990). Subsequent research has documented that self-leadership practices do indeed positively relate to performance (Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996; Prussia et al., 1998). In addition, self-leadership has been linked to creative behavior (Manz and Sims, 2001; Phelan and Young, 2003). In this special issue, DiLiello and Houghton (2006) argue that self-leadership is a critical determinant of creative potential and ultimately creative behavior. Research suggests that autonomous behavior plays a critical role in influencing individual creativity (Amabile, 1996; Barron and Harrington, 1981; Woodman et al., 1993). DiLiello and Houghton (2006) argue that the autonomy orientation inherent in self-leadership contributes to self-determination, which is central to models of individual creativity and performance (Deci and Ryan, 1985). Furthermore, self-leaders tend to be opportunity thinkers, who challenge prevailing beliefs and assumptions and look for creative alternatives to obstacles or problems (Neck and Manz, 1992). Therefore, a second objective of this study is to test whether self-leadership is associated with creativity and in-role performance. Methods Research setting, sample, and procedures The sample for this research came from employees of a large Chinese petroleum company undergoing organizational change. The change involved initiatives to abolish life-time employment, implement a new performance evaluation system, and introduce continuous improvement programs. Data were collected through survey administration a year after the changes began. The completed surveys were returned directly to the human resource department to reduce employees’ socially desirable responses. Among the 650 surveys distributed, 559 surveys were completed and usable, resulting in a response rate of 86 percent. The

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average age was 35.7 years and the average job tenure was 15.6 years. Twenty-six percent of the respondents were supervisory or managerial personnel, and 68 percent of the respondents in the sample were male. We randomly selected cases and split the sample into two subsamples. We used the first subsample (n ¼ 279) to conduct exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis, and the second subsample (n ¼ 280) to conduct confirmatory factor analysis. All respondents were Chinese.

364 Measures We followed Brislin’s (1980) translation/back-translation procedure to create a Chinese version of the questionnaire containing measures of all the focal variables. Self-leadership was measured using Houghton and Neck’s (2002) 35-item RLSQ. This scale consists of nine distinct subscales: (1) self-goal setting; (2) self-reward; (3) self-punishment; (4) self-observation; (5) self-cueing; (6) focusing thoughts on natural rewards; (7) visualizing successful performance; (8) self-talk; and (9) evaluating beliefs and assumptions. Reliability analyses were conducted on each of the sub-scales of the RSLQ. Using the Nunnally (1978) criteria of 0.70, only four subscales yielded acceptable levels of reliability: (1) self-goal setting (0.72); (2) self-reward (0.74); (3) visualizing successful performance (0.71); and (4) self-talk (0.77). The subscales that failed to yield acceptable levels of reliability were: . . . . .

self-punishment (0.54); self-observation (0.50); self-cueing (0.45); natural rewards (0.64); and evaluating beliefs and assumptions (0.58).

Results Exploratory factor analysis We used the first subsample to conduct an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to explore the item loading pattern with the Chinese sample. EFA of the RSLQ indicated that ten factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were extracted. Consistent with previous

research (Anderson and Prussia, 1997; Houghton and Neck, 2002), 0.35 was chosen as the critical value to determine whether an item defined a factor. Contrary to Houghton and Neck’s (2002) finding with their US sample, the factor structure with a Chinese sample was not as clear. Only six factors emerged with items loaded in a pattern consistent with Houghton and Neck’s (2002) finding. As Table I indicates, all the items from the self-talk and self-reward dimensions loaded in a manner consistent with previous research. For the factors visualizing successful performance, self-punishment, and natural rewards, each had one item with a factor loading smaller than 0.35 (items 27, 30, and 32, respectively). Two items identified as goal-setting items in previous research (items 2 and 34) had loadings greater than 0.35. Other factors did not appear to have a clear factor structure. The EFA yielded six distinct factors from our first Chinese sample. To further test whether the six factors emerged from the EFA appropriately captured the dimensions of self-leadership in a Chinese context, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis. Figure 1 depicts the two-order factor structure that included six factors that emerged from the EFA. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) We used the second Chinese subsample to conduct CFA. We reported the following fit indices: . chi-square (x 2); . chi-square relative to its degree of freedom (x 2/df); . the comparative fit index (CFI); . the goodness-of-fit index (GFI); . the root mean square residual (RMR); and . the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). A x 2/df ratio smaller than 3:1 indicates that the fit of the hypothesized model is favorable (Klein, 1998). GFI and CFI suggest a perfect fit when they equal 1, while a value greater than 0.9 is considered good fit (Bollen, 1995). An RMR smaller than 0.05 is judged as good fit (Byrne, 1999). An RMSEA smaller than 0.1 is desirable, and less than 0.08 is preferable (Klein, 1998). As indicated in Table II, the six-factor model did not demonstrate good fit (x 2 =df ¼ 3:33, GFI ¼ 0:79, CFI ¼ 0:71, RMR ¼ 0:06, RMSEA ¼ 0:09). Post hoc factor structure analyses We investigated alternative models that removed natural reward and self-punishment from the six-factor structure due to the low reliabilities of these subscales. The alternative five-factor model without natural rewards, but including self-punishment, showed slightly better fit than both the six-factor and four-factor models (with a x 2/df of 3.08, GFI of 0.84, CFI of 0.79, RMR of 0.05, and RMSEA of 0.08). To further explore whether removing items that have lower loadings from these factors would improve the model fit, we tested another alternative model that retained these five factors without item 27 from visualizing successful performance, item 28 from goal-setting, and item 30 from self-punishment. Results indicated that this alternative model yielded similar fit indices ( x 2 =df ¼ 3:12, GFI ¼ 0:86, CFI ¼ 0:83, RMR ¼ 0:05,

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Table I. Factor structure of the RSLQ by exploratory factor analysis

1 Factor 1: visualizing successful performance (a ¼ 0:70) Sl 1: I use my imagination to picture myself performing well on important tasks Sl 10: I visualize myself successfully performing a task before I do it Sl 19: Sometimes I picture in my mind a successful performance before I actually do a task Sl 27: I purposefully visualize myself overcoming the challenges I face Sl 33: I often mentally rehearse the way I plan to deal with a challenge before I actually face the challenge Factor 2: self-goal setting (a ¼ 0:72) Sl 2: I establish specific goals for my own performance Sl 11: I consciously have goals in mind for my work efforts Sl 20: I work toward specific goals I have set for myself Sl 28: I think about the goals that I intend to achieve in the future Sl 34: I write specific goals for my own performance Factor 3: self-talk (a ¼ 0:80) Sl 3: Sometimes I find I’m talking to myself (out loud or in my head) to help me deal with difficult problems I face Sl 12: Sometimes I talk to myself (out loud or in my head) to work through difficult situations Sl 21: When I’m in difficult situations I will sometimes talk to myself (out loud or in my head) to help me get through it Factor 4: self-reward (a ¼ 0:72) Sl 4: When I do an assignment especially well, I like to treat myself to some thing or activity I especially enjoy Sl 13: When I do something well, I reward myself with a special event such as a good dinner, movie, shopping trip, etc. Sl 22: When I have successfully completed a task, I often reward myself with something I like Factor 6: self-punishment (a ¼ 0:52) Sl 6: I tend to get down on myself in my mind when I have performed poorly Sl 15: I tend to be tough on myself in my thinking when I have not done well on a task Sl 24: I feel guilty when I perform a task poorly Sl 30: I sometimes openly express displeasure with myself when I have not done well Factor 8: focusing on natural rewards (a ¼ 0:67) Sl 8: I focus my thinking on the pleasant rather than the unpleasant aspects of my job activities Sl 17: I try to surround myself with the objects and people that bring out my desirable behaviors Sl 26: When I have a choice, I try to do my work in ways that I enjoy rather than just trying to get it over with Sl 32: I seek out activities in my work that I enjoy doing Sl 35: I find my own favorite way to get things done

2

3

4

5

6

0.64 0.71 0.52 0.16 0.37 0.42 0.24 0.33 0.12 0.68

0.80 0.81 0.77

0.51 0.86 0.74

0.75 0.38 0.75 0.06

Notes: n ¼ 279; extraction method: principal component analysis; rotation method: Varimax

0.43 0.72 0.65 0.29 0.67

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Figure 1. Confirmatory factor analysis with factors emerging from exploratory factor analysis

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Models Original model with six factors

368 Table II. Fit statistics for confirmatory factor analysis and alternative models

x2

df x 2/df GFI CFI RMR RMSEA

894.72 269 3.33

Alternative models 1. Removing natural reward (five-factor model) 508.64 165 3.08 2. Removing natural reward and self-punishment (four-factor model) 356.50 100 3.57 3. Removing natural reward and items with low factor loadings (five-factor model without item 28 from goal-setting, item 30 from self-punishment, and item 27 from visualizing success) in EFA in other factors 356.17 114 3.12

0.79 0.71 0.06

0.09

0.84 0.79 0.05

0.08

0.85 0.82 0.05

0.10

0.86 0.83 0.05

0.09

Notes: df, degrees of freedom; GFI, goodness-of-fit index; CFI, comparative fit index; RMR, root means-square residual; RMSEA, root-mean-square error of approximation; n ¼ 280

RMSEA ¼ 0:09) with the five-factor model without natural rewards. These alternative models showed fit close to the conventional standards, but overall demonstrated marginally adequate fit. Although we did not hypothesize any variance between supervisors and non-supervisors in manifestation of self-leadership practices, potential differences in autonomy and motivational drives suggest the possibility of self-leadership practices varying by level of authority within the organization. Our supervisory sample was not sufficient to conduct separate analyses to answer this question. Nonetheless, in post hoc analyses the removal of supervisors from both samples did not significantly alter the results of either the exploratory or confirmatory analyses. Relationships to performance variables In our investigation of the association of self-leadership to performance variables we used the five-factor model of self-leadership that includes goal setting, visualizing successful performance, self-talk, self-reward, and self-punishment. Self-leadership was significantly and positively related to self-reports of in-role performance (r ¼ 0:46) and creativity (r ¼ 0:59). Discussion Self-leadership merits increased research attention due to its potential positive implications for enhancing individual performance (Neck and Manz, 1992, 1996; Stewart et al., 1996), adapting to organizational change (Neck, 1996), and substituting for leadership (Manz and Sims, 1980). Although the measurement of self-leadership has been developed and validated with samples from the USA (Houghton and Neck, 2002), its generalizability to other cultural contexts has yet to be confirmed. In this issue, Alves et al. (2006) propose that different cultural orientations may influence the exercise of self-leadership. Using two Chinese samples to test the generalizability of the RSLQ, we offer the first step towards exploring the generalizability of the RSLQ by examining its factor reliabilities and factor structure in a non-Western context. Our exploratory factor analysis showed that six factors emerged with a clear factor structure. The confirmatory factor analysis using these six factors, however, yielded

less than ideal fit. In our post hoc analyses, the removal of natural rewards slightly improved the model fit to the point where the fit indexes were marginally adequate. Furthermore, the revised factor structure of self-leadership was associated with self-assessments of creativity and in-role performance giving initial evidence of convergent validity with theoretically appropriate performance variables. Altogether, as measured by the Houghton and Neck RSLQ (Houghton and Neck, 2002), the dimensions of self-leadership that exhibit the most evidence of generalizing to a Chinese culture are goal setting, visualizing successful performance, self-talk, self-reward, self-punishment, and natural rewards; although the latter two dimensions have low reliabilities and the visualizing successful performance items are cross-loaded on other factors. It appears that the other factors, as currently measured, do not generalize to a Chinese context. This suggests that some conceptual dimensions of self-leadership may be universal whereas others may be culturally bound. Given this interpretation of the results, self-leadership research could be enhanced by more theoretical work attempting to explain, and subsequently test, generalizable factors of self-leadership. Alves et al. (2006) begin this task by suggesting that dimensions of culture may impede the development and manifestation of self-leadership practices, but more work is necessary to elucidate theory for specific factors of self-leadership. Moreover, cross-cultural theory development may result in propositions regarding culturally specific self-leadership practices that currently are not included in the predominantly Western conceptualization of self-leadership. The discussion of generalizable factors begs the question of what self-leadership is. Is it only and entirely that which has been proposed by Manz, Neck, and colleagues (i.e. Manz, 1986; Neck and Manz, 1996; Manz and Neck, 2004)? Or have artifacts of scale development (e.g. Anderson and Prussia, 1997; Houghton and Neck, 2002) unduly constrained the conceptualization of self-leadership? There may be a generalizable core to self-leadership that has yet to be clearly articulated and measured. For example, this core may relate to the constructs and robust research of personal goal setting (Locke and Latham, 1990); but if so, are self-leadership practices really distinct from personal goal setting and control practices? In other words, if only a subset of self-leadership components is generalizable, should this still be considered to be self-leadership or is it something else? This requires further consideration. An alternative interpretation of our results suggests that the generalizability of self-leadership is a measurement issue that requires further work in the area of item development. Houghton and Neck (2002) identified and measured nine factors in their self-leadership scale development. Our study with a Chinese sample identified only six distinguishable factors, five of which were retained in the model that excluded natural rewards. Our findings alone do not mean that the excluded factors are irrelevant. The low reliabilities in the factors that did not emerge from the EFA may be evidence that items developed with US samples may not be understood by Chinese respondents in the same manner as US respondents. This indicates that developing items, of the same underlying conceptual dimensions, which may be more universally understood across cultures, could yield more favorable results, and possibly warrant inclusion in a cross-cultural measure of self-leadership. Given the suboptimal fit of the six-factor model, item development also seems appropriate regardless of whether or not a revised factor structure is agreed upon or new conceptual dimensions of self-leadership are investigated. Deficiencies in the fit

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indices suggest that there is room for improvement in the quality of the items and its factor structure in order to generalize self-leadership to a Chinese context. We attribute this lack of good fit in the six-factor model to several reasons. First, it could be because of the low reliabilities in the factors. Specifically, one of the remaining factors with an alpha coefficient below 0.70, self-punishment, had a particularly low reliability (0.52). Because the items pertaining to self-punishment were internally inconsistent, this likely reduced the fit of the model. Second, the possible cross-loading on items could also lead to model misspecification in the form of inadequate model fit. To explore this possibility, we examined the standardized residual covariances matrix. The residual covariance matrix captures the discrepancy between the hypothesized model and the data; therefore, the magnitudes of residual discrepancy signify the possible areas of model misfit and item cross loading (Byrne, 2001). Joreskog and Sorbom (1988) suggested that standardized residual covariances greater than 2.58 are considered large. Thus, we examined the standardized residual covariances matrix using 2.58 as a cut point to determine the possible item cross-loading. The standardized residual covariances indicate that eight pairs of variables generated residual covariances greater than 2.58: (1) item 27 versus item 28; (2) item 30 versus item 10; (3) item 34 versus item 33; (4) item 13 versus item 1; (5) item 13 versus item 19; (6) item 22 versus item 1; (7) item 22 versus item 10; and (8) item 22 versus item 21. A closer look at these items reveals that a majority of the cross-loaded items belonged to visualizing successful performance (items 1, 10, 19, 27, and 33). This lack of independence from other factors, in turn, likely contributes to the low model fit as indicated in the CFA. Specifically, the residual covariance analysis indicates that item 27 (“I purposefully visualize myself overcoming the challenges I face”) cross-loaded with a goal-setting item (“item 28: I think about the goals that I intend to achieve in the future”). Item 1 (“I use my imagination to picture myself performing well on important tasks”) cross-loaded with two self-reward items (item 13: “When I do something well, I reward myself with a special event such as a good dinner, movie, shopping trip, etc.”, and item 22: “When I have successfully completed a task, I often reward myself with something I like”). Item 10 (“I visualize myself successfully performing a task before I do it”) cross-loaded with one self-punishment item (item 30: “I sometimes openly express displeasure with myself when I have not done well”), and one self-reward item (item 22: “When I have successfully completed a task, I often reward myself with something I like”). Item 19 (“Sometimes I picture in my mind a successful performance before I actually do a task”) cross-loaded with one self-reward item (item 13: “When I do something well, I reward myself with a special event such as a good dinner, movie, shopping trip, etc.”). Item 33 (“I often mentally rehearse the way I plan to deal with a

challenge before I actually face the challenge”) cross-loaded with one goal-setting item (item 34: “I write specific goals for my own performance”). This analysis indicates that visualizing successful performance, although it emerged from exploratory factor analysis as having an identifiable structure, is highly correlated with other factors and therefore may not be a distinguishable factor from others in the model. In conclusion, much is yet to be known regarding self-leadership. Given its importance to performance in our increasingly global work environments, cross-cultural research on self-leadership is of critical importance to managers who must understand and improve the performance of employees in the twenty-first century. This current research represents a significant contribution to advancing the research and practice of self-leadership by investigating the generalizability of self-leadership to Chinese employees. Future research should continue to test conceptual models and refine the measurement of self-leadership in cross-cultural samples of working adults to identify generalizable self-leadership behaviors. Once identified and reliably measured, generalizable self-leadership behaviors can be the focus of training to improve performance in culturally diverse work contexts (Stewart et al., 1996).

References Alves, J.C., Lovelace, K.J., Manz, C.C., Matsypura, D., Toyasaki, F. and Ke, K. (2006), “A cross-cultural perspective on self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 338-59. Amabile, T.M. (1997), “Entrepreneurial creativity through motivational synergy”, Journal of Creative Behavior, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 18-26. Anderson, J.S. and Prussia, G.E. (1997), “The self-leadership questionnaire: preliminary assessment of construct validity”, The Journal of Leadership Studies, Vol. 4, pp. 119-43. Barron, F. and Harrington, D.M. (1981), “Creativity, intelligence, and personality”, Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 32, pp. 439-76. Bollen, K.A. (1995), Structural Equations with Latent Variables, Wiley, New York, NY. Brislin, R.W. (1980), “Translation and content analysis of oral and written materials”, in Triandis, H.C. and Lambert, W.W. (Eds), Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, Vol. 2, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA, pp. 349-444. Byrne, B.M. (2001), Structural Equation Modeling with AMOS: Basic Concepts, Applications, and Programming, LEA Press, Mahwah, NJ. Cox, J.F. (1993), “The effects of superleadership training on leader behavior, subordinate self-leadership behavior, and subordinate citizenship”, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, MD. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985), Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York, NY. DiLiello, T.C. and Houghton, J.D. (2006), “Maximizing organizational leadership capacity for the future: toward a model of self-leadership, innovation, and creativity”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 319-37. Hofstede, G. (1997), Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind: Intercultural Cooperation and its Impact for Survival, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.

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Houghton, J.D. and Neck, C.P. (2002), “The revised self-leadership questionnaire: testing a hierarchical factor structure for self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 17, pp. 672-91. Houghton, J.D., Bonham, T.W., Neck, C.P. and Singh, K. (2004), “The relationship between self-leadership and personality: a comparison of hierarchical factor structures”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 427-41. House, R.J., Hanges, P.J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P.W. and Gupta, V. (2004), Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Joreskog, K.G. and Sorbom, D. (1988), LISREL 7: A Guide to the Program and Applications, SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL. King, R.C. and Bu, N. (2005), “Perceptions of the mutual obligations between employees and employers: a comparative study of new generation IT professionals in China and the United States”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 46-64. Klein, R.B. (1998), Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, Guildford Press, New York, NY. Locke, E.A. (1997), “The motivation to work: what we know”, Advances in Motivation and Achievement, Vol. 10, pp. 375-412. Locke, E.A. and Latham, G.P. (1990), A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Manz, C.C. (1986), “Self-leadership: toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp. 585-600. Manz, C.C. (1992), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Neck, C.P. (2004), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, 3rd ed., Pearson/Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1980), “Self-management as a substitute for leadership: a social learning perspective”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 5, pp. 361-7. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1987), “Leading workers to lead themselves: the external leadership of self-managing work teams”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 32, pp. 106-28. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1991), “Superleadership: beyond the myth of heroic leadership”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 19, pp. 18-35. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2001), The New Superleadership: Teaching Others to Lead Themselves, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Neck, C.P. (1996), “Thought self-leadership: a self-regulatory approach towards overcoming resistance to change”, The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 202-16. Neck, C.P. and Manz, C.C. (1992), “Thought self-leadership: the impact of self-talk and mental imagery on performance”, The Journal of Organizational Psychology, Vol. 13, pp. 681-99. Neck, C.P. and Manz, C.C. (1996), “Thought self-leadership: the impact of mental strategies training on employee behavior, cognition, and emotion”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 17, pp. 445-67. Neck, C.P., Stewart, G. and Manz, C.C. (1995), “Thought self-leadership as a framework for enhancing the performance of performance appraisers”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 31, pp. 278-302.

Neck, C.P., Stewart, G. and Manz, C.C. (1996), “Self-leaders within self-leading teams: toward an optimal equilibrium”, in Beyerlein, M. (Ed.), Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams, Vol. 3, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 43-65. Nunnally, J.C. (1978), Psychometric Theory, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. O’Leary-Kelly, A.M., Martocchio, J.J. and Frink, D.D. (1994), “A review of the influence of group goals on group performance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 37 No. 5, pp. 1285-301. Phelan, S. and Young, A.M. (2003), “Understanding creativity in the workplace: an examination of individual styles and training in relation to creative confidence and creative self-leadership”, Journal of Creative Behavior, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 266-81. Prussia, G.E., Anderson, J.S. and Manz, C.C. (1998), “Self-leadership and performance outcomes: the mediating influence of self-efficacy”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 19, pp. 523-38. Roberts, H.E. and Foti, R.J. (1998), “Evaluating the interaction between self-leadership and work structure in predicting job satisfaction”, Journal of Business & Psychology, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 257-67. Schneider, J.F. (2002), “Relations among self-talk, self-consciousness, and self-knowledge”, Psychological Reports, Vol. 91 No. 3, pp. 807-13. Stewart, G.L., Carson, K.P. and Cardy, R.L. (1996), “The joint effects of conscientiousness and self-leadership training on employee self-directed behavior in a service context”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 49, pp. 143-64. Triandis, H.C. (1995), Individualism and Collectivism, Westview Press, Boulder, CO. Tsui, A.S., Schoonboven, C.B., Meyer, M.W., Lau, C. and Milkovich, G.T. (2004), “Organization and management in the midst of societal transformation: the People’s Republic of China”, Organization Science, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 133-44. Walumbwa, F.O. and Lawler, J.J. (2003), “Building effective organizations: transformational leadership, collectivist orientation, work-related attitudes and withdrawal behaviours in three emerging economies”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 14 No. 7, pp. 1083-101. Woodman, R.W., Sawyer, J.E. and Griffen, R.W. (1993), “Toward a theory of organizational creativity”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 293-321. Corresponding author Mitchell J. Neubert can be contacted at: [email protected]

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The forgotten follower: a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership

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Seokhwa Yun School of Business, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, New Jersey, USA

Jonathan Cox Dell Corporation, Dallas, Texas, USA

Henry P. Sims Jr The Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA Abstract Purpose – Seeks to examine the interaction effect of leadership and follower characteristics on follower self-leadership, using hierarchical linear modeling. Design/methodology/approach – Longitudinal data were collected using a questionnaire at two points in time, with ten weeks between each collection. These data facilitate the causal inference between leadership and follower need for autonomy (wave 1) and follower self-leadership behaviors (wave 2). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to analyze the hierarchical structure data. Findings – Both empowering and directive leadership (group level) interacted with follower’s need for autonomy (individual level) to enhance subsequent follower self-leadership (individual level). That is, empowering leadership had a stronger positive effect on followers who were high on the need for autonomy, and directive leadership had a stronger negative effect on followers who were high on the need for autonomy. In summary, the influence of leadership on follower self-leadership was contingent on follower need for autonomy. Overall, the results supported the view that attributes of the follower can be an important element in contingency theories of leadership. Research limitation/implications – This study does not include other possible individual characteristics, group level characteristics, and organizational level or environmental characteristics. A future research design might include organizational-level characteristics. Practical implications – Both the leadership context and the trait of the individual employee work hand in hand to produce true self-leadership. Therefore, organizations need to develop empowering leaders who will, in turn, develop followers who are effective at self-leadership. Originality/value – This research contributes to the literature by testing a contingency model of leadership and follower self-leadership. This study also demonstrated the usefulness of HLM to test interaction effects between group-level variables and an individual-level variable on individual-level dependent variables. Keywords Leadership, Empowerment, Contingency planning, Modelling Paper type Research paper

Journal of Managerial Psychology Vol. 21 No. 4, 2006 pp. 374-388 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0268-3946 DOI 10.1108/02683940610663141

The authors thank Dr Paul Hanges at the Department of Psychology of the University of Maryland for his helpful suggestions and comments. This research was supported by grants from the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.

Not everyone wants to be empowered!

This is a statement that we frequently hear from executives as they talk about empowerment. In essence, the statement represents a “conventional wisdom” that we often find with seasoned executives. They believe there are individual differences in the way some people respond to opportunities for enhanced self-leadership. According to this belief, some people want to be self-leaders; others do not. While this view may represent conventional wisdom, little empirical research has supported this belief. From a more rigorous theoretical viewpoint, this statement represents a “contingency” based on some attribute of the follower; that is, the notion that there is an interaction between some individual trait of the follower and the empowering behavior of the leader. Stated more formally, the research question might be: “Is there an interaction between leadership and individual differences (of the follower) that influences subsequent behavior of the follower?”. In the research reported here, we focus on the specific follower behavior of self-leadership. We would include this question within the general category of a leadership “contingency” theory because it implies that the effect of the leadership is dependent on some situational contingency. Empowering leadership There are several reasons leaders might engage in empowering behaviors toward followers. First, leaders are limited in terms of time, energy, knowledge and scope of their authority. Some followers might be more highly motivated if given greater decision authority. Also, followers often have first-hand information and/or solutions to issues associated with their jobs (e.g. Durham et al., 1997). Therefore, by empowering followers, leaders enlist the aid of many to cope with uncertainty beyond their own limits. In addition, followers have flexibility to engage their own ability more fully to help the organization enhance competitiveness. Even Bill Gates advocates the value of empowerment: “In the new organization the worker is no longer a cog . . . but is an intelligent part of the overall process.” (Gates, 1999, p. 289). Beyond business benefits, leaders must consider the changing expectations of the work force. Today’s employees increasingly view their jobs as a means of personal fulfillment, not just a paycheck. As a result, people increasingly expect control and influence over their own jobs and over the decisions that are related to their own jobs. This expectation requires that leaders interact with followers in ways that are different from traditional leadership. Several terms have been coined to articulate employee self-control, such as self-regulation, self-management, and participation. In this paper, we utilize the term “self-leadership”, because it has become associated with a range of specific self-control behaviors. Thus, this study investigates the influence of leaders on followers’ self-leadership. More specifically, the study deals with conditions under which empowering leadership is more likely to enhance follower self-leadership. The follower as a contingency element Most managers believe there is no single leadership trait or style that universally applies to all situations (Lord et al., 2001). That is, one kind of leadership is likely to work in a particular situation, and, in a different situation, a different kind of leadership would be more appropriate. This notion is sometimes known as a “situational” view, or, as we use here, a “contingency” view. According to Yukl (2002, p. 17), a contingency theory “describes some aspect of leadership that applies to some

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situation but not to others [. . .] contingency theory may explain how leader behavior typically varies from one situation to another”. He suggests that general principles may not provide sufficient guidance to be meaningful and that situational elements may be useful (Yukl, 2002, p. 231). He provides an excellent review of the tradition of contingency theory in leadership, including such well-known contingency theories and studies such as LPC theory (Fidler, 1967, 1986), situational leadership theory (Hersey and Blanchard, 1984), path-goal theory (House, 1971), and normative decision making (Vroom and Yetton, 1973; Vroom and Jago, 1995). One relative recent example of a contingency investigation is Kahai et al. (1997), who found empowering leadership to be effective for less structured problems and directive leadership to be effective for more structured problems. Another example is the work of Yukl and Fu (1997), who investigated circumstances under which managers would use delegation and consultation. In their research, delegation was used when subordinates were perceived to have high competence and longer tenure with the manager. In this issue, Alves et al. (2006) examine the effect of culture as an important contingency element in the applicability of individual self-leadership. Despite the conventional wisdom that one form of leadership is more likely to be effective only under specific conditions, widespread empirical support for contingency theories has generally been less than might be expected. Podsakoff et al. (1995), for example, conducted extensive analysis searching for leadership moderators, including individual attributes, and concluded that empirical support for situational factors had “unfortunately, over the years, not received much empirical support” (Podsakoff, 1995, p. 464). Since their work, very little research can be found that investigates individual attributes as a potential leadership contingency factor. Indeed, characteristics of the individual follower seem to have been forgotten as a fruitful area of leadership contingency research. Yet, to most managers, it seems sensible that not every employee desires self-control to the same extent. Some might desire it more than others. In other words, we might say that some employees have a higher need for autonomy. More specifically, we suggest that a leader’s empowering influence on his or her followers is likely to be stronger when the follower’s need for autonomy is high. This is a meso- or multi-level theoretical view, since the behavior of the leader is conceptualized here at the team or group level, while follower need for autonomy and the dependent variable, follower self-leadership, are conceptualized at the individual level. This is also a contingency viewpoint, since it regards the effect of leadership on an outcome to be “contingent upon” some external factor, in this case an attribute of the individual follower. In the organizational literature, there have been many calls for multi- or meso-level study (e.g. Cappelli and Sherer, 1991; House et al., 1995; Klein et al. 1999; Rousseau, 1985). Yet, there have been a few multi- or meso-level studies (e.g. Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996; Kidwell et al., 1997). Of course, this neglect stems mainly from limitations of conventional statistical methods. However, development of one statistical technique, specifically hierarchical linear modeling, facilitates the conduct of multi-level empirical research. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) has the capacity to handle data from different levels. More specifically, in this study, we conceptualize leadership as a group-level phenomenon, and follower need for autonomy and self-leadership as an individual level phenomenon.

To investigate our main research question, longitudinal data were collected with a time lag of ten weeks. At time 1, follower’s need for autonomy (an individual-level independent variable) and leadership (a group- or team-level independent variable) were collected, and follower self-leadership (an individual-level dependent variable) at was collected at time 2. Since our data have mixed, or hierarchical, structure we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to investigate our hypotheses (e.g. Arnold, 1992; Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992; Cheung and Keeves, 1990; Hofmann, 1997; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996; Hofmann et al., 1993; Kidwell et al., 1997; Paterson and Goldstein, 1991). Hypothesis development Self-leadership is a term that has been used to describe the influence that people exert over themselves and the intention to control their own behaviors (see also Manz and Sims, 1980). Self-leadership is one of several terms that represents self-influence, but it indicates an expanded view of self-control that includes both behavioral and cognitive perspectives of how individuals influence themselves (Sims and Manz, 1996). That is, self-leadership is broadly defined as both thoughts and actions that people use to influence themselves, and implies that people look within themselves for sources of motivation and control. The concept of self-leadership is deeply rooted in the psychology literature. It has emerged primarily from social learning literature (Bandura, 1977, 1997), self-control literature (e.g. Thoresen and Mahoney, 1974), self-leadership theory (Manz, 1996, 1992; Manz and Sims, 1980, 1989, 2001; Sims and Manz, 1996) and intrinsic motivation literature (e.g. Deci, 1975). Bandura (1977, 1997) suggests that a person can mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and actions needed to meet a given situation. In other words, we can influence our own cognition and motivation as well as our behaviors. In a similar vein, cognitive evaluation theory (Deci, 1975, 1980; Deci and Ryan, 1985; Deci et al., 1989) posits that an individual’s feelings of self-determination and competence are central to the intrinsic motivation that causes behavior. Individual behavior, including self-leadership, can be a reflection of one’s personality, traits, or preference structure. For example, need for autonomy is a trait, predisposition, or an individual difference variable that refers to a personal need or eagerness to express one’s own initiative in doing one’s job. Need for autonomy is different from self-leadership, in that need for autonomy is a latent trait, a “personality” variable, while self-leadership is a behavior or an actual manifestation of self-control. In addition, the external context can influence one’s behavior. For example, leadership is a near context element that is typically thought to influence follower behavior (Yukl, 2002). Moreover, empowering leadership is a form of leader behavior that is primarily intended to enhance follower self-leadership. Leadership has long been an important topic in both the academic and organizational worlds. It is so complex a concept in the study of organizations that there have been problems of definition. Stogdill (1974, p. 259) even asserts that “there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept”. In his review of leadership research, Yukl (1998, p. 5) suggests a definition of leadership as “a specialized role and a social influence process” (p. 5). We generally follow Yukl’s definition and regard leadership as a process of personal influence: that is, when a person influences another, leadership takes place. In this paper, leadership is conceptualized as a group-level variable. We suggest (and test

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empirically) whether a leader’s behaviors are similar across their followers. Moreover, a follower’s perception of leadership style is influenced by observation of a leader’s behavior toward other people as well as toward him or her. Therefore, to qualify as a group-level variable, a high level of agreement in the followers’ description of the leader’s behaviors is required. Empirically, the coefficients (rwg(J)) of James et al. (1984) were used to test the agreement among followers within the same group or team in describing their leader’s behaviors. Empowering leadership is intended to encourage followers to take initiative, to manage and control their own behavior; that is, to engage in self-leadership. Empowering leaders delegate significant responsibilities related to their followers’ own jobs. That is, the empowering leader emphasizes follower self-influence, rather than providing followers with orders and commands. An empowering leader is one who leads others to influence themselves to achieve high performance, not one who leaves others doing whatever they want to do. Empowering leaders believe that followers themselves are an influential source of wisdom and direction, and strive to develop followers who are effective at self-leadership. They create the context within which followers more fully utilize their capabilities In summary, self-leadership behavior can be thought of as being influenced by both a latent trait – need for autonomy – and the leadership context in which an individual works. In this study, we propose that a leader’s behaviors enhance follower self-leadership. We consider leadership as an important external vehicle to provide support through which an individual exercises self-leadership, because leaders can influence the work climate within which followers perform their tasks. But indeed, empowering leadership is more likely to have an effect on follower self-leadership when followers desire to be empowered. More specifically, we expect to find a positive interaction between leadership and need for autonomy on subsequent follower self-leadership behavior. Another way of thinking about this is through a contingency viewpoint. That is, empowering leadership is more likely to be effective with followers who have a high of need for autonomy. The term “contingency” denotes interaction. That is: H1. Empowering leadership interacts with follower need for autonomy to positively influence follower self-leadership. Directive leadership is distinct from empowering leadership. Directive leadership refers to a prototypical “boss” who engages in highly directive and occasionally dictatorial leadership (e.g. Schriesheim et al., 1976). This type of leadership is the earliest dominant view of leadership, when “leadership was mainly a matter of how and when to give directions and orders to obedient subordinates. The strong directed the weak” (Bass, 1985, p. 5). The directive leader’s power stems primarily from formal position power in the organization. This type of leader is more likely to hold and exercise their power over their followers. The directive leader sizes up the situation, dictates and commands, and expects compliance from the subordinates. Leader directive behaviors are generally contrary to the philosophy of empowerment. That is, by “directing” the behavior of others, followers’ self-leadership would be diminished. Again, another way of thinking about this is through a contingency viewpoint. That is, directive leadership is more likely to have a negative effect with followers who have a high of need for autonomy. Again, “contingency” denotes interaction. That is:

H2. Directive leadership interacts with follower need for autonomy to negatively influence follower self-leadership. Method Subjects and procedures Longitudinal data were collected at a large defense firm located in the mid-Atlantic USA. At time 1, the original sample consisted of 404 subordinates within 75 groups. At time 2, data were gathered from 313 subordinates within 72 groups. Leaders and responding subjects were predominantly white, male and generally well-educated, most having completed a Bachelor’s degree with some additional post-college training. Subordinates averaged 40 years in age (SD ¼ 10:8) and had worked in the host organization for an average of 14 years (SD ¼ 9:51), and averaged four years with their present team leader. Data were collected by questionnaire in both waves, with a time lag of ten weeks between each wave. Leader behaviors and followers’ need for autonomy were measured at time 1, while followers’ self-leadership was measured at time 2. These longitudinal data facilitate causal inference. Measures Leader behaviors. Leader behavior was measured using a short version of the Leadership Strategies Questionnaire II (LSQII) originated by Cox and Sims (1996), with later analysis by Pearce and Sims (2002). We adopted seven items for empowering leadership and six items for directive leadership from LSQII. All items were measured on a five point Likert scale: 1 ¼ definitely not true, 2 ¼ not true, 3 ¼ neither true nor untrue, 4 ¼ true, and 5 ¼ definitely true. Internal consistency was assessed for each dimension using Cronbach’s a (e.g. Cronbach, 1951). Reliabilities of all measures were larger than 0.70. In this research, we conceptualized leadership as a group-level variable. We do not argue that leaders always treat all of their followers in exactly same way. However, a leader can exhibit similar patterns of behavior toward an entire group of followers (e.g. Kerr and Schriesheim, 1974). To test our conceptualization of leadership as group level variable, we utilized the coefficient of James et al. (1984) for each dimension. This coefficient is a method to assess team member consensus within a team and to confirm the within-unit aggregatability of the data. The James et al. (1984) coefficients for both leadership dimensions were larger than 0.80, which can be considered evidence of within group consensus (George, 1990). Thus, the two leadership types of each leader were aggregated from responses of team members reporting to each leader. The mean, standard deviation, and correlations among the leadership dimensions are shown in Table I. Note that empowering leadership and directive leadership were not correlated with each other. Appendix 1 shows the definition of leadership archetypes with all items, Cronbach’ a and James et al. (1984) coefficients. Need for autonomy. Need for autonomy is a follower’s desire or predisposition to be independent and relatively free of external control. Need for autonomy was measured with three items which asked about subject preference, which are shown in Appendix 2. All items were measured using a five-point Likert scale: 1 ¼ definitely not true, 2 ¼ not true, 3 ¼ neither true nor untrue, 4 ¼ true, and 5 ¼ definitely true. The Cronbach’s a was 0.68. While perhaps somewhat lower than desired, it was accepted

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for further analysis. We note with interest that the mean and standard deviation of need for autonomy were 3.66 and 0.63, respectively, which demonstrates considerable variance above and below the neutral mid-point of the response format. Self-leadership. Self-leadership was measured with six items which refer to their own behavior while at work. The definition and items are also shown in Appendix 2. The Cronbach’s a was 0.89. All items were measured using a five-point Likert scale: 1 ¼ definitely not true, 2 ¼ not true, 3 ¼ neither true nor untrue, 4 ¼ true, and 5 ¼ definitely true. Analysis To test the hypotheses, we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), because our research model involves a hierarchical data structure. That is, the dependent variable (follower self-leadership) was an individual level variable, whereas the independent variables were both individual level (need for autonomy) and group level (team leadership). Since the level of analysis was mixed, we cannot use the more typical regression analysis. Thus, to deal with the multi-level design, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used (e.g. Arnold, 1992; Bryk and Raudenbush, 1992; Cheung and Keeves, 1990; Hofmann, 1997; Hofmann and Stetzer, 1996; Hofmann et al., 1993; Kidwell et al., 1997; Paterson and Goldstein, 1991). HLM has several advantages (for details, see Hofmann, 1997). First, it can explain individual variables as a function of group-level characteristics as well as individual-level characteristics. Second, it can model both the between- and within-group variance at the same time, and thus produce more accurate estimates of individual variables. Third, it can produce better estimates of the predictors of individual variables within groups, by “borrowing” information about these relationships from other groups (Arnold, 1992). At first, we ran the unconditional model[1] that did not include any independent variables. This analysis provided us with all the variance of self-leadership. This variance was used to calculate variance explained with our HLM model. Second, the full model[2] was run. In this model, need for autonomy was first entered as the individual-level independent variable to explain individual-level self-leadership. Also, since our hypotheses are the interaction effect or the effects of leadership on the relationship (slope b1j) between need for autonomy and self-leadership, the two leadership dimensions were entered as group-level independent variables to help explain the relationship between need for autonomy and self-leadership in the full model. In essence, this analysis was focused on the interaction effect, which is an indicator of a “contingency” effect in the model.

Variables

Table I. Means, standard deviations and intercorrelations

Directive leadershipa,e Empowering leadershipa,e Need for autonomya,f Self-leadershipb,f

Mean

SD

2.92 3.58 3.66 4.07

0.41 0.39 0.63 0.51

Directive leadership

Need for autonomy

0.04c 0.14d *

Notes: aTime 1; btime 2; cn ¼ 75; dn ¼ 260; elevel 2 variable; flevel 1 variable; *p , 0:05

Results Table I reports means, standards deviations, and intercorelations for the variables included in the analysis. However, our main interest was in the HLM analyses. Our first HLM analysis (unconditional model analysis) showed that the total variance of self-leadership was 0.21, of which 0.06 was explained by our full model. Thus, the full model explains 28.67 percent of the total variance of individual self-leadership. Table II provides the result of the HLM analysis that tested the full model. Since both of our hypotheses are directional, we used one-tailed, rather than two-tailed tests. The result supported H1, showing a positive interaction between empowering leadership and need for autonomy and self-leadership (g ¼ 0:11, t-ratio ¼ 4.42, p , 0.01). Thus, we can conclude that empowering leadership and need for autonomy interact together to positively influence self-leadership. The analysis also supported H2. The results showed that directive leadership interacted with need for autonomy to negatively influence self-leadership (g ¼ 20:04, t-ratio ¼ 2 1.80, p , 0.05). Overall, the results supported the main hypothesis that empowering leadership and need for autonomy would interact to enhance self-leadership. The secondary finding that directive leadership would negatively interact with need for autonomy was supported as well.

Contingency model of leadership 381

Discussion The main purpose of this research was to examine the interaction effect of leadership and follower’s trait (need for autonomy) on follower self-leadership. This model is a form of contingency theory, where the effect of a certain form of leadership is moderated by, or “contingent upon”, an individual attribute. Employee perspectives about work have been changing. Employees expect more autonomy in doing their jobs and more participation in making decisions that are related to their jobs. They value quality of working life as well as compensation. In addition, in today’s age of information, few leaders can harness all the expertise needed to accomplish the work and direct their followers. They must depend on followers. These changes demand that leaders play a different role to a few decades ago. To cope with these changes, leaders are discovering they can leverage their own capability by empowering their followers. Yukl (1998), for example, has enumerated several advantages of self-managed Variables For INTRCPT1, b0j INTRCPT2, g00 For “needs for autonomy” slope, b1j INTRCPT2, g10 Directive leadership, g12 Empowering leadership, g15 Variance explained (percent)

Coefficients

Standard error

t-ratio

3.87 * *

0.12

31.12

20.23 * 20.04 * 0.11 * *

0.11 0.02 0.02

2 2.18 2 1.80 4.42

28.67

Notes: The formula for this result is shown in note 2; *p , 0:05; * *p , 0:01

Table II. The results of HLM analysis

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employees, such as “stronger task commitment, faster resolution of local problems, better customer service, reduced administrative cost, and more opportunities for leadership development” (Yukl, 1998, p. 169). But individual followers differ in terms of the degree to which they wish to take responsibility or initiative in conducting their tasks. Indeed, in this research, we found a range of scores on the “need for autonomy” attributes of our subjects. In an indirect way, our results supported the notion that “not everyone wants to be empowered”. Leaders can use empowering leader behaviors in an attempt to enhance follower self-leadership. However, as shown by this research, this influence attempt is more likely to work with followers who have a higher need for autonomy. Empowering leadership can stimulate followers to express their need for autonomy as a form of self-leadership, while, in the opposite direction, directive leadership can suppress self-leadership in those high on need for autonomy. The issue of interaction between some organizational variable and individual differences is not new. Indeed, the “search for moderators” has been seen in the literature for decades (e.g. House and Dessler, 1974). Podsakoff et al. (1995) articulated the task as “searching for a needle in a haystack”. Our findings here do uncover at least one “needle”, and demonstrate that individual differences can make a difference in the way individuals respond to an external stimulus such as leadership. That is, when the external context matches well with a specific individual trait, the result is more likely to influence follower behavior. In essence, the research reported here has demonstrated that the follower need not be “forgotten” as an important element in contingency approaches to leadership. Methodologically, this research is a one of an increasing number of multi-level studies (e.g. Cappelli and Sherer, 1991; House et al., 1995; Klein et al., 1999; Rousseau, 1985). This research took advantages of the power of hierarchical linear modeling – a technique for analyzing mixed-level data. This research provided an illustrative example of the general applicability of HLM. This method can handle a hierarchical data structure, which consists of data at two or three different levels. Specifically, this study demonstrated the usefulness of HLM to test interaction effects between group-level variables and an individual-level variable on individual-level dependent variables. We would expect more extensive use of this technique in the future. As with most studies, this research has various strengths and weaknesses. First as regards strengths, the design is longitudinal, which enhances our ability to infer causality. Also, the design and analysis enables analysis across hierarchical levels, which is still somewhat unusual in organizational analysis. Yet, there are also some weaknesses. First, this study was intended to be a limited focus study, and thus does not include other possible individual characteristics (e.g. growth needs, self-actualization needs, and the like), which are certainly potential candidates as contingencies of self-leadership and other outcome variables. In future research, the effects of such variables on self-leadership should be examined. Also, group-level characteristics (e.g. group cohesiveness, group conflict, and the like) may also influence followers’ leadership. Furthermore, organizational-level or environmental characteristics can also influence follower self-leadership. For example, rapidly changing environments may require and enhance follower self-leadership more than stable environments. A future research design might include organizational-level characteristics, and thus would involve data structures

across three different levels, organizational level (e.g. environmental change), group level (e.g. leadership), and individual trait (e.g. need for autonomy). This type of three-level data can also be analyzed with HLM. Finally, two of the variables (need for autonomy and self-leadership) were taken from the same source, which hypothetically raises the issue of same-source variance. We point out, however, that the collection of these two variables was separated by a temporal span of ten weeks, which diminishes concerns about this issue. Moreover, conceptually, these measures are quite distinct from each other. Our findings have clear practical implications for organizations that wish to develop the flexibility that derives from an empowered work force. If a high degree of employee self-leadership is desired, it seems clear that organizational activities to attain this objective would work best when the employee desires some degree of autonomy. This seems to be a matter of common sense, yet this research is the first that has demonstrated this conventional wisdom with empirical data. The implication of this study seems to be most salient to the selection task, when greater control over individual employee characteristics might be exercised. That is, if an organization needs empowered employees, the organization should consider follower traits (e.g. need for autonomy) in the selection process. To do so, one might develop an instrument to measure desire for self-leadership. Organizations might use this measurement to assign employees to tasks. When the task requires high self-initiative from the employee who conducts the task, the organization might consider each employee’s dispositional traits. In other words, an organization can fully utilize human resources by matching tasks that require initiative and self-leadership to employees who place a high value on their own autonomy. Moreover, people who are provided with an opportunity to develop and display their potential more fully are more likely to be satisfied with their work. Finally, the results do suggest that both the leadership context and the trait of the individual employee work hand-in-hand to produce true self-leadership. Therefore, organizations need to develop empowering leaders who will, in turn, develop followers who are effective at self-leadership. This conclusion points out the potential value of training leaders how to bring out the self-leadership of their followers. These results are similar, in a conceptual way, to findings from a study by Spreitzer and Quinn (1996). They used cluster analysis to evaluate the influence of individual self-esteem and social support on employee response to a leadership development training program. The cluster analysis technique does not allow an interaction analysis, but they found main effects. That is, they concluded that “individuals with high levels of self-esteem and [. . .] social support are likely to make transformational changes”. The analogs between their research and ours are the need-for-autonomy and self-esteem, empowering leadership and social support, and self-leadership and transformational change. In essence, both studies have concluded that individual differences and the social context can both act to influence subsequent individual behavioral change. In conclusion, this research found empirical support of how empowering leadership and follower need for autonomy interact to influence subsequent follower self-leadership. Thus, the study provides support for the notion that follower attributes can play a significant role in developing contingency views of leadership.

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Indeed, the research demonstrated that the follower should not be forgotten as an important contingency factor in the development of employee self-leadership. Notes 1. ðSelf – leadershipÞij ¼ bj þ rij Þ, b0j ¼ b00 þ u0j , where ij is the ith member in the jth team, rij is the unique effect of individual i in team j on self-leadership, b0j is the the mean self-leadership for members in team j, g00 is the grand mean of self-leadership, and u0j is the between-group variance. 2. ðSelf – leadershipÞij ¼ b0j þ b1j £ ðneed for autonomyÞij þ rij , b0j ¼ g00 þ u0j , b1j ¼ g10 þ g11 £ ðDLÞj þ g12 £ ðELÞj þ u1j , where ij is the ith member in the jth team, b0j is the the mean self-leadership (SL) for members in team j, rij is the the unique effect of individual i in team j on self-leadership after controlling for need for autonomy (NFA), g00 is the the grand mean of SL, u0j is the unique effect of team j on the mean SL of the team, b1j is the NFA-SL slope of team j, g10 is the mean of the NFA-SL slopes, g11 is the effect of directive leadership (AL) on the NFA-SL slope (interaction effect of AL with NFA on SL), g12 is the effect of empowering leadership (DL) on the NFA-SL slope (interaction effect of DL with NFA on SL), and u1j is the unique effect of team j on NFL-SL slope after controlling for two leadership archetypes. References Alves, J.C., Lovelace, K.J., Manz, C.C. and Toyasaki, F. (2006), “A cross cultural perspective of self-leadership”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 338-59. Arnold, C.L. (1992), “Methods plainly speaking: an introduction to hierarchical linear models”, Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, Vol. 25, pp. 58-88. Bandura, A. (1977), Social Learning Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Bandura, A. (1997), Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, NY. Bass, B.M. (1985), Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations, Free Press, New York, NY. Bryk, A.S. and Raudenbush, S.W. (1992), Hierarchical Linear Models, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Cappelli, P. and Sherer, P.D. (1991), “The missing role of context in OB: the need for a meso-level approach”, in Cummings, L.L. and Staw, B.M. (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 13, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 55-110. Cheung, K.C. and Keeves, J.P. (1990), “Hierarchical linear modeling”, Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 14, pp. 289-97. Cox, J.F. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1996), “Leadership and team citizenship behavior: a model and measures”, in Beyerlein, M.M. and Johnson, D.A. (Eds), Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams, Vol. 3, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 1-14. Cronbach, L.J. (1951), “Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests”, Psychometrika, Vol. 16, pp. 297-334. Deci, E.L. (1975), Intrinsic Motivation, Plenum Press, New York, NY. Deci, E.L. (1980), The Psychology of Self-Determination, D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA. Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. (1985), Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, Plenum Press, New York, NY. Deci, E.L., Connell, J.P. and Ryan, R.M. (1989), “Self-determination in a work organization”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 74, pp. 580-90.

Durham, C.C., Knight, D. and Locke, E.A. (1997), “Effects of leader role, team-set goal difficulty, efficacy, and tacit on team effectiveness”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 72, pp. 203-31. Fiedler, F.E. (1967), A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Fiedler, F.E. (1986), “The contribution of cognitive resources to leadership performance”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 16, pp. 532-48. Gates, B. (1999), Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System, Warner Books, New York, NY. George, J.M. (1990), “Personality, affect, and behavior in groups”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 75, pp. 107-16. Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K.H. (1984), Management of Organizational Behaviour, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Hofmann, D.A. (1997), “An overview of the logic and rationale of hierarchical linear models”, Journal of Management, Vol. 23, pp. 723-44. Hofmann, D.A. and Stetzer, A. (1996), “A cross-level investigation of factors influencing unsafe behaviors and accidents”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 49, pp. 307-39. Hofmann, D.A., Jacobs, R. and Baratta, J.E. (1993), “Dynamic criteria and the measurement of change”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 78, pp. 194-204. House, R.J. (1971), “A path goal theory of leader effectiveness”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 16, pp. 321-38. House, R.J. and Dessler, G. (1974), “The path goal theory of leadership: some post hoc and a priori tests”, in Hunt, J.G. and Larson, L.L. (Eds), Contingency Approaches to Leadership, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL. House, R., Rousseau, D.M. and Thomas-Hunt, M. (1995), “The meso paradigm: a framework for the integration of micro and macro organizational behavior”, in Cummings, L.L. and Staw, B.M. (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 17, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 71-114. James, L., Demaree, R. and Wolf, G. (1984), “Estimating within-groups interrater reliability with and without response bias”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 69, pp. 85-98. Kahai, S.S., Sosik, J.J. and Avolio, B.J. (1997), “Effects of leadership style and problem structure on work group process and outcomes in an electronic meeting system environment”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 50, pp. 121-46. Kerr, S. and Schriesheim, C.A. (1974), “Consideration, initiating structure, and organizational criteria: an update of Korman’s 1966 review”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 27, pp. 555-68. Kidwell, R.E., Mossholder, K.W. and Bennett, N. (1997), “Cohesiveness and organizational citizenship behavior: a multilevel analysis using work groups and individuals”, Journal of Management, Vol. 23, pp. 775-93. Klein, K.J., Tosi, H. and Cannella, A.A. (1999), “Multilevel theory building: benefits, barriers, and new developments”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 24, pp. 243-8. Lord, R.G., Brown, D.J., Harvey, J.L. and Hall, R.J. (2001), “Contextual constraints on prototype generation and their multilevel consequences for leadership perceptions”, Leadership Quarterly, Vol. 12, pp. 311-38. Manz, C.C. (1986), “Self-leadership: toward an expanded theory of self-influence processes in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp. 585-600. Manz, C.C. (1992), Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

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Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1980), “Self-management as a substitute for leadership: a social learning theory perspective”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 5, pp. 361-7. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (1989), SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Manz, C.C. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2001), New SuperLeadership: Leading Others to Lead Themselves, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Paterson, L. and Goldstein, H. (1991), “New statistical methods for analyzing social structures: an introduction to multilevel models”, British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 17, pp. 387-93. Pearce, C.L. and Sims, H.P. Jr (2002), “Vertical versus shared leadership as predictors of the effectiveness of change management teams: an examination of aversive, directive, transactional, transformational and empowering leader behaviors”, Group Dynamics: Theory Research, and Practice, Vol. 6, pp. 172-97. Podsakoff, P.M., MacKenzie, S.B., Morrman, R.H. and Bommer, W.H. (1995), “Searching for a needle in a haystack: trying to identify the illusive moderators of leadership behaviors”, Journal of Management, Vol. 21, pp. 423-70. Rousseau, D. (1985), “Issues of level in organizational research: multilevel and cross level perspectives”, in Cummings, L.L. and Staw, B.M. (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 7, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 1-37. Schriesheim, C.A., House, R.J. and Kerr, S. (1976), “Leader initiating structure: a reconciliation of discrepant research results and some empirical tests”, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Vol. 15, pp. 197-321. Sims, H.P. Jr and Manz, C.C. (1996), Company of Heroes: Unleashing the Power of Self-Leadership, Wiley, New York, NY. Spreitzer, G.M. and Quinn, R.E. (1996), “Empowering middle managers to be transformational leaders”, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Vol. 32, pp. 237-61. Stogdill, R.M. (1974), Handbook of Leadership: A Survey of the Literature, Free Press, New York, NY. Thoresen, E.E. and Mahoney, M.J. (1974), Behavioral Self-Control, Holt Rinehart & Winston, New York, NY. Vroom, V.H. and Jago, A.G. (1988), New Leadership: Managing Participation in Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Vroom, V.H. and Yetton, P.W. (1973), Leadership and Decision Making, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA. Yukl, G.A. (1998), Leadership in Organizations, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Yukl, G.A. (2002), Leadership in Organizations, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Yukl, G. and Fu, P.P. (1999), “Determinants of delegations and consultation by managers”, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Vol. 20, pp. 219-32.

Contingency model of leadership

Appendix 1

Directive leadership Items

Empowering leadership Items

Leader who mainly engages in providing direction and assigning goals to the followers When it comes to my work, he/she gives me instructions on how to carry it out He/she provides commands in regard to my job He/she gives me instructions about how to do my job He/she establishes my goals for me He/she establishes the goals for my work He/she establishes my performance goals Leader who mainly engages in empowering followers He/she urges me to assume responsibilities on my own He/she advises me to solve problems when they pop up without always getting his/her stamp of approval He/she encourages me to search for solutions to my problems on the job without his/her supervision He/she encourages me to find solutions to my problems at work without his/her direct input He/she encourages me to work together with other managers/supervisors who report to him/her He/she advises me to coordinate my efforts with other managers/supervisors who report to him/her

Notes: aCronbach’s a; bJames et al. (1984) coefficients

0.75 a (0.85)b

387

0.88a (0.91)b

Table AI. Leadership archetypes with dimension definitions and sample items

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Need for autonomy

388

Items: In my ideal job . . .

Self-leadership Items

Table AII. Definition of individual-level variables with sample items

A individual trait or predisposition that refers to a personal need or eagerness to take or display one’s initiative in doing one’s own job I would find solutions to my problems at work without consulting my supervisor I would make decisions on my own initiative without involving my supervisor I would collaborate with other employees at my level to accomplish tasks without involving my supervisor The influence that people exert over themselves and the intention to control their own behaviors I solve problems when they pop up without always getting my supervisor’s stamp of approval I search for solutions to my problems on the job without supervision I find solutions to my problems at work without seeking my supervisor’s direct input I assume responsibilities on my own I solve my own problems without being dependent on solutions from above I take initiatives on my own

Notes: aCronbach’s a (n ¼ 388); bCronbach’s a (n ¼ 315)

Corresponding author Seokhwa Yun can be contacted at: [email protected]

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

0.68a

0.89b