2014/06/21 by Philippe Jacquart, John Antonakis · 180 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Ambiguity #Attribution #Charisma #Charismatic authority #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Cultural Differences and Values #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Personality Traits and Psychology #Political science #Presidential system #Psychology #Social psychology #Transformational leadership
paper · pdf · doi:10.5465/amj.2012.0831
published in Academy of Management Journal 58(4), 1051-1074 (Academy of Management)
openalex publication_date 2014/06/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
One stream of leadership theory suggests that leaders are evaluated via inferential observer processes that compare the fit of the target to a prototype of an ideal (charismatic) leader. Alternatively, attributional theories of leadership suggest that evaluations depend on knowledge of past organizational performance, which is attributed to the leader’s skills. We develop a novel theory showing how inferential and attributional processes simultaneously explain top-level leader evaluation, and, ultimately, leader retention and selection. We argue that observers will mostly rely on attributional mechanisms when performance signals clearly indicate good or poor performance outcomes. However, under conditions of attributional ambiguity (i.e., when performance signals are unclear), observers will mostly rely on inferential processes. In Study 1, we tested our theory in an unconventional context—U.S. presidential elections—and found that the two processes, due to the leader’s charisma and country’s economic performance, interact in predicting whether a leader is selected. Using a business context and an experimental design, in Study 2, we showed that CEO charisma and firm performance interact in predicting leader retention, confirming the results we found in Study 1. Thus, our results suggest that this phenomenon is quite general and can apply to various performance domains.