2024/12/10 by Matthieu Légeret, Christian Zehnder, Benjamin Tur · 1 voice
Psychology · Business, Management and Accounting · #Emotional Intelligence and Performance #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Human Resource and Talent Management
paper · doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101856
openalex publication_date 2024/12/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/28
In many organizational settings, the person emerging as the group leader is not the best person for the job. The leadership literature provides several explanations as to why mediocre or even incompetent leaders exist. However, previous work builds on the premise that choosing a leader with limited skills is always a mistake. In this paper, we take a complementary stance and claim that—in some cases—organizations might select underperforming leaders because it is efficient to do so. Determining the leader within a fixed group of individuals is similar to allocating any other limited resource. Leader selection involves a trade-off, in that the benefit a person generates as a leader has to be contrasted with the opportunity cost that arises because the leader is (at least to some extent) no longer available as a follower. We identify cases in which it is optimal not to select the most competent individual as leader. Finally, we discuss how selection procedures need to be designed so that the most appropriate (but not necessarily the most competent) leader is chosen in a given setting.