What makes leadership behaviour approriate? : the impact of elementary relationships on leadership behaviour and social influence

Abstract

The overall aim of the present research was to explore what makes leadership behaviour to be perceived or judged as appropriate behaviour by followers and thus as influential on followers. Based on the Relational Models Theory, which postulates four elementary relationships people engage in and defines what motivates and constitutes morally guided behaviour within these relationships, we hypothesised that leadership behaviour is more influential the more its implementation corresponds with the dominant elementary relationship of the leader-follower relationship. More specifically, we hypothesised that leaders are perceived to be more influential when they are in a communal sharing relationship with their followers and demonstrate leadership behaviour based on the moral principle of unity or when they are in an authority ranking relationship with their followers and demonstrate leadership behaviour based on the moral principle of hierarchy. Four experimental studies were conducted to test our hypotheses using a business context (Study 1 and 2) and student context (Study 3 and 4) and presenting these contexts either as a scenario to be imagined (Study 1 and 2) or as a bogus post on Facebook (Study 3 and 4). Although our findings did not support our overall hypothesis, they imply that leaders who are in a communal sharing relationship with their followers or demonstrate leadership behaviour based on unity are relatively more influential.