Emergent Leadership Structures in Organizations
Abstract
A social network approach was used to investigate the structural features of
various emergent leadership systems in a large financial organization (n = 137),
including transactional and transformational-style leadership relations. Results indicate
that macro-level patterns of leadership nominations may be explained by a small number
of underlying structural features, some of which vary across types of leadership
networks. Leadership nominations were shown to be less hierarchical, more reciprocal,
and more triadic than traditionally thought. On top of effects associated with individual
differences in sex, supervisor status, tenure, and physical location, leadership networks
displayed tendencies towards reciprocity and loose core-periphery structures based on
transitive hierarchies. There was also some evidence that transformational leadership
networks tended to be slightly less centralized and more transitive than transactional
leadership networks. Implications for bridging leadership theory across levels of analysis
are discussed.
Citation
Slaughter, Andrew (2008). Emergent Leadership Structures in Organizations. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2008 -12 -101.