Leadership - Studies

Lippitt & White (1943) — Leadership Styles

Aim: Examine how leadership styles shape group behaviour and productivity.
Method: Boys’ groups exposed to autocratic, democratic, or laissez-faire leaders across activities.
Results:

• Autocratic: high productivity only when leader present; dependence, aggression.

• Democratic: liked most; high, steady productivity; task- and group-oriented.

• Laissez-faire: low productivity initially; group-centered, play-oriented; productivity rises in leader’s absence.
  Interpretation: Leadership style strongly affects group functioning beyond leader traits.

Hains, Hogg & Duck (1997) — Prototypical Leaders

Aim: Test whether prototypical leaders are judged more effective.
Method: Participants rated leadership effectiveness given manipulations of leader prototypicality and skill, under high/low group salience.
Results: Prototypical leaders judged most effective, especially when group identity salient.
Interpretation: Leadership effectiveness mediated by social identity processes, not just traits/skills.

Schein — Think Manager, Think Male

Aim: Test whether managerial success traits map onto gender stereotypes.
Method: Three questionnaire conditions: describe men, describe women, describe successful managers.
Results:

• Overlap between “manager” & “men” traits

• Minimal overlap between “manager” & “women” traits

• Found across male & female managers; generalised across cultures.
  Interpretation: Managerial competence strongly gendered masculine → biases selection & evaluation.

Heilman (2001) — Prescriptive Stereotypes

Key Point: Stereotypes about women are both descriptive (what they are like) and prescriptive (how they should behave), driving backlash when women violate expectations (e.g., assertiveness).

Glass Cliff Studies — Ryan & Haslam (2005, 2007)

Aim: Investigate whether women disproportionately appointed during organisational crisis.
Method: Analysed London Stock Exchange data & lab experiments (candidate choice under good vs poor company performance).
Results: Women more often selected when companies performing poorly.
Interpretation: Crisis contexts create precarious leadership → reinforces later narratives that women “failed” in leadership roles.

Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, Kulich & Wilson-Kovacs (2009) — Candidate Selection

Aim: Test whether crisis context influences candidate gender choice.
Method: Participants asked to select board candidates for companies in positive or negative contexts.
Results: Female candidate selected significantly more often when company struggling.
Interpretation: Confirms glass cliff mechanism experimentally.

Heilman & Haynes (2005) — Credit for Success

Aim: Examine gender biases in attribution of competence and leadership for joint success.
Method:

• Participants evaluated male & female employees who jointly succeeded on male-typed task.

• Rated competence, influence, leadership.
  Results:

• Men rated more competent (7.3 vs 5.6), influential (6.5 vs 5.4), and leader-like (6.5 vs 4.7).
  Interpretation: Women denied credit for success in masculine domains; competence assumed male unless specified.