Leadership Research Summary:
- Autonomy is a key characteristic of attachment relations that varies as a function of attachment orientations and is also a key personality characteristic of leadership perceptions. In the presented research, we reasoned that the relationship between attachment and autonomy-related preference for specific leaders and leadership behavior would be a function of individuals’ insecure attachment strategies. The study tested the hypotheses in two studies. Study 1 used Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) modeling to test expectations based on a cross-sectional design, while Study 2 utilized a vignette-based experimental design.
- Researchers find that anxious individuals attributed less positive evaluations to an autonomous leadership style (Study 1), while avoidant persons attributed higher leader competence to an autonomous leader description (Study 2). Compared to less anxious participants, highly anxious participants attributed lower competence to the autonomous leader description. By examining how individual differences in attachment orientations can indirectly influence the ideal leader categorization process, the present set of studies lends support to the importance of attachment orientations and related working models in leader perception and contribute to the literature on leader-follower fit. Using a survey and experimental approach, we examine how followers’ attachment schemas can shape the leader influence process, specifically concerning a preference for an autonomous leadership style.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- Researchers found a significant interaction effect between anxious and avoidant attachment. Such an interaction effect is usually considered equivalent to higher fearful attachment orientation, an attachment orientation also characterized by a higher degree of anxious attachment (Brennan et al., 1998). Since fearful attachment involves a higher level of anxiety, this could be taken as evidence partly supporting the study’s expectations regarding anxious followers’ ILTs.
- These key findings add to the discussion of leader identity and how leader identity is shaped as a result of leader-follower fit (DeRue and Ashford, 2010; Junker and van Dick, 2014). Work on leader identity has identified followers’ ILTs (DeRue and Ashford, 2010) critically influence the granting (and claiming) of leader identity to others who match followers’ ILTs. Self-identity marks another important antecedent in the evaluation of leader-follower relationships. Specifically, Jackson and Johnson (2012) attest that follower self-identity “may moderate the effects of […] leadership” (p. 488) so that some followers will respond more favorably to certain leadership styles than others, depending on relational leader-follower fit. Hence, attachment orientations could provide additional, individual-level insights in the formation and granting of leader identity under the assumption of leader-follower fit.
- By examining how individual differences in attachment orientations can indirectly influence the ideal leader categorization process, the present set of studies contribute to the literature on leader-follower fit and respond to calls for more research on this topic (Shondrick et al., 2010; Epitropaki et al., 2013).
- The results have some key practical applications and theoretical implications. Leader-follower fit is a key antecedent to work performance (Martin et al., 2016). Given the increasing multicultural character of work teams and autonomy being a key facet of leader schemas cross-culturally (House et al., 2004), examining leader-follower fit in terms of attachment related ILTs can increase accuracy in predicting group cohesiveness and effectiveness in international working teams. On the theory level, there is an increasing awareness on the interplay between insecure attachment and cultural orientations especially around the independent/interdependent cultural dimension (Kafetsios and Gruda, 2018; Kafetsios, 2021). This evidence underline the need to extend our understanding of how followers’ attachment orientations interact with leader autonomy traits (e.g., independent self-construal) with respect to relational and team outcomes at work. Therefore further cross-cultural research on this topic is distinctly needed.