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This paper contributes to leadership categorization theory by advocating a new method to surface people's implicit leadership theories. The purpose of this new approach is to simultaneously capture individual difference in how they conceptualize leadership but within a common framework to allow for comparison of within- and between-person effects.

The authors conduct a narrative review of the implicit leadership theory, leadership categorization theory, cognitive mapping and verbal protocol literature with the purpose of surfacing a research method that will overcome the problems of over-simplification and over-individualization in existing methods.

The authors argue that using a combination of cognitive mapping and verbal protocols can capture the idiosyncrasies of individual lay theories of leadership while retaining the ability to compare people's responses through a common framework. The authors provide an example of how this method can be used to elicit people's perceptions of one aspect of implicit leadership theories, intelligence.

This new method will provide a methodology to test the subset propositions advocated by leadership categorization theory. These include the idea that subordinate level implicit leadership theories contain a subset of attributes found in the basic-level implicit leadership theories, that there is attribute integrity in superordinate implicit leadership theories through the levels, and the idea that people define leadership differently depending on the context they are observing.

Whereas previous approaches to surfacing people's implicit leadership theories either heavily constrain their responses with a predetermined generic suite of attributes or are totally open-ended and idiosyncratic, the authors advocate an approach that combines the best of both.

This empirical study aims to consider the stability and connection of implicit leadership theories to authentic leadership using performance feedback as a first step in a larger research agenda.

Scenarios were created to operationalize implicit and authentic leadership, manipulate implicit leadership theory between followers and leaders, and discover perceptions of leader effectiveness. The use of scenarios was purposely intended to create anticipatory future research agendas.

Components of authentic leadership may be a part of implicit leadership theory and leadership performance feedback may alter leader and follower implicit leadership theories.

Data collected in this study were from students’ perceptions, and did not infer causality between constructs. This study is also subject to mono‐operation and mono‐method bias.

This research provides an extension of theory in several ways: by looking at the authentic leadership paradigm; and by viewing perceptions of leader authentic effectiveness as a continuous influence on implicit leadership theories.

This commentary on Kenny and Livi (2009) expands on aspects of leadership categorization theory that are consistent with the application of the social relations model (SRM). It critically considers limits to the generalization of the variance components analysis results described in Kenny and Livi's first example, and briefly summarizes results of an additional study that supports their findings. Finally, this commentary suggests interpretational issues of interest to researchers who wish to continue to apply the SRM to multi-level issues in the study of leadership.

Challenging, novel, and educational experiences are critical contributors to effective leader and follower development, in part, because such developmental experiences enable people to reconceptualize their perceptions about the traits and characteristics of effective leaders, or their implicit leadership theory (ILT). To understand how ILTs develop throughout developmental experiences, we examine the ILTs of 276 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of their first year of college. Using an open-ended ILT response format, a unique ILT trait of integrity emerged along with the dominant ILT traits of sensitivity, charisma, and dedication identified in previous literature. Overcoming limitations of the factor-based ILT approach, we investigate the development of ILT constellations, allowing a holistic picture of ILTs and how they throughout a developmental experience. Based on cluster analyses, four constellations of ILT themes emerged. Participants shifted to different ILT constellations after a year in college, moving from a non-descript, varied constellation toward constellations with clearly defined, dominant themes. Exploratory analysis revealed that completion of leadership coursework partially explains the shift towards more descript ILT constellations. Results have implications for new methods of future research using the ILTs constellation perspective and the practice of undergraduate leadership education in facilitating leader development among college students.

This study focuses on the relationship between cohesion, consensus in the perception of leadership style of the supervisor within teams and solidarity behaviour of employees towards their supervisor (vertical solidarity behaviour) and towards other team members (horizontal solidarity behaviour).

According to the self‐categorisation theory, which elaborates on the social identity theory, hypotheses for the relationship between consensus in perception within teams, cohesiveness within the teams and vertical and horizontal solidarity behaviour of employees were formulated. The hypotheses were tested in a study with 193 employees within 35 teams in a Dutch Ministry.

As expected, consensus in leaders' perception and cohesiveness within the team were positively related for transformational leadership style. Results from multi‐level analyses showed, as expected, a positive relationship between cohesiveness and horizontal solidarity behaviour. For vertical solidarity behaviour an interaction effect was found: the relationship between cohesiveness and vertical solidarity behaviour is positive if employees perceive their supervisor as high transformational, but is slightly negative if employees perceive their supervisor as low transformational.

The finding that consensus in transformational leader's perception within teams is related to the cohesiveness of a team support the self‐categorization theory. On the other hand cohesiveness is only related to vertical solidarity behaviour when the supervisor is perceived as high transformational.

The different results mean that it make sense to distinguish between horizontal and vertical solidarity behaviour. In addition, they show the impact of consensus in the perception of leadership style on cohesion.

The authors integrate social cognitive theory with social exchange theory to examine how subordinates' perceptions of leader-member exchange (LMX) and moral disengagement mediate the relationship between congruence on implicit leadership theories (ILTs) of ethical leaders and characteristics recognized in one's supervisor (ethical ILT–supervisor alignment) and subsequent engagement-related outcomes (engagement attitudes, job satisfaction and supervisor-directed deviance). The authors then examine romance of leadership (ROL) as a moderator of these relationships.

The authors tested the theorized indirect effects and boundary conditions in a moderated mediation model using 180 working adults over three time points, in a polynomial regression framework using a block variable approach.

The authors found moderated indirect effects between ethical ILT–supervisor alignment and work-related outcomes via LMX and moral disengagement. ROL served as a boundary condition, such that the high levels bolstered the positive effects of ethical ILT–supervisor alignment.

The study results suggest that examining ethical leadership through the lens of implicit theories may be fruitful and highlight the importance of accounting for context when assessing the impact of ILTs.

The purpose of this study is to determine if observed ratings on a multi‐source feedback (MSF) instrument reflect the same cognitive constructs of leadership across multiple rating pairs based on rater and ratee gender.

The independent variables of this quantitative research study are MSF rater and ratee gender. The dependent variables are leadership constructs reflected by MSF ratings. During phase I of the data analysis, five models of leadership constructs are built. During phase II of the data analysis, the five models are compared against each other to discover if the same factors determine the cognitive constructs of leadership comprising each model.

Findings from this study indicate that constructs of leadership across multiple rating pairs reflect the same cognitive constructs of leadership. Measurement equivalence for the MSF instrument under investigation has been established.

It is concluded that the MSF instrument is free of bias, thus not contributing to the existence of a “glass ceiling” keeping women from entering top‐level leadership positions. The potential for a “social epidemic” in the near future whereby the glass ceiling will be shattered and many women will enter into top leadership positions is confirmed.

Findings are contrary to the conclusions drawn from the literature review of social role theory, expectation states theory, and leadership categorization theory. This study fills a gap in the empirical body of knowledge, by including a large number of female managers.

In this paper, we discuss a new information processing model of culture and leadership (Hanges, Lord, & Dickson, 2000). First, we review the older cognitive categorization approach that has been used to explain the relationships between culture, preferred leadership attributes and follower behavior. Then we present a new model based on the connectionist theory of information processing. This model focuses on the connections between concepts in a cognitive network, rather than discrete schemas. Finally, we use the new model to suggest strategies that managers might use to manage a diverse workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and map the intellectual structure of leadership studies during 1997‐2006. This paper also attempts to help researchers identify the important publications and the influential scholars as well as the correlations among these publications using citation and co‐citation.

In this paper, co‐citation analysis and social network analysis techniques are used to research knowledge network of the leadership literature by analyzing 31,232 cited references of 2,322 articles from two leadership related journals in social science citation index and science citation index databases.

Four factors emerged in this paper: effectiveness of leadership style, leadership theory and development, leadership categorization, and current issues of leadership research.

This paper provides management researchers a tool for evaluating leadership publications and provides a systematic and objective means of determining the relative importance of different knowledge nodes in the development of the leadership research.