The social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001; Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) focuses on how the followers as group members facilitate and empower effective leadership.
This theory states that an important predictor of leadership effectiveness is how prototypical of the group the leader is. The groupprototypicality of the leader is the degree to which the characteristics of the leader correspond with the characteristics of the group. More specifically, when we categorize someone as a group member, we depersonalize them.
Depersonalization is a process which causes us to view someone as a group member rather than as an independent individual. We then assign them the cognitive and perceptual attributes of the group; feelings, attitudes and …show more content…
According to the theory, as group membership becomes more important to the group members, the prototypical group members are often perceived as the most reliable source of normative information. Consequently, these prototypical group members gain greater influence over the behaviours and the identity of the group members, and will most likely emerge as leader of the group. Another point made by the social identity theory of leadership, is that people have preconceptions about how a leader should behave. These preconceptions are (cognitive) schemas of how effective leaders should behave and they operate in the same way as other schemas (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). As a result, when a group member is categorized as a leader based on their prototypicality, the relevant leadership schemas are activated and will cause the group members to generate further assumptions about their behaviour. One of these assumptions is charismatic behaviour
(as effective leaders are generally typified as charismatic), leading to the attribution of a charismatic personality profile to the leader. Thus, this theory describes how social
This theory states that an important predictor of leadership effectiveness is how prototypical of the group the leader is. The groupprototypicality of the leader is the degree to which the characteristics of the leader correspond with the characteristics of the group. More specifically, when we categorize someone as a group member, we depersonalize them.
Depersonalization is a process which causes us to view someone as a group member rather than as an independent individual. We then assign them the cognitive and perceptual attributes of the group; feelings, attitudes and …show more content…
According to the theory, as group membership becomes more important to the group members, the prototypical group members are often perceived as the most reliable source of normative information. Consequently, these prototypical group members gain greater influence over the behaviours and the identity of the group members, and will most likely emerge as leader of the group. Another point made by the social identity theory of leadership, is that people have preconceptions about how a leader should behave. These preconceptions are (cognitive) schemas of how effective leaders should behave and they operate in the same way as other schemas (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). As a result, when a group member is categorized as a leader based on their prototypicality, the relevant leadership schemas are activated and will cause the group members to generate further assumptions about their behaviour. One of these assumptions is charismatic behaviour
(as effective leaders are generally typified as charismatic), leading to the attribution of a charismatic personality profile to the leader. Thus, this theory describes how social