Leadership Emergence through Advice-Seeking Network: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

<p>Leadership aspiration is an important predictor of leadership emergence, but current research ignores the key process of how leadership aspiration leads individuals to get leadership positions. On the awareness that leadership is embedded in social interactions within the team, we introduce the individual's network indicator, closeness centrality in the advice seeking network, to explain the process of leadership emergence. Using the large-scale field study with multisource, time-lagged data from 5,422 employees across 218 teams, the results show that employees' leadership aspiration drives two processes (i.e., social status and social capital perspectives). Empirical results show that leadership aspiration is positively related to actual promotion through the employee's in-closeness centrality in the advice-seeking network and informal leadership, but is negatively related to promotion through the employees' out-closeness centrality in the advice seeking network and informal leadership. Moreover, the serial indirect effect of an employee's leadership aspiration on actual promotion through the employee's in-closeness centrality in the advice-seeking network and informal leadership is stronger for males. How research provides a refined framework for understanding how leadership emerges.<br></p>