Olga Epitropaki

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Verified

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• PhD
• Professor at Durham University

Leader word‐action misalignment has important implications for employees' attitudes and behaviour, but we do not know how it affects leaders themselves. Adopting an actor‐centric perspective and integrating insights from research on moral emotions to further develop behavioural integrity theory, we investigate how leaders respond to their own word‐...

Developing as a leader is widely recognized as a challenging endeavour that takes time. However, little research has been done to explain the process through which future representations of oneself as a leader relate to current leader identity and how future and current leader selves motivate action. Integrating possible selves theory with identity...

Individuals hold internal leadership representations, termed leadership prototypes. We examined how these prototypes changed in reaction to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. A sample of Republicans (N = 200), Democrats (N = 200), and individuals who identified with neither major party (N = 200), surveyed eight times between October 2020 and Janu...

Beyond Exchange: Revisiting Leadership as a Relationship emerged in response to scholarly calls to steer away from the 'exchange' rhetoric and ‘give-and-take’ conceptualizations in the study of leader-follower interactions and instead shift the focus to the fundamental element of 'relationship'. The book delves into the very essence of leader-follo...

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) is one of the most popular leadership research domains. Its unique focus on the dyad and the leader-follower relationship differentiates it from all other leadership approaches. Yet, its theorising has remained stagnant for the last thirty years, and very limited research has addressed its dynamic relational nature and...

Drawing on construal level and conservation of resources theories, our paper focuses on the psychological distance employees experience from their manager in remote work contexts. We specifically examine the role of three leadership behaviours (initiating structure, consideration and vision communication) on employees' perceptions of psychological...

Whereas the scarring effects of unemployment on future income, health and well-being are well-documented, little is known about its potential role on future leadership emergence and development. Using data from two cohorts of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79 and NLSY97) and drawing from life course theory, we examine the role of emp...

Growing evidence suggests a diminishing interest in pursuing leadership roles. This increasing trend of avoiding leadership roles has prompted a new area of research, concentrating on agentic perspectives in leader emergence and self-selection biases. This study focuses on a key concept in this emerging field: “reluctance to lead" (RTL). Only recen...

Recent studies indicate a potential trend of waning enthusiasm for leadership positions. This increasing trend of avoiding leadership roles has prompted a new area of research, concentrating on agentic perspectives in leader emergence and self-selection biases. This study focuses on a key concept in this emerging field: “reluctance to lead" (RTL)....

Identity leadership captures leaders efforts to create and promote a sense of shared group membership (i.e., a sense of “we” and of “us”) among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between po...

Identity leadership involves leaders creating and promoting a sense of shared group membership (a sense of 'we' and 'us') among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between political leaders'...

Identity construction has been widely studied, garnering scholarly attention from different epistemological and methodological traditions. Especially research on the identity construction process of identity work has prospered in recent years. Identity construction is a fascinating field of study for management scholars with important implications...

This paper investigates the concept of behavioral integrity from three important foci in organizational settings: i.e., leader, organization, and follower. Drawing from theories of behavioral integrity, social learning, and social identity, we examine the effects of leader and organizational behavioral integrity on follower behavioral integrity and...

Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b)...

Innovation is considered essential for today’s organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers’ innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) the relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) t...

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burno...

Drawing upon self-concept and social-information processing perspectives, we theorize and test a model linking ethical leadership with ethical voice via ethical value internalization and integrity identity. In two field studies ( N = 972 and N = 765, respectively) of police officers and staff in the United Kingdom and an online three-wave study ( N...

Purpose Drawing on the social-cognitive and motivational literature of leadership, the present study examines the influence of young adults' self-perceptions of leadership on their leadership self-efficacy (LSE) and motivation to lead (MTL) in their future career. The authors further examine gender and socio-economic status (SES) as important moder...

Are there career benefits to leaders and followers agreeing about the quality of their leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship? Is LMX disagreement always detrimental for a follower's career? Can the examination of LMX agreement as a substantive variable help us cast new light on some of the inconclusive findings of past research on LMX and caree...

People may identify with multiple entities at work, but how are different foci of identification related and how do they influence extra-role work behaviors? Drawing from social identity theory, our article examines: (a) the potential bidirectional relationship between leader and organizational identification; (b) the mediating role of organization...

Using social learning theory, the job demands-resources model and idiosyncrasy credit theory, the present study casts additional light on the explanatory mechanisms underlying the effects of service leadership on service performance. We examine employee work engagement as an important mediator of this relationship and explore the moderating role of...

We offer a comprehensive review of the theoretical underpinnings and existing empirical evidence in the implicit leadership and implicit followership theories domain. After briefly touching on the historical roots of information-processing approaches to leadership and leader categorization theory, we focus on current contextualized and dynamic pers...

A growing body of literature has focused on transgressions in the workplace and more recently, with respect to leader-follower relationships. Despite the important implications of leader and follower transgressions and relationship repair for work outcomes, there has not been a systematic review that examines the broad spectrum of leader and follow...

Although research shows a reliable association between leadership training and positive organizational outcomes, a range of research design issues mean we do not know to what degree the former causes the later. Accordingly, the paper has two main aims. First, to describe the conditions necessary to determine causality in leadership training researc...

Guided by the relationship science literature, we developed and tested a model of forgiveness in leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships across three independent studies. Study 1 utilized a sample of 254 employees from eight organizations located in four countries and showed that higher quality LMX led to higher job satisfaction and subjective w...

This study investigated the role of age in the relationship between perceptions of learning climate and self- and supervisor-rated employability among European Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals. The psychological climate for learning was operationalized by three indicators, namely the perceptions that employees have of th...

Recent theorizing applying the social identity approach to leadership proposes a four‐dimensional model of identity leadership that centres on leaders’ management of a shared sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’. This research validates a scale assessing this model – the Identity Leadership Inventory ( ILI ). We present results from an international project with...

In this chapter, we examine Implicit Leadership (ILTs) and Implicit Creativity Theories (ICTs) as key socio-cognitive foundations of creative leadership. We discuss the paradoxical relationship between leadership and creativity noted in the extant literature and we attempt to resolve the paradox by closely examining the content of leadership and cr...

Whereas a great number of leadership emergence studies examine followers’ perceptions of emergent leaders, fewer studies have focused on why people choose leadership in the first place. Prior research has, for example, shown that traits such as dominance and extraversion characterize people who ‘naturally’ gravitate to leadership positions. Men are...

There has never been a better time to study, practice, and experience creative leadership. In the fluid and turbulent economic and social environments of the 21st century, creative leadership has become a cardinal force in the creation and evolution of adaptive organizations. In the last two decades, organizational science has witnessed a rapid inc...

If the leadership relationship resides, at least in part, in the expectations of leaders and followers, then is its imperative to understand multiple perspectives of similarity in expectations for how leaders and followers should behave. Unfortunately, little is known about how similarity in expectations for leader and follower roles influences oth...

Building on similarity‐attraction theory and extending research on person–organization value congruence and organizational identification, this study examines the relationship between perceived leader–employee value congruence and leader identification. Using a two‐wave design, data were collected twice with a 6 months’ time lag from a sample of 28...

By applying the supplies-values (S-V) fit approach from the complementary person-environment (P-E) fit literature to the leader-employee perspective, and drawing upon social exchange theory, we examine how fulfillment of different work values is related to Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and work outcomes. First, polynomial regression analyses combine...

Join us at the 2nd Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Leadership Symposium that will take place in 4-6 May 2017, in the island of Mykonos, Greece. The theme this year is " Leadership, Followership and Identity". Interested participants can submit an abstract by November 30th, 2016 via the symposium website: www.leadership-symposium.com

A growing body of leadership literature focuses on leader and follower identity dynamics, levels, processes of development and outcomes. Despite the importance of the phenomena, there has been surprising little effort to systematically review the widely dispersed literature on leader and follower identity. In this review we map existing studies on...

How do stakeholders react to Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSiR)? What are the emotional mechanisms and behavioral outcomes following CSiR perception? The psychology of CSR literature has yet to address these important questions and has largely considered CSR and CSiR as the opposite poles of the same continuum. In contrast, we view CSR and CS...

This study developed and tested a model that posited employability and job performance as intervening variables in the relationship between receipt of mentoring and career success. Participants were 207 information technology (IT) professionals employed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in three European countries. Mentoring receipt was...

Drawing from social/political influence, leader–member exchange (LMX), and social comparison theories, the present two-study investigation examines three levels of LMX differentiation (i.e., individual-level,meso-level, and group-level LMX differentiation) and further tests a model of the joint effects of political skill and LMX differentiation on...

In the present chapter, we present the case study of the only woman film director who has ever won an Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow. We analyzed 43 written interviews of Kathryn Bigelow that have appeared in the popular press in the period 1988-2013 and outlined eight main themes emerging regarding her exercise of leadership in t...

Various streams of organizational research have examined the relationship between creativity and leadership, albeit using slightly different names such as “creative leadership”, “leading for creativity and innovation,” and “managing creatives.” In this article we review this dispersed body of knowledge and synthesize it under a global construct of...

In the present paper, I present the case study of the only woman film director who has ever won an Academy Award, Kathryn Bigelow. We analyze 43 written interviews that have appeared in the popular press and outline eight main themes emerging regarding her exercise of leadership in the cinematic context. By utilizing two theoretical frameworks on l...

This paper reports a meta-analysis that examines the relation between Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) relationship quality and a multi-dimensional model of work performance (task, citizenship and counterproductive performance). The results show a positive relationship between LMX and task performance (146 samples, ρ= .30), citizenship performance (97...

By utilizing the premises of uncertainty management theory, the present paper examines the moderating effects of political skill and informational justice on the relationships between LMX differentiation and employee outcomes. In Study 1, data from 231 employees supported the hypotheses that political skill moderated the relationship between percei...

The relationship between LMX and work attitudes has been the focus of numerous LMX studies and meta-analyses. The present chapter attempts a closer look into the “black box” of the LMX – work attitudes relationships and reviews existing research focusing on both direct relationships and boundary conditions and explanatory mechanisms. It also includ...

For over 30 years information-processing approaches to leadership and more specifically Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) research has contributed a significant body of knowledge on leadership processes in applied settings. A new line of research on Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs) has re-ignited interest in information-processing and socio-...

Creative leaders are portrayed in the extant literature as agreeable, supportive, and ultimately fostering the creative potential of employees. Some creative leaders, however, are driven by their own personal creative vision and behave in ways that, far from being agreeable, are confrontational, unconventional, and even toxic. While past research h...

This study investigates the role of authentic leadership and positive psychological capital as critical mechanisms for managing employment uncertainty in adverse labor market conditions. The theoretical model of the present study proposes that authentic leadership and positive psychological capital will mediate the relationships between employment...

Relationship-based approaches to leadership (e.g., Leader–Member Exchange theory) currently represent one of the most popular approaches to understanding workplace leadership. Although the concept of “relationship” is central to these approaches, generally this has not been well articulated and is often conceptualized simply in terms of relationshi...

Drawing on the perceived organizational membership theoretical framework and the social identity view of dissonance theory, the present study examined the dynamics of the relationship between psychological contract breach and organizational identification. Group-level transformational and transactional leadership as well as procedural justice clima...

Using 394 pairs of employees and their immediate supervisors working in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector in three northern European countries, this study examined the effect of workplace moderators on the link between relational demography and supervisor ratings of performance. Directional age differences between superior a...

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the outcomes of a so-called “employability management needs analysis” that is meant to provide more insight into current employability management activities and its possible benefits for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals working in Small- and Medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throug...

PreambleLMX Theory: Basic Concepts, Measurement and Levels of AnalysisLMX Theory development and ResearchFinal ReflectionsReferences

This article examines current career thinking and employability management practices within the Polish Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. The aim of this contribution is to identify career management problems and to determine obstacles for implementing employability management practices at a company level. Semi-structured interv...

This article explores the employability of information and communication technology (ICT) professionals from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The first stage of analysis, based on over 100 interviews with managers of ICT supplier companies in seven European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Po...

We propose a theoretical model in which we describe the role that solitude can play for authentic leadership development.