This dissertation addresses two issues in the literature on informal leadership emergence (i.e., the process of an individual without a formal leadership position coming to exert leadership influence over others). First, scholars have focused on situations in which a focal person’s leadership claiming is aligned with a peer’s leadership granting. In doing so, past work has overlooked instances of misalignment, that is, when a focal person claims more leadership than a peer grants (i.e., overclaiming) or when a peer grants more leadership than a focal person claims (i.e., underclaiming). Second, the consensus in the literature suggests that emerging as an informal leader provides more beneficial outcomes to the individual and their team than non-emerging. However, I argue that this assumption may not be warranted in some situations, for example when a focal person’s lack of claiming is aligned with a peer’s lack of granting. Drawing on the leadership identity claiming and granting framework, I postulate four forms of informal leadership (non)emergence, namely (1) dyadic emergent leadership, (2) dyadic leadership absence, (3) overclaiming, and (4) underclaiming. Based on role theory, I then build theory regarding their effects on behavioral consequences through affective and cognitive mechanisms. More precisely, I suggest that forms characterized by congruence in leadership claiming and granting (as opposed to forms characterized by incongruence) result in increased peer backing-up behavior towards the focal person (mediated by enthusiasm and respect) and reduced peer social undermining (mediated by anger and revenge cognitions). I further hypothesize asymmetrical incongruence effects and consider a focal person’s prosocial motivation as a boundary condition. I conducted three studies to examine my theorizing. In Pilot Study 1 (N = 199), I adapted and validated a measure to assess leadership claiming and granting. In Pilot Study 2 (N = 151), I shortened established measures. In the Main Study (N = 279), I tested my theoretical predictions yielding mixed findings. Whereas I find support for the congruence effect on backing-up behavior, all other hypotheses were not supported. I report supplemental analyses to examine these null results and discuss the theoretical, empirical, and practical implications of this research.

Research suggests that behaving in an ingratiatory manner towards one’s supervisor is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, ingratiation is a powerful tool through which employees develop positive social exchange relationships with target audiences (i.e., supervisors) and subsequently obtain desired outcomes at work. On the other hand, third party observers of ingratiation often view this behavior (and the people enacting it) in a negative manner, thereby hindering ingratiatory employees’ ability to develop high quality social exchange relationships with these individuals. However, this research primarily focuses on how organizational actors perceive of ingratiatory employees while neglecting the social context in which this behavior occurs. This is an important limitation because there are compelling reasons to believe that the social context plays a crucial role in how individuals react to ingratiation. Specifically, the social context may influence the extent to which ingratiation is salient, valued, and/or perceived as normative behavior by organizational members both within and external to the ingratiator-target dyad, which in turn affects how this behavior relates to relationship quality with the target and observers. The objective of my dissertation is to address this limitation by integrating a social context perspective with social exchange theory to build a “frog-pond” model of ingratiation. To that end, I propose that employees’ ingratiation relative to their team members, rather than absolute levels of ingratiation, drives positive exchange quality with supervisors. Furthermore, I hypothesize that congruence between the focal employee’s ingratiation and other team members’ ingratiation increases employees’ social exchange quality with team members. I also shed light on the asymmetrical nature of ingratiation (in)congruence by investigating how different types of congruence and incongruence impact social exchange quality with team members in different ways. In addition, I examine how relative ingratiation indirectly influences supervisors’ citizenship behavior toward the focal employee via focal employee-supervisor social exchange quality, as well as how ingratiation congruence indirectly affects team members’ citizenship behavior toward the focal employee through social exchange quality between the two parties. I test my hypotheses in a multi-wave multi-source field study of 222 employees and 64 teams/supervisors.

Globalization has necessitated cross-cultural communication among groups and individuals alike, often beginning with management. This project considers how the degree of Power Distance, one of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, may change over time as a result of exposure to different, and often opposing, cultural values. We conducted two surveys 12 weeks apart collecting an initial sample of 317 and retaining a secondary sample of 142. We gathered data on demographics, education, on-campus involvement, cultural dimensions, and levels of comfort with different cultures. Through data analysis we found that as a result of exposure to different cultural values, cultural groups adjust their own views on Power Distance. Specifically, we found that the Anglo cultural group and the international cultural subgroup that had been living in the U.S. for less than 10 years trended towards each other on levels of Power Distance. We also found that international female students adjusted to new cultural surroundings faster than their male counterparts. These discoveries have led us to conclusions regarding the influence of awareness of other cultural values through international exposure, specifically that of Power Distance, as well as male versus female differences in cultural adjustment, and how differing views might trend towards each other with recurrent interaction.

Employees are directly involved in work tasks and processes which are necessary to accomplish unit or organizational goals, and accordingly, they may become aware of key mistakes, slips, and failures that are unbeknownst to the leader or supervisor responsible for the work unit or organization. Given that errors or deviations in work tasks or processes can have far-reaching effects within the organization, it may be essential for employees to share bad news with their leader or supervisor so that steps can be taken to address the issue or ameliorate negative consequences. However, although employees' sharing of bad news may be important to the organization and should be encouraged, supervisors may respond to the messenger in ways that discourage the behavior. Unfortunately, we lack an explanation of why and under what conditions supervisors respond positively or negatively to employees who share bad news. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to address this gap in our understanding. I draw from social exchange theory and the transactional theory of stress to develop a conceptual model of sharing bad news. I suggest that sharing bad news can be cast as a transaction between employees and supervisors that is mediated by supervisors’ appraisals of employees’ sharing the message. The quality of the relationship between an employee and supervisor, or leader-member exchange (LMX), is strengthened when supervisors appraise the sharing of bad news as challenging, or potentially rewarding; however, LMX is weakened when supervisors appraise the sharing of bad news as hindering, or potential harmful. In turn, LMX influences supervisor responses to the sharing of bad news in the form of evaluations of the employee’s effectiveness. In addition to these main effects, I also consider how aspects of the message delivery, such as the timeliness with which messages are conveyed and extent to which employees incorporate solutions when they share bad news, can influence supervisor appraisals of sharing bad news. Finally, I suggest that the extent to which the messenger is responsible for the bad news moderates the relationships between appraisals of sharing bad news and LMX. I test this model in three studies.