Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Why are Leaders Perceived as Abusive: Evaluating the Definition of Abusive Leadership with an Experimental Examination Comparing Harmful Leader Intentions, Behaviors, and the Frequency of Leader Actions(2020) Levine, Benjamin Ryan; Grand, James A; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Abusive leadership, subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in systematic and repeated hostile behaviors that violate the interests of the organization, subordinates, or both, is a widespread issue with far reaching consequences. It is consequently vital for organizations to monitor and neutralize these behaviors, to improve the lives of individual employees and their overall company performance. Unfortunately, research on abusive leadership is muddled as many researchers have coined their own terms for similar behaviors and phenomena. The lack of clarity and agreement on the definition is a continual source of friction in this research area, and it presents a roadblock for practitioners seeking to reduce abusive leadership. The current research leveraged an experimental methodology to critically examine and refine the definition of abusive leadership through testing its three core assumptions. Drawn from the three core assumptions, three factors, leader intentions, the frequency of exposure to leader behavior, and the harm caused by leader behavior, were included to provide the first experimental test of the influence of each factor on perceptions of abusive leadership. A longitudinal design was utilized to model the influence of frequency of exposure, and leader intentions and the harm of leader behaviors were specifically manipulated in the study. Across five trials, 208 participants completed tasks and interacted with videos of a confederate leader. After each trial, participants provided ratings of their perceptions of the leader’s abusiveness. Results from a repeated measures ANOVA and an HLM growth model suggested strong support for the influence of leader intentions, harm of leader behaviors and frequency of exposure on perceptions of abusive leadership. Guidance for updating the definition of abusive leadership, theoretical and practical implications of the study, as well as future directions are also discussedItem The influence of societal norms on leader categorization(2017) Levine, Benjamin Ryan; Grand, James A; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Leadership prototypes, cognitive structures representing organized knowledge about the ideal leader, are central to the process of leader categorization. Culture is believed to influence the content and structure of leadership prototypes, however the majority of existing research centered on the influence of cultural values. The purpose of this research was to incorporate societal norms, specifically cultural tightness-looseness, the strength of norms and acceptance for deviance in a society, into the study of leadership prototypes. Drawing from literatures on Leader Categorization Theory, leadership prototypes, and cultural tightness-looseness, the current research investigated the influence of tightness-looseness on the structure and content of leadership prototypes across cultures. Study 1 examined the structure of leadership prototypes as a function of cultural tightness within a country using a large archival data set. It suggested that individuals in tighter cultures were less discriminating in the attributes they valued in leadership prototypes than individuals in looser cultures. Study 2 utilized a policy capture methodology to evaluate the influence of tightness-looseness on the importance of singular attributes in leadership prototypes. Results indicated that individuals who endorsed tighter norms were more willing to categorize individuals as leaders than individuals who endorsed looser norms. Implications of these findings for understanding leader categorization and its relationship to cultural tightness-looseness in particular are discussed.