Preference for Directive Versus Participative Leadership: The Role of Regulatory Mode and Context Quality Definition

Beylat, Magali [UCL] Woltin, Karl-Andrew [UCL] Sassenberg, Kai [Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien (IWM)] Yzerbyt, Vincent [UCL]

Prior work showed that leadership preferences depend not only on followers’ characteristics, but also on contextual features. We investigated how regulatory mode (assessment – a concern with “getting things right” vs. locomotion – a concern with “getting things done” in goal pursuit) and the definition of quality criteria (i.e., whether or not there are predefined standards to evaluate task or work performance) jointly influence followers’ preferences for directive and participative leadership. We measured (Study 1, N = 503) and experimentally induced (Study 2, N = 497) followers’ regulatory mode before presenting them with task instructions that either clearly defined quality criteria or left them undefined. In both studies, participants were led to believe that they would work on a task with a supervising leader and indicated their preferred leader style for the task. Contrary to predictions, results do not suggest that the definition of quality criteria moderates the influence of followers’ regulatory mode on their leadership preferences. Independent of quality criteria conditions, both chronic assessment and locomotion predicted preferences for directive leadership; additionally, chronic locomotion strongly predicted preferences for participative leadership. However, induced regulatory mode did not influence leadership preferences. Further work is needed to better understand the role of context on self-regulatory dynamics and leadership style preferences.