Theories of management & leadership
Table of Contents
Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership ....................................................................... 3
Social Learning Theory ..................................................................................................4
Social Identity Theory ...................................................................................................7
Minimal group-paradigm ...........................................................................................................................8
• Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment ..................................................................................................9
Social Exchange Theory .............................................................................................. 13
The reciprocity principle: ........................................................................................................................14
Perceived Organizational Support (POS) .....................................................................................................16
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) ...............................................................................................................16
Week 2: Individual Motivation .............................................................................. 20
Self-efficacy – goal setting & strength use .................................................................... 20
Goal Setting Theory......................................................................................................................................21
Path-Goal Theory .........................................................................................................................................21
Strength use theory .......................................................................................................................................22
Self-Determination – motivation & need satisfaction ................................................... 25
Expectancy theory ...................................................................................................................................25
Types of motivation .................................................................................................................................26
Proactivity – job resources & job crafting ..................................................................... 31
Job-Demands-Resources Model ...................................................................................................................32
Job crafting ...................................................................................................................................................34
Week 3: Human Capital Management .................................................................. 37
Human Capital Theory ................................................................................................ 37
VRIO Framework ......................................................................................................... 39
Generic vs firm-specific KSAOs (skills) .................................................................................................40
Managing Human Capital – Line of Sight (LOS) ............................................................. 43
Managing Human Capital: Employee Governance ........................................................ 46
Commitment-eliciting & compliance-achieving .....................................................................................46
Four approaches to employee governance ...............................................................................................47
Week 4: Team Management ................................................................................. 49
Foundations of Teams ................................................................................................. 49
Team Development – Tuckman’s Stage Model (1965) ................................................................................49
Group Size ....................................................................................................................................................51
Emergent Team Properties .......................................................................................... 52
Group norms = emergent property (& team cohesiveness) ..........................................................................53
Psychological Safety = emergent property ...................................................................................................53
Goal shielding theory & Bottom-line Mentality......................................................................................54
Status & Social Hierarchy ............................................................................................................................55
Disinhibiting effect of power: ..................................................................................................................55
Status conflict ..........................................................................................................................................56
Too-Much-Talent effect (Disadvantage of status differentiation)............................................................56
Team Processes & Performance .................................................................................. 57
Shared Goals .................................................................................................................................................57
Group decision-making ................................................................................................................................57
, Conformity studies (Ash) ........................................................................................................................57
Group Creativity & Innovation implementation – Sparkling Fountains ......................................................59
Week 5: Culture & Values ..................................................................................... 63
Organizational culture: Three layers of culture............................................................. 63
Three levels of culture .............................................................................................................................64
Organizational culture: Strong culture ......................................................................... 65
Value Congruence....................................................................................................... 68
Extra studies on Happiness & Productivity ..................................................................................................70
Lab studies: Happiness & productivity....................................................................................................70
Field evidence: start-of-workday mood & productivity ..........................................................................70
Field evidence: Well-being & Productivity .............................................................................................70
Course goals:
• Understand and explain important theories related to leadership and management
• Use these theories to analyse problems and challenges organizations face in terms of managing individuals, teams,
and organizations
• Critically reflect on these theories
• Apply these theories to practical issues and problems
Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership
• Clarify what is meant by theoretical mechanism
• Explore some common theoretical mechanisms that have been identified in leadership research.
o 1. Social learning theory
o 2. Social identity theory
o 3. Social exchange theory,
▪ POS & LMX
Week 2: Individual Motivation
• Understand and explain key theories of individual motivation
• Propose motivation and morale-boosting activities that align with these theories and encourage proactivity
o 1. Self-efficacy (goal setting & strengths use)
o 2. Self-determination (motivation & need fulfilment)
o 3. Proactivity (job resources & job crafting)
Week 3: Human Capital Management
• (S)HCR can contribute to an organization’s sustained competitive advantage.
• VRIO framework helps us decide what (S)HCR are.
• Line of sight and employee governance approaches help us manage (S)HRM.
Week 4: Team Management
• Understand and explain the foundations of effective team functioning
• Analyse and evaluate how these factors shape team processes
• Apply and reflect on theories of team management in practice
o 1. Foundations of Teams (Development, size)
o 2. Emergent Team Properties (Norms, psych safety, status)
o 3. Team Processes and Performance (Shared goals, decision-making)
Week 5: Culture & Values
• Organizational culture: Three layers of culture
o Artifacts, values, assumptions - value of cultural analysis: provide a road map for the future.
• Organizationa culture: Strong culture
o Contribute to organizational performance via two mechanisms: energizing employees & coordinating
employee behavior.
• Value congruence:
o Between own values and that of the organization positively affects workplace outcomes.
,Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership
Learning goals:
• Clarify what is meant by theoretical mechanism
• Explore some common theoretical mechanisms that have been identified in leadership research.
o 1. Social learning theory
o 2. Social identity theory
o 3. Social exchange theory (POS & LMX)
4 ways we acquire knowledge:
• Intuition (know a dark alley is dangerous)
• Authority (in school you learn traffic signs)
• Experience (we know arc de triomphe bc we’ve been there)
• Reasoning (science)
o Theories powerful tool for science.
▪ We use theories when we cannot see immediate things and thus use it as a tool for
science. What is best course of action of to manage people? You learn from theories,
but also from doing, from mistakes.
Mechanisms:
• Process or pathway that connects a leader’s behavior (input) to a follower’s response or an
organizational outcome (output).
• What’s in the box? The Mechanism.
o Rather than only saying “ethical leadership leads to ethical followers,” mechanisms help
explain WHY:
▪ Social learning → Employees learn appropriate behavior by observing ethical or
competent leaders
▪ Social identification → When people identify strongly with a group, they support
leaders who best represent the group’s norms and values (prototypical leaders).
▪ Social Exchange → When employees feel supported by
organization (POS) or trusted by leader (LMX), they
reciprocate with loyalty, commitment, and effort.
Behaviourism (Pavlov)
• About conditioning: a process how organisms acquire new behaviours and
responses through repeated associations between stimuli, eventually triggering a conditioned response.
• Study on dogs and rats on rewards and punishments. To see what will make animals behave in a certain
way.
• Input → output (behavior)
The Cognitive Revolution
• We want to understand WHY we do certain things.
• Bridge the gap between physical world and ideas.
• Leader-focused research often directly links leader behaviours to organizational outcomes (often
related to followers), implicitly assuming a relationship of some sort between leader’s and followers’
behaviours. However, such an approach often fails to answer how, and why certain behaviours work.
, • Outcome is dependent on the followers. How employees work is not only what leader does, but a
relationship/mechanism between leader and employee. And to understand what makes leader effective,
is that we need to understand what happens between employees and leaders.
Social Learning Theory (mediator)
• Mechanism: modelling/imitating (mediator: it explains why the leader’s behavior affects followers’
outcomes.)
• Social learning is mediating theoretical MECHANISM that explains when you have more ethical
leaders you have more ethical followers.
o Examples: baby dancing while watching Beyonce,
• People can learn new information and behaviours by watching other people = observational learning /
learning from observing a role model (vicarious learning)
o Inhibition: ‘stop’ → behavior you would normally do, but you see someone else doing that
behavior and doesn’t go so well, so you inhibit from doing that.
o Disinhibition: ‘start’ → You wouldn’t normally do, but see someone else doing it, so you
start doing it.
• 4 requirements for social learning:
o Attention: notice the behavior (stimuli & focus)
o Retention: encode & remember what someone does and the outcome of it (rehearse & encode)
o Motor reproduction: ability to imitate behavior (practice & feedback)
o Motivation: to do it
o Video: when adult played violently with toy, kid does the same. When calmly, child also
calmly. Same with adults watching adults in movies. After watching boxing games, homicide
rates increased. Also, with riots but can also be positive when NFL players ‘rioted’ for BLM
by going down on one knee. Same with TikTok dances or videos.
• Over-imitating: also imitating unnecessary things.
Table of Contents
Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership ....................................................................... 3
Social Learning Theory ..................................................................................................4
Social Identity Theory ...................................................................................................7
Minimal group-paradigm ...........................................................................................................................8
• Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment ..................................................................................................9
Social Exchange Theory .............................................................................................. 13
The reciprocity principle: ........................................................................................................................14
Perceived Organizational Support (POS) .....................................................................................................16
Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) ...............................................................................................................16
Week 2: Individual Motivation .............................................................................. 20
Self-efficacy – goal setting & strength use .................................................................... 20
Goal Setting Theory......................................................................................................................................21
Path-Goal Theory .........................................................................................................................................21
Strength use theory .......................................................................................................................................22
Self-Determination – motivation & need satisfaction ................................................... 25
Expectancy theory ...................................................................................................................................25
Types of motivation .................................................................................................................................26
Proactivity – job resources & job crafting ..................................................................... 31
Job-Demands-Resources Model ...................................................................................................................32
Job crafting ...................................................................................................................................................34
Week 3: Human Capital Management .................................................................. 37
Human Capital Theory ................................................................................................ 37
VRIO Framework ......................................................................................................... 39
Generic vs firm-specific KSAOs (skills) .................................................................................................40
Managing Human Capital – Line of Sight (LOS) ............................................................. 43
Managing Human Capital: Employee Governance ........................................................ 46
Commitment-eliciting & compliance-achieving .....................................................................................46
Four approaches to employee governance ...............................................................................................47
Week 4: Team Management ................................................................................. 49
Foundations of Teams ................................................................................................. 49
Team Development – Tuckman’s Stage Model (1965) ................................................................................49
Group Size ....................................................................................................................................................51
Emergent Team Properties .......................................................................................... 52
Group norms = emergent property (& team cohesiveness) ..........................................................................53
Psychological Safety = emergent property ...................................................................................................53
Goal shielding theory & Bottom-line Mentality......................................................................................54
Status & Social Hierarchy ............................................................................................................................55
Disinhibiting effect of power: ..................................................................................................................55
Status conflict ..........................................................................................................................................56
Too-Much-Talent effect (Disadvantage of status differentiation)............................................................56
Team Processes & Performance .................................................................................. 57
Shared Goals .................................................................................................................................................57
Group decision-making ................................................................................................................................57
, Conformity studies (Ash) ........................................................................................................................57
Group Creativity & Innovation implementation – Sparkling Fountains ......................................................59
Week 5: Culture & Values ..................................................................................... 63
Organizational culture: Three layers of culture............................................................. 63
Three levels of culture .............................................................................................................................64
Organizational culture: Strong culture ......................................................................... 65
Value Congruence....................................................................................................... 68
Extra studies on Happiness & Productivity ..................................................................................................70
Lab studies: Happiness & productivity....................................................................................................70
Field evidence: start-of-workday mood & productivity ..........................................................................70
Field evidence: Well-being & Productivity .............................................................................................70
Course goals:
• Understand and explain important theories related to leadership and management
• Use these theories to analyse problems and challenges organizations face in terms of managing individuals, teams,
and organizations
• Critically reflect on these theories
• Apply these theories to practical issues and problems
Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership
• Clarify what is meant by theoretical mechanism
• Explore some common theoretical mechanisms that have been identified in leadership research.
o 1. Social learning theory
o 2. Social identity theory
o 3. Social exchange theory,
▪ POS & LMX
Week 2: Individual Motivation
• Understand and explain key theories of individual motivation
• Propose motivation and morale-boosting activities that align with these theories and encourage proactivity
o 1. Self-efficacy (goal setting & strengths use)
o 2. Self-determination (motivation & need fulfilment)
o 3. Proactivity (job resources & job crafting)
Week 3: Human Capital Management
• (S)HCR can contribute to an organization’s sustained competitive advantage.
• VRIO framework helps us decide what (S)HCR are.
• Line of sight and employee governance approaches help us manage (S)HRM.
Week 4: Team Management
• Understand and explain the foundations of effective team functioning
• Analyse and evaluate how these factors shape team processes
• Apply and reflect on theories of team management in practice
o 1. Foundations of Teams (Development, size)
o 2. Emergent Team Properties (Norms, psych safety, status)
o 3. Team Processes and Performance (Shared goals, decision-making)
Week 5: Culture & Values
• Organizational culture: Three layers of culture
o Artifacts, values, assumptions - value of cultural analysis: provide a road map for the future.
• Organizationa culture: Strong culture
o Contribute to organizational performance via two mechanisms: energizing employees & coordinating
employee behavior.
• Value congruence:
o Between own values and that of the organization positively affects workplace outcomes.
,Week 1: Mechanisms of Leadership
Learning goals:
• Clarify what is meant by theoretical mechanism
• Explore some common theoretical mechanisms that have been identified in leadership research.
o 1. Social learning theory
o 2. Social identity theory
o 3. Social exchange theory (POS & LMX)
4 ways we acquire knowledge:
• Intuition (know a dark alley is dangerous)
• Authority (in school you learn traffic signs)
• Experience (we know arc de triomphe bc we’ve been there)
• Reasoning (science)
o Theories powerful tool for science.
▪ We use theories when we cannot see immediate things and thus use it as a tool for
science. What is best course of action of to manage people? You learn from theories,
but also from doing, from mistakes.
Mechanisms:
• Process or pathway that connects a leader’s behavior (input) to a follower’s response or an
organizational outcome (output).
• What’s in the box? The Mechanism.
o Rather than only saying “ethical leadership leads to ethical followers,” mechanisms help
explain WHY:
▪ Social learning → Employees learn appropriate behavior by observing ethical or
competent leaders
▪ Social identification → When people identify strongly with a group, they support
leaders who best represent the group’s norms and values (prototypical leaders).
▪ Social Exchange → When employees feel supported by
organization (POS) or trusted by leader (LMX), they
reciprocate with loyalty, commitment, and effort.
Behaviourism (Pavlov)
• About conditioning: a process how organisms acquire new behaviours and
responses through repeated associations between stimuli, eventually triggering a conditioned response.
• Study on dogs and rats on rewards and punishments. To see what will make animals behave in a certain
way.
• Input → output (behavior)
The Cognitive Revolution
• We want to understand WHY we do certain things.
• Bridge the gap between physical world and ideas.
• Leader-focused research often directly links leader behaviours to organizational outcomes (often
related to followers), implicitly assuming a relationship of some sort between leader’s and followers’
behaviours. However, such an approach often fails to answer how, and why certain behaviours work.
, • Outcome is dependent on the followers. How employees work is not only what leader does, but a
relationship/mechanism between leader and employee. And to understand what makes leader effective,
is that we need to understand what happens between employees and leaders.
Social Learning Theory (mediator)
• Mechanism: modelling/imitating (mediator: it explains why the leader’s behavior affects followers’
outcomes.)
• Social learning is mediating theoretical MECHANISM that explains when you have more ethical
leaders you have more ethical followers.
o Examples: baby dancing while watching Beyonce,
• People can learn new information and behaviours by watching other people = observational learning /
learning from observing a role model (vicarious learning)
o Inhibition: ‘stop’ → behavior you would normally do, but you see someone else doing that
behavior and doesn’t go so well, so you inhibit from doing that.
o Disinhibition: ‘start’ → You wouldn’t normally do, but see someone else doing it, so you
start doing it.
• 4 requirements for social learning:
o Attention: notice the behavior (stimuli & focus)
o Retention: encode & remember what someone does and the outcome of it (rehearse & encode)
o Motor reproduction: ability to imitate behavior (practice & feedback)
o Motivation: to do it
o Video: when adult played violently with toy, kid does the same. When calmly, child also
calmly. Same with adults watching adults in movies. After watching boxing games, homicide
rates increased. Also, with riots but can also be positive when NFL players ‘rioted’ for BLM
by going down on one knee. Same with TikTok dances or videos.
• Over-imitating: also imitating unnecessary things.
