The challenge of being a young manager: The effects of contingent reward and participative leadership on team‐level turnover depend on leader age

Abstract

Summary Effective leadership requires a leader claiming as well as team members granting the leadership position. Contingent reward and participative leadership may both facilitate this mutual process. However, these behaviors differ in the degree to which they require a leader to have status and be prototypical. Their effectiveness might thus depend on the status‐related characteristics of the leader. In this respect, we propose that younger leaders, by deviating from the leader prototype in terms of age, lack a natural status cue, which will determine the effectiveness of these two leadership behaviors in shaping turnover. Two pilot studies (N = 113 and 121 individuals) confirm that younger leaders are perceived as less prototypical and to have lower status than older leaders. Examining 83 work teams, we show that leader age differently moderates the effects of contingent reward and participative leadership on time‐lagged team turnover. For younger (compared with older) leaders, contingent reward was effective as illustrated by decreased voluntary turnover and increased involuntary turnover, whereas participative leadership, which was associated with increased voluntary turnover and decreased involuntary turnover, was ineffective. These findings point to the importance of incorporating natural status cues of leaders for understanding the effectiveness of different leadership behaviors. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The consequences of (not) seeing eye‐to‐eye about the past: The role of supervisor–team fit in past temporal focus for supervisors' leadership behavior

“…Additionally, we considered supervisors' gender (0 = female; 1 = male) and age (in years) as potential covariates because theory and research suggest that role expectations might bias our proposed relationships. Task‐oriented leadership, for example, may be more congruent with stereotypically male (rather than female) role expectations (Eagly & Johnson, ) and with stereotypes toward younger (rather than older) individuals (Buengeler, Homan, & Voelpel, ). Relationship‐oriented leadership may, however, be more congruent with stereotypes toward females (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, ) and toward older individuals (Buengeler et al, ), whereas laissez‐faire leadership may be more accepted among males (Eagly, Johannesen‐Schmidt, & Van Engen, ) and older persons (Zacher, Rosing, & Frese, ).…”

“…Task-oriented leadership, for example, may be more congruent with stereotypically male (rather than female) role expectations (Eagly & Johnson, 1990) and with stereotypes toward younger (rather than older) individuals (Buengeler, Homan, & Voelpel, 2016). Relationship-oriented leadership may, however, be more congruent with stereotypes toward females (Eagly, Makhijani, & Klonsky, 1992) and toward older individuals (Buengeler et al, 2016), whereas laissez-faire leadership may be more accepted among males (Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt, & Van Engen, 2003) and older persons (Zacher, Rosing, & Frese, 2011). Moreover, we considered the teams' organizational tenure (in years) as a possible covariate.…”

Younger supervisors, older subordinates: An organizational-level study of age differences, emotions, and performance

“…If, however, age fails to concur with the other status indicators, then statuses are incongruent, evoking unpleasant and potentially upsetting feelings among group members. Age‐inverse supervisory relationships, which disassociate age from hierarchical position and prototypical leadership attributes (Buengeler, Homan, & Voelpel in press), generate status incongruence, causing subordinates to feel negative emotions such as resentment (Cox & Nkomo ) and anger.…”

Congruence effects of contingent reward leadership intended and experienced on team effectiveness: The mediating role of distributive justice climate

“…To our best knowledge, this is the first team‐level study investigating the impact of CRL congruence on DJC and its indirect effects on team and LE. Unfortunately, leader involvement in shaping team reactions to performance–reward contingencies has been overlooked in that team‐level CRL has been examined using only team member perceptions (e.g., Buengeler, Homan, & Voelpel, ; Han et al ., ). Perhaps because leaders occupy a singular role, their impact on team emergent constructs like DJC has not been fully appreciated.…”