To Apologize or Justify: Leader Responses to Task and Relational Mistakes

Hetrick, Andrea L.; Blocker, Lily; Fairchild, Joshua; Hunter, Samuel T.

doi:10.1080/01973533.2020.1828083

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Follmer et al (2019), for example, found that relationship errors were viewed as more internally attributable and resulted in weaker future followership intentions and lower leader liking than did task errors. Hetrick et al (2021) similarly found that followers viewed relationship errors as more representative of their leader as a person than did task errors. It appears that followers are more likely to abandon leaders if they feel personally harmed by their actions or decisions, as opposed to when the leader's behavior negatively impacts the accomplishment of a particular task or objective.…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Although some research in this space has been conducted (e.g. Hetrick et al, 2021), it remains a nascent area that has important implications for leadership research and practice. Additionally, scholars should consider the moderating or mediating influence of relational variables like leader-member exchange.…”

Section: Practical Implications and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The moderating influence of error timing on follower perceptions of leader error Scholars acknowledge that a complete perspective of leadership requires accepting that leaders are prone to errors and transgressions. Prior research has explored topics such as the types of errors that leaders commit (Dimitrova and van Hooft, 2021;Thoroughgood et al, 2013), the responses and attributions of followers to leader errors (Follmer et al, 2019) and how leaders attempt to recover from mistakes (Hetrick et al, 2021). This work has suggested that there are meaningful differences in how leader errors are viewed based on their characteristics and typology (e.g.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…weeks, months), but research suggests that leader-follower dynamics can also be altered by momentary experiences, particularly those that followers interpret as transgressive (Epitropaki et al, 2020). Accordingly, leader errors have been demonstrated to significantly alter perceptions of a leader's viability in the aggregate (Follmer et al, 2019;Hetrick et al, 2021) but little is known as to whether those errors are differentially interpreted based on when they occur during a leader-follower interaction. Thus, error timing may be an important boundary condition to how followers form momentary assessments of leader competence and viability and how impactful specific errors are perceived to be.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The moderating influence of error timing on follower perceptions of leader error

Crayne

Hunter

2022

LODJ

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PurposeThis study aims to examine how the characteristics of leader errors impact perceptions and reactions of followers, particularly their willingness to follow a leader in the future and perceptions of error severity. Expanding upon the leader error and transgressions literature, this study considers how the timing of an error may influence how the error is interpreted.Design/methodology/approachThis study’s sample included 283 students engaged in a 2 × 2 factorial designed laboratory experiment. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether error timing moderated the relationship between error type and two outcomes, willingness to follow and perceived error severity.FindingsRelationship errors resulted in the worst outcomes and perceptions regardless of when they occurred. Task errors were judged as less impactful when occurring early in a task than later in a task. These results suggest that followers are more accepting of task leader errors when they have opportunities to recover from them, but consistently judge relationship errors as damaging.Practical implicationsOrganizations should carefully consider the impact of leader errors and their context and develop strategies for error management and recovery.Originality/valueThis research addresses calls from scholars for greater consideration of temporality as a contextual variable in leader-follower dynamics, as well as those to take a more follower-centric approach to leadership research. This study also replicates prior leader error research and extends leader error theories to provide new avenues for future research.

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Section: Literature Review and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Practical Implications and Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The moderating influence of error timing on follower perceptions of leader error

Crayne

Hunter

2022

LODJ

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“…2 2 Empirical hypotheses do not have to be expressed via means, standard deviations, and so on. They also can be expressed via correlation coefficients, regression weights, and so on (e.g., Hetrick et al., 2021; Jordan et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2021). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalizing across auxiliary, statistical, and inferential assumptions

Trafimow

2021

J Theory Soc Behav

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There is a long history of discussion about the ability of researchers to generalize their findings. But findings are not the only entity that researchers can attempt to generalize. Scientists have theories, empirical hypotheses, and statistical hypotheses too. The extent to which scientists can generalize these is an open issue. As a prerequisite to proposals about generalizing theories, empirical hypotheses, and statistical hypotheses; they must be distinguished from each other. Another prerequisite is to specify, across what, the researcher wishes to generalize. I show that theories may or may not generalize across auxiliary assumptions, empirical hypotheses may or may not generalize across statistical assumptions, and statistical hypotheses may or may not generalize across inferential assumptions. The reasoning to be presented, pertaining to generalization, militates against the typical practice of using p‐values to draw conclusions about hypotheses.

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