关键词: 领导者, 依恋, 内隐追随, 性别

Abstract: Leaders' expectations on followers have significant effects on subordinates, such as potential stimulation, work enthusiasm motivation and performance promotion. These expectations, also known as implicit followership theories(IFTs), aroused widespread concerns among scholars. In recent years, in order to have better understanding of the structure of IFTs, many researchers had investigated the antecedents to IFTs from various perspectives, including personality, emotion, and age, etc. However, while most of the studies revealed how intrapersonal factors could influence individuals’ IFTs, the interpersonal causes were ignored. Since leadership process happens based on social interaction, we supposed that leaders’ attachment system, which is activated by the emotional link between leaders and followers, will shape and influence their IFTs. According to the schema transference theory, the internal working model which developed in one’s early life would be activated and influences leaders’ opinions and attitudes to his/her subordinates in organizational contexts. In addition, since leaders often act as parents in workplaces, they preferred to build relationship with subordinates in a similar way which they had experienced in childhood. Based on connectionist network model, IFTs were distributed representations that could emerge their meaning only until the entire network was activated. Generally, such network would be influenced by both top-down and down-up contextual information processing mechanism. Therefore, we supposed that attachment, an emotion-related input, could have considerable impacts on IFTs. Moreover, since female are more susceptible to emotional factors compared with male, such as anxiety, depress and nervous, it is also worth to explore if the extent of the influence of attachment on IFTs would be different between male and female. We hypothesized that leaders’ IFTs would be predicted by their attachment, and their IFTs profiles would be different among diverse attachment styles. Besides, we supposed that gender would mediate the relationship between attachment and IFTs. The data were collected from 323 leaders of 10 organizations in China. In line with theoretical arguments, it showed that: (1) Attachment predicted IFTs significantly; (2) IFTs prototypes and anti-prototypes were different from various attachment styles. Secure attachment leaders preferred followers who were industrial and positive, while anxiety attachment leaders were fond of counterparts who were dull and affected, and avoidant attachment leaders favored effective and executive followers. (3) Gender moderated the relationship between IFTs and attachment. Female leaders’ negative expectations on followers were more likely to be influenced by attachment anxiety compared to male. Our findings provided significant theoretical implications. Firstly, the study expanded our understanding of antecedents to IFTs. By investigating how attachment shape leaders’ IFTs, we offered a new direction for future research. Secondly, the study deepened our understanding of IFTs of Chinese leaders with different attachment styles. Meanwhile, some practical implications were offered for organizations. Firstly, employers should consider attachment styles as important reference indexes in leader election. Secondly, employers could enhance person-job fit according to the different features of attachment styles. Thirdly, we should discard the prejudice that female leaders were more susceptible to emotional factors than male when judge subordinates, instead, evaluate them more objectively.

Key words: leader, attachment, implicit followership theories, gender