The role of subjective theories for leadership evaluation pubs/werth_markel_foerster2006.pdf · The...

The role of subjective theories for leadership evaluation

Lioba Werth and Petra MarkelUniversitat Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany

Jens ForsterInternational University Bremen, Bremen, Germany

The current article argues that taking subjective theories of both the rater andratee into consideration contributes to a deeper understanding of leadershipevaluations. In the present study, individuals’ pre-existing implicit personalitytheory (Dweck, 1996) was measured in an organizational setting andwas identified as a moderating variable for leadership assessments (108participants). It was shown that when judging their managers, raters whobelieve in the ability to change and the dynamic nature of personality(‘‘incremental theorists’’) place significantly stronger weight on the situationand dynamic factors, while raters who believe in the stability of humancharacteristics (‘‘entity theorists’’) focus more strongly on their relationship tothese people. Moreover, managers with entity theory are judged significantlymore positively than managers with an incremental theory. In view of thesefindings, implications are derived for the measurement of leadership behaviouras well as information concerning the application of leadership behaviour in anorganizational setting.

One of the most common and controversial concepts in organizationalpsychology is the concept of leadership. Diverse approaches have beendeveloped and then discarded, leaving a lack of either a generally recognized

Correspondence should be addressed to Lioba Werth, Department of Psychology II,

University Wurzburg, Rontgenring 10, 97070 Wurzburg, Germany. Email: werth@psychologie.

uni-wuerzburg.de

The research reported in this article was supported by the company Zentrum fur Training

und Weiterbildung in Wurzburg (www.ztw.de). We would like to thank Roland Deutsch, Birte

Englich, Kai Epstude, Michael Hafner, Thomas Mussweiler, Roland Neumann, Katja Ruter,

Beate Seibt, and Fritz Strack for their helpful comments. We would also like to thank Ashleigh

Ferris, Viola Rost, and Amina Oezelsel for editing the manuscript and Atilla Hofling, Jennifer

Mayer, and Katja Stork for collecting the data. In addition, we thank the Fraunhofer

Gesellschaft (FhG), who, in the framework of an employee survey, enabled us to collect this

data within their company.

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF WORK AND

ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

2006, 15 (1), 102 – 127

� 2006 Psychology Press Ltd

http://www.psypress.com/ejwop DOI: 10.1080/13594320500436768

leadership concept or a fixed tool for measuring leadership behaviour. Oneof the central questions in both research and practice is how to measure themagnitude of the influence that leadership has on company production andthe gathering of leadership evaluations. Finding the factors that determinehow a manager evaluates his or her employees or how employees judge theirmanager is as of current ineffective and vague. In the following we wish toshow that implicit theories, i.e., subjective assumptions that an individualhas about people’s ability to change, influence leadership evaluations.

Leadership evaluations are usually carried out with the help ofquestionnaires in which leadership behaviour is measured by question itemsor by lists of characteristics with which employees reveal to what extent acharacteristic applies to their manager (Neuberger, 2002; there are alsostandardized questionnaires, such as the Leader Behaviour DescriptionQuestionnaire, LBDQ; Fleishman, 1972; Stogdill, 1963). While manyaspects can be depicted with objective standards (for instance measuringperformance by way of productivity in terms of number of items), someaspects are difficult to quantify and are largely a matter of opinion. Inparticular, evaluating people’s commitment and involvement to a companyis a subjective matter. For instance, individual’s loyalty can be perceivedvery differently by different people. While one manager may judge thecriticism of the employees as negative and perceive them as troublemakers,the same criticism could be interpreted by another manager as a positiveconstructive commitment (Near & Miceli, 1987). Similarly, while oneemployee may attribute the loyal behaviour of his or her manager to themanager’s personality, another employee may see the manager’s loyalty as aresult of the work situation. Briefly put, the judgement of management is, aswith any other type of judgement or perception, a subjective process(Bohner & Wanke, 2004; Forster & Strack, 1998; Martin & Tesser, 1992).Consequently, as noted by Brown and Lord (2001), leadership needs to beunderstood not just in terms of the effects of leadership traits andbehaviours. Additionally, subordinates’ cognitive processes, the antecedentsto those cognitive processes, and their effects on behavioural ratings need tobe included in the concept of leadership. In other words, an understandingof the raters’ information processing is necessary.

What people perceive and how they process it depends decisively on thepersonal characteristics of the ratee (such as attractiveness, status, nonverbalbehaviour) and the specific situation surrounding that individual (i.e.,complexity, salience), as well as on the features of the rater (for exampletheir abilities, or convictions; for a review see Bretz, Milcovich, & Read,1992). Even in early theories of person perception, a perceiver’s subjectiveassumptions about social structures were argued to play an important role(Heider, 1958; Kelly, 1955; Ross, 1989). For example Jones and Thibaut(1958) proposed that missing links in inference chains about interpersonal

SUBJECTIVE THEORIES AND LEADERSHIP EVALUATION 103

perceptions are supplied by the perceiver’s own ‘‘theory’’ of personality.Such ‘‘lay theories’’ have since come to be seen as increasingly importantperceiver variables in person cognition (see Trope & Higgins, 1993). Otherareas of research have convincingly proven that perceptions, judgements,and behaviour are influenced to a large extent by implicit variables (fora review see Strack & Deutsch, 2004), such as, unconscious motives,needs, and expectations (e.g., Snyder & Swann, 1978), or goals (e.g.,Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Troetschel, 2001; Gollwitzer,Heckhausen, & Steller, 1990). Research shows that in the area of personnel,the performance expectations of army instructors were shown to influenceboth their evaluation of their subordinate soldiers and their behaviourtowards them (Eden, 1990; Eden & Shani, 1982). As was shown here,motivational and cognitive variables influence person perception. Moreover,purely cognitive processes such as subjective theories also guide ourjudgements.

In the current article we therefore focus in particular on the influence ofsubjective theories on the evaluation of leadership behaviour. We will beginby addressing subjective theories and will move on to examine theirrelationship to the area of employee leadership.

SUBJECTIVE THEORIES

Research on individual’s subjective theories about the self and others iswide-ranging. Although these theories have been variously labelled as:‘‘implicit theories’’ (e.g., Dweck, 1996; Hong, Chiu, Dweck, & Sacks, 1997;Levy, Plaks, & Dweck, 1999), ‘‘subjective beliefs’’ (e.g., Forster & Strack,1998), ‘‘naive theories’’ (e.g., Heider, 1958; Wegener & Petty, 1995), ‘‘laytheories’’ (e.g., Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997b), or ‘‘metacognitive knowledge’’(e.g., Nelson, 1996; Strack & Bless, 1994; Strack & Forster, 1998); they allshare the fundamental feature that they are referred to as being implicit ratherthan explicit. This is because most scientific theories are rarely explicitlyarticulated or consciously present at the time of their influence.

Implicit knowledge can be activated from many different sources (Nelson,Kruglanski, & Jost, 1998). An initial basis can be provided by momentaryfeelings, impressions, or actual perceptions, such as when the feeling offamiliarity with a person’s name is used as information when making ajudgement about that individual’s level of fame (e.g., ‘‘if a name is familiarto me it must belong to a famous person’’; Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, &Jasechko, 1989). Examples of this implicit use of information found inliterature include feelings of familiarity (Banaji & Greenwald, 1995; Jacobyet al., 1989; e.g., a sense of fluency or familiarity indicates the validity of ahypothesis one was entertaining), feelings of uncertainty (Clore & Parrott,1994; e.g., ‘‘the more certain I am, the more correct my answer will be’’), or

104 WERTH, MARKEL, FORSTER

feelings of happiness (Schwarz & Clore, 1983; e.g., ‘‘if I am in such a goodmood when I meet the person, I am bound to like him’’).

Furthermore, implicit theories can be based on knowledge, assumptions,or expectations about a person. Examples of this source of implicitinformation known from the literature include theories about memorability(e.g., a person may know that he/she has a better memory for unusual orinfrequent events and can use this knowledge for recognition tasks,Forster & Strack, 1998; Strack & Bless, 1994; Strack & Forster, 1998;Strack, Forster, & Werth, 2005), personal stability and change (Dweck,Hong, & Chiu, 1993; Levy & Langer, 1994; Werth & Forster, 2002; e.g.,intelligence, Hong, Chiu, & Dweck, 1995; morality, Chiu, Dweck, Tong, &Fu, 1997a), creativity (e.g., Runco, Johnson, & Bear, 1993), expertise (e.g.,Wright & Murphy, 1984), and theories about bias and correction (Strack,Schwarz, Bless, Kubler, & Wanke, 1993; Wegener & Petty, 1995). Forexample, if a person experiences a great deal of liking for somebody thisfeeling could result in an evaluation that is overly positive—but if awarenessis gathered about this influence then the judgement can be correcteddownwards. Research from various different areas has therefore highlightedthat implicit theories play an important role in everyday judgements.

Even if they occur automatically and without awareness, implicit theoriesinfluence all steps of information processing (e.g., Banaji & Greenwald,1995; Bargh, 1997; Fazio, 2001; Strack & Deutsch, 2004). As was shown inthe related area of person perception, pre-existent expectations can guide theprocess of deciding what information is relevant to a concept like leadershipor how one is to interpret the evidence on the topic (Fiske & Taylor, 1991).A particular kind of expectation might be an individual’s implicit persontheory (Dweck, 1996), which has been shown to construct an interpretativeframework for understanding the social world. Therefore this theory mightresult in varying interpretations/evaluations of leadership behaviour. Inorder to demonstrate the interplay between the implicit person theory andleadership evaluation, we will begin by briefly explaining the implicit persontheory by Carol Dweck and colleagues (Dweck, 1996; Levy, Stroessner, &Dweck, 1998).

Implicit person theories

Research by Carol Dweck (1996; Hong et al., 1997) has shown thatindividuals’ implicit beliefs about the malleability or fixedness of humanattributes guides information processing and especially inferences in personperception. In particular, the tendency to use traits as a bases for drawinginferences is greater among evaluators who believe that an individual’spersonality consists of fixed, static traits (entity theorists) than amongevaluators who believe that personality consists of dynamic personal


qualities which change and develop (incremental theorists) (Chiu et al.,1997a; Erdley & Dweck, 1993; see Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995a, 1995b for areview). In terms of academic achievement it was found that individuals whobelieve that their intelligence is a fixed entity (entity theorists) tend to focuson traits and inferences based on dispositionism.1 In contrast, individualswith an incremental theory focus on the relevance of situational moderatorsfor drawing inferences about personality. Furthermore, Levy et al. (1998)found that entity theorists endorsed existing stereotypes to a significantlygreater degree than did incremental theorists. Moreover, in comparison toincremental theorists, entity theorists seem to be more confident that trait-relevant behaviours will be consistent over time (Erdley & Dweck, 1993) andacross different contexts (Chiu et al., 1997b, Study 1). Entity theoristsbelieve to a greater extent that knowing a person’s traits will allow them tomake confident predictions about that person’s behaviour in new situations(Chiu et al., 1997b, Studies 2 and 5), and that an awareness of how a personbehaved in a particular situation will enable them to make confidentinferences about that person’s traits in that relevant domain (Chiu et al.,1997b, Studies 3 to 5). Therefore entity theorists would assume, that aperson, whom they have experienced as acting aggressive in a particularsituation will also behave aggressively in the future. In addition, researchshows that entity theorists draw strong trait judgements even whensituational information (e.g., the external pressures influencing a person)and psychological process information (e.g., a target’s thoughts, intentions,goals, expectancies, affect) are made salient (Erdley & Dweck, 1993).

Effects of the implicit person theory were also shown in the appliedcontext of person evaluations. When making judgements about themselvesand their own behaviour, incremental theorists tend to attribute their failuresto specific processes that may have mediated their performance (e.g.,amount of effort exerted, effectiveness of current task strategies), whereasentity theorists tend to explain their academic failures in terms of stablepersonality traits (i.e., that they reflect their global, enduring intellectualability or personality). This difference in attribution between the twotheorists occurs despite the fact that both display equal levels of abilitybefore encountering a failure (Hong & Dweck, 1992) and similar levels ofconfidence in their ability (Henderson & Dweck, 1990; Hong & Dweck,1992; Zhao & Dweck, 1994). Although evaluators are able to indicate theirassumptions about the stability of a person’s character when prompted todo so, they are typically unaware of their views and how these viewsinfluence their social understanding or evaluations. In addition, differentimplicit theories lead to differences in individual’s judgements of the

1Namely, the tendency to draw global trait inferences from behaviours even when there is a

plausible situational explanation for the behaviours.


behaviour of others (e.g., Levy et al., 1998). When explaining and predictingbehaviour, incremental theorists appear to take into account the actor’scurrent state as well as relevant aspects of the situation (Chiu, 1994, Study 1;Hong, 1994). For example, Hong (1994) asked college students to explainisolated positive or negative behaviours (e.g., ‘‘Arthur brought hiscolleagues some souvenirs from a trip’’) and found that whereas entitytheorists proposed significantly more trait attributions (e.g., ‘‘Arthur isgood-hearted’’), incremental theorists focused significantly more onpsychological process attributions (e.g., goals, needs, or values such as‘‘Arthur wanted to please his colleagues’’) and placed more emphasis onenvironmental factors impinging on the person (see also Levy & Dweck,1998).

In summary, when drawing inferences, incremental and entity theoristsgenerally use their implicit theories about people very differently.2 Whereasentity theorists see traits as reliable predictors for the future and enduringdispositional labels, incremental theorists see traits as having less predictivevalue and as serving as more tentative or provisional descriptors (Chiuet al., 1997b; Erdley & Dweck, 1993). It therefore appears that on a moregeneral level, entity theorists select, encode, and organize person informa-tion to facilitate a trait-based judgement, whereas, incremental theoristsprocess this information to enable an understanding of psychologicalmediators. The influence of the aforementioned theories on perception andsubsequent inferences leads us to the assumption that these theories mayalso influence leadership perceptions and styles in the organizationalcontext.

THE LINK BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE THEORIES ANDLEADERSHIP BEHAVIOUR

Question 1 (valence of the evaluation)

There is reason to believe that both incremental as well as entity beliefs canpromote better leadership. Hence, we would now like to delineate possibleadvantages for both leadership styles.

Pro-‘‘incrementals’’/contra-‘‘entities’’. Wood and Bandura (1989) indu-ced entity or incremental beliefs about ability (ability as a stable entity vs. asan acquirable skill) in a simulated organization context. Their data shows

2For data concerning the reliability and validity of the implicit theory measures see Dweck

et al. (1995a, 1995b). Moreover, endorsing an incremental theory is not associated with social

desirability or self-monitoring as measured by the Social Desirability Scale (Paulhus, 1984) and

the Self Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974) (see Dweck et al., 1995a, 1995b).


that ‘‘incrementals’’ are better in diverse areas of performance including:self-set goals, efficient use of analytic strategies, and organizationalperformance. Furthermore, ‘‘incrementals’’ showed higher self-efficacythan ‘‘entities’’ did. Additionally, Heslin and Latham (2004) argue thatinducing manager’s incremental theory increases their readiness to supporttheir employees (even those with poor performances) through coaching, andgenerally provide them with more feedback, since these managers have theassumption that their employees’ characteristics can be changed. Thesefindings suggest that ‘‘incrementals’’ would be the better managers than‘‘entities’’.

Moreover, incremental theory has some similarities to the theory oftransformational leadership (e.g., Bass, 1990, 1998), which addressesinspiring and challenging subordinates and setting a personal example.Specifically, transformational leaders tended to score higher than otherson the personality traits of extraversion, agreeableness and openness toexperience (Judge & Bono, 2000). However there are differences betweentransformational leadership and incremental theory in that transforma-tional leadership construes the leader as ‘‘a great person’’ and pays littleattention to subordinates or the work situation. According to currentliterature, incremental theorists place more emphasis on environmentalfactors impinging on an individual than entity theorists do (e.g., Levy &Dweck, 1998).

Contra-‘‘incrementals’’/pro-‘‘entities’’. However, the above-mentionedadvantages of ‘‘incremental’’ leaders do not necessarily imply that‘‘incrementals’’ are correspondingly evaluated more positively by theiremployees. It can be speculated that incremental theorist workplacemanagers are quicker to see situations and tasks as changeable, andconfront their employees with new ideas and flexible decisions. Thisbehaviour could lead employees to finding them more demanding and lesscontrollable. Consequently, an incremental manager could, on the whole, beless well-liked or perceived less positively by his or her employees. Sinceentity managers would act more consistently employees might rate themmore positively. Further arguments in favour of the hypothesis that entitytheorist managers should be evaluated more positively than incrementaltheorist managers can already be found in the early literature on traditionalattribution theory. This research assumed that a perceiver seeks consistencyin individuals or situations in order to be able to assess his or her opponent(Deschamps, 1997; Jones & Davis, 1965). In addition, people search forstable causes in their social world, i.e., for dispositional characteristics of theworld (Heider, 1958). The trait judgements of incremental theorists appearto be more provisional and thus less stable. They see their judgements asvalid only for the present (Erdley & Dweck, 1993), and readily revise them


when presented with new, discrepant information (Erdley & Dweck, 1993;Plaks & Dweck, 1997). In conclusion, since managers with an entity theoryshould display more stable behaviour and consequently be considerablyeasier to assess and more predictable in their behaviour, as they are less aptto revise their trait judgements even in the face of counterinformation.

In view of these possible advantages of both entity and incrementalleadership styles, we predict that the subjective theory of the evaluatedindividual will influence the valence of his or her evaluation.

Question 2 (weighting of the dimensions of leadershipbehaviour)

Not only does the subjective theory of the person being evaluated influencethe valence of their evaluation, additionally the raters’ implicit theoryshould also have an influence on the evaluation of leadership behaviour.Individuals should judge the leadership behaviour of others differentlyaccording to their own implicit theory. Arguments in favour of thishypothesis can be found in the literature on implicit leadership theory, in theliterature on information processing, as well as in the works of Dweck andcolleagues.

As postulated in the framework of so-called Implicit Leadership Theory,leadership-relevant judgements and evaluations are largely implicit-theorybased and only tangentially associated with actual behavioural perfor-mances (e.g., Brown & Lord, 2001; Engle & Lord, 1997; Gioia, Dennis, &Sims, 1985; Lord & Brown, 2004; Pavitt, Whitchurch, McClurg, & Petersen,1995). An individual’s own assumptions of social justice have a greaterinfluence on evaluations than the target’s actual behaviour this can beattributed—as is apparent from the literature on information processing—tothe finding that structures such as beliefs, expectancies, values, etc. leadpeople to devote greater attention to particular aspects of incominginformation (Bruner, 1957; Erber & Fiske, 1984; Hilton, Klein, & vonHippel, 1991). The same applies to entity and incremental theorists—theyfocus their attention on different aspects of incoming social information,evaluate them differently and perceive them selectively, and base theirassessment of incoming information according to their own implicit theory(see Plaks & Dweck, 1997). An entity theorist’s belief in a fixed traitencourages him or her to measure, judge, or evaluate this trait—entitytheorists strive to know themselves and others by diagnosing people’s fixedattributes. In contrast, it is suggested that the belief in a more dynamic,malleable attribute orients the incremental theorist to the goals ofdeveloping those attributes and understanding the dynamics behind them.We thus hypothesize that individuals judge others in a way that fits withtheir view of reality.


In particular, we predict that when assessing their managers, anemployee’s subjective theory will change the way they perceive theirmanagers. This will occur because raters focus their attention on differentaspects of incoming social information according to their own implicittheory. Specifically, raters with an incremental theory will place significantlymore weight on dynamic dimensions. In other words, when evaluatingleadership behaviour incremental theorists are more likely to take intoaccount the way in which a manager deals with change or said manager’sflexibility. On the other hand, employees with an entity theory, focus moreintently on static dimensions. Which translates to entity theorists taking intoaccount their stable relationship to their manager or their manager’s stabledependability when assessing ‘‘general management’’. Statistically speaking,in a regression analysis, depending on the implicit theory of the rater (andquite independently of the theory of the rated manager—the ratee), astronger explanation of variance in the evaluation of ‘‘general management’’should be shown through those factors/dimensions that match the theory ofthe rater.

If leadership evaluations are influenced by both the subjective theories ofthe raters and of the ratees, this would be of both theoretical and practicalrelevance (see Results and Discussion section). The following studytherefore examines the influence of subjective theories of raters and rateeson the evaluation of changeable and stable management behaviour. Inparticular, we address whether managers (ratees) are evaluated differently bytheir employees depending on the manager’s personal subjective theory(Question 1). In addition we look at whether employees (raters) focus ondifferent aspects of their manager’s behaviour in accordance with theemployee’s subjective theory when evaluating their managers (Question 2).

METHOD

All data were collected in the framework of an employee surveycommissioned by a large German company. The goal of the employeesurvey was to identify strengths and weaknesses of the company. To answerthe two questions of interests we examined the sample along the pre-existentdifferences between incremental and entity theorists.

Sample and procedures

A total of 108 participants (96 male, 11 female; one person did not indicatetheir gender) from all levels of the hierarchy of the target company took partin the investigation (only the most senior director of the company wasexcluded from the analyses, as he did not have a superior to rate).Participants were engineers and concerned with the development and testing


of methods, components and facilities for the automation and rationaliza-tion of industrial manufacturing processes. They were between 20 and 63years old, and 27% held a managerial position (29 out of 108). All of thoseinterviewed had been employed by the company for more than 6 months(average duration of employment 5 years). The employee survey took placeduring working hours and achieved—on a voluntary basis—a participationrate of almost 100%. As an acknowledgement for their participationparticipants received a bar of chocolate.

All of the data collection took place in company rooms that had beencommissioned for the survey. The survey was carried out in a total of 11group sessions each with a maximum of 10 participants. The entire surveyinstrument was computer based. Each participant received a user code andworked through the catalogue of questions independently on a laptopcomputer. This ensured the absolute anonymity of the participants. To helpthem work through the questions, the participants were introduced to thecomputer program by means of standardized instruction. Several generalquestions designed to ascertain whether or not the subject held managerialresponsibility were placed at the beginning of the question catalogue. Theprogram then used this information to independently select the questionsintended for each group of people. The questions for evaluating themanagers were integrated into a separate item block on ‘‘management’’,which began with the questions concerning how well the manager, on thewhole, fulfils his or her managerial duties. This was followed by a block ofquestions evaluating leadership behaviour. Due to in-house companyregulations, the items designed to assess the subjective personality theoryof the participants were presented towards the end of the employee survey,i.e., after they had answered all questions on their company, themselves, andtheir managers.

The items relevant to our study were embedded in a catalogue ofquestions in the employee survey. At the end of the survey, participants wereasked to voluntarily provide statistical information such as age, gender andduration of employment in the company, as well as the department of thecompany to which they belonged, thus enabling each person to be(anonymously) matched to their manager. The complete employee survey,including the embedded current study, lasted approximately 2 hours.

Independent variables

Independent variable ‘‘subjective theory of the rater’’. The subjectivepersonality theory was ascertained for all participants. In order to measureparticipants’ implicit theories, a translation (by Werth & Forster, 2002) of adomain-general questionnaire by Carol Dweck and colleagues was used(e.g., Hong et al., 1997). The questionnaire consisted of eight items (e.g.,


‘‘Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their basiccharacteristics’’). Participants were asked to indicate the extent to whichthey agreed with each item on a 6-point Likert scale, from 1 (‘‘stronglyagree’’) to 6 (‘‘strongly disagree’’). The items for which greater agreementcorresponded to a belief in the change of characteristics (incremental theory)were all recoded. Through the recoding, now all items that showed a highvalue indicated an entity theory. By way of extreme group formation,participants were then divided into those who believe in the change ofhuman characteristics versus those who believe in the stability ofpersonality. Specifically, participants with a total mean value of less thanor equal to 3 were classified as having incremental theory (N¼ 21) and thosewith a total mean value of greater than or equal to 4 were deemed to haveentity theory (N¼ 47) (following Plaks, Stroessner, Dweck, & Sherman,2001). All participants with a mean value between 3 and 4 were excludedfrom the analyses (N¼ 27). Furthermore some participants did not completethe questionnaire (N¼ 13). Through this procedure of extreme groupformation only participants who have a clear subjective personality theory(N¼ 68) go into the further analyses.

Through forming two groups, entity rater versus incremental rater, it waspossible to examine whether leadership evaluations are influenced by thesubjective theories of the raters. Particularly whether individuals with entityversus incremental theory focus on different dimensions when they evaluate‘‘general management’’ (Question 2). (Please note that in this question theindependent variable ‘‘theory of the manager’’ does not play a role.)

Independent variable ‘‘subjective theory of the evaluated manager’’. Inaddition, the subjective theory of the ratees was recorded. Due to thenecessity of ensuring anonymity, this ensued in a rather complicatedfashion, which included the raters being asked who their manager was. Asall managers had also taken part in the survey, their subjective theory hadalso been recorded, and thus with the help of this additional voluntaryinformation (recoded to ensure anonymity) it was possible to separateevaluations of employees whose manager has an incremental theory(N¼ 14), and evaluations of employees whose manager has an entitytheory (N¼ 30).3 In this way it was possible to answer the question ofwhether managers with a subjective entity theory would be evaluateddifferently from managers with an incremental theory (Question 1). Thestudy was therefore based on a 2 (subjective theory of the employee rater:incremental vs. entity) 6 2 (subjective theory of the evaluated managerratee: incremental vs. entity) factorial design, which enabled a comparison

3Due to missing information (information was provided on a voluntary basis), the amount

of assignable data was reduced to N¼ 44.


between the subjects of the manager evaluations depending on the subjectivepersonality theories of raters and ratees.

Materials

In order to distinguish the independent variables, the questionnaire onImplicit Person Theory was used (Hong et al., 1997; translation by Werth &Forster, 2002). In order to establish the dependent variables, a catalogue ofquestions on the evaluation of the manager leadership behaviour wasemployed. The material used is described below.

Implicit person theory measure. In order to measure participants’implicit theories, a translation (by Werth & Forster, 2002) of the domain-general questionnaire by Carol Dweck and colleagues (mentioned above)was used (e.g., Hong et al., 1997). The eight items4 were averaged.Cronbach’s alpha of the person theory scale was .94.

Evaluation of leadership behaviour. A total of 40 items were used to judgeleadership behaviour (see the complete questionnaire in the Appendix). Theitems were specifically geared towards the company on the basis of previousqualitative interviews with employees of the company. All of the leadershipbehaviour question items were used to determine the dependent variables.These 40 items can be divided into seven concept dimensions that refer tovarious aspects of leadership behaviour and a global judgement ofmanagement.

A series of five items measured the dimensions: ‘‘Interest in employeesand interpersonal feeling’’ (My manager is also interested in me as a person),‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ (My manager sticks to arrangements),‘‘Relationship between manager and employees’’ (I have a good relationshipwith my manager), ‘‘Ability to deal with change/flexibility’’ (My managerrecognizes in time if changes are necessary), ‘‘Conflict management’’(My manager is very good in crisis situations), ‘‘Dealing with mistakes’’(My manager reproaches his5 employees for their mistakes without makingany constructive suggestions for change), and ‘‘Feedback/praise/criticism’’(My manager invites us to give him feedback). In addition five items wererelated to the global judgement of the management (‘‘General manage-ment’’—On the whole, my manager fulfils his management duties very well).The items in the eight constructed dimensions were never presented in justone block, but were distributed across the whole block on leadership

4In analyses with only individual items of the question, e.g., only the four entity items or

only three items (following Dweck et al., 1995b), the effects were in the same direction.5Items are formulated with the masculine pronoun because all managers were males.


behaviour. A 5-point Likert scale on which the participants expressed theextent of their agreement with each item from 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5(‘‘strongly agree’’) was used to answer the questions. Cronbach’s alpha forall scales lies between a¼ .77 and a¼ .86.

Dependent variables for ‘‘evaluation of the leadership behaviour of themanager’’. Participants were required to evaluate the leadership behaviourof their direct superior on a scale from 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5(‘‘strongly agree’’) (in the target company the direct superior for eachemployee was always explicitly one particular person). It was possible tocategorize whether strong agreement describes a negative or a positivebehaviour of a manager for each item (example of positive behaviour: ‘‘If Ineed my manager he is always there for me’’; example for negativebehaviour: ‘‘When there are problems/mistakes in our organization mymanager always blames the employees’’). All items were recoded so that ahigh agreement with the questions also always meant a positive assessmentof the manager. (Only for the regression analysis is this variable entered as apredictor and therefore as an independent variable.)

Dependent variable ‘‘valence of the other evaluation’’. The main predictionfor the valence of the dependent variable was that managers with asubjective entity theory and managers with a subjective incremental theorywould be judged differently with regard to all types of leadership behaviour.

Dependent variable ‘‘weighting of the dimensions of leadershipbehaviour’’. As Dweck (1996; Hong et al., 1997) has shown, individuals’implicit beliefs about the malleability or fixedness of human attributesguides information processing and especially inferences in personperception. Therefore, it was predicted that when judging their managers’‘‘general management’’, raters would focus on different leadershipdimensions depending on their own subjective theory. To test thisquestion, separate observations (via regression analysis) are made forraters with incremental theory and raters with entity theory concerningwhich of the seven specific dimensions of leadership behaviour play a role inthe evaluation of ‘‘general management’’ (independently of the theory of theevaluated managers).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Dependent variable ‘‘valence of the other-evaluation’’

Each of the mean values of the manager behaviour evaluated by others wastested for statistical significance using a one-way analysis of variance


(ANOVA). It was expected that managers who believe in the stability ofpersonality vs. in the dynamic nature of personality would be judgeddifferently. As shown in Table 1, managers with an entity theory werejudged more positively than managers with an incremental theory in theareas ‘‘Interest in employees and interpersonal feeling’’, F(1, 42)¼ 12.31,p5 .001, ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’, F(1, 42)¼ 9.58, p5 .003, ‘‘Rela-tionship between manager and employees’’, F(1, 42)¼ 6.20, p5 .017,‘‘Ability to deal with change/flexibility’’, F(1, 42)¼ 6.92, p5 .012, ‘‘Conflictmanagement’’, F(1, 41)¼ 22.97, p5 .000, ‘‘Dealing with mistakes’’, F(1, 42)¼8.73, p5 .005, and ‘‘Feedback/praise/criticism’’, F(1, 42)¼ 13.80, p5 .001.It can therefore be established that managers with entity theory are judgedsignificantly more positively than managers with an incremental theory in allseven separate areas of management behaviour, as well as in terms of ‘‘Generalmanagement’’, F(1, 41)¼ 10.01, p5 .003). The interaction between the implicittheory of the evaluated managers and the theory of the raters is not statisticallysignificant (F¼ 0.09, p5 .768).

Dependent variable ‘‘weighting of the dimensions ofleadership behaviour’’

Stepwise regression analyses were used to explore whether differentjudgemental dimensions are included in the analysis for raters with anincremental or entity theory, when judging their managers’ ‘‘Generalmanagement’’. Two stepwise linear regression analyses were carried out, the

TABLE 1Mean values for the dependent variables

Rated managers with

incremental theory

Rated managers

with entity theory

‘‘General management’’ 3.14 (.95) 4.01 (.75)

‘‘Interest in employees and interpersonal feeling’’ 3.14 (.70) 3.91 (.66)

‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ 3.56 (.83) 4.23 (.59)

‘‘Relationship between employees and managers’’ 3.53 (.69) 4.14 (.80)

‘‘Ability to deal with change/flexibility’’ 3.62 (.70) 4.16 (.61)

‘‘Conflict management’’ 3.16 (.76) 4.15 (.57)

‘‘Dealing with mistakes’’ 4.56 (.70) 5.21 (.67)

‘‘Feedback/praise/criticism’’ 3.07 (.68) 3.88 (.66)

Incremental theory: NRated managers¼ 14. Entity theory: NRated managers¼ 30; Exception

‘‘General management’’ and ‘‘Conflict management’’ with NRated managers¼ 29.

Mean values of the dependent variable scales, anchored on a 5-point Likert scale from 1

(‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 5 (‘‘strongly agree’’). Higher mean values correspond to a more positive

evaluation of the manager. Standard deviations in parentheses.


first only for raters with incremental theory and the second only for raterswith entity theory.6 For this purpose, all seven specific dimensions of theleadership behaviour were taken into account and were entered into astepwise regression as predictors, both for raters with incremental theoryand those with entity theory. The choice of the stepwise method allows theinfluence of the separate dimensions that play a role in the evaluation of the‘‘General management’’ to be shown, dependent on the theory of the rater.With this method it also can be shown to what extent the separatedimensions contribute to the explanation of variance.

Relevant dimensions for raters with incremental theory

Table 2 describes how for participants with an incremental theory thevariables were selected in two steps, with the dimensions ‘‘Ability to dealwith change/flexibility’’ and ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ being includedin the regression equation. Sixty-seven per cent of the emerging variance of‘‘General management’’ was explained by the regression equation (corrected.63). For those participants with incremental theory the strongest predictorfor the global judgement of ‘‘General management’’ was the area ‘‘Ability todeal with change/flexibility’’ with b¼ .52, F(1, 19)¼ 26.02, p5 .001, whichcontributes somewhat more to the prediction of the dependent variable thanthe variable ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ with b¼ .39, F(2, 18)¼ 18.09,p5 .001. The more positively the areas ‘‘Ability to deal with change/flexibility’’ (R2¼ .56) and ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ (R2¼ .63) wereevaluated, the more positively ‘‘General management’’ was also assessed. Intotal, it was possible to predict 82% of the variance of the variable ‘‘Generalmanagement’’ from these two dimensions.

Relevant dimensions for raters with entity theory

In the regression analysis in which the factor ‘‘General management’’ wasonly predicted by individuals with entity theory, the variables ‘‘Relationshipbetween managers and employees’’ and ‘‘Dependability of the managers’’were entered as predictors (see Table 3). The selection of variables tookplace in two steps: The variables ‘‘Relationship between managers andemployees’’ and ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ were entered into theregression equation. Seventy-two per cent of the emerging variance of the‘‘General management’’ was explained by this regression equation(corrected .70). With a standardized regression coefficient of b¼ .50, F(1,45)¼ 79.61, p5 .001, the variable ‘‘Relationship between managers and

6Regression analyses that separate data both according to subjective theory of the rater as

well as the subjective theory of the manager could not be carried out due to small cell sizes.


employees’’ contributed somewhat more to the prediction of the dependentvariable than the variable ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ with b¼ .40, F(2,44)¼ 54.51, p5 .001. The more positively the areas ‘‘Relationship betweenmanagers and employees’’ (R2¼ .63) and ‘‘Dependability of the manager’’(R2¼ .70) were evaluated, the more positively ‘‘General management’’ wasalso assessed. In total, these two dimensions were able to account for 82% ofthe variance of the variable ‘‘General management’’.

In summary different content areas are taken into account whenevaluating general management for individuals who believe in the abilityto change and the dynamic nature of personality compared with individualswho believe in the stability of human characteristics. Whereas forincremental theorists, the specific dimension ‘‘Ability to deal with change/flexibility’’ is of particular importance, for entity theorists ‘‘Relationshipbetween managers and employees’’ is of central importance. The dimension‘‘Dependability of the manager’’ appears to be of particular importance forboth incremental and entity theorists and, thus, should prove to be critical ina leadership context. When judging their managers, raters with anincremental theory place significantly stronger weight on the particular

TABLE 3Summary of the regression model for variables on the prediction of ‘‘General

management’’ for those questioned with an entity theory (N¼ 47)

Variable B SE B b

Step 1

Relationship between managers and employees 0.85 0.10 .80***

Step 2

Relationship between managers and employees 0.53 0.13 .50***

Dependability 0.53 0.16 .40***

R2¼ .64 for Step 1; DR2¼ .71 for Step 2.

***p5 .01.

TABLE 2Summary of the regression model for variables on the prediction of ‘‘General

management’’ for people questioned with an incremental theory (N¼21)

Variable B SE B b

Step 1

Ability to deal with change 1.10 0.22 .76***

Step 2

Ability to deal with change 0.75 0.25 .52***

Dependability 0.43 0.19 .39**

R2¼ .58 for Step 1; DR2¼ .67 for Step 2.

**p5 .05, ***p5 .01.


situation and dynamic factors, while raters with an entity theory focus morestrongly on people and their relationship to these people. This being said,both entity and incremental theorists perceived the reliability of theirsupervisor as equally important, resulting in it being the second factor in therespective analyses of regression.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The current findings demonstrate that leadership evaluations are influencedby both the subjective theories of the raters and of those being rated. First,an influence of the subjective theory of the rated manager is found.Managers are judged significantly different in the perception of others on alleight dimensions of the leadership behaviour depending on whether theybelieve in stable characteristics or in change: managers with entity theory arejudged more positively than managers with incremental theory throughout.In addition, the influence of the employee raters’ theory finds expression inthe fact that raters with an incremental theory place significantly strongerweight on the situation when judging their managers, while raters with anentity theory focus more strongly on stable personality traits.

In other studies (e.g., Heslin & Latham, 2004), it was shown that theimplicit personality theory has an important influence on the choice of goalsand the performance behaviour of individuals in an organization. Forinstance, inducing the incremental theory of a manager increased thereadiness of said manager to support his or her employees (even those withpoor performances), to coach them, and to provide them with morefeedback. This induction worked because incremental theory supports theassumption that the employees’ characteristics can be changed and thebehaviours subsequently shown by managers attempted just that (Heslin &Latham, 2004). Based on this positive management behaviour it could beassumed that incremental managers are evaluated better—but the currentstudy shows a more negative evaluation in the case of a manager withincremental theory. We speculate that employees possibly expect morefrequent feedback from managers with incremental theory than frommanagers with entity theory. Although incremental managers might givefeedback even more frequently than managers with entity theory, theirevaluation nevertheless turns out to be more negative when additionalcriteria are brought into play. On the basis of the current study thisdifference in expected feedback must remain pure speculation, but in futurestudies it would be beneficial if, in addition to subjective assessments ofmanager behaviour (through items such as ‘‘When I say something to mymanager he includes it in his considerations’’), additional measures or even‘‘more objective’’ measures (such as frequency/quality of feedback) shouldbe considered, with a comparison of the two. In this way, an examination of


whether there is a discrepancy between absolute frequency of feedback andevaluation of the satisfaction with the feedback can be made evident.

Additionally, it would be interesting to examine in subsequent studies towhat extent these differing evaluations of leadership behaviour aredetermined by the management style. It is conceivable that the unpredict-ability of an incremental manager is only perceived as problematic as long asthe manager promotes it in an authoritarian manner. In the case ofparticipatory or democratic management, an incremental theorist managermight even be better liked, as he or she takes into account the needs ofindividual employees more strongly and flexibly.

Finally, follow-up studies could also look at the importance of a ‘‘theoryfit’’, i.e., the concurrence between the theory of the manager and theemployee. The importance of the similarity between manager and employeeon performance judgements (Pulakos & Wexley, 1982), job satisfaction(Turban & Jones, 1988), and the relationship between managers andemployees (Bauer & Green, 1996) has already been demonstrated in othercontexts. Where similarity exists, the exchange between manager andemployees is better and accompanied by a greater number of positivefeelings (Bauer & Green, 1996). Furthermore, it has been shown thatemployees prefer managers who are similar to themselves (Taylor & Brown,1988). It would therefore be useful to examine whether employees also prefermanagers (or vice versa) with whom a ‘‘fit’’ in terms of their implicit theoriesexists, i.e., with whom they, for example, agree in their implicit personalitytheory on change and stability (greater preference with the same theory). Inthe current study no indication of such an interaction was found, but itcould be the case that in the present data set or company the positiveevaluation of the entity managers was so strong that it led to a positivitybias, masking other types of effects.

Practical implications

The current findings show that an incremental manager is judged morenegatively on the whole by his or her employees than an entity manager. Apossible practical implication of this might be that employees withincremental managers need to be convinced of the advantages of thistheory, for example that flexibility is something positive and not somethingthat generates fear or stress. A possible intervention would be to integratethe found influence of subjective theories more strongly into team buildinginitiatives.

In the organizational context particularly, the differences in implicitpersonality theory should have a relevant effect with regard to socialbehaviour. This is supported by findings that entity theorists weresignificantly more likely to wish to escape from or avoid a problematic


performance situation, while incremental theorists were significantly morelikely to propose more productive coping strategies (Zhao & Dweck, 1994),presumably because they tend to attribute more to situational factors.Moreover, in several studies (Chiu et al., 1997a; Erdley & Dweck, 1993)entity theorists were found to be significantly more likely to recommendpunishment and a greater degree of punishment for the transgressor, whileincremental theorists recommend education or rehabilitation for wrong-doers. Therefore, implicit person theory appears to have implications notonly in terms of how we think about or judge others, but also with regard tohow we believe others should be treated (with regard to perceptions ofgroups, see Levy & Dweck, 1998). These findings have direct relevance formanagement behaviour and personnel development in organizations, asreactions to others’ behaviour, to achievement, and to social setbacks areimportant determiners of qualitatively good management.

Equally relevant are findings that individuals with incremental theorydevelop higher self-efficacy and more positive affect, set themselves morechallenginggoals, and showbetterperformances in complex tasks (Tabernero&Wood, 1999). These findings suggest that persons with incremental theory arepossibly ‘‘better’’ employees making it beneficial for a company to induceemployees and managers to develop incremental theory. According toVandeWalle (2001), the implicit theory of the changeability of characteristicsand abilities is an important prerequisite for enabling learning goals, andtherefore ultimately innovations and growth in a company. He thereforerecommends that managers influence the assumptions of their employees andthereby help to turn their implicit entity theory into an implicit incrementaltheory through explaining, for example, how a particular ability can bedeveloped; at the same timemanagers should show their employees, as amodel,comparable people who have acquired this ability, offer them trainingpossibilities to acquire the abilities themselves, give them feedback, andencourage them. In various studies individuals’ implicit theory was experi-mentally induced through situational manipulations (see e.g., Bergen, 1991,cited inDweck&Leggett, 1988;Chiu et al., 1997a).Not least, theorganizationalculture also has a decisive influence in that it either strengthens or restricts theimplicit orientation that the employee possesses.

Theoretical implications

Consistent with Brown and Lord (2001; Lord & Brown, 2004), we argue thatleadership theory needs to be articulated with a theory of how employeescreate meaning from leadership acts and how this meaning helps employeesto carry out evaluations and to self-regulate in specific contexts. In order toknow the influence of implicit theories on management evaluations and tobring these into play in the interpretation of evaluations, however, we


believe it is not sufficient to ‘‘only fight half the battle’’. Rather, the currentfindings indicate that measurements that fail to include implicit aspects can,by definition, only deliver incomplete results (Strack & Werth, in press). Inconclusion, the current data calls for a new approach in the measurement ofleadership behaviour. The combined use of explicit and implicit measureshas recently been suggested as one possibility for dealing with the problem(see Werth, Hafner, Seibt, & Stork, 2004).

On a more conceptual level, the implicit personality theory sheds light onthe ‘‘fundamental attribution error’’, which is described as the generaltendency to overestimate the role of individual’s traits and to underestimatesituational factors in explaining their behaviours, even when situationalfactors are made salient (Jones & Davis, 1965; Ross & Nisbett, 1991).According to Dweck et al. (e.g., Levy et al., 1999), incremental theorists areless prone to the fundamental attribution error because they take situationalexplanations into account to a larger extent (Hong, 1994; Levy & Dweck,1998) and make more process attributions than entity theorists (Hong, 1994;Levy, 1998). In the current study we took this view one step further byshowing that when judging leadership behaviour, incremental theoristsjudge dynamic dimensions more strongly, while entities evaluate more staticdimensions of leadership.

In previous studies we have shown that, depending on their implicitperson theory, raters use the same available information differently, orrather see it as diagnostically different. The implicit personality theory wasalso shown to be a moderating variable for the use of idiosyncraticknowledge, i.e., knowledge about one’s own psychological functioning (e.g.,‘‘Knowing me, I would remember that!’’; Werth & Forster, 2002). Entitytheorists use this idiosyncratic knowledge more often since it makes senseunder the assumption of stable, consistent behaviour and can be used tomake a top-down inference. It is important to note that the use of suchimplicit theories does not imply that individuals have introspective access tothis knowledge. On the contrary, individuals are frequently not even able toidentify the actual causes of their decisions and behaviours, since they haveno direct introspective access to themselves and have to rely on inferencesinstead (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Nevertheless, although those questionedare often unable to explicitly state their theory, the theory does guidebehaviour and can definitely have fundamental effects on informationprocessing and behaviour. In order to achieve a better quality of theevaluation of leadership behaviour, these perspectives or methodologicalapproaches should also be given consideration. The current study providesan initial contribution in this respect. Finally, it is important to note thatneither theory should be seen as the only ‘‘correct’’ one. Instead the twotheories should be understood as different ways of constructing reality, eachwith its own potential costs and benefits. For example, an entity theory, with


its emphasis on stable traits that can be readily assessed, constructs aparsimonious and knowable reality for its adherents, where the world (here:the managers) appears predictable and possibly controllable. However, thesimplicity of an entity theory can sometimes lead to global trait judgementsbeing made too hastily and result in helpless coping styles—reality can bemore complex than this view would imply. In contrast, an incrementaltheory, with its emphasis on more specific process analysis, provides itsadherents with a more complex and less knowable reality. It is a theory thatcan foster effective persistence and flexibility in the face of obstacles, whilethe possibility of change inherent in the theory means that reality can neverbe known with any finality. This may leave a person in a constant state ofuncertainty. The extent to which one or the other subjective theory isparticularly helpful or unhelpful in combination with particular conditionsin an organization needs to be examined through further research.

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Revised manuscript received February 2005

APPENDIX

Areas of the other-perception and the corresponding question items

Area of management behaviour Items in the analyses

General management All in all, my manager fulfils his management duties very well

All in all, my manager fulfils his professional duties very well

My colleagues and I show our manager unlimited solidarity

My manager finds the right balance between instructing us

and allowing us our freedom

My manager just administrates instead of pointing the way

and guiding R

Interest in employees/

interpersonal feeling

I feel that my manager values me

My manager is also interested in me as a person

My manager completely neglects interpersonal aspects of

everyday working life R

My manager recognizes when there is a bad atmosphere

among his employees

My manager knows the strengths and weaknesses of his

employees

Dependability of the

manager

My manager treats confidential information of his employees

with responsibility.

I receive binding statements from my manager

My manager sticks to arrangements

The opinions of my manager can be easily influenced by

others (other employees, his own direct superior, other

managers, etc.) R

Once decisions have been made, my manager consistently

follows them through

Relationship between

manager and

I feel that my manager only has authority over me because he

works hierarchically above me R

employees My manager supports me in my work

(continued overleaf )


APPENDIX(continued )

Area of management behaviour Items in the analyses

My manager is behind his employees and defends them when

necessary

If I need my manager he is always there for me

I have a good relationship with my manager

Ability to deal with

change/flexibility

My manager recognizes in time if changes are necessary

My manager has good foresight with regard to possible

market changes that may be in the air

My manager places more value on maintaining the status

quo than on promoting innovations R

My manager is open to new ideas of employees

My manager always only begins to act when something goes

wrong R

Conflict management My manager is able to mediate conflicts between the

employees

My manager copes very well with crisis situations

My manager deals with problems openly and does not avoid

conflicts

When there are problems in our department, my manager is

interested in why/how they have arisen

My manager always tries to get his own way even when he is

in the wrong R

Dealing with mistakes My manager cannot admit to his own mistakes R

If I make a mistake I am scared of my manager’s reaction R

My manager uses every opportunity to make his employees

aware of their incompetence R

My manager reproaches his employees for their errors

instead of making concrete suggestions for improvement R

When there are problems/mistakes in our organization my

manager always blames the employees R

Feedback/praise/criticism My manager invites us to give him feedback

My manager deals well with criticism (of himself or his

department)

My manager takes good performances of his employees for

granted without comment, but always comments on poor

performances R

If I say something to my manager, he includes it in his

considerations

My manager rewards achievement and commitment

The items were answered on a 5-point Likert scale according to the degree of agreement

from 1 (‘‘not at all true’’) to 5 (‘‘very true’’).

R: Item recoded in the analyses so that a high agreement means a positive assessment of the

manager.


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