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Introduction, appendix 1: interview topic list.

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Leadership Behavior Repertoire: An Exploratory Study of the Concept and Its Potential for Understanding Leadership in Public Organizations

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Marieke van der Hoek, Sandra Groeneveld, Maarja Beerkens, Leadership Behavior Repertoire: An Exploratory Study of the Concept and Its Potential for Understanding Leadership in Public Organizations, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance , Volume 4, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 363–378, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppmgov/gvab022

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Rapidly accumulating literature on public leadership tends to zoom in on specific aspects of leaders’ behavior. Such a fragmented approach may overlook the most challenging aspect of effective leadership: combining diverse behaviors in relation to various stakeholders to match contextual needs. This article therefore argues for a comprehensive approach that recognizes the behavioral complexity of most contemporary leaders, particularly in ambiguous contexts. The concept of leadership behavior repertoire facilitates this. The article conceptualizes the perspective of the leadership behavior repertoire and illustrates in which ways leaders combine behavioral options from their repertoire using data from in-depth interviews with public leaders. Based on our findings, we propose integration of this perspective into the field’s research agenda to make our understanding of leadership in public organizations more complete. Moreover, the repertoire perspective can challenge and advance theorizing of leadership in relation to its context and outcomes in a more comprehensive way.

Academic interest in leadership has been growing rapidly in the last few decades. Public management scholars, too, dedicate an increasing amount of attention to leadership in public organizations ( Vandenabeele, Andersen, and Leisink 2014 ; Van Wart 2013 ; Vogel and Masal 2015 ). Research focused on the individual level of analysis, studying leadership behavior of public managers at various organizational levels, has taken flight. Studying leadership at this individual level is valuable to grasp processes underlying policy making and implementation, taking shape in public organizations. A large share of research in this tradition focusses on “leadership in organizations” ( Dubin 1979 ; Hunt and Ropo 1995 ), referring to leadership as supervising individual employees. Rich literature on transformational and transactional leadership, for example, primarily examines the downward supervisory relationship of managers motivating employees ( Ospina 2017 ; Vandenabeele, Andersen, and Leisink 2014 ; Vogel and Masal 2015 ). “Leadership of organizations” ( Dubin 1979 ; Hunt and Ropo 1995 ), on the other hand, looks at a leadership role in handling issues at the level of the organization or unit in relation to internal and external stakeholders. Middle managers typically are expected to perform a variety of roles simultaneously, yet the literature in public management tends to ignore this variety and to compartmentalize leadership into isolated roles.

In this article, we argue that research on leadership behavior at the individual level in public organizations could be advanced by looking not only deeper into dyadic manager–employee leadership behavior, but also by adopting a broader conceptualization spanning a more varied range of behaviors and their interactions with each other. Leaders probably do not perceive the roles as clearly distinct and separable in their daily activities as researchers often present them. In other words, we should understand the broader “repertoire” of behaviors that leaders have at their disposal, not only single elements within the repertoire. The behaviors that are studied in isolation are important, but when we ignore other types of behavior that leaders are simultaneously engaged in, the danger is that we lose sight of the “big picture” of challenges that leaders face on a daily basis ( Head 2010 ).

We argue that combining various behaviors is the essence of leadership (see also Pedersen et al. 2019 ). The OECD (2001) indeed signaled that leaders need diverse competences to cope with complex challenges in the public sector, which recent country studies reiterated ( Gerson 2020 ). Leadership training programs in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Mexico prepare leaders for a range of behaviors: from networking and collaborating, directing and managing internal processes, envisioning and facilitating change, to inspiring and creating commitment among employees ( OECD 2001 ). The relational character of leadership is explicitly addressed due to increasingly collaborative set-ups for public value creation: leaders need to work with a range of internal and external stakeholders across boundaries of countries, sectors, organizations, and professions, as well as throughout the hierarchy, from employees to top management ( Gerson 2020 ; OECD 2001 ).

To extend our understanding of leadership and its relationship with organizational variables, we can benefit from examining repertoires of behaviors. A leadership behavior repertoire can be described as a set of behavioral options at a leader’s disposal to address a variety of issues in a suitable fashion ( Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ). Yukl (2012) and recently Pedersen et al. (2019) and Kramer et al. (2019) also acknowledge that looking at single behavioral types provides only partial comprehension of leadership. Leaders often have to combine various types of action because they are faced with multiple tasks and objectives, and they need to balance competing demands on scarce resources ( Quinn 1984 ). Therefore, the effectiveness of leadership depends on the variety of leadership behaviors instead of a particular type ( Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ; Havermans et al. 2015 ). Taking the perspective of leadership behavior repertoires can assist in understanding leadership in its complexity, complementing ongoing efforts in the field.

Looking at leadership behavior repertoires is particularly relevant in contexts that are characterized by ambiguity. Ambiguity creates a need for leadership ( Moore 1995 ), yet poses challenges for many public leaders in balancing multiple needs from their environment. This means that leaders are challenged to adopt behavioral strategies to match these contingencies. This is typical for public organizations: the different values, conflicting goals, and competing interests of a range of stakeholders at stake in public organizations confront leaders with simultaneous demands, which are often vague and/or potentially conflicting ( Davis and Stazyk 2015 ; Hood 1991 ; Moore 1995 ). Moreover, the saliency of issues changes. The variety of interpretations of what is to be done makes the leadership context ambiguous and puts leaders in a position of equivocal decision-making ( Christensen et al. 2018 ; Chun and Rainey 2005 ; Feldman 1989 ). In addition, leaders in public organizations operate in an environment with increasingly complex organizational structures and ambiguous authority relationships. Formal authority is often fragmented and distributed among several organizational members, which means that leaders are often not fully allowed to make decisions ( Getha-Taylor et al. 2011 ; Groeneveld and Van de Walle 2011 ; Gronn 2002 ; Shamir 1999 ). Consequently, this dispersion of power creates leadership interdependencies and requires that leaders involve various other stakeholders to accomplish their objectives ( Gronn 2002 ). It can therefore be expected that leaders within such contexts need to combine many different leadership behaviors from their repertoire and do so in various directions to stimulate collaboration: influencing and facilitating subordinates, peers, superiors, and external stakeholders—multiple at a time ( ‘t Hart 2014 ; Moore 1995 ; van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman 2016 ). This context of ambiguity induces leadership that is best approached through a repertoire perspective.

This study therefore presents the following question: How can leadership in an ambiguous context be conceptualized as a behavior repertoire? To allow a comprehensive understanding, leadership is defined as “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.” ( Yukl 2008 , 8). This definition is adopted, because framing leadership as a process highlights that leadership is a continuous effort that encompasses a wide range of activities. Indeed, from the organizational science and generic leadership literature we can conclude that leadership behavior is diverse, and leaders have to engage in a variety of behaviors to be effective ( Behrendt, Matz, and Göritz 2017 ; Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ; Yukl 2012) . This comprises behaviors that are frequently distinguished as “leadership” and “management.” While those are often seen as distinct, both types are important and complement each other ( Bedeian and Hunt 2006 ), and following Yukl (2012) , it can be all seen as leadership behavior. Managers, as formal leaders, are often expected to perform both ( Head 2010 ). Furthermore, incorporating the relational character highlights that leadership takes shape in interaction with a variety of stakeholders. Besides the typical focus on subordinates in research on individual leaders’ behavior, the broader public management literature teaches that superiors, peers, or external actors are included in the process of leadership. This accommodates Moore’s (1995) perspective that public managers work in different directions—downwards, upwards, sidewards, and outwards ( van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman 2016 ).

This article conceptualizes a repertoire perspective on leadership behavior and illustrates its relevance with accounts of leadership behavior repertoire uses based on in-depth interviews with public leaders. Conceptualizing is an essential building block for theory development: developing concepts that are aligned with the empirical world facilitates realistic empirical research and elaboration of theories. We thereby aim to contribute to public management research on leadership by suggesting how integration of a repertoire perspective can advance the field’s current research agenda and our understanding of leadership in its complexity. A qualitative approach is adopted to integrate the situational context of leaders in our understanding of leadership. Accounting for context is relevant, because characteristics of the context in which leaders behave affect leadership (e.g., George, Van de Walle, and Hammerschmidt 2019 ; Nielsen and Cleal 2011 ; Porter and McLaughlin 2006 ; Schmidt and Groeneveld 2021 ; Stoker, Garretsen, and Soudis 2019 ). Building on contingency theory’s premise that “one size does not fit all,” studying leadership by the same person in different situations is particularly facilitated by adopting a repertoire perspective (cf. Pedersen et al. 2019 ). Elaborating empirically how leaders combine diverse options from their repertoire, varying between situations, highlights the complexity of leadership and the need for further research to adopt a conceptualization of leadership behavior as repertoire.

The article proceeds with a discussion of previous research on leadership in the public management literature to build the study’s conceptual framework. Next, the empirical setting and methodological choices will be elaborated. The subsequent section shows various uses of a leadership behavior repertoire highlighted by the ambiguous context. The article concludes with a discussion on the potential contribution of the repertoire perspective, emphasizing its theoretical and methodological implications. Building on current lines of research, we argue that the field’s research agenda would benefit from adopting a repertoire perspective, since this more comprehensive conceptualization can stimulate theoretical and empirical work connected to the bigger picture of leadership challenges. Thereby it can challenge and advance our understanding of leadership and its relationships with other organizational phenomena.

The Leadership Behavior Repertoire: A Conceptual Framework

In an ambiguous context, competing demands present a variety of challenges for leadership that require leaders to use different types of leadership behavior suitable for a variety of purposes. Recently, Pedersen et al. (2019) show that managers engage in a range of different behaviors. Their study provides support for studying leadership from a more holistic perspective that acknowledges the behavioral complexity of public managers. These authors also argue that a more complex conceptualization has been missing despite efforts to develop typologies of management and leadership. A similar effort by Kramer et al. (2019) , who focused on leadership in interorganizational collaboration, confirms this call for a more comprehensive perspective. Therefore, we conceptualize leadership as a leadership behavior repertoire. Building on the work of Quinn (1984) and Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn (1995) , a leadership behavior repertoire can be seen as a set of behavioral options that can be matched to the circumstances at hand. This concept embraces the idea that leadership is complex and is characterized by a diversity of behaviors used in combination.

Research on leadership in the public management literature contains a variety of elements relevant for a repertoire conceptualization of leadership, scattered in separate research traditions. These traditions define and conceptualize leadership distinctively. Two distinctions underlie this separation. A first distinction concerns the operationalization of leadership: the literature shows variety in focusing either on styles, behaviors, or relations. These operationalizations are not mutually exclusive, yet prior research tends to maintain a more narrow focus. A second distinction concerns the level of abstraction and aggregation. One part of relevant literature discusses empirical constructs focused on individuals, while another share involves a broader governance mode concept, centered on networks. We discuss three prominent lines of public management research that contribute valuable elements of leadership behavior repertoires and point out their positions on the two distinctions discussed.

Firstly, research on leadership of individual leaders in (public) organizations tends to concentrate on leadership styles, in particular transactional, transformational, and charismatic leadership ( Lord et al. 2017 ; Ospina 2017 ; van Knippenberg and Sitkin 2013; , Vogel and Masal 2015 ; Yukl 2012 ). These studies focus on the downward dyadic relationship between manager and employee, in which leaders motivate employees to perform well (e.g., Jensen et al. 2019 ; Vermeeren, Kuipers, and Steijn 2014 ). This tradition has an empirical individual-centered approach. Its measurement involves motivating behaviors, but the main focus is put on leaders’ style of conduct instead of the actions themselves. Examining styles tells us something about how leaders implement their actions without taking the range of behaviors into account. Although the Full-Range Leadership Theory and the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (e.g., Antonakis, Avolio, and Sivasubramaniam 2003 ) form an attempt at a more-encompassing approach of leadership styles, it is still limited to the supervisor–employee relationship.

Secondly, internal and external management ( O’Toole and Meier 1999 ; Pedersen et al. 2019 ) and managerial networking ( Torenvlied et al. 2013 ; van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman 2016 ) is relevant here, although these studies speak in terms of management rather than leadership. This research tradition highlights that leadership encompasses multiple relationships with a range of stakeholders, inside and outside the organization. Again, this tradition has an individual, empirical focus. Whereas measurement of internal management includes specification of concrete behaviors, measurement of external management and networking often only involves the frequency of interactions with various stakeholders in different directions. This measurement then lacks specification of types of leadership behaviors used within such stakeholder relationships.

Finally, collaborative governance research involves collective or distributed leadership. This tradition has a strong focus on collaboration and relationships with a wide range of actors, reflecting that managing networked structures instead of single organizations takes center stage ( Bryson, Crosby, and Stone 2015 ; Crosby, ‘t Hart, and Torfing 2017 ). In contrast to the other two lines of enquiry, this type of research is concerned with collective leadership as a governance concept: leadership is treated as the product of the dynamics of many individuals’ actions and does not concern leadership behavior of individual leaders (e.g., Ospina 2017 ). In a recent study, Cristofoli, Trivellato, and Verzillo (2019) combine the individual and network focus, by investigating managers’ network behaviors to assess network effectiveness. While this and similar studies add on to the external management and networking literature (and are equally not speaking of leadership), leadership largely remains a governance concept in this tradition.

The public management leadership literature is thus empirically rich yet fragmented across various traditions, and not aligned (see also Ospina 2017 ). Research in the tradition that shares our focus on the individual level of leaders’ behavior generally operationalizes leadership rather narrowly focused on motivating behaviors in the downwards, dyadic relationship between manager and employees. While this research could benefit from the variety of insights from other traditions, they are rarely integrated. As a result of the fragmentation and disconnection, a comprehensive view that shows how leaders use the diversity of behaviors and combine various behaviors remains absent. Yet, effective leadership comes about when leaders employ the variety of their leadership behavior repertoire ( Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ; Havermans et al. 2015 ; Hooijberg 1996 ). Approaching leadership with a repertoire perspective can overcome this.

The leadership behavior repertoire is a collection of behavioral options available to a leader to pick and choose from to find a way to act suitable in light of the circumstances. The repertoire embodies the variety of roles (Dension, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995) leaders fulfill that can be enacted by a range of behaviors in relation to a range of actors in different directions. The behavioral options then comprise combinations of behaviors differing in orientation (task, relations, change, external environment; Yukl 2012 ) and directions of action (upwards and downwards in the hierarchy to superiors and subordinates, sidewards to those in comparable positions, and outwards to external stakeholders ( Moore 1995 ; van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman 2016 )). Leaders have leeway to make various combinations: combinations can be more extensive or more simple, and there is no fixed combination between behavior types and relations in which they are used. The repertoire signifies that leaders have options to adapt to changing situations.

In sum, a repertoire conceptualization sees leadership behavior comprehensively in terms of behaviors and relationships and captures interactions between various behavioral options. Leadership repertoires are not just a sum of its separate elements. The need for an integrated view of leadership behavior through a repertoire perspective will be illustrated below and discussed in the research agenda.

Research Setting

To illustrate how leaders use the leadership behavior repertoire, an empirical setting characterized by contextual ambiguity provides a highlighting opportunity. When ambiguity in the context of leaders is omnipresent, leaders are likely forced to employ and combine diverse behaviors, because no clear guidance (clear priorities between interests, regulations, formal authority) is available to them to accomplish goals directly. While such ambiguity can be found throughout the public sector, it is particularly pronounced within universities. Therefore, universities were selected as a typical case ( Gerring 2006 ), in line with the tradition in organizational studies ( Askling and Stensaker 2002 ; Cohen and March 1974 ; March and Olsen 1979 ). Contextual ambiguity is particularly pronounced within universities, for two reasons.

Firstly, ambiguity is an ever-present phenomenon at universities, since universities work on multiple goals at the same time, involving research, education, and outreach tasks. Thereby they have to deal with a range of stakeholders with different interests, such as employees from multiple faculties and departments, students, and external stakeholders such as ministries or partner organizations ( Bryman and Lilley 2009 ; Enders 2012 ; Rainey and Jung 2015 ). March and Olsen (1979) , in their highly cited study on ambiguity and choice in organizations, illustrate their argument by the empirical study of universities based on the observation that educational institutions are prone to ambiguity: “goals that are unclear, technologies that are imperfectly understood, histories that are difficult to interpret, and participants who wander in and out” (8). This forms a point where ambiguity for leaders can emerge, since this creates room for various interpretations of priorities and desirable courses of action. It is then likely to generate variety in leadership behavior—both in terms of what is done and the complexity of this behavior.

Additionally, the complexity of universities’ organizational structures enhances the need to combine a range of leadership behaviors and work in multiple directions. Universities operate a system of shared governance, which means that the decision-making authority of leaders in universities is often limited and shared between different formal positions while professionals enjoy much autonomy ( Bolden, Petrov, and Gosling 2009 ; Pearce, Wassenaar, and Wood 2018 ; Seeber et al. 2015 ). This adds structural complexity, which may affect what leaders can do in terms of leadership behavior. As a result, it is expected there is a marked need to use a variety of leadership behaviors from their repertoire.

Data Collection

Data have been collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with leaders. Interviews provide rich data that can show how leaders combine various roles and behaviors in different circumstances. The interviews focused on what leaders do in ambiguous situations, with topics covering how leaders perceive their leadership roles, what tensions they experience, and how they fill in their role and address such challenges (see topic list in Appendix   1 ). Since the perception of the environment and one’s role within it can be highly important for one’s behavior ( James and Jones 1974 ; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005 ), eliciting these perceptions while allowing participants to elaborate freely is valuable. Interviews lasted between 50 and 90 minutes and were recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis.

The focus is on leaders in positions of formal authority, which means people who have a managerial position. Although leadership behavior is not necessarily limited to be performed by only those in formal leadership positions, we focus on leaders as those people within organizations with such positions, because these people have extensive leadership tasks incorporated in their position—enacting leadership is expected of them. Formal leaders in universities in middle management positions are increasingly tasked with responsibilities related to strategy, accountability, and innovation as a result of shifted modes of governance. These tasks create expectations and requirements for such position holders to show leadership behavior ( Beerkens and van der Hoek 2021 /forthcoming; Pearce, Wassenaar, and Wood 2018 ). It should be noted, however, that this does not have to exclude forms of shared or distributed leadership. Such forms of leadership are present in this study, since it also includes leaders “leading leaders” and leaders with tasks delegated within a board who do not necessarily have the accompanying formal authority ( Gronn 2002 ; ‘t Hart 2014 ; Ospina 2017 ). Participants have positions as (vice) deans; directors; faculty, department, and institute board members; and chairs or coordinators of research groups and teaching programs. All participants are active academics who fulfill a managerial position for a specific term, not professional administrators.

Data collection took place from December 2017 through February 2018 at three comprehensive, research-intensive universities in the Netherlands. Within each university, participants were recruited from the faculties hosting social sciences and natural sciences. Potential participants were identified through university websites and indexed according to faculty, organizational unit, type of position, and gender. Since this study has an exploratory character, participants were invited to create a sample including a balanced variation on these characteristics and thereby variation in types of experiences. Therefore, an equal number of men and women in similar types of positions in both social and natural sciences were invited. Since the number of women in formal leadership positions in the natural sciences was comparatively small, oversampling them was required. If a participant agreed to participate, no direct colleagues from the same department or board were selected. Invitations and one reminder email were sent by email, generating an invitation acceptance of 19 out of 37. Those who declined the invitation did so with the argument of lack of time. We have no indication of bias in who accepted the invitation, as an equal number of men and women declined to participate or did not respond to the invitation. Table 1 provides an overview of participants sorted by discipline, gender, and the level of their leadership position within the university.

Interview Participants per Discipline, Gender, and Level of Leadership Position Within University ( n = 19)

Data were analyzed using the method of Thematic Analysis, based on Boyatzis’ (1998) approach. A hybrid approach was used to accommodate both inductively elaborating the variety of leadership behaviors and using sensitizing concepts of roles in the leadership behavior repertoire ( Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ) and of direction of leadership behavior ( Moore 1995 ; van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman 2016 ).

Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn (1995) distinguish a comprehensive set of leadership roles and accompanying behaviors: innovator, broker, producer, director, coordinator, monitor, facilitator, and mentor (see table 2 for brief descriptions per role). Whereas some roles involve more task-oriented behaviors, other roles concern externally oriented networking or relations-oriented coaching behaviors ( Yukl 2012 ). Since it is flexible in accommodating various directions in which the leadership behaviors are exercised, a connection to Moore’s (1995) and van den Bekerom, Torenvlied, and Akkerman (2016) distinction between leading upwards, downwards, outwards, and sidewards can be made. Therefore, this typology captures the various takes on leadership present in the public management literature and fits a repertoire perspective on leadership at the level of behavior in an encompassing way.

Leadership Roles (Derived from Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ) and Behaviors (Derived from Interviews)

Starting with open coding, an inventory of leadership behaviors was established by extracting key themes close to the wording used by participants. Co-occurring behaviors were grouped into categories of similar actions. This resulted in 13 categories of leadership behaviors. Axial coding linked these categories to the leadership roles as described by Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn (1995) . The behavior categories then give more detailed substance to the role categories, and role categories can be seen as clusters of behaviors with a similar purpose. Five behavior categories seemed to fit several leadership role categories, which were then split up into more specific categories matching the description of the role categories. During the axial coding, there appeared no substantive distinction between behavior types matching the coordinator and producer roles, which were therefore merged. This resulted in a total of seven leadership roles encompassing 18 types of leadership behaviors. This coding scheme is presented in table 2 .

The coded data have been examined using coding stripes and matrix queries to seek patterns of co-occurrence of leadership behaviors and directions in which the behaviors were exercised. The units of analysis in this process were the situations discussed by the participants, in which they experienced ambiguity and were showing leadership behavior. All analyses of the coded transcripts are performed in NVivo. This pattern-seeking has led to a categorization of leadership behavior repertoire uses that varied in their complexity, as the next section will discuss.

Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses: Empirical Illustrations

Based on the interview data, different uses of the leadership behavior repertoire were uncovered, which are illustrated below. To illicit these accounts, participants were asked to tell about situations in which they were confronted with multiple simultaneous demands that produced tension and how they acted then. In response, participants described a rich variety of leadership behaviors, showing a repertoire consisting of a range of behavioral options. Throughout the interviews, participants reported on combining several behaviors to address issues they are facing. Thereby they often need to balance several objectives, create synergies, or work in parallel on multiple issues. Participants described different types of behavior repertoire uses, that vary in terms of the number of behaviors used and the number of directions in which they operate. The variety of leadership behavior repertoire uses can be categorized in four quadrants, which is displayed in table 3 . Important to emphasize is that leadership behavior repertoire uses concern behavior modalities, approaches in dealing with leadership situations, rather than traits or characteristics of people. Leaders use those behavior modalities differently between situations.

Variation of Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses

The discussion below builds up in terms of leadership complexity (see also table 3 ): first simpler uses of the repertoire are discussed, followed by uses that involve more different types of behavior and more different directions.

Simple Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses: Few Behaviors, Few Directions

Leaders do not always use a substantial part of their leadership behavior repertoire. Only a few types of behavior directed to a single type of actor can form a leader’s response to occurring needs. Leaders discussed situations in which they dealt with a single type of actor such as their employees or were engaged in issues that involved a single task. Such examples match with how public leadership behavior is often studied, in research with the common focus on the supervisor–employee dyadic relationship. Instances of this kind can be found concerning motivating and coaching employees or managing conflict between employees. Though these examples as shown below can be classified as simple repertoire uses, it should be noted that more often than not more than one type of behavior was used. This illustrates that delineating leadership behavior in a more limited conceptualization may be too simple and may not be congruent with leaders’ practice.

For example, a participant described how he had facilitated reintegration of employees who suffered from burn-out (interview 13). He describes using behaviors of the mentor and monitor roles in downward direction: signaling and discussing burn-out of an employee to acknowledge the existence of a problem, giving the employee autonomy to come up with his/her own plan to improve the situation, discussing the plan and directing towards solutions or assistance if necessary, and monitoring and discussing progress. Another example originates with an educational director. In a mentor role, she keeps an eye to the human behind the employee, facilitating him or her to make choices about the number of hours s/he wants to work when family situations change, but at the same time ensuring that all courses can be taught and sufficient staff capacity remains, using behaviors fitting a coordinator role (interview 14). These examples show that leaders keep the interests of employees in mind while simultaneously also considering the implications for an institute and continuity of teaching programs. Yet despite concurring demands on the leader, a relatively simple repertoire use is shown.

Another type of example that appeared several times concerns the broker role in upward direction. For instance, a head of the department discussed that part of his job is to shield off his staff from new rules and administrative burden as much as possible. In the case of new digital systems being introduced by the university, he raised his voice and objections repeatedly towards the faculty and higher levels within the university. As part of this, he also participated in a review committee, gathering experiences and problems with these systems from all parts of the university, to advise the university board to change the systems and reduce the burden on employees (interview 2).

Moderately Complex Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses: Few Behaviors, Various Directions

Other times, participants described situations featuring more comprehensive uses of the leadership behavior repertoire. Leaders focus on a few behaviors fitting one role, but thereby engage a range of actors in various directions. This type of instance shows similarities with the network perspective from the literature. Examples regularly feature behaviors of a communicating and connecting kind but can take on more task-oriented behaviors in more complex contexts.

A vice-dean talked about a process to create a shared story about the newly developed strategy. The leadership behaviors mainly fall within the facilitator role, but were directed downwards, outwards, and partially also upwards. In this case, earlier efforts to engage various parts of the organization in the development of the new strategy had not been accomplished that the outcome resonated broadly and generated excitement for the future envisioned together for the strategy. She therefore organized different types of meetings with staff as well as students to discuss the important values and how the new faculty strategy would contribute to advancing these values. Seeking input, bringing perspectives together, and giving the various stakeholders a voice in creating a story brought about that a lively discussion and a sense of community around this story emerged as a basis for acting upon the strategy sustainably (interview 3).

Other illustrations of this quadrant feature participants who are active in collaborations across organizational boundaries - both internal boundaries within the university and outward boundaries. An example comes from a research group leader who also acts as chair of a university-wide multidisciplinary network. In her work for this network, she talks about using leadership behaviors fitting the broker role in upward, sideward, and downward directions. As chair of this network, this participant works on setting up collaborative teaching modules as well as integrating the network’s focal theme within existing programs at all faculties. This means that she is engaged a lot in talking to deans, department and education directors, and peers throughout the university to explain the relevance of incorporating the theme within university teaching, asking them to participate and allocate resources within their programs to develop such education, and coordinating between participating programs and teachers on the work floor. Bargaining is part of this process, as well as establishing commitment from the university board to leverage it in those negotiations. Keeping in touch and following up with all stakeholders in the various directions, representing interests, cooperating, and spotting opportunities all fit this broker role, but takes different shapes dependent on which type of actors in which direction she engages with (interview 16).

Moderately Complex Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses: Various Behaviors, Few Directions

A similar yet different version of the more comprehensive repertoire use is found when leaders combine a variety of behaviors of multiple roles, but only use them in one direction. Such behavior repertoire uses share with much of the literature that leadership is exercised in relation to a single type of stakeholder. It differs, however, by involving a combination of diverse behaviors, that emphasizes that leaders draw on multiple roles in these relationships.

An illustration is given by a head of department, whose department went through turbulent times and faced declining revenues and austerity measures from the faculty. She described her leadership in keeping the department afloat in terms of various behaviors matching the director, facilitator, and broker roles directed downwards at the staff working in the department. Initially, she had to get the change process in motion, which meant that she stressed the urgency of the problem and the need to take action for survival. Moreover, she stepped in to mediate and resolve conflict to get resistant staff members on board. This required organizing numerous meetings, having conversations with people separately, explaining the situation, and convincing the staff to make changes to the program. Besides giving input, she sought perspectives and ideas of the staff to solve the problems, giving them the opportunity to reshape the program along their expertise and thereby also create ownership of the community. Still, as head of the department, she made the conditions clear in order to reach the goal of solving the financial problems. Throughout the process, she worked on building social cohesion, trust, and a sense of collective ownership of the department, not only through participatory decision-making but also by organizing social activities and creating physical signs of community (a picture wall, for instance) (interview 19).

A further example of this type of repertoire use is provided by an educational director, who discusses how he works on getting the teaching program staffed and ensures educational quality. To plan all courses and allocate staff, he uses a model that specifies how many hours are available to fulfill tasks. In this way, he provides transparency to his colleagues. When a teacher complains about their tasks and the time available, and that it would not be fair, he can use the model to show what needs to be done in a year and how all colleagues contribute to that. Besides his coordinator and monitor role behaviors, he also draws on mentor role behaviors, to make sure that supporting arrangements are in place for new teachers, for instance, training and assistance, and asking what tasks people would like to do and how he can help them. Building shared ownership by involving staff in discussions and asking them for plans to improve educational quality characterize his facilitator role (interview 7).

Complex Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses: Various Behaviors, Various Directions

Lastly, complex combinations of leadership behavior repertoire options are commonly used. Leaders made use of multiple behaviors and engaged with actors in various directions. Cases that involve strategy and organizational change are commonly at the heart of such examples. All participants shared the conviction and experience that strategies, plans for change, and important decisions should not be made by a leader alone, but instead should be developed together with their staff. This is important within the complex ambiguous contexts of many public organizations, because leaders lead professionals who have strong intrinsic motivation and a high level of expertise, while at the same time, many leaders still participate—like their staff—in the primary process like a “primus inter pares.”

Exemplary for a complex leadership behavior repertoire use is a head of department who elaborated on a process of formulating a new strategy for his department. He combined the innovator, broker, facilitator, and director roles and thereby worked downwards and upwards. Taking initiative, seeking and giving input, setting boundary conditions, delegating tasks and giving autonomy to his staff within these limits, overseeing but not directing the process, creating engagement, representing interests to the faculty board and financial department, and setting direction by making the final decisions based on input from the bottom-up process were combined in this process. New plans were being developed, while at the same time he started preparing for implementation. This example also illustrates the relational character of leadership spanning multiple organizational levels and working with actors in multiple directions. The participant facilitated employees within his institute to create bottom-up plans and influenced them by providing boundary conditions, while at the same time, influencing stakeholders higher up in the organization to be able to implement the new plans without delay or difficulties (interview 18).

Another illustrative case is provided by an educational director, who initiated, developed, and realized a new international Bachelor program. She combined innovator, facilitator, monitor, and director role behaviors in various directions: downwards, sidewards, and outwards. Based on her analysis of developments in the educational environment, staff composition, and potential for future thriving, this educational director took the initiative to start talking about creating a new program. Together with coordinating and policy staff, she made sure the financial conditions would allow this initiative and she started seeking input from teaching staff in various rounds and through diverse channels. The process was intentionally participatory and efforts were made to ensure transparent communication with staff members. In this way, shared ownership and support for the program were created to make it a success. Additionally, in the logistical developments, she has sought help and cooperation with colleagues of other disciplines within the university, to learn from each other and unite their interests (interview 10).

Towards a Research Agenda

The illustrated uses of the leadership behavior repertoire give rise to questions how this perspective can contribute to ongoing theorizing and research. This section outlines research directions that seem particularly fruitful to continue when conceptualizing leadership behavior as a repertoire. Moreover, several methodological suggestions to make progress along those substantive lines are discussed.

Leadership Behavior Repertoire Uses in Relation to Context

In line with most leadership research, we have found between-person variation: between participants, the emphasis on certain types of behavior differs. Whereas some participants seem to put their role as director more central, others more often act as facilitators or brokers. Nevertheless, all participants take on multiple roles and work in various directions, which makes clear that characterizing a leader by their most prominent style is too simplistic. Possibly of more theoretical importance then is the within-person variation. The same participant can show different uses of the repertoire in varying situations. Several interviewees explicitly state that using the same “recipe” in all situations is not helpful, that instead, it is necessary to have sensitivity to contextual variation and use various approaches adapted to the situation. Such within-person variation of leadership behavior implies that an adaptation process is ongoing and underlines the importance of looking at leadership integrally and contextually.

Increasing our understanding of how leadership itself takes shape is all the more important, because characteristics of the context in which leaders operate present challenges—not the least in public organizations. Leaders need to balance multiple needs from their environment while being constrained by the complex hierarchical structures that divide formal authority between leaders in different positions ( Getha-Taylor et al. 2011 ; Groeneveld and Van de Walle 2011 ). Simultaneously, leadership is of growing importance in the pursuit of organizational goals ( Shamir 1999 ). So far, however, this question is largely overlooked ( Porter and McLaughlin 2006 ; cf. Schmidt and Groeneveld 2021 ; cf. Stoker, Garretsen, and Soudis 2019 ). Though it is debated to what extent the public sector is special, it is widely acknowledged that various aspects of publicness and the political context impact on organizational structures and processes amongst which leadership takes shape ( ‘t Hart 2014 ; Pollitt 2013 ). Adopting a repertoire conceptualization of leadership behavior and continuing within-person focused research can further stimulate systematic investigation of the impact of context factors on leadership.

Moving the focus from leadership of persons to leadership in situations helps disentangling leadership’s complexity while integrating context in our understanding of leadership. Thereby we build on and set a step beyond recent work of Pedersen et al. (2019) and Kramer et al. (2019) . Leaders could be thought of as being sensitive to contextual variations between situations and consequently, that such context sensitivity translates into context-sensitive behavior: when a leader perceives the situation to be different, the behavior deemed appropriate would co-vary. 1 A repertoire conceptualization can help to make this visible. It can then be argued that such context sensitivity is connected to a behavioral response based on contextual adaptation ( Hooijberg 1996 ; Van der Hoek, Beerkens, and Groeneveld 2021 ). It is worthwhile to investigate the relationship between contextual needs and a leader’s individual skills, capacity, and preferences and what that means for how the repertoire is used. Follow-up studies should conceptualize and operationalize context variables specifically to avoid vague and irrelevant explanations and make situational variation meaningful.

Leadership Repertoire Uses in Relation to Outcomes

Another step can be made by investigating how leadership behavior seen from this repertoire perspective relates to other organizational phenomena. In the existing literature, many studies show the effects of isolated parts of leadership on performance and employee attitudes (see Vogel and Masal 2015 ). From a repertoire perspective, leaders can substitute and compensate their behaviors, and they prioritize their roles and behaviors differently (possibly) depending on the context. As Van der Hoek, Beerkens, and Groeneveld (2021) show, for example, leaders are likely to consolidate their behaviors when ambiguity increases. We have observed various shapes that the repertoire can take, but it would be worthwhile to investigate, too, whether those shapes have different impacts on outcome variables and under which conditions those relationships exist.

It has been found that leaders can use various approaches to be effective ( Pedersen et al. 2019 ) and leadership is most effective when leaders draw on the variety of options of the repertoire ( Denison, Hooijberg, and Quinn 1995 ; Havermans et al. 2015 ; Hooijberg 1996 ). Using the repertoire’s full range of options makes that leaders can match the diversity of issues they are addressing with suitable action, as the opportunities to create a fit between demands and response increase. Also in research on ambidexterity of leaders, it was found that effectiveness to fulfill various requirements was enhanced when leaders draw on a range of different behaviors ( Mom, Fourné, and Jansen 2015 ). Moreover, as Smith’s (2014) study shows, the pattern of behavior and decisions over a longer stretch of time may have more important consequences for organizational outcomes than single actions and decisions. A repertoire conceptualization of leadership facilitates that combinations of behavior with their combined impact are highlighted and can be evaluated.

Operationalization of the Leadership Behavior Repertoire

Our analysis has focused on the variety within leadership behavior repertoire uses. Nevertheless, variety is only one perspective on this complexity. Not only which behaviors are used and in which directions, but a temporal lens to study repertoires can also add supplementary insights. Firstly, timing of the use of the repertoire’s elements can vary. Leaders can undertake various actions in parallel, while at other times the different actions are more sequential. Moreover, the moment when leaders decide to start, stop or change their approach can differ. Also delaying or waiting involve this temporal factor. Our interview participants gave examples that indicate variation in timing. Another way in which we can learn more about the leadership behavior repertoire is by considering the duration and intensity of behaviors. Whereas leaders may spend only a single instance of short time on some activities, others may require full attention for either a longer or shorter time, or may be always ongoing in a monitoring fashion.

Several authors have called for attention for temporal factors such as timing, pace, rhythm, cycles, ordering, and trends in the study of organizational behavior (e.g., Ancona et al. 2001 ; Castillo and Trinh 2018 ; Johns 2006 ) and public management ( Oberfield 2014a ; O’Toole and Meier 1999 ; Pollitt 2008 ), though still very few empirical studies in public management have explicitly addressed this issue (e.g., Oberfield 2014a , 2014b ). By taking up a repertoire perspective to conceptualize leadership, more nuanced differences connected to subtle time variables could be illuminated.

Internal Dynamics of the Leadership Behavior Repertoire

Besides further developing the operationalization of the leadership behavior repertoire, the internal dynamics of the repertoire can be unpacked. Not only the elements of the repertoire themselves and how we look at them, but also how they are combined and balanced can be disentangled for deeper insights. Understanding why leaders use their repertoire as they do, how they combine and balance the various elements, and why so, helps to untangle the intricacies of the complexity of the leadership behavior repertoire. As referred to before, the internal dynamics may cause differential effects than when a single type of leadership is examined.

One relevant aspect concerns the extent to which leaders are on the one hand intentional, strategic, and proactive in choosing their leadership behavior, or reactive and habitual on the other hand ( Boyne and Walker 2004 ; Crant 2000 ; Miles and Snow 1978 ). Based on some indications in our data, variation exists in this respect. Sometimes leaders take a proactive approach and choose behaviors strategically to advance their goals. Building on findings by Havermans et al. (2015) , intentional switching and combining of various leadership behaviors can be expected. Other times, leadership behavior becomes a matter of reactively responding to what is thrown at a leader and defaulting to preferred styles.

Explanatory factors at the level of the leader may be relevant to consider. One way to understand such differences concerning the combinations leaders make, relates to the breadth of repertoire options available to them. In case leaders are aware of a large number of behavioral strategies they could adopt and have the skills to use them, this may lead to more varied repertoire uses and more variation between situations. On the other hand, having knowledge and skills of only a few behavioral options, leaders may be more inclined to use the same and a limited repertoire. How this relates to length of tenure in a position or experience in leadership roles more generally could be examined. A second explanation could be found in how leaders perceive their room for maneuver. Feeling in control or in the position to frame issues may help to make such conscious strategic combinations. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of demands or in a position of putting out fires, however, may put leaders under pressure to forgo proactive strategic behavior.

Methodological Recommendations

To pursue these substantive avenues for continued study, a number of methodological suggestions can be made that seem particularly suitable when using a repertoire conceptualization of leadership behavior.

Experimental methods are strongly encouraged and increasingly used in the field (e.g., Blom-Hansen, Morton, and Serritzlew 2015 ; Jacobsen and Andersen 2015 ). Experimental designs can be used to assess the extent to which leaders adapt their leadership behavior to context. The controlled design can systematically build on insights from rich literature about the public sector context as well as from research in the contingency tradition. By manipulating contextual variation in experimental tasks or vignettes ( Atzmüller and Steiner 2010 ; Barter and Renold 1999 ; Belle and Cantarelli 2018 ; Podsakoff and Podsakoff 2019 ), the specific effect of context on leadership behavior can be tested. A repertoire conceptualization may then reveal differentiation in how context factors influence leadership behavior. Since experimental conditions can be designed by the researcher, numerous potentially relevant contextual dimensions discussed in public management research can be investigated on their effects on leadership behavior repertoire uses. If participants are confronted with multiple manipulations each, within-person variation and adaptation can be examined ( Van der Hoek, Beerkens, and Groeneveld 2021 ).

Another strategy to study leadership repertoires is using event sampling methods ( Bolger, Davis, and Raffaeli 2003 ; Kelemen, Matthews, and Breevaart 2020 ; Ohly et al. 2010 ). These methods are based on within-person variation over time, whereby study participants can be asked to report their leadership behavior at various points in time or after specified events occur. In addition, they can be asked to provide information about the context and situation in which this leadership behavior was used as well as about results. Both quantitative multilevel designs and qualitative diary studies could each contribute new insights: hypothesized patterns can be assessed or perceptions of and considerations in various situations can be disentangled. Therefore, event sampling methods can be used to test whether leaders adapt their leadership behavior to changing situations. Secondly, this method offers opportunities to learn more about timing of changes in the repertoire use and reasons for doing so.

Finally, ethnographic methods such as shadowing and participant observation are suitable to study subtle differences in meaning-giving and leadership behavior repertoire use ( Alvesson 1996 ; Geertz 1973 ; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005 ). Observing leaders in various types of situations and asking questions related to those observations can give better insights in leaders’ interpretations of the context and their considerations when responding to a situation. In this way, the interaction between situational context and personal preferences and skills related to their repertoire can be studied. The balancing of different behavioral strategies by leaders can then be illuminated. This could add to develop the operationalization of the leadership repertoire as well as the understanding of its internal dynamics. Moreover, such methods are particularly useful to connect leaders’ own intentions of their leadership behavior to the perceptions of those around them to whom this behavior is directed. Since self-other disagreement is common in the study of leadership behavior ( Vogel and Kroll 2019 ), combining self-reported accounts with accounts of others can stimulate the repertoire’s validity if confirmed.

We see more of leadership when we look at the leadership behavior repertoire used in situations. Coaching, motivating, planning, solving problems should not be seen as stand-alone behaviors of a leader; instead, such actions are taken at the backdrop of and are impacted by the overall task of leading an organization, which involves many more leadership behaviors. This regularly evokes a more complex leadership repertoire use. Furthermore, the structures that divide authority of leaders and thereby make them interdependent, bring along that leadership behavior does not only comprise supervising employees or leading downwards, but that 360-degree action is frequently required. The relational character of leadership is omnipresent in such complex environments. Leaders have to work in different directions and need to switch their strategies and combine various types of leadership behavior to be able to influence and facilitate.

There are always trade-offs when defining a good concept, parsimony and depth being one of them in this case, and the utility for theory is the most important criterion when choosing the best concept ( Gerring 1999 ). In-depth studies on specific leadership elements have provided valuable evidence on the nature of certain behaviors, and their effects on various organizational outcomes. As a limitation, they ignore a symbiotic relationship between different behaviors. While more comprehensive, the repertoire approach has its own challenges, though. Due to its comprehensiveness, delineation of the concept as well as its operationalization and use in empirical studies is more complex.

The fragmentation of research in different, largely non-communicating parts of the literature may be developing a blind spot for the study of leadership behavior of individuals in public organizations: though it may describe the real world well in relatively simple situations, it prevents studying leadership behavior in a manner that covers the comprehensiveness of leadership in more complex situations common in public organizations. This study provides support for the importance of an integral approach that examines the combination of various leadership behaviors at the individual level in public management, because the ambiguous context of many public leaders forces them to draw on a broad repertoire of behaviors. Learning how leaders vary, combine, and balance their behavioral strategies is then essential, as it can provide further insights into obstacles and openings of effective leadership. The identified directions could be a guide for future research in this endeavor.

The premise of context sensitivity underlies research on contingency theory (e.g., Aldrich 1979 ; Donaldson 2001 ; Fiedler 1967 ; Lawrence and Lorsch 1967 ; Perrow 1970 ) and situational leadership (e.g., Graef 1997 ; Thompson and Vecchio 2009 ; Yukl 2008 ), though such studies generally focus on organizational structure or effectiveness as dependent on leadership or organizations’ external environment. Situational leadership theory ( Graef 1997 ; Thompson and Vecchio 2009 ; Yukl 2008 ) sees leadership itself as dependent on context, but specifically focuses on employees’ task maturity rather than a broader view of organizational context factors and narrows leadership to motivating subordinates.

- Can you tell me what it means to be [director/dean/board member/project leader] within this [department/institute/faculty] (tasks/running issues and projects)?

Leadership role: How do you see your role as […]?

- What do you find hard about your role as […]? Can you tell about this in relation to a particular issue or event in which this featured. What did make that difficult?

- Do you experience dilemmas in your role as […]? Have you experienced moments where different things were hard to reconcile? Where did that tension come from?

- Do you experience dilemmas between your roles as […] and […]?

- You have different tasks and roles. How do you combine those (simultaneously)?

Ambiguity needs: Which needs/expectations do you encounter in your role as […]?

- Where do those needs originate from? Can you tell about this in relation to a particular issue or event in which this featured.

- What did you do then in that situation?

- Do you always do this in the same way, or is it dependent on the situation?

- What made you choose this approach?

Do you face:

Goals that allow room for multiple interpretations?

Working on both innovation/change as optimization/stability?

Complexity and dynamism in the environment of your [department/institute/faculty/group]?

- Do you experience tension here? Example? Where did that tension stem from?

- How did you deal with it?

As a last question for this interview: Could we go through your last week, see how the things you talked about show in how you spend your time?

- What do you mean by […]?

- Can you give an example of that (of last week/month)?

- What did you do then?

- Can you tell more specifically which actions you undertook to do that?

- Can you take me along in the process of […], how that went, what you were thinking?

- What did you find difficult about that?

- How did you do that?

- Can you elaborate?

- Have you missed a topic/did we not discuss something that you would like to bring to my attention?

- Did you participate in leadership training?

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Leadership →

• 26 Mar 2024
• Cold Call Podcast

How Do Great Leaders Overcome Adversity?

In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations were used to force him to resign from his prior US government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the Department of Labor. Two employees had accused him of ethical violations in hiring and procurement decisions, including pressuring subordinates into extending contracts to his alleged personal associates. The Deputy Secretary of Labor gave Jefferson four hours to resign or be terminated. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the US government to clear his name, which he pursued for eight years at the expense of his entire life savings. Why, after such a traumatic and debilitating experience, would Jefferson want to pursue a career in government again? Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Anthony Mayo explores Jefferson’s personal and professional journey from upstate New York to West Point to the Obama administration, how he faced adversity at several junctures in his life, and how resilience and vulnerability shaped his leadership style in the case, "Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire."

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

• 02 Jan 2024
• What Do You Think?

Do Boomerang CEOs Get a Bad Rap?

Several companies have brought back formerly successful CEOs in hopes of breathing new life into their organizations—with mixed results. But are we even measuring the boomerang CEOs' performance properly? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

Employees may seek new approaches to balance, even as leaders consider whether to bring more teams back to offices or make hybrid work even more flexible. These are just a few trends that Harvard Business School faculty members will be following during a year when staffing, climate, and inclusion will likely remain top of mind.

• 12 Dec 2023

Can Sustainability Drive Innovation at Ferrari?

When Ferrari, the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer, committed to achieving carbon neutrality and to electrifying a large part of its car fleet, investors and employees applauded the new strategy. But among the company’s suppliers, the reaction was mixed. Many were nervous about how this shift would affect their bottom lines. Professor Raffaella Sadun and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna discuss how Ferrari collaborated with suppliers to work toward achieving the company’s goal. They also explore how sustainability can be a catalyst for innovation in the case, “Ferrari: Shifting to Carbon Neutrality.” This episode was recorded live December 4, 2023 in front of a remote studio audience in the Live Online Classroom at Harvard Business School.

• 05 Dec 2023

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

A study of 70,000 decisions by Thomas Graeber and Benjamin Enke finds that self-assurance doesn't necessarily reflect skill. Shrewd decision-making often comes down to how well a person understands the limits of their knowledge. How can managers identify and elevate their best decision-makers?

• 21 Nov 2023

The Beauty Industry: Products for a Healthy Glow or a Compact for Harm?

Many cosmetics and skincare companies present an image of social consciousness and transformative potential, while profiting from insecurity and excluding broad swaths of people. Geoffrey Jones examines the unsightly reality of the beauty industry.

• 14 Nov 2023

Do We Underestimate the Importance of Generosity in Leadership?

Management experts applaud leaders who are, among other things, determined, humble, and frugal, but rarely consider whether they are generous. However, executives who share their time, talent, and ideas often give rise to legendary organizations. Does generosity merit further consideration? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 24 Oct 2023

From P.T. Barnum to Mary Kay: Lessons From 5 Leaders Who Changed the World

What do Steve Jobs and Sarah Breedlove have in common? Through a series of case studies, Robert Simons explores the unique qualities of visionary leaders and what today's managers can learn from their journeys.

• 06 Oct 2023

Yes, You Can Radically Change Your Organization in One Week

Skip the committees and the multi-year roadmap. With the right conditions, leaders can confront even complex organizational problems in one week. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss explain how in their book Move Fast and Fix Things.

• 26 Sep 2023

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf Merger: Competition vs. Cooperation

On June 9, 2022, the first LIV Golf event teed off outside of London. The new tour offered players larger prizes, more flexibility, and ambitions to attract new fans to the sport. Immediately following the official start of that tournament, the PGA Tour announced that all 17 PGA Tour players participating in the LIV Golf event were suspended and ineligible to compete in PGA Tour events. Tensions between the two golf entities continued to rise, as more players “defected” to LIV. Eventually LIV Golf filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anticompetitive practices, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, LIV Golf and the PGA Tour announced that they were merging. Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay discusses the competitive, antitrust, and regulatory issues at stake and whether or not the PGA Tour took the right actions in response to LIV Golf’s entry in his case, “LIV Golf.”

• 01 Aug 2023

As Leaders, Why Do We Continue to Reward A, While Hoping for B?

Companies often encourage the bad behavior that executives publicly rebuke—usually in pursuit of short-term performance. What keeps leaders from truly aligning incentives and goals? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 05 Jul 2023

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their "action orientation" to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

How Are Middle Managers Falling Down Most Often on Employee Inclusion?

Companies are struggling to retain employees from underrepresented groups, many of whom don't feel heard in the workplace. What do managers need to do to build truly inclusive teams? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 14 Jun 2023

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

Companies need T-shaped leaders, those who can share knowledge across the organization while focusing on their business units, but they should be a mix of visionaries and tacticians. Hise Gibson breaks down the nuances of each leader and how companies can cultivate this talent among their ranks.

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

Struggling to spark strategic risk-taking and creative thinking? In the post-pandemic workplace, teams need psychological safety more than ever, and a new analysis by Amy Edmondson highlights the best ways to nurture it.

• 31 May 2023

From Prison Cell to Nike’s C-Suite: The Journey of Larry Miller

VIDEO: Before leading one of the world’s largest brands, Nike executive Larry Miller served time in prison for murder. In this interview, Miller shares how education helped him escape a life of crime and why employers should give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. Inspired by a Harvard Business School case study.

• 23 May 2023

The Entrepreneurial Journey of China’s First Private Mental Health Hospital

The city of Wenzhou in southeastern China is home to the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group, the Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. It’s an example of the extraordinary entrepreneurship happening in China’s healthcare space. But after its successful initial public offering (IPO), how will the hospital grow in the future? Harvard Professor of China Studies William C. Kirby highlights the challenges of China’s mental health sector and the means company founder Guan Weili employed to address them in his case, Wenzhou Kangning Hospital: Changing Mental Healthcare in China.

• 09 May 2023

Can Robin Williams’ Son Help Other Families Heal Addiction and Depression?

Zak Pym Williams, son of comedian and actor Robin Williams, had seen how mental health challenges, such as addiction and depression, had affected past generations of his family. Williams was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a young adult and he wanted to break the cycle for his children. Although his children were still quite young, he began considering proactive strategies that could help his family’s mental health, and he wanted to share that knowledge with other families. But how can Williams help people actually take advantage of those mental health strategies and services? Professor Lauren Cohen discusses his case, “Weapons of Self Destruction: Zak Pym Williams and the Cultivation of Mental Wellness.”

• 11 Apr 2023

The First 90 Hours: What New CEOs Should—and Shouldn't—Do to Set the Right Tone

New leaders no longer have the luxury of a 90-day listening tour to get to know an organization, says John Quelch. He offers seven steps to prepare CEOs for a successful start, and three missteps to avoid.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Laughter and effective presidential leadership: A case study of Ronald Reagan as the ‘great communicator’

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Project administration, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected] (PAS); [email protected] (CS)

Affiliation Department of Political Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, United States of America

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Political Science, George Washington University, Washington, DC, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation School of Psychology, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

• Patrick A. Stewart, 
• Reagan G. Dye, 
• Carl Senior

• Published: April 17, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301324
• Reader Comments

Former United States President Ronald Reagan’s use of media and his charismatic connection with viewers earned him the moniker “the great communicator”. One aspect of his charisma, the influence of elicited laughter, during a highly critical 5-minute news story by CBS reporter Leslie Stahl during the 1984 US presidential election is examined here. Two experiments examining the effects of audience laughter on perceptions of charismatic leadership are reported. In the first experiment the effects of audience laughter in response to Reagan’s comments were investigated. Here, Reagan’s perceived warmth as an effective leader significantly diminished when strong laughter is removed, whereas perceptions of competence remained unaffected. The second study carried out on an older cohort replicated and extended the first in a pre-registered design by considering the perception of trait charisma. Here, the presence or absence of audience laughter did not affect judgements of charisma. Additionally, the affective response before, and then after, the presentation of the news story was measured. Emotions associated with a positive appraisal all decreased after being shown the news story while emotions associated negative appraisal all increased. However, only participant anger was significantly increased when audience laughter was removed. Taken together the findings of both studies converge on the fact that subtle changes in media presentation of political leaders can have a significant effect on viewers. The findings show that even after 40 years in office the social psychological effects of presidential charisma can still influence observers.

Citation: Stewart PA, Dye RG, Senior C (2024) Laughter and effective presidential leadership: A case study of Ronald Reagan as the ‘great communicator’. PLoS ONE 19(4): e0301324. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301324

Editor: Hans H. Tung, National Taiwan University, TAIWAN

Received: April 24, 2023; Accepted: March 14, 2024; Published: April 17, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Stewart et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The data for study 1 are publicly accessible by contacting the authors. Study 2 is a preregistered replication and is available here ( https://osf.io/cq5d8/?view_only=fdab9c5c07f94ea0b9c6d01f706121f5 ).

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

One of the most important areas of study regarding politics and social psychology considers how social behaviours affect political interaction and, more specifically, how nonverbal signals influence perceptions of political leaders, especially as presented in television news. With the introduction of high-definition portrayals and ubiquitous hand-held devices, the role of the visual media in the portrayal of political leaders has grown. Experimental research on the visual primacy effect has also demonstrated that when there is conflicting information between the verbal and nonverbal channels in an audio-visual presentation, viewers have difficulty processing the verbal attributes of television news reports and remember the visuals with far more fidelity [ 1 ]. More attention is also paid to affectively important nonverbal communication when the nonverbal attributes of televised leader displays appear inappropriately matched to the rhetorical context [ 2 – 4 ].

The majority of research concerning the influence of nonverbal leader communication on social perception focuses on how visual attributes of posture, body movements, and facial display behaviours affect viewer perceptions and trait attributions [ 5 ]. At the same time, there is a small but growing literature that considers the role played by audible signals. Specifically, research considering the influence of the observable audience response to political figures suggests there is a significant intra-audience effect of emotional and evaluative signalling on other audience members while watching mediated events [ 6 ]. Applause-cheering, laughter, booing, chanting and combinations of these audible signals significantly influence how audience members view the televised political event or news coverage [ 6 ]. Viewers may unknowingly monitor and respond to the expressed intensity and type of follower utterance in support or opposition to the speaker and their stated political positions [ 7 ]. Media audiences, whether streaming debates, watching on television, or viewing through other media platforms, and perhaps more crucially, journalists who may be reporting on the event, may likewise be influenced by information conveyed via this audible channel. In other words, the social influence asserted through a specific audience response is similar to emotional contagion effects [ 6 ] and can affect viewer and listener perceptions with or without express awareness. However, the specific influence of different audience responses such as applause-cheering, laughter, and booing has yet to be studied in depth.

Despite the influence that observable audience responses may have on perceptions of leaders, systematic evaluation of these behaviours to political figures and how they affect the efficacy of politician narratives is limited. The few studies providing insight into the social influence of audience behaviour on political figures and policy issues tend to incorporate both audible and visually observable responses. Wiegman’s field experiment involved a videotaped studio audience either reacting positively, negatively, or neutrally to a well-known Dutch politician through audible utterances and different visible nonverbal behaviours [ 8 ]. Likewise, Fein and colleagues’ experiments considering Ronald Reagan’s second 1984 presidential debate performance did not differentiate between applause and laughter nor the moderator’s verbal and nonverbal response [ 9 ]. A study by Axsom and colleagues considering the verbal channel alone with regards to specific policy issues (e.g., imprisonment/probation) provided for comparison of “enthusiastic applause-cheering” to unenthusiastic and polite applause with occasional derisive cries [ 10 ] and found a tendency towards a simple consensus heuristic to make social judgments. Thus, while the limited research regarding political candidates and issues provides useful insights, it does not differentiate between different observable audience response types and often conflates visual and audible stimuli. In the work that follows we focus on one form of observable audience response–laughter–considering first its evolutionary roots and social influence briefly before focusing on its presence in politics and the types of humour that might elicit this type of behavioural response. We then evaluate group laughter’s role in providing a heuristic by which individuals may evaluate a political figure in ambiguous situations.

Laughter has been studied extensively across a broad range of social contexts with a wide range of approaches and techniques. Indeed, it is one of the few positive emotions considered in great detail, likely due to the social and survival benefits it confers. Across such species as canines [ 11 ], rats [ 12 ], and multiple primate species [ 13 ]–including humans–laughter signals playfulness, and with it benign intent [ 14 ]. In other words, social animals are more likely to cooperate and learn when in a playful state of mind as signalled by laughter.

Within humans, laughter emerges early and is seen across different cultures. Spontaneous laughter is observed in infants as young as 17 to 26 days [ 15 ], well before socially stimulated laughter occurs at three-to-four months of age [ 16 ]. Laughter is also observed within individuals who are blind since birth suggesting a possible adaptive function in social bonding [ 17 ].

The study of laughter is thus rightfully situated as a social phenomenon and would benefit from application of multiple different types of inquiry techniques; despite this, the primary method for analysing laughter has been naturalistic observational studies. Here, the effects of laughter tend to be studied in its social ecology. For instance, the ground-breaking work of Provine and colleagues took a “side-walk scientist” approach to laughter, finding that its role as a social lubricant by which mutual conversational grooming occurred was underappreciated, whereas its role as response to humorous comments was over-stated [ 16 ].

Laughter can be seen as socially influential due in large part to it being reliably identified through audible and visual characteristics. When nonverbal signals are easily and accurately identified, the more they are likely to affect perceptions and behaviour by being part of a highly learned (near automatic) repertoire of behaviours and responses that are likely to have been evolutionarily selected for survival purposes [ 18 ]. Thus, accurate recognition of the emotional state and behavioural intent of communicators provides relevant social information that influences perceptions and evaluations of others [ 19 ].

Reliable indicators of emotion may be defined as first, leading to an accurate recognition of the emotional state of the communicator, along with their resultant behavioural intent (e.g., bonding), and second, providing an index of the sender’s underlying state as one that is costly to produce [ 20 ]. Such signals are emotionally costly to produce due to their communicating underlying physiological states potentiating specific behaviour; furthermore, even when such signals are faked, physiological change can and does occur through the posing or acting out of these display behaviours.

Laughter may be classified as a costly, and hence reliable, signal when evoked or when it is difficult to control; even when faked, the initially emitted laughter leads to physiological change [ 21 ]. Individual laughter likewise serves as a social emollient by affecting perceiver mood states by dampening negative affect, increasing positive affect (and pain tolerance), while increasing social cooperation and group identity [ 22 ]. Laughter thus serves as a highly reliable social signal regarding behavioural intent [ 14 ].

Laughter across differing social contexts

Because laughter provides a mechanism for the facilitation of affiliative social interactions that go beyond physical contact and is inclusive of large numbers of individuals, it should be easily and accurately recognized to indicate the underlying behavioural intent of the senders. Socially important utterances, such as laughter, can be seen as stereotyped activities by having coherent and identifiable vocalic, facial and even postural displays reliably associated with them. As pointed out by Gaspar and colleagues, the multimodal nature of this affiliative display behaviour, together with its early emergence in ontogenetic development and its stability throughout an individual’s lifespan, make it a predictable and reliable signal even as context changes [ 13 ]. Thus, due to the important role it plays in facilitating extended social interaction laughter may be one of the most reliable of nonverbal signals [ 23 ].

That is not to say that laughter cannot function in varying contexts, or convey differing or nuanced information, rather, that it is reliably recognized across cultures. Research regarding laughter at the individual level focuses on the role of such expressiveness being a pervasive social signal during interpersonal interactions. Here, laughter may serve to punctuate speech and indicate turn-taking and transitions within conversations [ 24 , 25 ].

Laughter by individuals indicates social intent through the conveyance of vocalic qualities. Voiced laughter, with its sing-song characteristics, can communicate the experience of amusement, contempt, and even schadenfreude [ 26 , 27 ]. Unvoiced laughter on the other hand, with its gruntlike characteristics [ 28 ], can be seen as signalling more competitive intent by being connected with aggressive statements [ 29 ]. This is perhaps due to the interrelationship between vocalic and facial movements seen with laughter and the amusement smile; facial display behaviour immediately after laughter-eliciting comments help convey social intent by punctuating the preceding statement [ 30 ]. In summary, laughter at the individual level serves a multitude of social functions based upon reliable multi-modal nonverbal signalling that is easily recognized. At the same time, the nuanced expression of individual laughter allows for subtle differences in to be conveyed in its meaning.

Intra-audience effects of audience laughter

Laughter, as an important communicative signal, should also be socially contagious, or at least mimicked, to allow for the cohesion, broadening, and building of groups. Hatfield and colleagues [ 31 ] define social contagion as the “tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person’s and, consequently, to converge emotionally” (p. 169). Thus, laughter would meet the definition of a socially contagious behaviour and indeed might provide the modal behaviour by meeting each of the above criteria in the convergence of mimicry and emotional response [ 13 ]. While group laughter is readily identifiable and distinct from other types of audience responses, it does not appear to have distinguishable characteristics that allow for the differentiation of members of different social groups from each other [ 32 ], nor in identifying nuanced social intent, as is the case with individual laughter.

Experimental research considering how individuals respond to group laughter tends to focus mainly on perceptions of how funny a stimulus is, whether visually with cartoons and written jokes [ 33 – 37 ], audio tapes of jokes, funny stories and stand-up routines [ 38 – 46 ], bloopers [ 47 , 48 ], or scenes from television shows and movies [ 49 – 52 ]. When the source of the humour is taken into account, findings show that group laughter leads to individuals within the group being perceived more favourably across multiple dimensions relevant to leadership, including potential for success [ 45 ], authoritativeness, character, dynamism and interestingness [ 41 ], and credibility, likability, and lowered aggressiveness [ 53 ].

While each of the above studies were influenced by multiple factors, Vraga and colleagues [ 53 ] incisively comment that, “a humorous cue might be more important when faced with a more ambiguous context… as people have substantially less information on which to rely” (p. 145). Much of this research focuses on entertainment figures in which preconceptions either do not play a role due to low awareness, or by being so heterogeneous as to be randomly distributed. Political figures are different. Not only does their humour play a role in audience response, their group membership and social status predisposes perceptions [ 45 ]. Politicians, through their leadership role in society, belong to a clearly demarcated social group that is defined by a more restrictive set of social rules. Thus, the effects of receiving and perceiving laughter within a political context could be manifestly greater than in a non-political context, where it is expected and therefore part of the routine dialogue.

Political laughter

When one considers group level behaviour in political contexts, research regarding observable audience responses tends to focus on the target and intent of verbal statements rather than the social influence process that laughter facilitates [ 30 , 54 , 55 ]. Current analyses describe audience response to political figures, by considering the length, strength, and intensity of audience laughter during political events [ 6 , 56 , 57 ]; however, the results reflect descriptive and correlational findings regarding response to individual speakers rather than group-related outcomes.

In group interactions, laughter is arguably more stereotyped and easily identified than other types of observable audience responses. The vocalic utterances that constitute laughter are much shorter in duration than applause-cheering, for instance. Analysis shows that group laughter in political contexts lasts on average 1–3 seconds in comparison with 2–8 seconds for applause-cheering [ 56 – 59 ]. Booing, another form of observable audience response, is surprisingly rare in political contexts. Interestingly, when an audience shows their appreciation for a humourous comment, applause-cheering prolongs the laughing response [ 30 , 59 ]. This points to high levels of social mimicry in the case of group laughter, and then likely social contagiousness through its continuation via applause.

Studies regarding the use of humour during US presidential primary debates in 2008 [ 30 ] and the 2016 general election presidential debates [ 6 , 56 , 57 ] suggest that the main targets of humour during electoral campaigns tend to be out-group members. Here, ridicule and other forms of disparagement humour are used as a form of political rhetoric. In addition, self-deprecatory humour, where speakers poke fun at themselves or other in-group members, also occurs with regularity. The use of these different types of humour, ridicule and self-deprecation, likely holds strategic value, as ridicule can be used to derogate the competition or set normative boundaries on behaviour. On the other hand, self-deprecatory humour is useful for making a candidate more likable [ 60 ].

While there is an emerging body of research examining the type of humour employed by political candidates and the strength and duration of the laughter response, the correlational nature of this work limits the kinds of inferences that may be drawn. Furthermore, failed humour–which may be defined by the absence of laughter, its muted presence, or even booing–is rarely studied due to the difficulty of identifying enough occurrences for analysis [ 61 ].

The experimental research discussed in the previous section suggests that audience laughter certainly affects perceptions of humorousness and trait evaluations of the speaker. A number of scholars have shown that audience responses affect perceptions of political candidates [ 6 , 8 , 9 ]; however, the question remains as to how robust a role laughter, and the eliciting humour, plays in perceptions of political figures.

This question may be elaborated by considering what leadership traits are influenced by group laughter—and in what direction. The perception of competence and warmth are considered central to the identification and choice of leaders [ 62 – 66 ]. At the same time, these traits may be moderated or mediated by perceptions of leader charisma [ 67 – 72 ]. In the present study the effects of the observable audience response of laughter on the perception of trait charisma is examined by considering an individual considered to be amongst the most charismatic of presidents in United States history, Ronald Reagan.

Humour types and political laughter

When humour in conjunction with laughter has been experimentally studied, the stimuli has tended to have been presented to the participants in the written form [ 73 ]. In other words, vignette studies varying the type of humour used, in combination with the asserted presence of laughter (or its absence), indicates success or lack thereof. As observed by Bitterly, Brooks, and Schweitzer in their extensive analysis of the effect of humour on interpersonal status [ 73 ]:

Though humor can boost status , using humor is risky . Humor attempts can fail in several ways : by being too boring (i . e ., not funny) , too bold (i . e ., inappropriate) , or failing to elicit laughter from the audience . How the audience reacts profoundly influences perceptions . If the audience does not laugh , observers are less likely to view the humor attempt as appropriate or funny , and the joke teller may lose status . (p. 17)

While the work of Bitterly and colleagues’ is indeed informative, their use of written vignettes as experimental treatments limits generalizability. Likewise, their focus on inappropriate humour relied upon sexually-charged quips; while important for the workplace with mixed sexes and fluid power dynamics, this type of humour is not used much by politicians in our technologically mediated era [ 30 , 74 ]. Indeed, the use of sexualized humour in today’s political climate would probably be unsuccessful in eliciting laughter but would also likely alienate a substantial proportion of the electorate.

Regardless, their focus on perceptions of competence and status in response to humour–and the laughter that it elicits–is applicable to contests for leadership within politics. This is especially the case in viewer observations regarding leader competence, which in addition to perceptions of prestige is key to understanding why followers defer to, and confer status on, potential leaders.

Existing research in the use of humour by political figures suggest that it is used to either attack opponents, often through ridicule, or make light of oneself or allies [ 30 , 56 , 75 , 76 ]. Smith and Powell found in the case of other- and self-disparaging humour by group leaders that those making ridicule attempts directed downwards at lower status group members were perceived as less effective, less encouraging, less helpful, and less socially attractive than those using self-directed humour [ 77 ]. However, this investigation also showed that not using humour was perceived as leading to better outcomes; in almost all leadership-based attributions that were considered save for tension relief and opinion offering, leaders who did not attempt any humorous remarks were perceived in a more positive light.

Arguably, the key factor here is the presence or absence of the laughter that is recognized to be an observable audience response to the politician. In the case of other-deprecatory humour, ridicule may increase perceived competence by virtue of martialling an audience together in their response to a tangible target; likewise, failure would see its reduction, negatively affecting the joke-teller. On the other hand, self-deprecatory humour successfully eliciting audience laughter would presumably lead to greater perceptions of warmth and communication effectiveness for the joke-teller [ 77 ]. Ultimately, observable (here audible) support for specific leader comments helps followers to identify leadership potential and other related traits.

Ronald Reagan’s leadership style

Former US President Ronald Reagan’s moniker as “The Great Communicator” inspired a large body of literature assessing his communication style and its effects on public perceptions and the expectations of the American presidency [ 78 ]. As the first “celebrity” politician, Reagan provides insight into the role of media notoriety in politics. Consequently, re-examining Reagan’s relationship with the press and his ability to manipulate public perception is relevant in the current American political climate. The return of the celebrity presidency with the ascension of Donald Trump further warrants an historical examination of Reagan to glean insight into his unique communication style and public perception of populist leaders.

Reagan’s leadership style developed from his natural ability to connect with audiences and years of experience as a recognized film actor and television personality [ 79 ]. Upon entering national politics, Reagan was successful in enjoining his conservative agenda with the Republican Party establishment, garnering successful victories in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, and passing supply side economic policies. Although he suffered from periods of public scrutiny during his time in office, he was known as the “Teflon president” for his ability to rebound from criticism and controversy and gainfully employed rhetorical strategies to develop a reputation as humorous, charismatic, and likeable [ 75 ]. Now some 30 years since the Reagan era, the study of Reagan’s communication and leadership style has much to offer our current understanding of the normative behaviour of presidents and candidates operating under conditions of constant media scrutiny. Whereas Reagan was adept at connecting with Americans through television, contemporary office holders (and presidential hopefuls) must be able to compete with the flood of media choices now available across numerous platforms [ 80 ] and the fast pace of the issue-attention cycle.

Now more than ever, Converse’s assertion that the public pays more attention to, and takes cues from individuals in politics, rather than to politics and policy making itself is apparent in the individual-centred nature of the contemporary political environment [ 81 ]. If politicians possess the capacity to control the political agenda and how they are perceived by voters, then they have the ability to “go public” without relying on the mass media to set the agenda [ 82 ]. The specific case of Leslie Stahl’s mini-documentary on Reagan from the 1984 campaign is exemplary of this ability to skirt around the media narrative and control perceptions simply through imagery and audience response. Reagan’s mastery of image management in relation to television, including the use of self-deprecatory humour and direct appeals to supporters, provides a blueprint for understanding how presidential contenders must operate to maximize effectiveness in today’s hybrid media era [ 83 ].

The case study approach employed provides a historically relevant example that is recognized by many political communication scholars as a turning point in how nonverbal behaviour and social signals are considered [ 84 , 85 ], it also presents an emotionally evocative stimuli that better reflects the “real world” of media consumption. Here, we test specific hypotheses concerning the influence of the observable audience response of laughter, leadership traits, and also perceived charisma. Reagan’s ability to elicit audience laughter sets up following hypothesis that are addressed in two studies:

• H1: Laughter in response to Reagan’s humorous comments will increase perceptions of his competence, warmth, and charisma.

Furthermore, due to Ronald Reagan’s effective and prolific use of a range of humour types with strategic intent, we can further test the effect of successful and unsuccessful humour, as marked by the presence of absence of laughter. Specifically, the literature reviewed suggests differential impact of Reagan’s use of self-deprecatory and ridicule humour.

• H2: Laughter in response to Reagan’s ridicule of audience members will increase perceptions of his competence.
• H3: Laughter in response to Reagan’s self-deprecatory comments will increase perceptions of his warmth.
• H4: Laughter in response to Reagan’s humour will increase perceptions of his charisma.

The perception of audience laughter to Reagan’s humour will increase judgments of his leadership competence and approachability. However, this will be dependent on whether the humour is self-depreciatory or directed to other parties. Thus, there will be a main effect of humour on judgments of leadership traits and an interaction between the different types of humour that Reagan displays.

Content coding of the Reagan-Stahl News Story (1984)

The key news story was shown on Thursday, October 4, 1984 via a CBS network primetime television news broadcast, one month before Reagan’s landslide election victory. The news story as analysed had a video clip length of five minutes and forty-five seconds (5:44.85/100s; 345 seconds) with the story length after the introduction by Dan Rather being five minutes and twelve seconds. In the five-minute (306 seconds) news story, Leslie Stahl narrated for just over three minutes (194 seconds), while Reagan had twenty-seven seconds of speaking time dispersed throughout five sound bites. These sound bites all took place during the second half of the news story.

Throughout the news story, two minutes and five seconds of audience applause cheering, laughter, and mixed response could be heard. Applause-cheering can be heard throughout almost two minutes of the story (111 seconds). This is notable because support from partisans in the form of audible responses took place in over one-third of a purportedly critical news-story. While Stahl talked over much of the applause-cheering and mixed applause-cheering and booing, laughter was presented without interruption. Indeed, of Reagan’s five sound bites, three were presented with elicited laughter uninterrupted. The first of these laughter events started at two minutes and forty-five seconds into Stahl’s story, whereas the last occurred just under 2 minutes (114 s) from the end. This news story contained a range of examples of Reagan’s performative style and is thus an ideal means to study the effects of the different types of humour used and the interaction between observable audience responses.

While the placement of the humorous comments did not give Reagan the first or final word in the story, these three laughter-eliciting comments provided him with punctuated support from the audience when he did talk. ANVIL content coding software was used to characterize and analyse the news story [ 86 ]. ANVIL allows for frame-by-frame analysis of speaking time and the ability to disambiguate the observable audience responses by considering both audible response by the audience [ 59 ], and camera shots of the audience [ 85 ]. Adobe Premier Pro software was then used to edit the video and develop the various experimental conditions.

A content analytic approach was applied to the visual coding of the key news report [ 85 ]. Specifically, the presence of large (16 of 59 camera shots; 80s and 26.2% of camera time) and approving audiences (15/59 shots; 62.12s and 20.3% of camera time) were coded. When the audible response by the audience is considered in tandem with these types of camera shots, it is found that large, yet non-responsive, audiences were presented in three shots (19.72s), whereas thirteen shots and just over a minute of applause-cheering (60.28s) was heard from large audiences. Audiences seen as approving were evident in fourteen shots for just under one minute (55.52s) where applause-cheering occurred, while laughter was seen in one nearly seven second shot (6.60s). It was expected that the applause-cheering would be most likely observed in media coverage of group settings such as political speeches [ 75 , 76 ] and intra-party debates [ 87 ]. This is due to such observable audience responses predominating in political discourse because of the ease with which candidates can evoke it among supporters in partisan settings. As a result, applause-cheering plays a role as an important barometer of a politicians’ individual appeal during speeches [ 76 , 88 ] or when in direct competition with other candidates during debates [ 59 ]. However, the production decision to incorporate applause-cheering as a major part of a critical news story may be seen as at odds with the perceived intent. So too was the decision to incorporate laughter in response to humorous comments by the then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan.

The objective of the first study is to examine the effects of the observable audience response of laughter and how it moderated the perception of Reagan as an effective presidential leader. It can be expected from the literature reviewed that audience laughter in response to Reagan’s humorous comments will affect perceptions of the leadership traits he holds, whether warmth or competence. The question is, to what extent will the presence or absence of laughter, indicating success or failure of Reagan’s humorous comments differentially affect perceptions of these traits.

While Stahl spoke over the great majority of applause, the first three of Reagan’s sound bites led to observable audience laughter in response to his quips. These occurrences were not spoken over and ensued during a middle portion of the story where Stahl commented on Reagan by stating, “This tight control has baffled those who think that Mr. Reagan is at his very best when he is spontaneous….” With this in mind, three edits totalling just under six seconds (5. 46/100s = 2. 93 +. 83 +1. 7 ) were made. The video was presented in a between subjects design with three different conditions. The first, presented unedited video as the control condition, with participants seeing what viewers of the CBS news story viewed in 1984. The second two treatments involved either the audience laughter being removed completely, with no noise from the video during the edits, or the audience laughter being faded-out to a level at just under fifty percent of that presented during the original news story. As a result, the treatment effect being considered equals 0.016% of audio-visual time (5.46s/344.83) for the total video.

The first edit took place at 3:19:02 (until 3:21:25) of the video clip after Reagan was shown commenting “I’ll raise his taxes” in response to audience members shown as heckling him. The audience, presumably at a campaign speech held during the Missouri State Fair (based upon the scene prior) responded with loud laughter followed by mixed cheering and applause. At the same time Reagan, shown with his suit jacket off in front of hay bales, displayed a smile of amusement after delivering his punchline and during the audience’s laughter and applause-cheering.

The second edit, of less than a second (3:26:29–3:27:21), took place after Stahl commented positively on Reagan’s ability for “tossing off one-liners,” Here Reagan, dressed in a suit and tie and presumably sitting down for an interview, quipped “I never get good reviews from TASS” after shaking his head, presumably to a difficult question. As a small group of individuals laughed at his response Reagan smiled in amusement.

The third edit (3:41:26–3:43:03) was set up by Stahl as Reagan being “masterful at deflecting a hostile question” when he responded to a reporter at a press conference commenting on his keeping Republican Party representatives in line. Here Reagan responded with a self-deprecatory comment, “How can you say that about a sweet fellow like me?” and laughed while displaying a smile of amusement.

Participants

Participants were recruited from introductory-level political science classes and were provided extra course credit for taking part in the study. Written consent to participate was obtained prior to taking part. A total of 317 participants took part in the study that lasted from March 2 to April 28, 2018. So as to ensure task compliance, those individuals who stopped engaging within the first 7 minutes and who did not respond to the open-ended prompt “(P)lease list some of the thoughts you had while watching the video clip” were removed from subsequent analysis, which resulted in a final sample of 283 participants. All procedures were approved by the University of Arkansas IRB.

Of these participants, 61.8% identified as female, 81.3% identified as Caucasian (with 5.3% African-American, 2.1% Asian, 8.5% Hispanic, .4% Native American, and 2.5% other ethnicity), and the average age was twenty-one years old (range 18–71, SD = 4.55). The majority of participants identified themselves as identifying with the Republican Party (40.3%), followed by Democratic Party identifiers (35.3%), as independent (15.2%), Libertarian Party (6.7%), Green Party (.7%) and other (1.8%). Random assignment of participants to the different treatments was balanced (unedited video/laughter-in/control [ n = 96], laughter faded out [ n = 95], and laughter removed [ n = 92]) across the three conditions. When tested for randomness in assignment to the treatment condition, we found no statistical bias (all p-values = ns) for sex, ethnicity, age, party identification, and political ideology (social, economic, overall conservative-liberal).

Prior to the taking part in the protocol, participants were asked to provide basic demographic information (age, sex, ethnicity), whether they were registered to vote, the political party they best identify with and their attitudes towards the main US political parties, as well as their own political ideology. At this point, participants were randomly assigned to one of the three different treatment categories (i.e., control condition, laughter faded out or no laughter).

Immediately after the video clips were viewed, participants were first asked to describe their thoughts on the video, how strongly they felt in reference to different emotions at that moment (anxious, proud, angry, reassured, fearful, irritated, disgusted, sad, and happy) on a 0–10 (not at all to extremely). They were then asked their evaluation of the reporter, Leslie Stahl, in terms of their overall impressions of her, as well as how credible, appropriate, and likable she was on a seven-point scale. These items were then combined into an additive index (Cronbach’s a = .873). A final measure, that of how aggressive Stahl was perceived to be, due to weak correlations with the other measures, was analysed separately.

Participants were then asked to evaluate Ronald Reagan’s leadership traits in terms of his competence , which was based upon measures of how sincere, aggressive, strong, active, competent he appeared to be (Cronbach’s a = .779); additional measures considered a scale of his warmth with questions regarding how intelligent, caring, trustworthy, agreeable, and warm (Cronbach’s a = .928) he appeared during the news story. Responses regarding evaluation of both Leslie Stahl and Ronald Reagan ranged from “Not at all” to “Extremely” on a seven-point (0–6) scale. Finally, to evaluate whether participants noticed the treatment, we asked “How believable did you find the video clip to be?” on the same seven-point scale. Throughout the reported statistical tests an alpha level of >0.05 is designated as n/s.

Emotional response to the video showed that, how anxious ( F = .283, p = ns), proud ( F = .465, p = ns), angry ( F = 1.448, p = ns), reassured ( F = .644, p = ns), fearful ( F = 1.848, p = ns), disgusted ( F = .632, p = ns), sad ( F = .192, p = ns), and happy ( F = .119, p = ns) participants felt was unaffected by the laughter. However, when least significant differences are considered, participants felt significantly less irritated ( F = 4.124, p = .017, partial η 2 = .029) when watching the original video ( M = 3.646) when compared with the treatment videos with laughter faded out ( M = 2.611, p = .008) and laughter completely removed ( M = 2.793, p = .029).

Participant ratings of Leslie Stahl in a similar manner suggested the treatment had little effect. Specifically, the index considering overall performance, perceived credibility, appropriateness, and likability, exhibited no significant violations of homogeneity ( F [2, 280] = 1.298, p = ns) according to the Levene’s test. Analysis of the index shows participants were largely unaffected by whether there was laughter present, faded, or removed entirely ( F [2, 280] = 0.480, p = ns). Likewise, Stahl’s perceived aggressiveness failed to reach statistical significance ( F [2, 280] = 2.722, p = ns).

Similarly, participants did not seem to notice a difference between the different videos. When asked “how believable did you find the video clip to be,” there was no significant difference between the treatments ( F = 1.005, p = ns). In combination with the preceding findings, there was not apparently a cognitively perceived effect from the video as participants were not aware of the treatment.

Analysis of the effect of laughter on evaluation of Ronald Reagan’s leadership traits tells a more nuanced story. Tests for homogeneity of variance regarding the competence index finds no significant violations ( F [2, 280] = 1.536, p = ns) as does the between-subjects ANOVA between the three groups: F [2, 280] = 2.677, p = ns. Although the patterns of response mirror those of perceived warmth (Laughter in M = 23.80; Laughter faded out M = 22.31; Laughter removed M = 22.20).

When Levene’s test for homogeneity of variance regarding the index of Reagan’s warmth is considered, no significant violations were found ( F [2, 280] = 1.699, p = ns). However a highly significant between-subjects effect across the three humour groups was revealed: F [2, 280] = 4.078, p = .018, partial η 2 = .028. Here, Reagan’s trait evaluations were enhanced by the presence of the loud laughter evident in the original news story, with post-hoc comparisons showing that the laughter remaining condition (M = 25.94, p = 0.05) was significantly greater than the faded-out condition (M = 23.39) and the complete removal of the laughter (M = 23.60). Thus, while perceptions of his warmth are all relatively high, they are significantly reduced by the laughter either being faded out or removed entirely (p = ns).

Finally, as a control item a single measure of how humorous participants thought Reagan to be was included. No significant violations of homogeneity were found ( F [2, 280] = 1.497, p = ns) and the pattern revealed was similar to that regarding Reagan’s warmth index. Namely, a significant between-subjects effect between the three humor groups, F [2, 280] = 3.411, p = .034, partial η 2 = .024. When post-hoc least significant differences are considered, there were no significant differences between the laughter faded out (M = 5.13) and laughter completely removed (M = 4.96) groups, as was the case with perceptions of Reagan’s warmth . However, Reagan was considered significantly more humorous with the laughter in (M = 5.52) at the .05-level.

The finding that observers’ emotion was largely unaffected by the treatment, with the exception of feeling irritated, is perhaps not unexpected. The treatment, which is comprised of less than five seconds of laughter across the three Reagan excerpts, is a subtle and unobtrusive stimulus that potentially would not have an observable effect on self-reports of introspective evaluation of emotional response. Furthermore, by only considering between-subjects effects we cannot tease out whether the news story had a greater influence on participant emotional response and how this might have differed across the treatments. Even though the sole finding concerning irritation was aligned too the expectations both in the pattern of response, with greater irritation felt by those either not hearing laughter or diminished laughter, suggesting a failed humour attempt, and the comparatively weak effect of the treatment, future studies should consider change in self-reported emotional state through within-subjects design.

The lack of significant effect on evaluation of the reporter, Leslie Stahl, is likely due to the average age of the participants, which may have rendered her work as a nationally known figure unknown. While Ronald Reagan is recognized as a Republican Party icon and is mentioned in both glowing and critical terms by participants, Stahl is not so well recognized. As noted by Vraga and colleagues [ 53 ] when comparing participant response to a famous U.S. talk show host and an unfamiliar moderator “… a laugh track has very different effects when a host is a well-known comedian versus an unknown talk show host." (p.143) In other words, the perceptions of newscaster Stahl and the presentation of Reagan’s (un)successful humour may be premised upon the humour being interpreted as a benign violation of expectations [ 89 ], as opposed to ridicule that is received as more aggressive and less socially acceptable.

Type of humour likely play a role in perceptions of Ronald Reagan and how he is portrayed in this news story. As noted by Baumgartner, not only does “prior knowledge of the target of the humour affects susceptibility to attitude change” but also the context of political humour plays a role [ 90 ]. Whether the humour is other-deprecatory and ridicule-oriented or self-deprecatory plays a role in its perceptions especially upon considering the audience [ 60 ] when Reagan ridicules an audience member. Because of Reagan’s standing as a Republican Party icon, the effect of the audience’s response to his rejoinder to the dissenter within the audience might be accentuated if participants perceive his response being received in a less than flattering manner. This finding is consistent with considerable prior research considering the target of the humour, especially political figures [ 60 , 90 – 94 ].

The first experimental study is extended here by including control and full treatment levels, with all three laughter events present or removed; this allows replication of the first hypotheses regarding responses to laughter in the evaluation of leadership competence and warmth. This study will also examine the presence of laughter in response to Ronald Reagan’s humour and the effect that it will have on his perceived charismatic traits. The influence of specific laughter-eliciting comments removing concomitant laughter to consider the influence of different types of (un)successful humour will also be examined here. As a result, the second experimental study will have five different levels.

Additionally, the charisma of presidents is driven in part by perceived leadership traits of competence and warmth [ 68 ]. Even with participants not knowledgeable about Reagan, the positive visuals as well as the extensive applause-cheering throughout the news report, whether included inadvertently or not, does convey his charismatic presence. However, whether charisma plays a moderating or mediating role in conjunction with the observable audience response of laughter is still in question.

The second study utilizes three edits that totalled just under six seconds (5.46/100s = 2.93+.83+1.7) with a five condition between-subjects design. The first condition presented unedited video as a control with participants seeing what the 1984 CBS news viewers saw. The second replication treatment removed all three observable audience responses of laughter completely, with no noise from the video during the edits leading to the treatment effect 5.46 seconds of the total video (344.83s).

The next three conditions involved the removal of laughter from the three specific humorous comments. The third treatment, taking place from 3:19:02 until 3:21:25 of the video, showed Reagan responding to a heckler with the comment “I’ll raise his taxes” eliciting loud laughter followed by mixed cheering and applause. The fourth treatment involved the removal of less than a second of laughter from a small group of individuals and occurred from 3:26:29–3:27:21 of the video when a seated Reagan quipped “I never get good reviews from (the Russian news agency) TASS” after shaking his head. The final treatment condition saw Reagan use self-deprecatory humour to deflect an aggressive journalist’s question, leading to brief laughter at 3:41:26–3:43:03 of the video.

A power analysis using G*Power was carried out to determine sample size. Here, the traditional power estimation parameters for the least explained variable, the trait of competence , (1 –β err probability = 80%; α error probability = .05; effect size of f = .136). Findings based upon the effect likely, given the means and standard deviations uncovered in experimental study one, suggests a sample size of 650 participants would be required.

Participants were recruited using a snowball sampling approach in which upper-division undergraduate students received course credit for taking part in and recruiting participants. To better reflect the general population, older participants were systematically recruited, leading to a more age diverse sample. A total of 1041 individuals entered the study that lasted from November 16, 2020 to November 11, 2021; of those 315 did not spend at least seven minutes (420 seconds) in the study and were removed as per the previous study parameters. An additional 60 participants were removed due to their not responding to the open-ended prompt and a further 15 for not answering any post-treatment questions, leaving a total of 651 participants in the study. All ethical considerations, including consenting of the participants were identical to that reported for study 1.

Of those taking part, 61.4% identified as female, 83.3% identified as Caucasian (with 3.7% African-American, 0.5% Asian, 7.5% Hispanic, 2.6% Native American, and 2.3% other ethnicity); the average year of birth was 1982 old (range 1934–2005, SD = 16.3). The majority of participants identified themselves as identifying with the Democratic Party (38.9%), followed by Republican Party identifiers (33.3%), as independent (16.7%), Libertarian Party (3.9%), Green Party (1.4%) and other (5.6%). Random assignment of participants to the different treatments was balanced. We first replicated study 1 by having the unedited video control condition [ n = 119] and the treatment condition with all laughter removed [ n = 139]. The other three conditions considered the effect of removing individual laughter events, with the first removing laughter from Reagan’s response to a heckler [ n = 126], the second removing small group laughter [ n = 131], and the third removing group laughter in Reagan’s response to journalistic aggression [ n = 136]. When tested for randomness in assignment to across the five treatment conditions, we found no statistical bias (p = ns in all cases) for sex, ethnicity, age, party identification, and political ideology (social, economic, overall conservative-liberal).

As was the case with the first experimental study, participants were asked basic demographic questions (age, sex, ethnicity), as well as questions about whether they were registered to vote, the political party they identify with and self-reported political ideology. Additionally, they were asked to state how familiar they were with President Ronald Reagan, especially as this more externally valid sample had a greater distribution of ages and experience with Reagan, potentially influencing response. The distribution of participants was therefore examined as a separate, exploratory, and hypothesis-generating model with this variable as a moderator.

However, as the first experiment suggested differences in response to the video treatments, participants were asked to state their feelings both prior to and immediately after the presentation of the stimuli in terms of their emotions at that moment (anxious, proud, angry, reassured, fearful, irritated, disgusted, sad, and happy) on a 0–10 (not at all to extremely) scale. The evaluation of perceived charisma was based upon whether “This leader…” “moves people toward a goal,” “has a vision,” “inspire dares to take risks,” and “elicits a feeling of involvement in me.” [ 69 ]. The resulting scale showed strong reliability (Cronbach’s a = .865).

In line with the first experimental study, participants were asked to evaluate the reporter, Leslie Stahl, based upon their overall impressions of her, as well as how credible, appropriate, and likable she appeared in this video (Cronbach’s a = .919). Participants were also asked to evaluate Ronald Reagan’s leadership traits in terms of his competence , based upon measures of how sincere, aggressive, strong, active, competent he appeared to be (Cronbach’s a = .826). We also consider perceptions of his warmth with questions regarding how intelligent, caring, trustworthy, agreeable, and warm he appeared to be during the news story (Cronbach’s a = .908). All these were measured on a seven-point (0–6) scale ranging from “Not at all” to “Extremely”.

Change in emotional response from immediately before watching the video to immediately afterwards using repeated-measures ANOVA suggests that the video had a significant effect on how participants felt across all emotions (see Table 1 ). There was a small effect with a slight increase in fear (pre M = 1.567, se = .092; post M = 1.775, se = .097); sadness likewise showed a slight increase (pre M = 1.600, se = .088; post M = 2.059, se = .101) with a small-to-medium effect size, whereas felt anxiety decreased (pre M = 3.177, se = .115; post M = 2.719, se = .112) to a small-to-medium extent due to the video.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301324.t001

Emotions associated with pleasantness and positive appraisal all decreased as a result of the video, showing either medium-to-large (proud pre-M = 4.002, se = .129) or large (reassured pre-M = 3.412, se = .122; post-M = 2.174, se = .105; happy pre-M = 5.843, se = .108; post-M = 4.272, se = .122). For their part, the negative appraisal emotions of irritated (pre-M = 1.786, se = .093; post-M = 3.101, se = .114), disgusted (pre-M = 1.023, se = 077; post-M = 2.540, se = .116) and anger (pre-M = 1.070, se = .076; post-M = 2.173, se = .116) all increase with the video having a large effect size.

While all emotional state measures changed because of the video, only anger was affected by the treatment condition. As can be expected, the least amount of increased anger came in the treatment with all three laughter elements present; while the four other treatments between the video with laughter and with it removed failed to reach statistical significance.(M = 1.626, se = .172, p =.ns; vs M = 1.567, se = .170, p = ns), significant differences only occurred when anger in the laughter-present video (M = 1.223, se = .181) was compared with all laughter absent (M = 1.745, se = 167, p = .034) and with the first treatment condition in which the first laughter utterance was removed (M = 1.948, se = .167, p = .004).

Participant ratings of Leslie Stahl in a similar manner suggested the treatment had little effect. Specifically, the index considering overall performance, perceived credibility, appropriateness, and likability, exhibited no significant violations of homogeneity ( F [4, 686] = 1.070, p = ns) according to the Levene’s test. Analysis of the index shows participants were largely unaffected by whether there was laughter present, faded, or removed entirely ( F [4, 686] = 0.387, p = ns). Likewise, Stahl’s perceived aggressiveness ( F [2, 280] = .174, p = ns) failed to reach statistical significance.

Similarly, participants did not seem to notice a difference between the different videos. When asked “how believable did you find the video clip to be,” there was no significant difference between the treatments ( F = .242, p = ns). In combination with the preceding findings, there was not apparently a cognitively perceived effect from the video as participants were not aware of the treatment.

Analysis of the effect of laughter and its removal from the video treatment on evaluation of Ronald Reagan’s leadership traits does not replicate the first experiment. Tests for homogeneity of variance regarding the competence index finds no significant violations ( F [4, 686] = 1.682, p = ns). The between-subjects ANOVA between the five groups does not reveal significant differences: F [4, 686] = 1.313, p = ns.

Levene’s test for homogeneity of variance revealed a significant violation ( F [4, 686] = 2.480, p = .043) when considering the index of Reagan’s warmth . When the Brown-Forsythe robust test was used, no significant between-subjects effects across the five humour groups was revealed: F [4, 686] = 1.299, p = ns. Likewise, while with perceptions of Reagan’s charisma no significant violations of homogeneity of variance were found using Levene’s test ( F [4, 686] = 1.919, p = ns); no significant between-subjects effects across the five humour groups was revealed; F [4, 686] = .516, p = ns.

Finally, as a control item a single measure of how humorous participants thought Reagan to be was included. Significant violations of homogeneity were found with the Levene test ( F [4, 686] = 5.377, p < .001), yet no significant differences between the groups were seen, F [4, 686] = .589, p = ns, when the Brown-Forsythe robust test was used.

The second study provides insight regarding the importance of the population used and methods employed. First, by using a more representative sample in terms of age, with the first study’s average age being twenty-one years old, and the second study’s average age of thirty-nine years old, we can expect that perceptions of President Ronald Reagan, to be well-established for good or bad. While a historical figure, allowing us to carry out an experiment over a long period of time without worries over external validity, Reagan remains a powerful political symbol in terms of social identity. Indeed, when considering the distributions on the constructs of charisma and warmth, eight percent of participants held a ceiling perception of him on both measures. Thus, even though age, gender, and party identity were randomly distributed through the different treatments, the likelihood of such a weak treatment—between less than a second of laughter to six seconds of laughter—embedded within a roughly five-minute video having an effect was diminished.

Second, the use of trait measures may not be sensitive enough to capture contemporaneous stimuli, especially regarding well known figures (and even those not so well known as in the case of Leslie Stahl). That we found significant and predictable change in all the participant emotional state self-report measures prior to and after watching the video, and that anger was most affected by the absence of laughter, both overall and in Reagan’s response to the heckler, suggests that the presence of laughter does have an effect on participants–even ones with strongly held opinions.

General discussion

Our findings cohere with the expectations of Vraga and colleagues [ 53 ] that when people have limited information to deal with ambiguous situations, they will rely upon subtle signals–especially those socially influential and reliable indicators of positive regard as audience laughter. In this paper, we find two substantially different groups of study participants responding in line with Vraga and colleagues’ results, as the much younger–and likely less politically knowledgeable–study 1 participants used audience laughter, or its absence, as a factor in their evaluating Ronald Reagan’s warmth and, to a lesser extent, competence. The older and more politically experience and involved experimental study 2 participants were not affected by audience laughter’s presence or absence in their evaluation of Reagan’s leadership traits. This was likely due to either experiencing Reagan as an active and polarizing political figure or as seeing him as a historically relevant political figure.

The second, subtle, and perhaps more compelling indicator that audience laughter does have an effect on participants lies with the indicators of appraised emotion. In the first experiment, there were between-subject treatment differences in felt irritation, with participants feeling less irritated when viewing the video with the laughter in than with the video with the laughter removed or faded out. While experimental study 2 participants felt irritation was not significantly affected, their felt anger was. In other words, the older and more politically experienced participants had a response in the same emotion family that replicated that of irritation, with those not hearing audience laughter more angry than those who did hear audience laughter, and both studies having similar effect sizes. Furthermore, the experimental extension in the second study, which teased out the effects of the success–as measured by audience laughter or its absence–of humorous statements found that Reagan’s aggressive quip in response to protesters (“I’ll raise his taxes”) had the strongest treatment effect when post-hoc comparisons were made, stronger even than all laughter removed. This suggests, in line with Stewart’s [ 60 ] finding that other-deprecating and aggressive humour, including ridicule, can be dangerous for a leader if supporters are not there to respond to a quip or joke with laughter.

Taken together, these findings point to a greater awareness of how even very subtle stimuli might affect various measures differently, especially given distinct populations. Having multiple measures thus not only makes sense in assessing discriminant validity of treatment effects it also provides for greater comprehension of how individual differences exhibit themselves. Because the traits of warmth, competence, and charisma can be seen as the crystallization of emotional appraisals in response to individuals over a period of time—albeit one that is more malleable in the absence of pre-existing information–choosing and paying attention to distinct measures based upon population characteristics makes eminent sense when planning a study. It also points towards the more extensive use of highly responsive measures of affect, such as provided by psychophysiology, when crafting an experiment and viewing appraisal and response as a continuum affected by multiple internal and external factors.

Conclusions

Perhaps the most pertinent finding from this paper pertains to the use of an externally valid stimulus that, while nearly forty years old, still resonates today both in experimental effects and lessons imparted. First, historically relevant stimuli remain impactful, as can be seen by the cornerstone work by Fein, Goethals, and Kugler [ 9 ] upon which this paper builds, as the fresh eyes (and brains) of undergraduates in our first experiment had their perceptions significantly affected nearly three decades after Ronald Reagan left the presidency. Perhaps more important is that such a minor treatment in our study–up to 5 ¾ seconds removed from a five-minute+ video–had a small-to-moderate effect size suggests that even perceived minor production choices can have subtle, yet impactful implications for the perceptions and choices of low-information voters reliant on the social influence of others. Despite the fact that the key news story was produced decades ago the use of humour is often seen in contemporary political settings. Future work exploring the social psychological effects of different types of humour that is displayed by politicians should focus on the interactions between humour types and the strength of the observable audience response. As we have shown here it is the interaction between the two that impacts audience perceptions, in turn likely shaping attitudes and, potentially, behaviour.

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• 84. Bucy EP. Media biopolitics: the emergence of a subfield. In: Peterson SA, Somit A, editors. Handbook of Biology and Politics. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing; 2017. p. 284–303.
• 85. Grabe ME, Bucy EP. Image bite politics: News and the visual framing of elections. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2009. 316 p.
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• 87. Stewart PA, Hall SC. Microanalysis of the appropriateness of facial displays during presidential debates: C-SPAN coverage of the first and third 2012 debates. In: Browning RX, editor. Exploring the C-SPAN Archives: Advancing the Research Agenda. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press; 2016. p. 103–29.

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• Original Article
• Open access
• Published: 19 December 2017

GOOGLE: a reflection of culture, leader, and management

• Sang Kim Tran 1 , 2  

International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility volume  2 , Article number:  10 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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This paper provides a viewpoint of the culture and subcultures at Google Inc., which is a famous global company, and has a huge engineering staff and many talented leaders. Through its history of development, it has had positive impacts on society; however; there have been management challenges. The Board of Directors (BoDs) developed and implemented a way to measure the abilities of their managers, which helped to identify problems. This paper will analyze the case study of Harvard Business Review, Oxygen Project, and clarify the management problem in Google’s organization. It will also compare Google with Zappos, a much smaller organization, and present how the BoDs of Zappos assesses its culture and subcultures. In this paper, we will recommend eight important points to building an organizational culture that is positive for stable growth of a company. We believe that much of what be learned could be useful to other business leaders, regardless of company scale.

Introduction

In a large society, each company is considered a miniature society (Mawere 2011 ). Similar to large societies with large cultures, small societies also need to build their own cultures. A culture is influenced by many factors and determines if it is a great culture. Corporate culture requires both the attention to the efficiency of production and business and to the relationship among people in the organization closely (Bhagat et al. 2012 ). Regardless if it is a large or a small organization, it must encounter issues of cooperation among individuals and groups. There are many factors leading to the success of business process re-engineering in higher education (BPR), the main four elements are culture, processes, structure, and technology. Culture is listed as number one (Ahmad et al. 2007 ). Hence, culture becomes the most important factor to the success of the development of a business. Organizational culture is the set of shared beliefs (Steiber and Alänge 2016 ), values, and norms that influence the way members think, feel, and behave. Culture is created by means of terminal and instrumental values, heroes, rites and rituals, and communication networks (Barman n.d. ). The primary methods of maintaining organizational culture are through the socialization process by which an individual learns the values, expected behaviors, and necessary social knowledge to assume their roles in the organization. In addition, (Gupta and Govindarajan 2000 ) and Fig.  1 in (Ismail Al-Alawi et al. 2007 ) illustrates that culture was established by six major factors, such as information systems, people, process, leadership, rewarding system, and organization structure. Therefore, there is a wide variety of combined and sophisticated cultures in the workplace, especially in big corporations like Google, Facebook, Proctor & Gamble, etc. Each organization tends to have a common goal, which is to create a culture that is different from other companies and to promote their teams to be creative in developing a distinctive culture (Stimpson and Farquharson 2014 ). Clearly, we can see that Google’s culture is different than others. What makes this company unique and different from others, as well as the dominant cultures and subcultures existing at this company? How do leadership behaviors impact the organizational culture? By operating a case study of a Harvard Business Review to analyze its organizational culture, subsequently, having compared it with Zappos’ culture, this paper will clarify the similarities and differences in managing organizational cultures between them and consider whether the solutions for the problems can be applied to other business models, and for tomorrow leaders or not?

Trends of using product by information searching

Company overview

This part shows how Google became famous in the world and its culture and subcultures made it a special case for others to take into consideration. Google is one of the few technology companies which continue to have one of the fastest growth rates in the world. It began by creating a search engine that combined PageRank system, developed by Larry Page (ranking the importance of websites based on external links), and Web search engine, created by Sergey Brin (accessing a website and recording its content), two co-founders of the company (Jarvis 2011 ; Downes 2007 ). Google’s achievements absolutely do not come from any luck. Google has made extra efforts in creating an index of a number of websites, which have been up to 25 billion websites. This also includes 17 million images and one billion messages to Usenet group (Downes 2007 ). Besides searching for websites, Google users are able to search for PDF files, PostScript, documents, as well as Microsoft, Lotus, PowerPoint and Shockwave files. Google processes nearly 50% of search queries all over the world. Moreover, it is the number one search option for web users and is one of the top five websites on the Internet, which have more than 380 million users and 28 billion visits every month, and more than 50% of access from countries outside the US (Desjardins 2017 ). Google’s technology is rather special: it can analyze millions of different variables of users and businesses who place advertisements. It then connects them with millions of potential advertisements and gives messages of advertisement, which is closest to objects in less than one second. Thus, Google has the higher rate of users clicking advertisements than its opponent Yahoo, from 50 to 100%, and it dominates over 70% market share of paid advertisements (Rosenberg 2016 ). Google’s self-stated mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful (Alves n.d. ).” Nowadays, it is believed that people in the world like “Google” with words “the useful-lively information storage”.

Predominant culture at Google

The dominant culture in the organization depends on the environment in which the company operates the organization’s objectives, the belief system of the employees, and the company’s management style. Therefore, there are many organizational cultures (Schein 2017 ). The Exhibit 3.1 at page 39 in (Schein 2009 ) provides what culture is about. For example, employee follows a standard procedure with a strict adherence to hierarchy and well-defined individual roles and responsibilities. Those in competitive environments, such as sales may forget strict hierarchies and follow a competitive culture where the focus is on maintaining strong relationships with external parties. In this instance, the strategy is to attain competitive advantages over the competition. The collaborative culture is yet another organizational way of life. This culture presents a decentralized workforce with integrated units working together to find solutions to problems or failure.

Why do many large companies buy its innovation? Because its dominant culture of 99% defect-free operational excellence squashes any attempts at innovation, just like a Sumo wrestler sitting on a small gymnast (Grossman-Kahn and Rosensweig 2012 ). They cannot accept failures. In fact, failure is a necessary part of innovation and Google took this change by Oxygen Project to measure the abilities of their multicultural managers. This means that Google itself possesses multiple different cultures (see Google’s clips). Like Zappos, Google had established a common, organizational culture for the whole offices that are distinctive from the others. The predominant culture aimed at Google is an open culture, where everybody and customer can freely contribute their ideas and opinions to create more comfortable and friendly working environment (Hsieh 2010a ).

The fig.  2 .1 in chapter two of (Schein 2009 ) and page 17 in part one of (Schein 2017 ) provide us three levels of culture which are Artifacts, Espoused values and Underlying assumptions helping us to understand the culture at Google. At page 84, in (Schein 2009 ), the “artifacts” are identified such as dress codes, level of formality in authority relationships, working hours, meeting (how often, how run, timing), how are decisions made, communication, social events, jargon, uniforms, identity symbols, rites and rituals, disagreements and conflicts, balance between work and family . It seems that Google is quite open in these artifacts by showing a respect for uniform and national culture of each staff individually and giving them the right to wear traditional clothes.

Ad Blocking Incidence

Working at Google, employees enjoy free food served throughout the day, a volleyball court, a swimming pool, a car wash, an oil change, a haircut, free health care, and many other benefits. The biggest benefit for the staff is to be picked up on the day of work. As assessed by many traffic experts, the system set up by Google is considered to be a great transport network. Tad Widby, a project manager and a traffic system researcher throughout the United States, said: “I have not seen any larger projects in the Bay Area as well as in urban areas across the country” (Helft 2007 ). Of course, it is impossible for Google to “cover up the sky”, so Yahoo also started implementing the bus project for employees in 2005. On peak days, Yahoo’s bus also took off. Pick up about 350 employees in San Francisco, as well as Berkeley, Oakland, etc. These buses run on biofuels and have Wi-Fi coverage. Yet, Danielle Bricker, the Yahoo bus coordinator of Yahoo, has also admitted that the program is “indirectly” inspired by Google’s initiative (Helft 2007 ). Along with that, eBay recently also piloted shuttle bus transfers at five points in San Francisco. Some other corporations are also emerging ideas for treatment of staff is equally unique. Facebook is an example, instead of facilitating employees far from the workplace; it helps people in the immediate neighborhood by offering an additional $10,000 for an employee to live close to the pillar within 10 miles, nearby the Palo Alto Department (Hall 2015 ).

When it comes to Google, people often ask what the formula for success is. The answer here is the employees of Google. They create their own unique workplace culture rules to create an effective work environment for their employees. And here are the most valuable things to learn from Google’s corporate culture (Scott 2008 ) that we should know:

Tolerate with mistakes and help staff correct

At Google, paying attention to how employees work and helping them correct mistakes is critical. Instead of pointing out the damage and blaming a person who caused the mistake, the company would be interested in what the cause of the problem was and how to fix it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Also as its culture, we understand that if we want to make breakthroughs in the workplace, we need to have experimentation, failure and repeat the test. Therefore, mistakes and failures are not terrible there. We have the right to be wrong and have the opportunity to overcome failure in the support of our superiors and colleagues. Good ideas are always encouraged at Google. However, before it is accepted and put into use, there is a clear procedure to confirm whether it is a real new idea and practical or not?

Exponential thought

Google developed in the direction of a holding company - a company that does not directly produce products or provide services but simply invest in capital by buying back capital. In the company, the criteria for setting the ten exponential function in lieu of focusing only on the change in the general increase. This approach helps Google improve its technology and deliver great products to consumers continuously.

Of course, every company wants to hire talented people to work for them. However, being talented is an art in which there must be voluntary work and enthusiasm for the work of the devotees. At page 555 in (Saffold 1988 ) illustrated that distinctive cultures dramatically influencing performance do exist. Likewise, Google, Apple, Netflix, and Dell are 40% more productive than the average company which attracts top-tier employees and high performers (Vozza 2017 ). Recognizing this impact, Google created a distinctive corporate culture when the company attracted people from prestigious colleges around the world (West 2016 ; Lazear and Gibbs 2014 ).

Build a stimulating work environment

When it comes to the elements that create creativity and innovation, we can easily recognize that the working environment is one of the most important things. Google has succeeded in building an image of a creative working. Google offices are individually designed, not duplicated in any type of office. In fact, working environment at Google is so comfortable so that employees will not think of it as a working room, with a full area of ​​work, relaxation, exercise, reading, watching movies. Is the orientation of Google’s corporate culture to stimulate creativity and to show interest in the lives of employees so that volunteers contribute freely (Battelle 2011 )?

Subculture is also a culture, but for a smaller group or community in a big organization (Crosset and Beal 1997 ). Google, known as the global company with many more offices, so there are many subcultures created among groups of people who work together, from subcultures among work groups to subcultures among ethnic groups and nations, multi-national groups, as well as multiple occupations, functions, geographies, echelons in the hierarchy and product lines. For example, six years ago, when it bought 100 Huffys for employees to use around the sprawling campus, has since exploded into its own subculture. Google now has a seven-person staff of bicycle mechanics that maintains a fleet of about 1300 brightly-colored Google bikes. The company also encourages employees to cycle to work by providing locker rooms, showers and places to securely park bikes during working hours. And, for those who want to combine meetings with bike-riding, Googlers can use one of several seven-person (Crowley 2013 ).

Leadership influences on the culture at Google

From the definition of leadership and its influence on culture; so what does leader directly influence the culture existed? According to Schein, “culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin and one cannot understand one without the other”, page three in (Schein 2009 ). If one of us has never read the article “Google and the Quest to create a better boss” in the New York Times, it is listed in a priority reading. It breaks the notion that managers have no change. The manager really makes a difference (Axinn 1988 ; Carver 2011 ). In fact, a leader has a massive impact on the culture of the company, and Google is not an exception. The leaders of Google concerned more about the demands and abilities of each individual, the study of the nature of human being, an appreciation their employees as their customers. At Google, the founders thought they could create a company that people would want to work at when creating a home-like environment. It is real that they focus on the workplace brings the comfort to staff creatively and freely (Lebowitz 2013 ).

In my opinion, a successful business cannot be attributed solely from a single star; that needs the brightness of all employees. It depends very much on the capacity and ability to attract talented people. It is the way in which the leader manages these talents, is the cornerstone of corporate culture. One thing that no one can deny is that a good leader must be a creator of a corporate culture so that the employees can maximize capabilities themselves (Driscoll and McKee 2007 ; Kotter 2008 ).

To brief, through the view of Google’s culture, BoDs tended and designed to encourage loyalty and creativity, based on an unusual organizational culture because culture is not only able to create an environment, but it also adapts to diverse and changes circumstances (Bulygo 2013 ).

Company growth and its impact

“Rearrange information around the world, make them accessible everywhere and be useful.” This was one of the main purposes set by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they first launched Google on September 4th, 1998, as a private company (Schmidt and Rosenberg 2014 ). Since then, Google has expanded its reach, stepped into the mobile operating system, provided mapping services and cloud computing applications, launched its own hardware, and prepared it to enter the wearable device market. However, no matter how varied and rich these products are, they are all about the one thing, the root of Google: online searching.

1998–2001: Focus on search

In its early years, Google.com was simply one with extreme iconic images: a colorful Google logo, a long text box in the middle of the screen, a button to execute. One button for searching and the other button are “I’m feeling lucky” to lead users to a random Google site. By May 2000, Google added ten additional languages to Google.com , including French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish, etc. This is one of the milestones in Google’s journey into the world. Google.com is available in over 150 languages (Scott 2008 ; Lee 2017 ).

2001–2007: Interface card

A very important event with Google around this time was the sale of shares to the public (IPO). In October 2003, Microsoft heard news of the IPO, so it quickly approached Google to discuss a buyout or business deal. Nevertheless, that intention was not materialized. In 2004, it was also the time when Google held a market share of 84.7% globally through collaboration with major Internet companies, such as Yahoo, AOL, and CNN. By February 2004, Yahoo stopped working with Google and separately stood out for engine search. This has led Google to lose some market share, but it has shown the importance and distinctness of Google. Nowadays, the term “Google” has been used as a verb just by visiting Google.com and doing an online search (Smith 2010 ). Not stopping at the homepage search, Google’s interface tag began to be brought to Gmail and Calendar with the links at the top of the page. Google homepage itself continues to use this style.

In 2006, Google also made an important acquisition to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion (Burgess and Green 2013 ). However, the company decided to keep YouTube as a separate brand and not to include it in Google Video search. Thanks to the backing of an Internet industry giant, YouTube has grown to become the world’s largest online video sharing service (Cha et al. 2007 ).

2007–2012: Navigation bar, Google menu, Google now

Google began to deploy a new navigation bar located at the edge of the screen. It includes links to a place where to look for photos, videos, news, maps, as well as buttons to switch to Gmail, Calendar, and other services developed by the company. In the upper left corner, Google added a box displaying Google + notifications and user accounts’ image. Google Now not only appeared on Android and it’s also brought to Chrome on a computer as well as iOS. All have the same operating principle, and the interface card still appears as Android it is.

2013–2014: Simplified interface

Google has moved all of the icons that lead to its other applications and services to an App Drawer button in the upper right hand, at the corner of the screen. In addition, Google.com also supports better voice search through the Chrome browser. Google has experimented with other markets, such as radio and print publications, and in selling advertisements from its advertisers within offline newspapers and magazines. As of November 2014, Google operates over 70 offices over 40 countries (Jarvis 2011 ; Vise 2007 ).

2014–2017: Chrome development and facing challenges

In 2015, Google would turn HTTPS into the default. The better website is, the more users will trust search engine. In 2016, Google announced Android version 7, introduced a new VR platform called Daydream, and its new virtual assistant, Google Assistant.

Most of Google’s revenue comes from advertising (Rosenberg 2016 ). However, this “golden” business is entering a difficult period with many warning signs of its future. Google Search is the dominant strength of Google and bringing great revenue for the company. Nonetheless, when Amazon surpassed Google to become the world’s leading product in the search engine in last December, this advantage began to wobble. This is considered a fatal blow to Google when iOS devices account for 75% of their mobile advertising revenue (Rosenberg 2016 ).

By 2016, the number of people installing software to block ads on phones has increased 102% from 2015. Figure  1 illustrates that by the year’s end, about 16% of smart phone users around the world blocked their ads whilst surfing the web. These were also two groups having the most time on the Internet, high-earners and young people; however, these people have disliked ads (see Fig. 1 ).

Figure  2 shows the young people have the highest ad blocking rates. It is drawing a gloomy picture for the sustainable development of the online advertising industry in general and Google in particular. Therefore, in early 2017, Google has strategies to build an ad blocking tool, built into the Chrome browser. This tool allows users to access ads that have passed the “Coalition for Better Ads” filter so as to limit the sense of discomfort (see Fig. 2 ).

For the company impact, the history shows that speedy development of Google creates both economic and social impacts to followers in a new way of people connection (Savitz 2013 ). In this modern world, it seems that people cannot spend a day without searching any information in Google (Chen et al. 2014 ; Fast and Campbell 2004 ), a tool serves human information seeking needs. Even though when addressing this paper, it is also in need the information from Google search and uses it as a supporting tool. Nobody can deny the convenience of Google as a fast and easy way to search (Schalkwyk et al. 2010 ; Jones 2001 ; Langville and Meyer 2011 ).

Research question and methodology

In order to get the most comprehensive data and information for this case analysis, a number of methods are used, including:

Research data and collect information were mostly from the Harvard Study (Project Oxygen), which has been selected because it is related to the purpose of our study.

Data collection and analysis has been taken from Google Scholar and various websites related researches. We look at the history of appearance, development, and recognize the impacts of this company, as well as the challenges and the way the Board of Directors measures the abilities of their manager when the problem is found.

Analyzing: It was begun by considering expectations from the Harvard Study. Subsequently, considering the smaller organization (Zappos) in comparison of how its cultures and subcultures are accessed as well. Since then, the paper has clarified the management problem that Google and Zappos confront and deal with it so as to help other businesses apply this theoretical practice and achieve its goal beyond expectations.

In our paper, we mainly use the inductive method approach by compiling and describing the other authors’ theories of corporate culture, especially Google and Zappos in merging and comparing, analyzing them and making our own results.

From the aspects of the research, the questions are suggested as below:

What is the most instrumental element found from the Harvard study?

Is there any difference and similarity between a huge company and a smaller enterprise in perspective of culture and subculture?

What makes Google different from others, the dominant cultures as well as subcultures existing? How do leadership behaviors impact on the organizational culture?

How organizational culture impacts on business achievements?

The Harvard study

Project oxygen summary.

This project began in 2009 known as “the manager project” with the People and Innovation Lab (PiLab) team researching questions, which helped the employee of Google become a better manager. The case study was conducted by Garvin (2013) about a behavior measurement to Google’s manager, why managers matter and what the best manager s do. In early days of Google, there are not many managers. In a flat structure, most employees are engineers and technical experts. In fact, in 2002 a few hundred engineers reported to only four managers. But over time and out of necessity, the number of managers increased. Then, in 2009, people and team culture at Google noticed a disturbing trend. Exit interview data cited low satisfaction with their manager as a reason for leaving Google. Because Google has accessed so much online data, Google’s statisticians are asked to analyze and identify the top attributes of a good manager mentioned with an unsolved question: “Do managers matter?” It always concerns all stakeholders at Google and requires a data-based survey project called Project Oxygen to clarify employees’ concern, to measure key management behaviors and cultivate staff through communication and training (Bryant 2011 ; Garvin et al. 2013 ). Research −1 Exit Interviews, ratings, and semiannual reviews. The purpose is to identify high-scoring managers and low-scoring managers resulted in the former, less turnover on their teams, and its connection (manager quality and employee’s happiness). As for “what the best managers do”, Research-2 is to interview high and low scoring managers and to review their performance. The findings with 8 key behaviors illustrated by the most effective managers.

The Oxygen Project mirrors the managers’ decision-making criteria, respects their needs for rigorous analysis, and makes it a priority to measure impact. In the case study, the findings prove that managers really have mattered. Google, initially, must figure out what the best manager is by asking high and low scoring managers such questions about communication, vision, etc. Its project identifies eight behaviors (Bulygo 2013 ; Garvin et al. 2013 ) of a good manager that considered as quite simple that the best manager at Google should have. In a case of management problem and solution, as well as discussing four- key theoretical concepts, they will be analyzed, including formal organizational training system, how culture influences behavior, the role of “flow” and building capacity for innovation, and the role of a leader and its difference from the manager.

Formal organizational training system to create a different culture: Ethical culture

If the organizational culture represents “how we do things around here,” the ethical culture represents “how we do things around here in relation to ethics and ethical behavior in the organization” (Key 1999 ). Alison Taylor (The Five Levels of an Ethical Culture, 2017) reported five levels of an ethical culture, from an individual, interpersonal, group, intergroup to inter-organizational (Taylor 2017 ). In (Nelson and Treviño 2004 ), ethical culture should be thought of in terms of a multi-system framework included formal and informal systems, which must be aligned to support ethical judgment and action. Leadership is essential to driving the ethical culture from a formal and informal perspective (Schwartz 2013 ; Trevino and Nelson 2011 ). Formally, a leader provides the resources to implement structures and programs that support ethics. More informally, through their own behaviors, leadership is a role model whose actions speak louder than their words, conveying “how we do things around here.” Other formal systems include selection systems, policies and codes, orientation and training programs, performance management systems, authority structures, and formal decision processes. On the informal side are the organization’s role models and heroes, the norms of daily behavior, organizational rituals that support or do not support ethical conduct, the stories people tell about the organization and their implications for conduct, and the language people use, etc. Is it okay to talk about ethics? Or is ethical fading the norm?

The formal and informal training is very important. The ethical context in organizations helps the organizational culture have a tendency to the positive or negative viewpoints (Treviño et al. 1998 ). The leader should focus on providing an understanding of the nature and reasons for the organization’s values and rules, on providing an opportunity for question and challenge values for sincerity/practicality, and on teaching ethical decision-making skills related to encountered issues commonly. The more specific and customized training, the more effective it is likely to be. Google seemed to apply this theory when addressed the Oxygen Project.

How culture influences behavior

Whenever we approach a new organization, there is no doubt that we will try to get more about the culture of that place, the way of thinking, working, as well as behavior. And it is likely that the more diverse culture of a place is, the more difficult for outsiders to assess its culture becomes (Mosakowski 2004 ).

Realizing culture in (Schein 2009 ) including artifacts, espoused valued and shared underlying assumptions. It is easier for outsiders to see the artifacts (visual objects) that a group uses as the symbol for a group; however, it does not express more about the espoused values, as well as tacit assumptions. In (Schein et al. 2010 ), the author stated: “For a culture assessment to be valuable, it must get to the assumptions level. If the client system does not get to assumptions, it cannot explain the discrepancies almost always surface between the espoused values and the observed behavioral artifacts” (Schein et al. 2010 ). Hence, in order to be able to assess other cultures well, it is necessary for us to learn each other’s languages, as well as adapt to a common language. Moreover, we also need to look at the context of working, the solution for shared problems because these will facilitate to understand the culture better.

According to the OCP (Organizational Culture Profile) framework (Saremi and Nejad 2013 ), an organization is with possessing the innovation of culture, flexible and adaptable with fresh ideas, which is figured by flat hierarchy and title. For instance, Gore-Tex is an innovative product of W. L. Gore & Associates Inc., considered as the company has the most impact on its innovative culture (Boudreau and Lakhani 2009 ). Looking at the examples of Fast Company, Genentech Inc., and Google, they also encourage their employees to take challenges or risks by allowing them to take 20% of their time to comprehend the projects of their own (Saremi and Nejad 2013 ). In (Aldrich n.d. ), it is recorded that 25%–55% of employees are fully encouraged and giving a maximum value.

The famous quote by Peter Drucker , “Culture eats strategy for Breakfast” at page 67 has created a lot of interest in (Manning and Bodine 2012 ; Coffman and Sorensen 2013 ; Bock 2015 ). Despite we all know how important culture is, we have successively failed to address it (O'Reilly et al. 1991 ). The organizational research change process from the view of Schein ( 2009 ); it is a fact that whenever an organization has the intention of changing the culture, it really takes time. As we all acknowledge, to build an organizational culture, both leader and subordinate spend most of their time on learning, relearning, experiencing, as well as considering the most appropriate features. Sometimes, some changes are inevitable in terms of economic, political, technological, legal and moral threats, as well as internal discomfort (Kavanagh and Ashkanasy 2006 ; Schein 1983 ). As the case in (Schein 2009 ), when a CEO would like to make an innovation which is proved no effective response, given that he did not get to know well about the tacit implications at the place he has just come. It is illustrated that whatsoever change should need time and a process to happen (Blog 2015 ; Makhlouk and Shevchuk 2008 ). In conclusion, a new culture can be learned (Schein 1984 ), but with an appropriate route and the profits for all stakeholders should be concerned by the change manager (Sathe 1983 ).

It is true that people’s behavior managed by their types of culture (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002 ). All tacit assumptions of insiders are not easy for outsiders to grasp the meaning completely (Schein 2009 ). It is not also an exception at any organization. Google is an example of the multicultural organization coming from various regions of the world, and the national or regional cultures making this multicultural organization with an official culture for the whole company.

In this case, the organizational culture of Google has an influence on the behaviors of manager and employee. In addition, as for such a company specializes in information technology, all engineers prefer to work on everything with data-evidence to get them involved in the meaningful survey about manager (Davenport et al. 2010 ). Eventually, Google discovered 8 good behaviors of manager, which effect to the role of “flow” also (Bulygo 2013 ; Garvin et al. 2013 ).

The role of the “flow” and building capacity for innovation

More and more people are using the term of “patient flow”. This overview describes patient flow and links to theories about flow. Patient flow underpins many improvement tools and techniques. The term “flow” describes the progressive movement of products, information, and people through a sequence of the process. In simple terms, flow is about uninterrupted movement (Nave 2002 ), like driving steadily along the motorway without interruptions or being stuck in a traffic jam. In healthcare, flow is the movement of patients, information or equipment between departments, office groups or organizations as a part of a patient’s care pathway (Bessant and Maher 2009 ). In fact, flow plays a vital role in getting stakeholders involved in working creatively and innovatively (Adams 2005 ; Amabile 1997 ; Forest et al. 2011 ). An effective ethical leader must create flow in work before transfer it to employees for changing the best of their effort to maintain, keep and develop “flow” in an engineering job, which job be easier to get stress. Definitely, Google gets it done very well.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the knowledge from my Master course, a credit of managing culture which helps me to write this paper. The author also gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and suggestions of the reviewers and Associate Professor Khuong- Ho Van, who provided general technical help that all have improved the article.

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Sang Kim Tran

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Tran, S.K. GOOGLE: a reflection of culture, leader, and management. Int J Corporate Soc Responsibility 2 , 10 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40991-017-0021-0

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40991-017-0021-0

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Leadership Case Studies

Here is a sample of three case studies from the book, Leadership Case Studies, that are most instructive and impactful to developing leadership skills.

For the past 30 years, I have conducted seminars and workshops and taught college classes on leadership.

I used a variety of teaching aids including books, articles, case studies, role-plays, and videos.

I recently created a book, Leadership Case Studies that includes some of the case studies and role-plays that I found to be most instructive and impactful.

Here is a sample of three case studies.

Peter Weaver Case Study

Peter Weaver doesn’t like to follow the crowd. He thinks groupthink is a common problem in many organizations. This former director of marketing for a consumer products company believes differences of opinion should be heard and appreciated. As Weaver states, “I have always believed I should speak for what I believe to be true.”

He demonstrated his belief in being direct and candid throughout his career. On one occasion, he was assigned to market Paul’s spaghetti-sauce products. During the brand review, the company president said, “Our spaghetti sauce is losing out to price-cutting competitors. We need to cut our prices!”

Peter found the courage to say he disagreed with the president. He then explained the product line needed more variety and a larger advertising budget. Prices should not be cut. The president accepted Weaver’s reasoning. Later, his supervisor approached him and said, “I wanted to say that, but I just didn’t have the courage to challenge the president.”

On another occasion, the president sent Weaver and 16 other executives to a weeklong seminar on strategic planning. Weaver soon concluded the consultants were off base and going down the wrong path. Between sessions, most of the other executives indicated they didn’t think the consultants were on the right path. The consultants heard about the dissent and dramatically asked participants whether they were in or out. Those who said “Out” had to leave immediately.

As the consultants went around the room, every executive who privately grumbled about the session said “In.” Weaver was fourth from last. When it was his turn, he said “Out” and left the room.

All leaders spend time in reflection and self-examination to identify what they truly believe and value. Their beliefs are tested and fine-tuned over time. True leaders can tell you, without hesitation, what they believe and why. They don’t need a teleprompter to remind them of their core beliefs. And, they find the courage to speak up even when they know others will disagree.

• What leadership traits did Weaver exhibit?
• If you were in Weaver’s shoes, what would you have done?
• Where does courage come from?
• List your three most important values.

Dealing with a Crisis Case Study

Assume you are the VP of Sales and Marketing for a large insurance company. Once a year your company rewards and recognizes the top 100 sales agents by taking them to a luxury resort for a four-day conference. Business presentation meetings are held during the morning. Afternoons are free time. Agents and spouses can choose from an assortment of activities including golf, tennis, boating, fishing, shopping, swimming, etc.

On day 2 at 3:00 p.m., you are at the gym working out on the treadmill, when you see Sue your administrative assistant rushing towards you. She says, “I need to talk to you immediately.”

You get off the treadmill and say, “What’s up?” Sue states, “We’ve had a tragedy. Several agents went boating and swimming at the lake. Randy, our agent from California died while swimming.”

(Background information – Randy is 28 years old. His wife did not come on the trip. She is home in California with their three children).

• Explain what you would communicate to the following people.
• Your Human Resources Department
• The local police
• The attendees at the conference (Would you continue the conference?)
• How will you notify Randy’s wife?
• If Randy’s wife and a few family members want to visit the location of Randy’s death, what would you do?
• What are some “guiding principles” that leaders need to follow in a crisis situation?

 Arsenic and Old Lace Case Study

Review the YouTube video, “ I’ll show them who is boss Arsenic and Old Lace.”   

Background Information

The Vernon Road Bleaching and Dyeing Company is a British lace dyeing business. It was purchased in bankruptcy by the father/son team of Henry and Richard Chaplin. Richard has been acting as “Managing Director” which is the same as a general manager or president of a company.

The company has had 50-to-150 employees with 35-to-100 being shop floor, production employees. The company produces and sells various dyed fabrics to the garment industry.

Gerry Robinson is a consultant who was asked to help transform methods of conducting business to save the company.

Jeff is the factory manager.

• What are Richard’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader?
• What could Richard have done to make the problems of quality and unhappy customers more visible to the workforce?
• What do you think Richard’s top three priorities should be for the next 12 months?
• What could Richard have done to motivate the workforce?
• Evaluate Jeff’s approach and effectiveness as a leader.

The book contains 16 case studies, four role-plays, and six articles. I hope you find some of the content useful and helpful in your efforts to teach leadership.

Click for additional leadership case studies and resources .

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Leadership Behaviors: Delivering Customer and Investor Results

The problem.

A global hotel chain made a major strategy shift to growing by developing stronger relationships and intimacy with targeted customers. This shift was followed by significant investments in reaching out to target customers informing them of the new value proposition through advertising and brand messaging. Since there was not much impact from the advertising campaign, the business senior leadership team invited RBL to help diagnose the problem. Our insight was that, while unintentional, the new brand rhetoric was strongly aimed at customers, but had not been clearly defined or connected to what employees needed to do in order to make the brand real to them. Little investment was made on the employee and leader side to act differently based on the new strategy.  The CHRO challenged her peers to invest equally in employees (including leaders)— informing them of changes, building new skills, and hiring different people that would make sure the promises being made to customers would be experienced when they came to the hotel’s properties.

The Solution

To support this shift and make it show up in ways that employees and external customers would feel, the business leaders, led by the CHRO, commissioned RBL to help them define the new behaviors. The research looked at what behaviors and personality traits were associated with customer outcomes. Financial results, employee, and cultural outcomes were also included in this analysis. 

Using the results of a sophisticated analysis and based on the outcomes they needed to achieve, the client and RBL collaborated to create a results-based leadership model unique to their business. RBL translated that model into a customized 360 assessment the client used to assess all property leaders and provide coaching that helped them identify development priorities that would improve their performance.

The model was also integrated into other people processes.  Learning programs aligned to the model and addressing the most critical (and impactful) needs were rolled out across the organization.  A selection tool to more effectively screen candidates for the right leadership behaviors was developed and has had widespread adoption.  Performance management, succession planning, and long-term incentive programs were revised to include strong elements of “how” results are delivered that aligned with the new leadership behaviors.

The Outcome

This analytical, data-driven approach highlighted a significant difference in financial performance at properties led by leaders who demonstrated a high level of performance in the critical behaviors the research identified.  High performing general managers generated over 3 times the fees than base performing general managers—a potential impact of hundreds of millions of dollars each year as they continue to close the gap.

Equally important, the client was able to establish a clear relationship between leader behavior and demonstration of brand promise—high performing general managers were more successfully making the brand promise real to customers.  As they built the leadership capabilities of the GM population, they had confidence they were improving the realization of the brand promise.

While the evolution of leadership behaviors is ongoing, there are some significant gains.  More than 800 leaders in more than 50 countries have gotten a better understanding of both what behaviors matter for performance and how well they are doing on those behaviors.  Development plans are in place and leaders of leaders are following up and having conversations about how to behave in ways that support the strategy and deliver results for customers...and investors.

While only tangentially related, the process HR used to define leadership behaviors in a data-based way has shifted internal perceptions of the function and seeded new initiatives that are fueling additional growth.

Learn more here about how our evidence-based approach to building leadership capability can help you drive better business results

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