Do leaders’ hierarchical perceptions matter? A social dominance theory perspective of empowering leadership, abusive supervision, and team performance

Leaders typically operate within an organizational structure that places them in a hierarchically superior position over subordinates. Despite this ubiquitous arrangement, there has been little attention on leaders’ overall beliefs about hierarchical relationships (i.e. leaders’ beliefs concerning acceptable formal and informal role differentiation between managers and subordinates in organizations) and how these beliefs affect leader behavior and team functioning. In this study, I explored the effects of leaders’ social dominance orientation and power distance orientation on their empowering leadership and abusive supervision behaviors directed toward their teams. To test my hypotheses, I conducted a multi-source survey data collection with 12 outpatient physical therapy organizations, which resulted in a final sample of 312 employees across 52 teams. I found that a combination of leader and team factors interacted with leaders’ hierarchical orientations to impact empowering leadership and abusive supervision. These factors included teams’ power distance orientation, leader self-efficacy, leader gender, and the gender composition of the subordinate teams. Taken together, the research contributes to our understanding of leadership behavior by integrating social dominance theory with leadership theory, and offers a number of promising avenues for future theoretical development and research.

Committee Chair: Jonathan C. Ziegert, PhD Associate Professor of Management, OB Committee Member: Jeffrey H. Greenhaus, PhD William A. Mackie Chair, Professor of Management, OB Committee Member: Mary B. Mawritz, PhD Assistant Professor of Management, OB Committee Member: Sucheta Nadkarni, Ph.D. Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management, University of Cambridge Committee Member: Ronald F. Piccolo, Ph.D. Cornell Professor of Management, Rollins College