Who gets to lead the multinational team? An updated status characteristics perspective
研究跨国团队中非正式领导如何产生,发现语言和国籍影响领导地位,但核心自我评价能增强或补偿这些影响,对管理者和研究者有参考价值。
This article examines the emergence of informal leadership in multinational teams. Building on and extending status characteristics theory, the article proposes and tests a model that describes how global inequalities reproduce in multinational teams, and accounts for who gets to lead these teams. It is argued that an individual’s language (i.e. a specific status characteristic) and nationality (i.e. a diffuse status characteristic) predict deference received from peers (i.e. leadership status). However, individuals enhance and/or compensate for the effects of their status characteristics by virtue of their core self-evaluations. A study of over 230 individuals from 46 nationalities working in 36 self-managing teams generally supports the expected main and moderation effects. Individual core self-evaluations enhance an otherwise weak effect of English proficiency, but compensate for low levels of national development. The article concludes with implications for practice, and linking micro- and macro-level theories of status and global inequality.