Leadership and social change: a contest for influence
Date
2016
Authors
Mohamed, Shaistha
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Social change is fundamentally a process of collective
mobilization—of standing up for what ‘we’ believe in and
against which that violates the values that define who ‘we’
are. Leaders play a central role in mobilizing social change. It
is through a process of social influence that such a ‘we’ is
created, and ultimately, embodied in collective behaviour. Yet,
the role of leadership in mobilizing collective understandings
are missing in this body of work. While social change has been
studied as an intergroup process involving conflict between
‘ingroups’ and ‘outgroups’, leadership analysis has been
limited to the study of characteristics and behaviour of
individual leaders, the focus being on the (intragroup)
relationship between a single leader and a group of followers.
However, to understand the precise processes through which social
change is achieved, an intersection of social change and
leadership that involves both intra- and intergroup dynamics
needs to be considered more explicitly. This thesis will discuss
the nature of leadership as a contest for influence, where
competing visions for the society that ‘we’ want to become
are pitted against one another. Across six studies, we aim to
elucidate when and how leaders for change will be able to
successfully mobilize support for their change proposals in a
contest for influence.
Studies 1 and 2 explored when a leader candidate is successfully
able to mobilize the public for change in competition with an
existing leader defending the status quo. As predicted,
pro-change candidates succeeded in influencing attitude change,
securing votes and mobilizing change over a pro-status quo
incumbent, only when they were aligned with the group’s change
trajectory. When they were ‘non- aligned’ with the group’s
normative trajectory, the incumbent retained their influence.
Studies 3 and 4 examined whether support for a leader change as a
function of contest. As predicted, when a pro-change leader was
aligned with the group’s normative
LEADERSHIP & SOCIAL CHANGE 14 trajectory, they were more
influential and mobilize more support in the presence of
competition than its absence. Instead, when pro-change leaders
were non-aligned with the group’s normative trajectory, they
were more influential and mobilized more support in the absence
than presence of competing alternatives. Studies 5 and 6 explored
support for leaders with innovative change agendas. As predicted,
even when the rhetoric of those leading for change does not align
with norms, if the leader is seen to be one of ‘us’ or acting
for ‘us’, they were successful in securing votes and
mobilising collective action, but also gaining latitude to
suggest change and affect who ‘we’ are.
These findings show that by pitting competing leaders with
different and competing visions for the society, we not only
gained a deeper understanding of
when change can occur but also when change can fail, where the
status quo is maintained or other forms of change prevails. The
capacity of a leader to influence and mobilize followers for
change depends on how well they are able to capture ‘who we
want to be’, and doing so better than the available
alternatives.
Description
Keywords
Leadership, Social identity, Social change, Social influence, Self-categorisation, Self-categorization
Citation
Collections
Source
Type
Thesis (PhD)
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
Downloads
File
Description