Dear Colleagues:
We are preparing a proposal for a Presenter Symposium entitled "Evolutionary Leadership Theory: Theoretical and Empirical Advancements from Management and Organization Research" for the Academy of Management Annual Meeting to be held on August 4-8, 2023, in Boston. We collaborate with Prof. Mark van Vugt (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), who serves as the discussant to contribute to the symposium.
This symposium aims to shed light on the current state of evolutionary leadership theory (ELT), and investigate its emerging evidence and insights applied to management and organization research. The evolutionary psychology approach to leadership, inspired by insights from evolutionary biology and anthropology, argues that humans possess specialized psychological mechanisms for solving coordination problems and organizing group activities through leader-follower influence processes (van Vugt & Ronay, 2014). ELT provides a novel and integrative framework for comprehending the origins and functions of effective leadership, particularly in the context of natural history, adaptation, genetic and cultural evolution (e.g., van Vugt & Ahuja, 2010; van Vugt & von Rueden, 2020). A challenge for ELT is whether it is able to account for and enhance our understanding of influence dynamics in rapidly changing, modern, complex organizations. By presenting and discussing the core ideas of this theory, including the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis, the dominance-prestige model (e.g., van Vugt & Smith, 2019), evolved cognitive leader prototypes, human-centric organizational design (e.g., Narayanan et al., 2021; van Vugt, 2017), gender and leadership (e.g., Smith et al., 2021), and cultural evolution models of leadership (e.g., Lonati, 2020), we aim to shed more light on the relevance of ELT for understanding organizational behavior and management.
We would like to invite you to contribute to our symposium. If you are interested in having your relevant work included in this symposium, please let us know by sending a short abstract with 300-500 to j.shi@vu.nl by December 16th, 2022. Please note that the updated deadline for AOM final submissions is January 10th, 2023.
References
Lonati, S. (2020). What explains cultural differences in leadership styles? On the agricultural origins of participative and directive leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(2), 101305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.07.003
Narayanan, J., Puranam, P., & van Vugt, M. (2021). Human Centric Organization Design: A Perspective from Evolutionary Psychology.
Smith, J. E., von Rueden, C. R., van Vugt, M., Fichtel, C., & Kappeler, P. M. (2021). An evolutionary explanation for the female leadership paradox. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 468.
van Vugt, M. (2017). Evolutionary psychology: Theoretical foundations for the study of organizations. Journal of Organization Design, 6(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-017-0019-9
van Vugt, M., & Ahuja, A. (2010). Selected: Why some people lead, why others follow, and why it matters. Profile Books.
van Vugt, M., & Ronay, R. (2014). The evolutionary psychology of leadership. Organizational Psychology Review, 4(1), 74–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386613493635
van Vugt, M., & Smith, J. E. (2019). A Dual Model of Leadership and Hierarchy: Evolutionary Synthesis. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(11), 952–967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.09.004
van Vugt, M., & von Rueden, C. R. (2020). From genes to minds to cultures: Evolutionary approaches to leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 31(2), 101404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101404
We look forward to receiving your abstract by December 16th.
Jian Shi & Shirley Xiaotian Sheng
Organizational Psychology
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Jian Shi
Doctoral Student
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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