Voting for organizational leaders

Although not thought of as being a traditional occurrence in organizations, sometimes organizational leaders emerge through the means of voting and democratic process rather than through superior-choice. This paper serves to combine information from political science literature in addition to more conventional I/O topics, such as peer ratings of promotability, 360-degree feedback, and leader emergence. Two studies were conducted: one experiment and one survey. Study 1 entailed showing participants video of a candidate for the office of president of a campus inter-Greek council. Participants then indicated their preference for a candidate by rating how likely they would be to vote for this person and how electable they believe the person is. Upward influence tactic, but not gender, impacted candidate preference. Further, exploratory analysis revealed that female ingratiators were preferred over male ingratiators. Study 2 surveyed sorority and fraternity members about a number of 'candidate characteristics' to see which of these are related to (and in what way they are related to) likelihood to vote for a candidate and perception of that candidate's electability. Voters preferred candidates with whom they have a good relationship, and who are honest, have access to resources, and recognize others' needs. However, tenure, gender, and interactions of tenure with relationship quality, gender with honesty, and access to resources with recognizing needs, were all unrelated to preference for candidates. In addition, exploratory analysis revealed two things: first, women participants perceived more access to resources in candidates than male participants did; and second, perceived verbal participation was a good predictor of candidate preference.