Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb 25:12:635751.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635751. eCollection 2021.

The Bottleneck Metaphor of Leadership Culture: How Shared Understandings About Leadership Develop in Groups and Impede Diversity and Effectiveness of Leaders

Muaz Özcan  1
Affiliations

The Bottleneck Metaphor of Leadership Culture: How Shared Understandings About Leadership Develop in Groups and Impede Diversity and Effectiveness of Leaders

Muaz Özcan. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

There are two big problems related to leadership today: unequal representation and high failure rates among leaders. This conceptual paper argues that commonly shared values, assumptions, and beliefs about leadership, i.e., universal leadership culture, are the common cause of both problems. After the concepts and levels related to leadership culture were explained, we introduce a multilevel, multi-actor process model named the bottleneck metaphor of leadership culture. This metaphor describes how leadership cultures are co-constructed by multiple actors based on their involvement in leader selection and reproduce themselves in groups over time based on emergent leaders' characteristics. Next, a diagnostic tool called "the leadership mirror" is proposed for organizations that want to assess their leadership culture's current state as a starting point for further interventions. Specific suggestions are made for various actors, ranging from individuals to organizations, for their possible roles in preventing undesired leadership cultures.

Keywords: bottleneck effects; cultural change; diversity in leadership; leadership crisis; leadership emergence; leadership metaphors; organizational culture and climate.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The different levels of leadership cultures and climates.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of how a given group's leadership culture acts as a recursive bottleneck decreasing the diversity that exists in the group's leadership positions over time.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aasland M. S., Skogstad A., Notelaers G., Nielsen M. B., Einarsen S. (2010). The prevalence of destructive leadership behavior. Br. J. Manag. 21, 438–452. 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2009.00672.x - DOI
    1. Abadjian V. (2010). Kakistocracy or the true story of what happened in the post-Soviet area. J. Eurasian Stud. 1, 153–163. 10.1016/j.euras.2010.04.009 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Acton B. P., Foti R. J., Lord R. G., Gladfelter J. A. (2019). Putting emergence back in leadership emergence: a dynamic, multi-level, process-oriented framework. Leadership Quart. 30, 145–164. 10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.002 - DOI
    1. Adams K. A., Crosby A. (2017). The 2016 election, authoritarian childrearing, and our suicidal trajectory. J. Psychohist. 45, 2–11.
    1. Al Ariss A., Özbilgin M., Tatli A., April K. (2014). Tackling Whiteness in organizations and management. J. Managerial Psychol. 29, 362–369. 10.1108/JMP-10-2013-0331 - DOI

LinkOut - more resources