When Your Leader Just Does Not Make Any Sense: Conceptualizing Inconsistent Leadership

Jan Schilling (), Birgit Schyns () and Daniel May ()
Additional contact information
Jan Schilling: University of Applied Administrative Sciences
Birgit Schyns: NEOMA Business School
Daniel May: Free University of Berlin

Journal of Business Ethics, 2023, vol. 185, issue 1, No 11, 209-221

Abstract: Abstract Perceived consistency, and even more so inconsistency of behavior is an important factor in the evaluation of other people. This is especially true for leaders, whose behavior is typically closely monitored and interpreted by their followers. While perceived consistency is typically rewarded, behaving inconsistently as a leader can be ethically problematic, as it violates fundamental ethical principles. To theoretically capture how followers interpret and react to unexpected, ambiguous and/or confusing leader behavior, we introduce the concept of inconsistent leadership. We define this new concept as a process in which over a longer period of time the activities, experiences, and/or relationships of an individual or the members of a group are repeatedly influenced by their leader in a way that followers cannot make sense of in light of prior behavior or traits of that leader. We propose that a sensemaking process is triggered in followers whenever they register salient/important leader behavior that is novel, ambiguous and/or confusing when compared to behavioral expectations for that leader. Ascriptions of inconsistent leadership arise when followers’ sensemaking strategies temporarily or permanently fail to resolve the behavior–expectation discrepancy. Moreover, we clarify the relationships to other leadership concepts and delineate relevant follower and environmental influences on the sensemaking process. In doing so, we offer a clear conceptualization of inconsistent leadership and provide a solid base for future research.

Keywords: Leadership; Leader inconsistency; Inconsistent leadership; Follower sensemaking; Leader unethicality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-022-05119-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:185:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-022-05119-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-022-05119-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().