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Social Identity Model of Leadership (SIMOL) is a model by M.A. Hogg which proposes that a leader selected is considered the most ‘prototypical’ and fulfils the group norm (Hogg, van Knippenberg, & Rast III, 2012). The theory utilises prominent concepts from Social Identity Theory (SIT) such as social identity, self-categorisation, prototypicality and self-esteem hypothesis to construct an explanation for leadership selection, how power and influence is exercised as a leader and development of reverential leadership status (Hogg, Social Identity Theory of Leadership, 2001). Opposing theories have arisen criticising and contrasting Hogg’s formulation of leadership identity and how they arise by suggesting other methods.

Theoretical Background

Social Identity Theory (SIT)

The original concept for SIMOL develops from Tajfel and Turner’s work upon social identity. Social Identity Theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979) explains how one perceives and acts within the parameters of a social group, designed by their own perceptions; one categorises others and themselves within arbitrarily designed groups as to seek a sense of identity, positive sense of self by social comparison and positive distinctiveness of their own ‘in-group’ to the ‘out-group’ (Turner & Oakes, 1986). A series of seminal studies conducted by Tajfel found that minimal contact is needed to even socially categorise and positively discriminate against the out-group (Tajfel, 1970); although these studies are highly artificial and do not engage with the practical applications of SIT, studies have replicated the model and applied to more natural settings, finding more evidence towards the theory (Paruzel, Danel, & Maier, 2020).

Self-Categorisation Theory (SCT)

Turner expanded upon Tajfel’s work with Self-Categorisation Theory, examining the nature of our categorisation and the features of it. Utilising the aforementioned mechanisms, Turner posited that when individuals are in a group scenario, and therefore group identity, individuals take on group norms and stereotyped behaviours. By internalising these norms, individuals depersonalise and self-stereotype and, subsequently, become more ingrained in the group and creating a more salient group identity (Turner & Reynolds, Self-Categorization Theory, 2012). This theory has also been subject to many examinations across various perspectives, finding results from social-media-based studies (Mou, Miller, & Fu, 2015) to sports psychology (Van Nguyen, et al., 2016).

Theory

Social Identity Theory of Leadership was developed by Michael A. Hogg in 2001. He suggested that leadership is solely a structural element of being within an in-group and therefore must follow the established structures of SIT: self and group definition arises from a collected, homogenous feature, assimilation develops due to self-categorisation and social comparison develops, seeing individuals as either in-group or out-group members (Hogg, 2001).

Prototypicality

Hogg suggested that due to the lack of singular identity and the perception of each other as a series of features, leaders can be selected due to ‘prototypicality’; a leader should be the pinnacle of intergroup differences and intragroup similarities, a paragon of the group and what features are represented within it (Hogg, van Knippenberg, & Rast III, 2012). A meta-analysis was conducted in 2017 to evaluate how prototypicality predicts leader favourability across a 20 year span, finding that there was a large effect of prototypicality upon leader favourability. The research also determined that there was a much larger effect of leadership trust than leadership effectiveness, reinforcing the idea that SIMOL is does not determine how the leader leads but simply how they are selected (Barreto & Hogg, 2017). This review does offer great insight into leadership selection, but it does have a limited cultural observation along with a small number of studies provided within it.

Salience

Another key facet of SIMOL is salience of identity. This has proven to be key within social identity as research has been found to have a positive relationship with processing of group relevant information, and therefore group identification (Maitner, Mackie, Claypool, & Crisp, 2010). Hogg suggested that applying a prototypical leader not only represents identity salience in a greater fashion but it also allows for quicker accessibility of salience for group members, therefore fortifying group dynamics (Hogg, 2001); he further stated that self-categorisation can occur when identity is salient therefore believing it to be necessary to announce a leader who can create a quickly accessible salient identity for the group. A study was organised to compare leader-member exchange and SIMOL across two studies, measuring salience, leader-member relations, identification, individualism/collectivism and other qualities. The research showed that greater salience in the leader led to greater depersonalisation in members, and therefore greater space for collective group identity, in both studies (Hogg, et al., 2005). However, this research was only in comparison to leader-member exchange theory and did not compare itself to other theories that could provide more challenging in their ideas relative to the aforementioned. One benefit is the cross-cultural span of this, specifically spotlighting individualism/collectivism and acquiring significant findings in both extremes of the continuum.

Social Attraction

Expanding upon the concept of prototypicality, this theory leans on social attraction. Hogg opposes two concepts: ‘social attraction’ is when attraction is based upon perceived prototypicality whilst ‘personal attraction’ are individual preferences, regardless of social identity (Hogg, Social Identity Theory of Leadership, 2001). This social attraction is the driving force in determining a leader, being the mechanism of the key quality of selection. Research was conducted to find that social and personal attraction are very different phenomena and links to group-member prototypicality (Hogg & Hains, 1996) but recent research has found that although social attraction may be beneficial for self-promotion or selection, it does not link much to genuine credibility and can in fact have a negative relationship with it (Edwards & Omilion-Hodges, 2022). However, this recent research only looked at gender-specific social attraction in university presidents and therefore tends to be too niche to generalise to a grand population but it does provide a criticism of the applicability of the social attraction hypothesis, suggesting that there is more to leader selection or even prototypicality.

Application

Business

A study was conducted upon organisation and work engagement in the workplace, through the driving factor of social identity leadership. A large sample of Pakistani workers in different places were found to be more engaged in work through social identity leadership and identified with organisational qualities better. Prototypicality was found to be the greatest empowering factor in leadership, reinforcing Hogg’s theory of leadership (Arshad, Qasim, Farooq, & Rice, 2022). Although it is commonly known that the leader can greatly improve or impair workplace efficiency, this study makes it apparent that SIMOL can not only improve efficiency but also ameliorate workers’ relationship with their work, as they identify with it greater. Unfortunately the work does not compare itself with any forms of leadership and therefore makes it difficult to truly analyse the effectiveness of SIMOL. Other research into leader-member exchange has also found similar results in job satisfaction and identification (Loi, Chan, & Lam, 2013) which diminishes the earlier mentioned findings; this similarity could simply be due to their similar background in SIT and although Hogg suggested that there were experimental differences, there is little practical differences between the two theories. In total, SIMOL does seemingly have an effect upon internal business systems and can be used to improve business relations and efficiency.

Politics

Hogg’s work has also been applied to political scenarios. For example, a study researched leadership acceptance in military leadership in Afghanistan. This case study observed the reasons of why they rejected their first leader and decided to accept the subsequent leader. One factor leant on the troops was the sense of unity provided and team identity; the first leader was rejected due to the ‘black sheep effect’, treating in-group deviance from norms as greater than out-group deviance; the second leader was accepted due to being a greater part of the in-group (Jansen & Delahaij, 2020). In military situations, it seems key to promote unity and create a firm in-group identity: the best way to achieve the aforementioned traits is by having a ‘prototypical’ leader. However, this study is only a case study and is difficult to apply to other contexts, of which have suggested that social identity theory is not the full story of politics; research has found that in political skill moderates the social identity effect upon group-based pride (Hou, Song, Zheng, & Lyu, 2021). There is definitely an argument that SIMOL is the appropriate framework to analyse political and military systems, but the research tends to find mixed results in the degree to which it has an effect upon these systems.

Criticisms and Other Theories

General Criticism

One main criticism of this theory is lack of predictive power regarding general effectiveness. Hogg highlights and predicts how we select a leader but does not offer insight into the necessary effectiveness of the leader. Research has shown that influence can be exerted across identity and identification when more prototypical (van Knippenberg, 2023) but little real-world research has been provided to suggest that this theory is highly effective. Each section and mechanism within the theory has been founded across many studies but, as a holistic theory, results can be mixed. It can be utilised as an effective way to explain leadership and analyse historical leaders and social movements but applying it as a structure as a leader to your group is unexplored and not suggested. SIMOL would need further research on outcome predictors and consequences of using its model.

Another criticism is the difficulty in establishing a causal relationship between the specific interactions within SIMOL and group leadership. A meta-analysis highlighted the lack of research into intergroup contextual effects upon leader-group prototypicality (Steffens, Munt, van Knippenberg, Platow, & Haslam, 2020). This suggests that perhaps leadership and its interactions can be more complex than Hogg posits, as it is distilled into simple factors. This is not to say it is reductionist or wrong in any capacity but suggests that research needs to extend the breadth of the model as there are some interactive facets that remain ambiguous through the lens of SIMOL.

Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory

This theory provides a more specific social account of leadership relations and their effects. Specific relation quality between leader and members are key to the positive of negative effects of leadership: the closer and friendlier to the leader, the more likely to report to them. This creates a hierarchal and structured leadership model, allowing for greater efficiency (Erdogan & Bauer, 2014). This theory utilises Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964) and allows differentiates each individual in the group, as opposed to the homogeny of SIMOL. Aforementioned studies have analysed SIMOL and LMX in comparison, finding mixed results in efficacy but, on its own, research has found positive effects on task and objective performance and negative relationships with counterproductive performance; trust is a large moderator variable in this model as well (Martin, Guillaume, Thomas, Lee, & Epitropaki, 2016). This meta-analysis provides a breadth of insight, providing 262 studies across a range of factors, but researchers noted the lack of theory-guided mechanism research and longitudinal research. Although this study provides an account against SIMOL, LMX is not as long-established and would need to provide a sense of temporal and historical validity to provide a robust argument against Hogg’s work.

In total, Hogg’s work has provided much development and evidence toward a new perspective of leadership. Utilising the fundamentals of Tajfel and Turner’s work, SIMOL promotes prototypicality in a leader; however, the efficacy relations with prototypicality are unclear – opting for explanation for leader selection. Recent research has tilted towards another possible model, based on similar fundamentals, in LMX but more development would be needed to dethrone SIMOL as the most prominent leadership model. LMX has much less research regarding general application than SIMOL – the latter finding much evidence in political and business circles.

Bibliography

Arshad, M., Qasim, N., Farooq, O., & Rice, J. (2022). Empowering leadership and employees' work engagement: a social identity theory perspective. Management Decision, 60(5), 1218-1236.

Barreto, N. B., & Hogg, M. A. (2017). Evaluation of and support for group prototypical leaders: a meta-analysis of twenty years of empirical research. Social Influence, 12(1), 41-55.

Edwards, A. L., & Omilion-Hodges, L. M. (2022). Managing perceptions of credibility and social attraction: expectations of university presidents on Twitter. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 1-19.

Erdogan, B., & Bauer, T. N. (2014). Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory: The Relational Approach to Leadership. In D. V. Day, The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations (pp. 407-423). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hogg, M. A. (2001). Social Identity Theory of Leadership. Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 184-200.

Hogg, M. A., & Hains, S. C. (1996). Intergroup relations and group solidarity: Effects of group identification and social beliefs on depersonalized attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 295-309.

Hogg, M. A., Martin, R., Epitropaki, O., Mankad, A., Svensson, A., & Weeden, K. (2005). Effective Leadership in Salient Groups: Revisiting Leader-Member Exchange Theory From the Perspective of the Social Identity Theory of Leadership. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 859-1005.

Hogg, M. A., van Knippenberg, D., & Rast III, D. E. (2012). The social identity theory of leadership: Theoretical origins, research findings, and conceptual developments. European Review of Social Psychology, 258-304.

Hou, L., Song, L. J., Zheng, G., & Lyu, B. (2021). Linking Identity Leadership and Team Performance: The Role of Group-Based Pride and Leader Political Skill. Frontiers in Psychology, 12.

Jansen, M. M., & Delahaij, R. (2020). Leadership Acceptance Through the Lens of Social Identity Theory: A Case Study of Military Leadership in Afghanistan. Armed Forces and Society, 657-676.

Loi, R., Chan, K. W., & Lam, L. W. (2013). Leader–member exchange, organizational identification, and job satisfaction: A social identity perspective. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 42-61.

Maitner, A. T., Mackie, D. M., Claypool, H. M., & Crisp, R. J. (2010). Identity salience moderates processing of group-relevant information. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 441-444.

Martin, R., Guillaume, Y., Thomas, G., Lee, A., & Epitropaki, O. (2016). Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) and Performance: A Meta-Analytic Review. Personnel Psychology, 67-121.

Mols, F., Haslam, A., Platow, M. J., Reicher, S. D., & Steffens, N. K. (2023). The Social Identity Approach to Political Leadership. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, J. S. Levy, & J. Jerit, The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (pp. 804-842). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mou, Y., Miller, M., & Fu, H. (2015). Evaluating a target on social media: From the self-categorization perspective. Computers in Human Behaviour, 451-459.

Paruzel, A., Danel, M., & Maier, G. W. (2020). Scrutinizing Social Identity Theory in Corporate Social Responsibility: An Experimental Investigation. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.

Steffens, N. K., Munt, K. A., van Knippenberg, D., Platow, M. J., & Haslam, S. A. (2020). Advancing the social identity theory of leadership: a meta-analytic review of leader group prototypicality. Organisational Psychology Review, 3-93.

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Turner, J. C., & Reynolds, K. J. (2012). Self-Categorization Theory. In J. C. Turner, & K. J. Reynolds, Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

van Knippenberg, D. (2023). Developing the social identity theory of leadership: Leader agency in leader group prototypicality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(4).

Van Nguyen, H., Huang, H.-C., Wong, M.-K., Lu, J., Huang, W.-F., & Teng, C.-I. (2016). Double-edged sword: The effect of exergaming on other forms of exercise; a randomized controlled trial using the self-categorization theory. Computers in Human Behaviour, 590-593.