Should I lead? An intrapersonal perspective on the Asian–White leadership gap.

Despite being seen as a “model minority,” Asian Americans remain underrepresented in organizational leadership roles in North America. The existing and limited research on this topic has primarily focused on external barriers to Asians’ advancement (e.g., discrimination); however, little is currently known regarding potential internal barriers that this group may also experience—and why they may arise. Across two cross-sectional survey studies using undergraduate student samples (Study 1: nAsians = 205, nWhites = 290; Study 2: nAsians = 105, nWhites = 176), we consistently found that Asian Canadians reported lower affective motivation to lead and leadership self-efficacy compared to their White Canadian peers. Integrating intrapsychic versus social structural perspectives on group differences in leadership with research on implicit leadership and followership theories to explore potential explanations, these differences appeared to be driven by intrapsychic processes (i.e., personal views of the self) rather than social structural influences (i.e., metastereotypes or how others stereotype one’s racial group); however, both traits typically associated with leaders and followers seem to play a role in this process. Specifically, Asian Canadians had lower self-perceptions on agency-related traits associated with followership (i.e., more conforming), in line with commonly held stereotypes about Asians, and lower self-perceptions on competence-related traits associated w...
Source: Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research