Despite the growing body of research on informal leadership, the extant literature still has two notable limitations. First, most studies have focused on the antecedents of informal leadership emergence, ignoring the dynamic evolutionary process of informal leadership status (e.g., enhancement, weakening, or even disappearance). Although a limited number of studies have examined the dynamics of informal leadership status, they only explored its positive evolutionary path, neglecting the potential negative evolutionary trajectory. Second, current research has predominantly adopted the informal leader’s perspective, devoting insufficient attention to the behaviors of coworkers as the “grantors” of informal leadership status. The few studies that have considered coworker behaviors only explored their positive responses to informal leadership status, ignoring the potential erosive effects of coworkers. To overcome these limitations, based on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion and from a dynamic research perspective, we propose a dual-path model through which coworker emotions and behaviors exert endowment and erosion effects on the evolution of informal leadership status.
This study conducted a four-wave longitudinal study with repeated measurements and multi-source data to test the proposed theoretical model (N = 311). The data were collected at four time points with an interval of approximately two months between each wave. In the first wave, a round-robin design was used to measure the initial level of informal leadership status of focal members and the coworker inspiration and envy aroused by focal members, while focal members self-reported their coworker exchange relationship. In addition, control variables were collected in the first wave. In the second wave, a round-robin design was continued to measure coworker inspiration and envy induced by focal members, and focal members self-reported coworker helping and social undermining behaviors. In the third wave, focal members self-reported the received coworker helping and social undermining behaviors, and a round-robin design was synchronously used to measure the informal leadership status of focal members at the third stage. Finally, in the fourth wave, a round-robin design was used again to measure the informal leadership status of focal members at the fourth stage. Finally, we constructed a latent change score model to examine the theoretical model using Mplus 8.3.
Empirical results fully supported the proposed theoretical model. The findings of the latent change score model indicated that (1) Changes in coworker inspiration and changes in coworker helping behavior mediated the positive effect of initial level of informal leadership status on changes in subsequent informal leadership status. (2) Changes in coworker envy and changes in coworker social undermining behavior mediated the negative effect of initial level of informal leadership status behavior on changes in subsequent informal leadership status. (3) Coworker exchange relationship significantly moderated the positive indirect effect of initial level of informal leadership status on changes in subsequent informal leadership status, such that the indirect effect was stronger when coworker exchange relationship was higher. (4) Coworker exchange relationship significantly moderated the negative indirect effect of initial level of informal leadership status on changes in subsequent informal leadership status, such that the indirect effect was stronger when coworker exchange relationship was lower. The results indicated that coworker exchange relationship plays a critical moderating role in the dual-path evolution of informal leadership status: when the level of coworker exchange relationship is high, the initial level of informal leadership status is more likely to trigger an increase in coworkers’ inspiration and subsequent helping behaviors, which in turn drives the further enhancement of informal leadership status in subsequent stages. In contrast, when the level of coworker exchange relationship is low, the initial informal leadership status tends to induce a rise in coworkers’ envy emotions and subsequent social undermining behaviors, ultimately leading to the erosion of informal leadership status in the following stages.
This study makes several theoretical contributions to the literature on informal leadership. First, by constructing a dual-path model that elucidates how coworker emotions and behaviors shape the evolution of informal leadership status, this study highlights the critical role of coworkers in the dynamic evolution of informal leadership status, shifting the research perspective from the individual level to the social interaction level. Second, by identifying the negative responses (i.e., envy and social undermining) of coworkers, this study complements the understanding of coworker influences in the dynamics of informal leadership status, thereby revealing the dark-side process in the dynamics of informal leadership status. Third, this study introduces the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion into the dynamics of informal leadership status, revealing the mediating role of changes in coworker emotions in driving changes in coworker behaviors. Fourth, this study empirically verifies that coworker exchange relationship serves as a key boundary condition in the dual-path evolution of informal leadership status.
