An Examination of Social Persuasion's Influence on Generalized Leader Efficacy

This dissertation examined social persuasion's influence on leader efficacy. Hannah, Avolio, Luthans, and Harms (2008) proposed that the levels of leadership self-efficacy held by a leader are critical in promoting heightened levels of leader adaptability, positivity, and performance. Consequently, Hannah et al. proposed a framework for leader and leadership efficacy. Included in the model was a dyadic behaviors linkage between leader efficacy and follower efficacy. The linkage reflects Bandura's (1997) conception of self-efficacy being subject to influence by four methods, one of which is social persuasion. Scholars have conducted little empirical work to validate Hannah et al.'s framework for influencing leader efficacy. However, this dissertation empirically tested Hannah et al.'s framework by crafting an experiment designed to isolate social persuasion's influence on Generalized Leader Efficacy (GLE). GLE is conceptualized as a dynamic self-concept based structure representing leaders' (and followers') level of efficacy for self-regulation, action and means across a span of leader tasks. Drawing on self efficacy, leader efficacy and mentorship literatures, a model and methodology were proposed to examine the effect of social persuasion on GLE.