Social Identity Theory of Leadership is a theory started by Dr. Michael A. Hogg. The theory's general premise is that leaders can be identified by a specific social group rather than by the leader. This gives the leader power to push through the agenda of the group with his approval and achieve a result by appealing to the group's needs.
Early History
In the book "The Art of Followership," Riggio, Chaleff, and Lipman-Blumen talk about how the concept of Social Identity Theory came about in the 1970s. The theory discusses identifying oneself based on the social group and perceived shared values. Terms such as African-American and Native American help to highlight the theory.
Theory of Leadership
Dr. Hogg looked at the process of how these types of groups determined how leaders are created. In his book "Social Identity and Social Cognition," written with Dominic Abrams, he talks about initial studies of self-esteem and social identity and how many studies were done to come up with the idea of self-categorization. He disagrees with that theory, and in his book "Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts," comes up with his own theory called "ingroup prototypicality," which describes how groups view themselves and the issues they feel are important. Hoag came up with the theory that leadership grows from those feelings and works on defining its leaders rather than having someone else try to establish himself as the leader of a group.
Charisma and Leadership
In the book "Advances in Experimental Social Psychology," written by Mark Hanna, he proposes there's an interesting relationship between charisma and leadership that can be explained by the theory. The correlation is that a potential leader's charisma is what helps push that person into the leadership position. Then the person uses that same charisma to manipulate the group to support the leader's goals.
Political Leaders
In the book, "The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership," authors George R. Goethals and Georgia Jones Sorenso use two examples of politicians who they believe prove the theory. The first example is Margaret Thatcher, who they say "accentuated her nationalistic prototype of Britain, pilloried deviant groups within Britain who did not represent her prototype, and demonized the Argentinian outgroup" during the time of the Falkland Islands invasion. They use George W. Bush as an example by examining how he was able to promote the war with Iraq by lobbying directly to his specific group in "vowing to rid the world of evil-doers."
Social Leader
One example that would highlight Hogg's theory more clearly would be the ascension of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As mentioned in the book, "Weaving Color Lines" by Sonia Ospina, Dr. King was originally a reluctant leader, someone content being a small-town Baptist preacher, but was drawn into leadership not only because of social issues but also by the group perception that he was the one who represented the group's values in entirety and could thus work toward improving the group's lot.
