About Us
The International Network of Identity, Cognition and Leadership Studies, represents a group of scholars who have shared interests in these research topics, with the unified goal of advancing the field of leadership studies. As an international and multidisciplinary group, we are made up of individuals from a multitude of backgrounds including management, economics, psychology, neuroscience, statistics, and other fields. Members of our network are also located across world, with individuals currently located across 15+ countries. However, while our network is diverse, we share a set of core values that drive our pursuit to advance the study of leadership:
Interdisciplinary collaboration
Our network believes that to advance the study of leadership, we must continuously seek to use ideas and methodologies from a diverse set of disciplines. One way we encourage this is by inviting scholars from a large range of disciplines and approaches. As shown in the events sections of the website (add hyperlink), we hold network meetings during the year where we invite scholars from around the world together to discuss the current status of leadership research and how we can best help advance the study of leadership in the future.
Uniting Social & Cognitive Processes
A key component of our network is incorporating approaches that utilize both the social and cognitive phenomena that drive leadership processes. Notably, much of the work produced by members of our network readily incorporates cognitive processes into the study of leadership and identity. This includes acknowledging the role of memory in leadership ratings, adopting a bottom-up approach to leadership identity invention, and other related topics. In adopting this approach, we seek to benefit from the great advances in the cognitive sciences, as well as work with the system dynamics literature, which readily acknowledges the importance of both bottom-up and top-down processes in creating multilevel processes such as leadership. See our current projects (hyperlink) for more info.
Updating existing measurement approaches
As a network, we believe that a key aspect of advancing leadership research is to evaluate and improve existing measurement approaches. Historically, the field of leadership has relied on self-reported surveys that often rely on generalized impressions of leaders, followed by factor analysis to obtain evidence of quality measurment. Our network seeks to build on these approaches by adopting methods that challenge existing assumptions about leadership measurement. This includes (1) our work adopting both implicit and explicit techniques for studying leadership and identity phenomena, (2) our work studying the role of episodic and semantic memory in leadership ratings, and (3) our work using a GRID approach to studying leader and follower identity dynamics. See our current projects (hyperlink) for more info.
More on us coming soon!
Adopting cutting edge research methods & modeling approaches
With recent technological advancements, in addition to advancements in predictive modeling, many of our network of scholars are readily incorporating cutting edge research methods and statistical modeling into the study of leadership. This focus has generally come in two areas. First, multiple projects within our group utilize computational modeling and simulation to develop and test underlying conceptual assumptions about leadership phenomena. This includes work studying how newly formed groups develop a shared leadership identity using an agent-based modeling approach. Second, our network has recently begun to utilize recent advancements in predictive modeling and machine learning to help answer new questions about leadership. This includes using predictive text analysis to classify leadership items, as well as causal random forest analysis to better understand the effectiveness of leadership interventions.
Uniting research and practice of leadership
One mission of our leadership network is to put the ideas generated from research into practice. As such, we are very thankful for the partners of our research network who have supported our work and participated as a central part of the network. This includes the U.S. Army Research Institute, the Center for Creative Leadership, as well as many other important partners across the world. Not only our most of our projects and meetings supported by outside partners, but we use these meetings with those in applied organizations to update our current research plans and objectives.