Dominance and Prestige: The Dual Strategies of Influence and their Impact on Reputational Spread

Abstract: Reputation is at the core of social capital for leaders, whose ability to effectively influence others may be enhanced or detracted by their reputation. Drawing on the dual strategies theory, we examine how the dominance and prestige orientation of leaders determine their reputational spread. We test our predictions across three studies (n = 1,157). In an ecologically valid context, we demonstrate that athletes’ perceptions of their captains’ dominance (vs. prestige) predict both the extent to which athletes directly spread information and breadth of spread across the broader community (S1). We replicate those findings with a sample of employees who report the frequency of which they discuss their supervisors (S2). We then demonstrate that dominance and prestige of the leader (differentially) predict followers’ intent to spread neutral, positive, and negative information (S3). We highlight the implications of our findings for understanding reputational spread, leader influence, and social exchange processes in groups.

Keywords: reputation, dominance, prestige, multilevel