Does organizational performance always impact the emergence of Asian American leaders? Using replication to examine how leadership prototypes impact perceptions of fit

Abstract

Leadership categorization theory (LCT) argues that people develop mental models, or prototypes, for ideal leaders based on leaders they have encountered in the past. Organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion scholars have used LCT to explain why White men are consistently overrepresented in leadership positions. Historically, vignette research has found support for this argument, but recent replications of seminal LCT research have reported divergent findings. One potential explanation for these failed replications stems from social desirability effects. This argument states that because participants desire to behave in a socially desirable manner, detecting discrimination in laboratory or vignette research may be more difficult than it was in the past. To examine this explanation, the current research attempts to replicate Gündemir et al.'s (2019) fourth study because this study showed evidence for (no discrimination toward Black leaders) and against (discrimination toward Asian American leaders) social desirability effects. The current research includes a reproducibility study, a literal replication, and two constructive replications. While we were able to successfully reproduce the original findings using the authors’ data, our replication studies using newly collected data did not show evidence of the primary effects reported in the focal study.