Social Networks 31 (2009) 255–261 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Social Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socnet You are who remembers you. Detecting leadership through accuracy of recall Francesca Grippa a,∗ , Peter A. Gloor b a eBusiness Management Section S.S. ISUFI, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy b MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Cambridge, MA, USA article info Keywords: Interpersonal communication Internet-based surveys Network topology Knowledge networks Leadership abstract We measured interpersonal perception accuracy by focusing on the relationship between actors’ cen- trality and their ability to accurately report their social interactions. We used the network measures of actors’ betweenness centrality and degree centrality to identify the most prominent members by cor- relating ego-perception and alter-perception in a “non-reciprocity” type of misalignment. We found a positive correlation between actors’ centrality and their centrality as assessed by senior management, and a negative correlation between actors’ centrality and their accuracy in recalling interactions. Under- reporting social interactions may represent a third way of measuring the importance of members and finding the most influential actors. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Social scientists have long been interested in understanding what makes some respondents more accurate than others in recall- ing and reporting a social network’s structure (Adams and Moody, 2007). As Bernard et al. stated (1984), “People do not know, with any accuracy, those with whom they communicate”. Other scholars questioned their conclusion by proposing alternate explanations for the ability of informants to recall interaction patterns (Romney and Weller, 1984). Recent and old experimental studies found that indi- viduals do not judge themselves as accurately as they are judged by their friends (Marin, 2004; Kumbasar et al., 1994; Cogan et al., 1915). A more recent study investigated how an individual’s position in the formal and informal social structure of the organization, along with his or her personality traits, represents an important determi- nant of the variability in people’s accuracy in identifying the social structure (Casciaro, 1998). The main variables used to operational- ize the role of the stable pattern of social relationships influencing accuracy in reporting social network data were work status, the position in the organization’s formal hierarchy, and actors’ central- ity in the organization’s informal networks (Freeman et al., 1987). This study aims to contribute to social network research on interpersonal perception accuracy by focusing on the relationship between an individual’s centrality in an informal social network and his or her ability to accurately perceive communications and social interactions. We used the social network measures of actors’ betweenness centrality and degree centrality to identify the most ∗ Corresponding author at: Incubatore Euromediterraneo, Via per Monteroni snc, 73100, Lecce, Italy. Tel.: +39 0832 297 920. E-mail address: francesca.grippa@ebms.unile.it (F. Grippa). visible and prominent members and find a relationship between an individual’s centrality and his or her ability to accurately perceive how that network is structured. 2. Theoretical background Over the last century, the leadership concept has been stud- ied and conceptualized on many dimensions including individual traits, leader behavior, role relations, follower perceptions, influ- ence over others and on organizational culture (De Souza and Klein, 1995). Traditional theories of leadership, such as transfor- mational, charismatic and visionary, have been criticized as they fail to address the dynamic components of emergent leadership, defined as a social process in which an individual exerts significant influence over other members without the vest of a formal author- ity (Schneider and Goktepe, 1983). Models of emergent or informal leadership have been considered to be a leadership substitute when a formal leader is absent or ineffective. In the theoretical perspective that considers organizations as liv- ing systems, leadership is conceived as “collective self-leadership”, as a process, a group quality distributed between individuals in light of different circumstances and competencies (Youngblood, 1997; Gronn, 2002). Our theoretical framework is based on the formal model of distributed leadership that has been described by various leader- ship scholars as an emergent property of a network of interacting individuals. Leaders emerge based on who is available, who has information and who is trusted to be competent in a specific situ- ation (Wheatley, 2006). Ancona et al. (2007) describe leadership as a set of four capabilities: sensemaking, relating, visioning and inventing. No formal leader can excel in all of these components, while they 0378-8733/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2009.07.001