Abstract Leadership roles are complex, creating an environment where leaders are likely to make mistakes that result in negative outcomes. We shift the conversation in the literature from examining the effectiveness of mistake responses toward exploring why leaders use different mistake recovery methods. We employ an online experimental method to distinguish between task and relationship mistakes for leaders and suggest that different attributions are made for these two types of mistakes (Study 1). We found that task mistakes are viewed by leaders as more specific and less personal, and that relationship mistakes are viewed as more global, describing the leader’s stable characteristics rather than a specific event. From these findings, we predict that leaders are more likely to apologize for task mistakes and are more likely to justify their relationship mistakes rather than admit wrongdoing for them. We find support for these predictions using a mixed methods approach, employing a laboratory experiment (Study 2) and a critical incident method surveying a panel of leaders (Study 3). As such, this paper extends our understanding of the mistake recovery process for leaders by demonstrating that 1) leaders’ relationship mistakes are viewed as more globally representative of the leader than task mistakes, and 2) leaders are more likely to apologize for task mistakes but more likely to justify relationship mistakes. Relational and task mistakes, however, were not found to be different in regard to their ambiguity or the extent to which they were viewed as a mistake.

中文翻译：

---

道歉或辩解：领导对任务和关系错误的回应

摘要 领导角色是复杂的，在这种环境中，领导者可能会犯错，从而导致负面结果。我们将文献中的对话从检查错误反应的有效性转向探索为什么领导者使用不同的错误恢复方法。我们采用在线实验方法来区分领导者的任务和关系错误，并建议对这两种类型的错误进行不同的归因（研究 1）。我们发现，领导者认为任务错误更具体且不那么个人化，而关系错误被认为更具有全局性，描述了领导者的稳定特征而不是特定事件。从这些发现中，我们预测，领导者更有可能为任务错误道歉，更有可能为他们的关系错误辩解，而不是为他们承认错误。我们使用混合方法，采用实验室实验（研究 2）和对领导小组进行调查的关键事件方法（研究 3）找到对这些预测的支持。因此，本文扩展了我们对领导者错误恢复过程的理解，证明 1) 领导者的关系错误比任务错误更能代表领导者，2) 领导者更可能为任务错误道歉，但更有可能为关系错误辩护。然而，关系错误和任务错误在模糊性或被视为错误的程度方面并没有不同。