Given changes in business and society, the romance of leadership theory, which describes a glorification of the perceived influence of leaders on organizational outcomes, is arguably more relevant than at its conception over thirty years ago. This paper presents four studies aimed to replicate Meindl and Ehrlich (1987) early experiment on the romance of leadership, specifically considering the effect of leadership attributions on company evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 are close replications, whereas Studies 3 and 4 provide a conceptual replication drawing from a broader sample in age and work experience and include additional experimental conditions. These conditions vary the gender of the leader and including both success and failure situations, as well as including additional outcomes variables of participants’ behavioral intentions to support, invest, seek employment, or purchase from the company. Taken together, these studies do not support Meindl and Ehrlich’s findings that organizations are viewed more favorably when such outcomes are attributed to leadership. We discuss implications for the romance of leadership theory.

鉴于商业和社会的变化，领导力理论的浪漫主义描述了领导者对组织结果的影响力的颂扬，可以说比三十多年前的概念更有意义。本文介绍了四项研究，旨在复制 Meindl 和 Ehrlich（1987）关于领导浪漫的早期实验，特别考虑领导归因对公司评估的影响。研究 1 和 2 是密切重复，而研究 3 和 4 提供了从更广泛的年龄和工作经验样本中提取的概念性重复，并包括其他实验条件。这些条件因领导者的性别而异，包括成功和失败的情况，以及参与者行为意图支持的其他结果变量，投资、求职或从公司购买。总而言之，这些研究并不支持梅因德尔和埃利希的研究结果，即当这些结果归因于领导力时，组织会受到更有利的评价。我们讨论了领导力理论的浪漫含义。