Formal leadership emergence in new venture teams: The role of emotion regulation and social status

This article investigates how emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression shape formal leadership emergence in egalitarian and homogeneous new venture teams (NVTs). Drawing on expectation states theory, we propose a multilevel model where emotion regulation influences formal leadership emergence indirectly via perceived social status, with team status conflict acting as a boundary condition. A two-wave field study of 243 entrepreneurship students across 49 teams reveals that individual disposition to suppress emotions reduces social status perceptions and indirectly hinders formal leadership emergence, while reappraisal shows no significant effect. However, the indirect effect of suppression on formal leadership emergence is conditional on the team status conflict. The findings advance theory on status cues as a foundation for hierarchical structure and subsequent formal leadership emergence within NVTs. We show that social perceptions are influenced by response-focused emotion regulation strategies, rather than by internal cognitive reappraisal strategies, illustrating the importance of context in understanding the interpersonal consequences of emotion regulation. We also introduce team status conflict as an under-investigated conflict phenomenon in NVT literature.