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Research on implicit followership theories – that is, individually held assumptions about how followers are and how they should be – is still in its infancy. The few existing approaches differ in what they define as the object of these theories. The authors consider the lack of two aspects in the existing literature: first, the authors consider it important to not only focus on effective but also on ideal followers – which allows investigating follower characteristics that go beyond just performance; and second, the authors demonstrate the importance of the study of characteristics which leaders explicitly see as undesirable for followers (i.e. counter-ideal follower prototypes). The purpose of this paper is to fill these gaps and to extend the literature by introducing the concept of implicit followership theories as assumptions of ideal followers.

The authors first present three studies conducted to develop a scale to measure ideal and counter-ideal follower prototypes, respectively. In a fourth study, the authors apply this scale and compare it to existing measures of implicit followership theories regarding their value for predicting leaders’ follower ratings.

Results show that the newly developed measure is reliable and valid, and comprises a useful tool for future research.

The scale can be used for leadership development programs.

The study is among the few that provide theory and evidence for the relevance of implicit followership theories and is the first to consider the ideal follower in this regard.

This study aims to adopt a follower-centric approach in leadership and ethics research by investigating the impact of implicit followership theories (IFTs) on followers’ constructive resistance to leaders’ unethical requests. Specifically, it analyzes the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior in the relationship between IFTs and constructive resistance. Indeed, this study aims to examine whether followers with more positive beliefs about the characteristics that a follower should have IFTs are more likely to resist unethical leadership and whether this relationship is mediated by organizational citizenship behavior as volunteering acts that exceed the formal job requirements.

The proposed hypotheses were tested using survey data from 273 employees working in a steel manufacturer company in Iran. The variance-based structural equation modeling technique was used to analyze data.

The results show that followership antiprototype negatively affects both follower’s constructive resistance and organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, organizational citizenship behavior mediates the relationship between IFTs and follower’s constructive resistance. Also, both followership prototype and organizational citizenship behavior have a positive effect on follower’s constructive resistance.

Contrary to the dominant leader-centric approach in leadership and organizational ethics research, few studies have examined the role of followers and their characteristics. The results of this study provide important insights into the role of followers in resistance against the leader’s unethical request.

Scholars’ ability to do research based on the notions of “follower” and “followership” is questioned when studying formal leadership in organizations. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Critical comments are presented on the usefulness of the notions of followers and followership.

There are no evidence that followership exists other than some scholars’ perception of something that they have been unable to define. The conclusion is that the inability to define these notions is tantamount to the inability to research them.

The literature review contains no new empirical data.

The paper stresses that study objects which are not theoretically and empirically defined cannot be investigated.

This paper introduces intersectional situatedness to develop inclusive analyses of leadership. Intersectional situatedness recognises the contextual and situated nature of experiences and their interaction with socially constructed categories of difference.

The paper draws on memory work by three feminist academics who situate their understandings and experiences of leadership as part of socio-historical contexts.

Understandings and experiences of leadership are multifaceted and benefit from being examined in their intersectional situatedness. This way, the simultaneity of visible and invisible disadvantage and privilege, which accumulate, shift and get reconfigured across the life course and are based on particular intersectional identity invocations, can be integrated into narratives about leadership.

Interrogating gender-in-leadership adopting an intersectional situatedness helps to advance the field by embedding the recognition, problematisation and theorisation of situated difference as critical to understand leadership, its meaning and its practice in management and organisations.

In embedding intersectional situatedness in the analysis of leadership, more inclusive understandings of leadership are qualified that recognise differences positively and support changing the narratives around the meaning of “leader” and “good leadership”.

Intersectional situatedness helps to identify tangible ways to see how inequalities impact women’s career progression to leadership and enable more nuanced conversations about privilege and disadvantage to advance feminist social justice agendas.

The paper reveals the narrow and restricted understandings of leadership and how this influences who is regarded as a legitimate leader. In addition, it adopts a methodology that is not commonly used in gender-in-leadership research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the structure, implicit attitude and consequences of followers' implicit followership theories in the Chinese cultural context through three studies. Study 1 explores the structure of followers' implicit followership theories. Study 2 examines the implicit attitude of followers towards followers' implicit followership theories. Study 3 verifies the impact of followers' implicit followership theories on the quality of collegial relationships.

The data for study 1 (n = 321) and study 3 (n = 243) were collected through an online self-report questionnaire, and the data for study 2 (n = 30) were collected through the go/no-go association task.

The structure of followers' implicit followership theories includes two dimensions: positive followership prototypes and negative followership prototypes. Followers' implicit attitudes were more likely to match positive followership prototypes than negative followership prototypes. Positive followership prototypes had a significantly positive impact on the quality of collegial relationships, whereas negative followership prototypes had a significantly negative impact on the quality of collegial relationships.

The psychology and behaviour of employees can be better understood by exploring followers' implicit followership theories.

Employees hold a relatively positive implicit attitude towards followers. Therefore, managers should provide positive feedback to improve employees' positive self-cognition so that employees can better serve the organization and better promote its development.

The paper is one of the few studies to explore followers' implicit followership theories in the Chinese cultural context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the (in)congruence of leaders’ and followers’ cognitive characteristics (i.e. pessimism), followers’ identification with a leader and job satisfaction.

Data from 291 working professionals are analyzed, following a series of hierarchical linear modeling and mediated polynomial regression analyses.

Polynomial regression analysis results indicate that alignment (congruence) between leaders’ pessimism and followers’ pessimism, when both are at high levels, is related to low levels of job satisfaction. Further, leader–follower congruence at lower levels of pessimism leads to high levels of job satisfaction through the mediator of followers’ perceived identification with a leader.

By identifying (in)congruence of leader–follower pessimism as a key antecedent, and taking an explanatory mechanism of identification with a leader into account, the authors contribute to disentangling the conceptual paths that underlie the mode by which implicit leadership theory might explain instances of individual job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how employee perceptions of change and leadership might impact work engagement following major organizational change.

Social media invited US workers recently experiencing major organizational change to anonymously complete a web-based survey requesting qualitative and quantitative responses. Values-based coding and thematic analysis were used to explore qualitative data. Hierarchical and linear regression, and bootstrapped mediation were used to analyze quantitative data.

Analysis of qualitative data identified employees’ perceptions of ideal change and ideal leadership were well supported in the change leadership literature. Analysis of quantitative data indicated that employee perceptions of leadership fully mediated the relationship between employee perceptions of change and work engagement.

Study findings imply that how employees perceive change is explained by how they perceive leadership during change, and that these perceptions impact work engagement. Although these findings appear commonsensical, the less than stellar statistics on major organizational change may encourage leaders to become more follower-focused throughout the change process.

The study makes a contribution to an understudied area of organizational research, specifically applied information processing theory. This is the first study that identifies employee perceptions of leadership as a mediator for perceptions of change and work engagement. From a value perspective, leaders as successful change agents recognize significant cost savings in dollars and human welfare by maintaining healthy workplaces with highly engaged workers.

Assumptions regarding the effect of leader self-enhancement values on leader-follower relationships are oversimplified. To advance this conversation, we test non-linear and congruence effects. We hypothesize that leader self-enhancement values (via prestige) have an inverted U-shaped relationship with employee perceptions of leader-member exchange (LMX) and leader interpersonal justice, and that leader-follower incongruence is negatively related to LMX and interpersonal justice.

To evaluate our hypotheses we use hierarchical regression, polynomial regression, and surface plot analysis. Our sample consists of 193 leader-follower dyads from a variety of organizations.

LMX and interpersonal justice increase as leader self-enhancement increases, but begin to decrease at higher levels of self-enhancement values. Additionally, leader-follower self-enhancement incongruence is negatively related to interpersonal justice. Finally, LMX is lowest when leaders are higher than followers in self-enhancement values compared to when followers are higher than leaders.

It is critical to evaluate the level of leader self-enhancement values and/or the joint influence of the follower values (self-enhancement) to fully understand the effect of leader values on follower perceptions of the dyadic relationship. Organizations interested in facilitating high-quality leader-follower relationships should focus on the levels of the values and on mechanisms that facilitate leader-follower value alignment.

This work extends prior research assuming a direct, linear effect of leader self-enhancement values on follower outcomes. To fully understand the influence of leader values it is important to consider curvilinear and congruence effects.

Based on the micro role transition theory (MRTT), the present study aims to explore how leader–follower congruence in psychological capital (PsyCap) affects followers' task performance and voice behavior, in which we uncover the mediating role of organizational embeddedness.

A survey was conducted in South China through a three-stage procedure, and finally, a dyad-structured sample of 62 leaders and 218 employees was matched. The polynomial regression method, response surface analysis and structural equation modeling were employed to test the effects of leader–follower PsyCap congruence.

(1) Followers' organizational embeddedness will be higher when leaders' and followers' PsyCap are more aligned; (2) followers' organizational embeddedness will be higher when leaders' and followers' PsyCap are aligned at a high level rather than when they are aligned at a low level; (3) followers' organizational embeddedness will be higher when followers' PsyCap is higher than leaders', compared to when followers' PsyCap is lower than leaders'; (4) organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between leader–follower PsyCap congruence and followers' (a) task performance and (b) voice behavior.

This study emphasizes leaders' pivotal role in a process where followers' PsyCap affects task performance and voice behavior, and further extends MRTT through introducing organizational embeddedness as a mediator in such a mechanism.

Although empirical tests of effective lean-team leadership are scarce, leaders are often blamed when lean work-floor initiatives fail. In the present study, a lean-team leader’s work values are assumed to affect his or her team members’ behaviors and, through them, to attain team effectiveness. Specifically, two of Schwartz et al.’s (2012) values clusters (i.e. self-transcendence and conservation) are hypothesized to be linked to team members’ degree of information and idea sharing and, in turn, to lean-team effectiveness. The paper aims to report the examination of these hypotheses.

Survey responses (n=429) of both leaders and members of 25 lean-teams in services and manufacturing organizations were aggregated, thereby curbing common-source bias. To test the six hypotheses, structural equation modeling was performed, with bootstrapping, linear regression analyses, and Sobel tests.

The positive relationship between lean-team effectiveness and leaders’ self-transcendence values, and the negative relationship between lean-team effectiveness and leaders’ conservation values were partly mediated by information sharing behavior within the team.

Future research must compare the content of effective lean-team values and behaviors to similar non-lean teams.

Appoint lean-team leaders with predominantly self-transcendence rather than conservation values: to promote work-floor sharing of information and lean-team effectiveness.

Human factors associated with effective lean-teams were examined, thereby importing organization-behavioral insights into the operations management literature: with HRM-type implications.