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Leaders are role models and through social influence processes, they shape the behaviour of their followers. We build on social learning, social identity and person-environment (P-E) fit theories of leadership to explore the association between leaders’ and followers’ resilient behaviours.

In a three-wave, multisource study amongst 269 Dutch leaders and their followers, we investigate the mediating role of coaching in the relationship between leaders’ resilient behaviour and followers’ resilient behaviour and the moderating role of regulatory focus in this mediation path.

Our results show that coaching is a key relational vehicle through which leaders’ resilient behaviours shape employees’ resilient behaviours, and this indirect association is stronger for employees scoring low on promotion focus. In addition, our results show that resilient employees attract more coaching from their leaders, which further strengthens their resilient behaviours.

Existing studies have shown the occurrence of trickle-down effects of various leader behaviours, moods and work states on those of their followers. However, it remained obscure whether leaders’ resilient behaviour could trickle down to followers’ as well. Our study shows that such a link indeed exists and that coaching is a relational vehicle that embodies two key mechanisms to (1) foster social learning through behavioural entrainment and contagion and (2) facilitate support provision through which leaders promote resilient behaviour in their followers.

Leadership cannot exist without followership. The phenomenon of direction and guidance, coaching and mentoring, has at least three components: the leader, leadership, and followers. With each component, the composition of purpose and goals, ethics and morals, rights and duties, and skills and talents is critically important. While the leader is the central and the most important part of the leadership phenomenon, followers are important and necessary factors in the leadership equation. Leaders and followers are engaged in a common enterprise: they are dependent upon each other; their fortunes rise and fall together. Relational qualities define the leadership–followership phenomenon. A major component of such a relationship is how the leaders create and communicate new meaning to followers, perceive themselves relative to followers, and how the followers, in turn, perceive their leader. This mutual perception has serious ethical and moral implications – how leader uses or abuses power, and how followers are augmented or diminished. This chapter features the essentials of ethical and moral, corporate executive leadership in two parts: (1) the Theory of Ethical and Moral Leadership and (2) the Art of Ethical and Moral Leadership. Several contemporary cases such as inspirational leadership of JRD Tata, Crisis of Leadership at Infosys, and Headhunting for CEOs will illustrate our discussions on the ethics and morals of corporate executive leadership.

Defying conventional wisdom, leaders' storytelling may have ambiguous and even negative effects on followers. Built upon transformational leadership and leader -member exchange theory, the intention-perception model of storytelling in leadership provides a framework to systematically explain when and why unintended effects of storytelling happen. Despite its theoretical and practical relevance, a quantitative evaluation of the model's main assumptions, and particularly of followers' perceptions of leader storytelling, is still pending.

The authors developed a scale to assess followers' story perceptions in study 1 (N = 79) and confirmed the scale's structure in study 2, an online cross-sectional field study (N = 60). In study 2, the authors also tested a main assumption of the intention-perception model of storytelling, that is, the relationship between followers' story perceptions and story effects, mediated via followers' affective arousal.

Data revealed that story effects indeed depend on followers' perception of the story. In particular, the better a leader's story met followers' needs (need-supply fit), the more adequate the input load transported by the story (story load), the more positive followers' appraisal of their leader's story (story appraisal) and the more positive affective reactions and positive effects of storytelling (transformation, leader -member exchange quality, and trust in the leader) followers perceived.

The authors provide practical insights into how leaders may improve their storytelling by tailoring their stories to the expectations and needs of their followers.

Taking a follower-centric perspective on a common leadership practice (i.e. storytelling), the present research provides first support for the intention-perception model of storytelling in leadership.

Storytelling is considered an effective leadership behavior. However, research on storytelling’s effects on followers is scarce and disconnected from leadership theory. This paper aims to explore the perspectives of both leaders and followers with a focus on interaction-based moderators and affective mediators of storytelling effects, building on transformational leadership and leader-member exchange theory.

Data from semi-structured interviews (N = 27 independent leaders and followers) were analyzed with a combined content-analytic and grounded theory approach.

Leaders’ intended effects of storytelling (transformation, relationship and information) evoked either positive or negative affective reactions in followers depending on how well the story met followers’ needs (need-supply fit), the adequacy of the input load transported by the story (story load) and how followers interpreted their leaders’ story (story appraisal). Followers’ positive or negative affective reactions translated into positive effects (corresponding to leaders’ intended effects) or negative effects (contradicting leaders’ intended effects), respectively. Results were integrated into an intention-perception model of storytelling.

Proposing an intention-perception model of storytelling, this paper explains when and why unintended effects of storytelling happen, and thus provides an alternative view to the one-fits-all approach on leaders’ storytelling advocated by popular management literature.

Over time, the role of followers within leadership discourse has gained greater status, leading to followers being acknowledged as significant actors in the leadership process. This has led to the development of follower-centric leadership studies, as well as the more emergent research area of followership, with followership research having the specific intention to find out about followers from the perspective of followers. In this paper, the authors provide a review of role-based followership approaches, and implicit leadership and followership theories as a basis to build a case for follower implicit followership theories (FIFTs) as a focus area for future research.

The authors conducted a review of seminal and current role-based followership literature, with a specific focus on FIFTs and followership studies conducted within the African context.

Implicit theories have been an area of leadership research that has added much value, and as such could do the same for development of followership research. FIFTs as a research area are nascent and, as such, should continue to be explored in order to expand our understanding of followership.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first literature reviews to have a specific focus on FIFTs, as well as on followership research conducted within the African context.

Leading with vision while granting employees autonomy is one effective organizational response to the demands of a dynamic external environment. The former is thought to align followers' behavior by providing guidance, the latter to increase variance in their behavior by relinquishing control; both exert beneficial but distinct effects on organizational performance. What has remained uncharted heretofore is how these leader behaviors shape their followers' cognition and, subsequently, yield improvements in performance. The authors argue that a leader's vision communication transforms followers' cognitive representation of their work. This not only enables them to specify their goals in alignment with the vision (goal clarity) but also to locate the meaning of their work within the bigger picture of the vision (construal level). By contrast, perceived autonomy in terms of power-sharing might directly affect followers' work engagement more narrowly.

The authors tested the model on a sample of 408 employees from eleven enterprises of a holding company. In the survey, employees reported perceived vision communication and autonomy provided by their leader. Furthermore, the authors assessed the employees' goal attainment. To capture how employees represent their daily work activities, the authors measured their construal level and their goal clarity.

The results show that both perceived vision communication and granted autonomy improve employees' goal achievement. Moreover, two processes mediate the relationship between vision communication and goal achievement in followers: first, specifying goals in terms of clarity; second, composing a higher-level mental construal of their work. In contrast, no mediation of empowering leader behaviors was found.

Better goal achievement through visionary leadership is therefore achieved through cognitive alignment of followers, while leader-granted autonomy acts as a motivational tool directly on performance.

This study sought to test two competing sets of hypotheses derived from two different theoretical perspectives regarding (1) the effects of leader–follower similarity and dissimilarity in psychological resilience on the follower's absenteeism in times of organizational crisis and (2) the moderating effect of relational demography (gender and age similarity) in these relationships.

Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were performed using data from 510 followers and 149 supervisors in a financial firm in Canada.

The results overall support the similarity–attraction perspective, but not the resource complementarity perspective. Dissimilarity in resilience was predictive of followers' absenteeism, and similarity in surface-level conditions (gender and age) attenuates the relational burdens triggered by resilience discrepancy.

The findings reiterate the importance of developing employees' resilience, while shedding light on the importance for managers of being aware of their potential misalignment with subordinates resilience.

The results (1) suggest that it is the actual (di)similarity with the leader, rather than leader's degree of resilience, that shapes followers' absenteeism and (2) add nuance to the resilience literature.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how positive behaviors toward influencers (customer interaction) and promoted products (looking for product information) can be achieved, taking into account influencer–product fit, in a fashion marketing campaign. In addition, account following and product involvement are examined as possible moderators in these relationships.

The data were gathered from online participants. The participants were Instagram users who already knew a popular influencer on the platform. The experimental design manipulated the types of picture posted by the influencer to observe customers’ reactions in terms of intention to interact with the influencer’s account and to look for further information about promoted products.

The authors’ findings suggested that influencer–product matches in posts on Instagram encourage users to search for information about promoted products but do not affect their intention to interact with influencers’ accounts. Nevertheless, customers’ reactions toward an influencer’s posts differ based on whether they are followers of the influencer and whether they are highly or lowly involved with the promoted product.

Both brands and influencers should properly manage influencer marketing actions. Brands should control influencers’ audiences and their involvement with featured products so that they are seen to promote them in a natural way. Influencers should endorse branded products that fit their own style; this will increase the interaction on their accounts.

This research contributes to a better understanding of how users can be encouraged to undertake positive online actions as regards influencers (interaction with their accounts) and promoted products (information search) in influencer marketing campaigns.

Esta investigación analiza cómo lograr comportamientos positivos hacia los influencers (mayor interacción del consumidor con la cuenta) y los productos promocionados (búsqueda de información sobre el producto), en función del ajuste influencer-producto en una campaña de marketing de moda. Además, se estudian el seguimiento de la cuenta y la implicación con el producto como posibles moderadores en estas relaciones.

Los datos de la investigación se recogieron a través de una encuesta realizada a usuarios de Instagram que conocían previamente a la influencer estudiada. A través de un diseño experimental se manipularon las publicaciones de la influencer para analizar las reacciones de los consumidores, más concretamente, sus intenciones de interactuar con la cuenta del influencer y de buscar más información sobre los productos promocionados.

Los resultados de la investigación sugieren que un buen ajuste entre los influencers y los productos promocionados incentiva a los usuarios a buscar información sobre éstos productos, pero no afecta a su intención de interactuar con la cuenta de Instagram de la influencer. No obstante, las reacciones hacia las publicaciones de la influencer difieren dependiendo de si los consumidores son o no seguidores de la influencer y del nivel de implicación con el producto promocionado.

El trabajo muestra la necesidad de gestionar adecuadamente las acciones de marketing en las que participan influencers. Las marcas deben conocer el público al que se dirigen los influencers y su implicación con los productos promocionados, para que la publicación promocionada resulte natural. Por su parte, los influencers deben promocionar los productos de marcas que se ajusten a su propio estilo para así incrementar la interacción del público con sus cuentas.

Este trabajo indica algunas de las características que han de tener las campañas de marketing con influencers cuando su objetivo es estimular comportamientos de los consumidores tales como la interacción con la cuenta y la búsqueda de información sobre el producto.

Trabajo de investigación

The purpose of this study is to analyze how product placement through social media influencers (SMIs) during “new normal” can generate user-generated content (UGC) and determine the manners of product placement by SMIs who have become “homefluencers” by their skills.

This research applies a qualitative approach of thematic content analysis of a total of 49 micro and nano-homefluencer's contents in beauty fashion, clothing, workout-yoga, food and lifestyle sectors on Instagram.

The findings of this study identify the main five themes of homefluencers by analyzing UGC in the new normal portraying both positive and negative comments incorporating four manners of product placement as a framework backed by two identified skills: relevance and relationship.

This research pioneers the study on how SMIs as “homefluencers” can adapt product placement skills in crises strengthening UGC by proposing a framework in the existing influencer marketing literature, where research is scarce.

The findings of this research represent a guideline for effective SMI marketing development in the new normal and post-COVID. Based on the findings, recommendations are provided for the brand managers and influencers uplifting UGC blending skill of relevancy and relationship in product placement.

The author has contributed to the body of research by qualitatively analyzing how “homefluencer's” product placement in a crisis period can manage consistency and humanitarian association amplifying UGC and the practical implications in post-COVID.

This research proposes, building on social exchange theory and the componential theory of creativity, a model of servant leadership to investigate its effect on followers' creativity through the intervening mechanism of climate for creativity in the hospitality  industry, operating in a non-Western context.

The study predicted that climate for creativity will play a significant intervening role in the servant leadership–creativity relationship. The study’s data were collected from 232 employees working in 70 Palestinian hotels. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses along with techniques used to reduce common method bias.

The results revealed the significance of climate for creativity as a partial mediator in the relationship between servant leadership and followers' creativity.

The results might be useful for hotel managers in the context of utilizing servant leadership roles for fostering a creative climate. They might, therefore, consider placing servant leaders as a recruitment agenda priority.

This research is novel in three ways. First, its aim is to enrich the empirical literature on servant leadership, which is still in a maturity stage. Second, even with the research studies that are available, limited analysis is found on how servant leadership can stimulate employees' behaviors in the hospitality industry. Third, the study has been conducted in a non-Western context, in contrast to most servant leadership research studies being carried out in Western countries.