Search results

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.

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.

This study aims to examine how the characteristics of leader errors impact perceptions and reactions of followers, particularly their willingness to follow a leader in the future and perceptions of error severity. Expanding upon the leader error and transgressions literature, this study considers how the timing of an error may influence how the error is interpreted.

This study’s sample included 283 students engaged in a 2 × 2 factorial designed laboratory experiment. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine whether error timing moderated the relationship between error type and two outcomes, willingness to follow and perceived error severity.

Relationship errors resulted in the worst outcomes and perceptions regardless of when they occurred. Task errors were judged as less impactful when occurring early in a task than later in a task. These results suggest that followers are more accepting of task leader errors when they have opportunities to recover from them, but consistently judge relationship errors as damaging.

Organizations should carefully consider the impact of leader errors and their context and develop strategies for error management and recovery.

This research addresses calls from scholars for greater consideration of temporality as a contextual variable in leader-follower dynamics, as well as those to take a more follower-centric approach to leadership research. This study also replicates prior leader error research and extends leader error theories to provide new avenues for future research.

Leadership training has led to a large amount of research due to the belief that such training can lead to (or more precisely cause) positive changes in followers’ behavior and work performance. This chapter describes some of the conditions necessary for research to show a causal relationship between leadership training and outcomes. It then describes different research designs, employed in leadership training research, and considers the types of problems that can affect inferences about causality. The chapter focuses on the role of randomization of leaders (e.g., into training vs. non-training conditions) as a key methodological procedure and alludes to problems of achieving this in field settings.

The purpose of this paper is to take a new look at an old idea: since McGregor’s work in the 1960s, it is common knowledge that managers’ implicit theories about their followers can have self-fulfilling consequences. Surprisingly, McGregor’s work has largely remained within the bounds of employee motivation and has not met with a wide response in related fields such as service management. Assuming that managers do not only hold implicit theories of their followers but also of their customers (i.e. implicit customer theories), this paper transfers McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y to the service context. It further derives a framework of possible consistencies and inconsistencies between management styles and service strategies, depending on implicit managerial theories about the average employee and customer.

This conceptual paper integrates a management classic, current empirical findings, and media reports into a new line of thought.

This paper develops and undergirds the thesis that it is conducive to the development of trustful and productive relationships both with customers and followers if managers proceed from confident assumptions about them, thereby activating virtuous circles instead of vicious cycles.

This paper links concepts from the organizational domain to the service domain. It implies a normative component in arguing for the productive potential of positive and the destructive potential of negative assumptions about both followers and customers. The value of this idea lies in the potential for positive relational dynamics and better customer and workplace relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine potential consequences of helping behaviors on leader and follower relationship satisfaction and transformational leadership (TFL) ratings. It is argued that follower helping behaviors can violate leaders’ and followers’ expectations of each other, and especially disadvantage male leaders because of gender-role stereotypes.

Two studies were conducted. In Study 1, data were collected from 61 dyads (25 male and 34 female supervisors, 23 male and 38 female subordinates, two participants did not disclose their gender; M _age=35.56 years, SD=10.41). In Study 2, data were collected from 125 participants (66 female and 58 male subordinates, 22 female and 25 male supervisors; 79 respondents did not disclose their gender; M _age=39.21 years, SD=11.25).

Helping behaviors were positively associated with relationship satisfaction suggesting that leaders were amenable to receiving help from followers (Study 1). However, follower helping behaviors were negatively related to TFL ratings for male but not female leaders (Study 2).

While leaders may be amenable to increased follower involvement in leadership, future research is needed to investigate followers’ openness to, and intentions behind increasing their involvement in leadership, as well as strategies for leaders to mitigate unintended consequences.

For the sake of their TFL ratings, leaders should minimize any direct benefit from follower helping behaviors, and emphasize how follower helping behaviors aid follower development and/or benefit the organization.

The findings illustrate the dual-nature of follower helping behaviors: they have the potential to enhance leader relationship satisfaction, and also compromise perceptions of TFL.

This study examines how perceptions of injustice, anger, and group identification motivate follower intentions to engage in collective action against leaders. The study revolved around the Malaysian prime minister’s actions and responses toward allegations of misuse of public funds. Responses from 112 Malaysians via a cross-sectional survey revealed that follower perceptions of leader injustice are significantly related to anger toward the leader, which in turn is related to intentions to engage in collective action. The relationship between perceptions of distributive injustice and anger is moderated by group identification, while group efficacy moderates the relationship between anger and collective action intentions.

The social relations model (SRM; Kenny, 1994) explicitly proposes that leadership simultaneously operates at three levels of analysis: group, dyad, and individual (perceiver and target). With this model, researchers can empirically determine the amount of variance at each level as well as those factors that explain variance at these different levels. This chapter shows how the SRM can be used to address many theoretically important questions in the study of leadership and can be used to advance both the theory of and research in leadership. First, based on analysis of leadership ratings from seven studies, we find that there is substantial agreement (i.e., target variance) about who in the group is the leader and little or no reciprocity in the perceptions of leadership. We then consider correlations of leadership perceptions. In one analysis, we examine the correlations between task-oriented and socioemotional leadership. In another analysis, we examine the effect of gender and gender composition on the perception of leadership. We also explore how self-ratings of leadership differ from member perceptions of leadership. Finally, we discuss how the model can be estimated using conventional software.

The purpose of this paper is to seek answers to the question of the impact of different classes of strategy (generic and international) on firm performance in international markets.

Survey of 213 British SME exporters, using EQS.

The paper concludes that Porter's generic strategies have both a direct and an indirect impact through international marketing strategies on firm performance, and that the combined impact of the two levels yields better returns than either of them individually. Furthermore, it questions the wisdom of a stepwise approach to international markets and highlights the importance of a challenger strategy.

This research is limited to British SMEs and needs to be supplemented by research from other countries. Also, it explores the effect of only a limited number of confirmed international marketing strategies, excluding for instance the standardisation construct – a key construct in international marketing.

Managers may derive guidance in their planning by applying the model and the findings in their own deliberations.

Little agreement has been reached as to the impact of different international marketing strategies, let alone the classification of strategies themselves. This paper analyses firm strategy in two levels – generic strategies and five groups of international marketing strategies.

Challenging, novel, and educational experiences are critical contributors to effective leader and follower development, in part, because such developmental experiences enable people to reconceptualize their perceptions about the traits and characteristics of effective leaders, or their implicit leadership theory (ILT). To understand how ILTs develop throughout developmental experiences, we examine the ILTs of 276 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of their first year of college. Using an open-ended ILT response format, a unique ILT trait of integrity emerged along with the dominant ILT traits of sensitivity, charisma, and dedication identified in previous literature. Overcoming limitations of the factor-based ILT approach, we investigate the development of ILT constellations, allowing a holistic picture of ILTs and how they throughout a developmental experience. Based on cluster analyses, four constellations of ILT themes emerged. Participants shifted to different ILT constellations after a year in college, moving from a non-descript, varied constellation toward constellations with clearly defined, dominant themes. Exploratory analysis revealed that completion of leadership coursework partially explains the shift towards more descript ILT constellations. Results have implications for new methods of future research using the ILTs constellation perspective and the practice of undergraduate leadership education in facilitating leader development among college students.