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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.

Health-oriented leadership is an emerging concept that is promising for better understanding how leaders can support employee well-being. However, there is uncertainty about the process through which health-oriented leadership relates to employee well-being. Advancing health-oriented leadership research, this study aims to examine employee self-care and the perceived team health climate as mediating mechanisms.

The authors conducted a time-lagged study with three measurement points (NT1 = 335, NT2 = 134, NT2 = 113) to test these mechanisms.

The results show that health-oriented leadership at Time 1 positively relates to employee self-care and perceived team health climate at Time 2, which, in turn, are negatively associated with employee exhaustion at Time 3.

The indirect associations suggest that health-oriented leadership relates to employee well-being via the perceived team health climate and the individuals' self-care. By revealing an important mediating mechanism, this study contributes to the health-oriented leadership literature and can help organizations and leaders improve health promotion in organizations.

The aim of this paper is gaining a deeper understanding of potential negative effects of (smart)phone use at work. The authors do so by exploring mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions between leader phubbing, leaders snubbing their followers by glancing at their phones during an interaction; and follower (1) work engagement and (2) performance.

The authors conducted a survey-based time-lagged, multi-source and team-based study of leaders (N = 93) and their followers (N = 454).

Results of this paper showed that leader phubbing negatively relates to follower (1) work engagement and (2) performance through less perceived leader support. Contradictory to the hypothesis, the relationship between leader phubbing and perceived leader support was negative for male leaders only.

The authors contribute to existing research by (1) adding perceived support as an important mediator between leader phubbing and work engagement/performance, (2) exploring the effects of leader gender and (3) adding information on the cultural robustness of the leader phubbing phenomenon by testing it outside the Western work context.

School networks are of increasing importance in Germany. Despite not being formally anchored in the structure of the school system, school networks are promoted via a wide variety of programmes. These initiatives have varying aims such as the systemic promotion of school development and the identification of key factors for success. Some programmes even provide for accompanying research into the impact of networks on their success. Following the classification of the German school system according to the cohesion/regulation matrix by Chapman, and suggesting an emphasis on ‘egalitarian culture’, this chapter then focuses on the topic of school-to-school collaboration. Doing so, we shall define our understanding of school networks, present a typology of commonly found networks in Germany and provide systemic examples of some of the larger school networks. The review of the national state of research in this field including experience from two of our research and development projects shows desiderata especially concerning processes of school-to-school collaboration. The role of school leadership, which will be expanded upon further, has proven to be a driver of success in school networks.