Search results

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.

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.

Based on role theory, from the perspective of workplace behaviors (proactive behavior, in-role behavior and organizational citizenship behavior), this paper provides a perspective of matching process on the importance of fit in personnel selection.

Using a sample of 231 leader–employee dyadic in a two-wave survey, the hypotheses were demonstrated with hierarchical regression analyses.

The results presented that: (1) Employees' perceptions of implicit leadership prototype fit and leaders' perceptions of implicit followership prototype fit were positively related to employees' workplace behaviors; (2) Employees' perceptions of implicit leadership prototype fit and leaders' perceptions of implicit followership prototype fit increased person-supervisor fit; (3) The influence of the interaction between employees' perceptions of implicit leadership prototype fit and leaders' perceptions of implicit followership prototype fit on employees' workplace behaviors will be mediated, first by person-supervisor fit and then by work engagement.

This study introduces the perspective of matching process that reflects the relative importance of fit in personnel selection. The results also enriched role theory from the perspective of implicit prototype fit, which provides an important basis for managers to effectively use managerial cognition and inspire employees' positive workplace behaviors.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the antecedents to implicit followership theories (IFTs) and make recommendations for developing positive IFTs. Female transformational parenting is highlighted, showing that although followership is typically associated with one’s role in an organization, its development is not relegated to that context. Accordingly, this paper encourages transformational-parenting training and features activities for current leader-training programs to enlighten trainees about their IFTs.

Through one online and one paper survey, participants self-defined “follower,” rated their female primary caregivers’ transformational leadership during adolescence, reported their IFTs and provided demographic information.

Qualitative and quantitative data analyses found that the degree to which female primary caregivers demonstrated transformational leadership related to children’s positive IFTs and positive definitions about followers in young adulthood.

Future research should test female caregivers’ influence on IFTs at more advanced stages of one’s career, examine their influence over participants’ followership behavior and incorporate external ratings of leadership and followership.

Recommendations for embedding IFTs into transformational-leadership-training programs are provided, falling into the categories of feedback, reflection/introspection and mentoring/coaching. In the spirit of contemporary approaches to leadership, recommendations require trainees to recognize their biases/knowledge of followers and followership and use that knowledge to facilitate collaboration between leaders and followers.

Findings spotlight female leadership, an often-overlooked source of power in organizations, and go beyond leader/follower dichotomies by insisting on IFTs awareness and development for both parties.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.