Followership theory: A review and research agenda

While theory and research on leaders and leadership abound, followers and followership theory have been given short shrift. It is accepted wisdom that there is no leadership without followers, yet followers are very often left out of the leadership research equation. Fortunately this problem is being addressed in recent research, with more attention being paid to the role of followership in the leadership process. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the followership literature, and from this review, introduce a broad theory of followership into leadership research. Based on our review, we identify two theoretical frameworks for the study of followership, one from a role-based approach (“reversing the lens”) and one from a constructionist approach (“the leadership process”). These frameworks are used to outline directions for future research. We conclude with a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues in the study of followership theory.     

Facing the situation: Testing a biosocial contingency model of leadership in intergroup relations using masculine and feminine faces

Using an evolutionary psychology framework we propose that leadership and followership are evolved traits to solve recurrent group coordination problems. We argue that adaptive problems such as those concerning intergroup conflict or cooperation activate different cognitive leadership prototypes, and the face conveys diagnostic information about the suitability and emergence of intergroup leadership. Consistent with hypotheses we find that followers expect masculine-faced leaders to behave competitively and feminine-faced leaders cooperatively in intergroup relations. Furthermore, individuals prefer leaders whose facial cues match the adaptive problem. For example, a masculine-looking leader is preferred in a competitive intergroup setting. Also, this match between face and situation is reinforced with a consistent leadership message such as a masculine-looking leader expressing the need for competition. An evolutionary perspective provides a deeper understanding of the biological aspects of leadership and generates many novel hypotheses about how markers such as the human face affect leadership emergence and effectiveness.     

Revisiting followership through a social identity perspective: The role of collective follower emotion and action

We review the concept of followership, with a specific focus on how followers actively influence leadership outcomes. We examine in particular research from four key areas: social identity perspectives on leadership, intergroup emotion theory, collective action, and reciprocal affect within leader–follower interactions. Our central proposition is that followers engage in actions, driven by both cognitive and affective-based processes, which affect leadership outcomes. Moreover, because leaders are part of the groups they lead and therefore embedded within the social context of a group, we propose that any action that affirms or threatens the salient group will trigger both cognitive and emotional responses from followers towards leaders. These include the extent to which a leader engages in actions that are perceived as (1) self-sacrificial, (2) procedurally fair, and (3) expressing emotions congruent with that of their group. We also propose that the extent to which followers translate their perceptions and emotions towards collective action towards their leaders will be moderated by individual-level group identification and group-level shared identity. To conclude, we highlight theoretical implications in light of these propositions and suggest areas for further research on followership.     

Followership,leadership and social influence

Traditional research in leadership has largely relegated followers to the role of passive recipients or, at best, moderators of leader influence and behaviors. However, recent work in the area of followership has begun shifting this focus and emphasizing the possibility that followers actively have an influence over leaders, in particular leader behavior. This paper revisits traditional areas of the leadership literature and builds on the emerging followership literature to reintroduce followers as part of the social context of leaders. In an attempt to build theoretical rationales for how followers influence leader behavior we draw on the social influence (e.g., Social Impact Theory, Latane, 1981) and the power literature to suggest individual (e.g., strength and immediacy of followers) and group level (e.g., number of followers and unity of the group) characteristics that influence leader behaviors as a function of a leader's informational and effect dependence on followers.     

The nature of followership: Evolutionary analysis and review

From an evolutionary perspective, followership is puzzling because it is not clear why individuals would relinquish their autonomy and set aside their personal goals to follow those of another individual, the leader. This paper analyzes followership from an evolutionary perspective and advances three main conclusions that are not yet part of the leadership literature. First, followership evolved as a strategy to solve a range of cooperation and coordination problems in groups (e.g., collective movement, peacekeeping). Second, individuals who lack the physical, psychological, or social capital to be leaders themselves are more likely to emerge as followers. Third, followership styles, behaviors, and engagement result from (a) variations in the relative pay-offs that accrue to followers vis-à-vis their leader, (b) the adaptive goals pursued by followers, (c) the adaptive challenges that select for different followership styles, and (d) the prevailing leadership style. Together, these conclusions have several implications for followership theory, research, and practice.     

Leader and follower attachment styles: Implications for authentic leader–follower relationships

Authentic leadership theory posits that the authenticity of leaders and followers is influenced by their personal histories. Attachment theory states that individuals have internal working models that are influenced by both early developmental experiences and relationships later in life. These models guide how people interact with close others and tend toward three styles of attachment: secure, insecure-ambivalent, and insecure-avoidant. We argue that securely attached persons are most likely to exhibit authentic leadership/followership. We review empirical work which suggests that secure attachment is positively related to each of the four components of authentic leadership/followership (self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective). We then develop an attachment-based typology for variations in authentic leader–follower relationships, with emphasis on relationships that include an insecurely attached party. Finally, we draw from the attachment and authentic leadership literatures to suggest interventions to foster the development of authentic leadership/followership, thereby enhancing authentic leader–follower relationships.     

Leaders' conceptions of followers: Implications for naturally occurring Pygmalion effects

We investigated the relationships between leaders' implicit followership theories (LIFTs) (conceptions of followers) and naturally occurring Pygmalion effects (leaders' high performance expectations that improve follower performance). Results based on 151 workplace leader–follower dyads supported a model of naturally occurring Pygmalion effects. Positive LIFTs led to higher performance expectations, liking, and relationship quality from leaders, which impacted follower performance. Supervisory experience moderated the relationship between positive LIFTs and leaders' performance expectations for their followers, such that the performance expectations of leaders with less supervisory experience were more strongly influenced by their conceptions of followers. Implications of the findings for improving follower performance are discussed. Suggestions for future research are offered: antecedents of LIFTs, negative LIFTs, Golem effects, and role reversed Pygmalion effects, among others.     

The evolution of leadership: Leadership and followership as a solution to the problem of creating and executing successful coordination and cooperation enterprises

This paper proposes that leadership and followership are not just evolved solutions to the problem of coordinating what to do once a group exists. Rather, leadership and followership also solve the problem of creating a group in the first place. Creating a group is a problem of meta-coordination: coordinating with others about what to coordinate about. Of all possible bases for coordinating or cooperating, only a tiny fraction will be embraced by others, and smaller fraction still will be successfully implemented and executed. No one individual has enough information to solve this problem on one's own. Leadership and followership solve this problem by creating a social marketplace, in which leaders propose possible coordination and cooperation enterprises, and followers evaluate and choose among these offered possibilities. This marketplace—in which different individuals propose and evaluate different coordination and cooperation enterprises—solves the problem of meta-coordination by exposing possible enterprises to the broader social market, which serves as a selective or culling regime. Leadership and followership are evolved information-processing roles within this social marketplace. Consequently, understanding the evolutionary psychology of leadership and followership requires understanding the challenges and opportunities inherent in this market dynamic. The present paper analyzes the tasks that must be carried out to successfully navigate this dynamic. This task analysis predicts a number of novel information-processing functions for the roles of leadership and followership, and suggests that leadership and followership are a broader set of phenomena than currently conceptualized. This broadened conceptualization has a number of important implications for future research, and suggests that leadership and followership may have played a more central role in the evolution of human coordination and cooperation than has been appreciated.     

Exploring social constructions of followership: A qualitative study

This study adopts a qualitative approach to deconstruct the meaning of followership. Interviews were conducted with employees in various industries to examine how individuals socially construct their roles as followers and to explore followership schemas and contextual influences that relate to these constructions. Results suggest that while some individuals socially construct definitions around passivity, deference and obedience, others emphasize the importance of constructively questioning and challenging their leaders. With regard to personal qualities that are thought to make followers effective, major themes such as obedience, expressing opinions, and taking initiative were found to be most disparate across different groups of followers. Results also revealed that contextual factors may affect both followership constructions and behavior in the follower role. These findings have important implications regarding a need to examine the construct of followership in leadership research, as well as raise interesting possibilities for advancing an “expanded” view of leadership in organizations.     

Implicit Leadership and Followership Theories “in the wild”: Taking stock of information-processing approaches to leadership and followership in organizational settings

For over 30 years information-processing approaches to leadership and more specifically Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) research has contributed a significant body of knowledge on leadership processes in applied settings. A new line of research on Implicit Followership Theories (IFTs) has re-ignited interest in information-processing and socio-cognitive approaches to leadership and followership. In this review, we focus on organizational research on ILTs and IFTs and highlight their practical utility for the exercise of leadership and followership in applied settings. We clarify common misperceptions regarding the implicit nature of ILTs and IFTs, review both direct and indirect measures, synthesize current and ongoing research on ILTs and IFTs in organizational settings, address issues related to different levels of analysis in the context of leadership and follower schemas and, finally, propose future avenues for organizational research.     

The downside of transformational leadership when encouraging followers to network

Network scholars argue that one responsibility of leaders is to help their followers develop social capital. We suggest that one way leaders do this is by encouraging followers to engage in networking behavior. However, we argue that such encouragement is more effective when leaders are seen as less transformational, because followers are then less able to benefit from their leaders’ social capital. We support our arguments with a study of 142 followers and their leaders. Our findings show that followers engage in greater networking behaviors when encouraged by their leaders to do so, but this association is moderated by leaders’ transformational leadership style such that it is stronger as transformational leadership behaviors decrease. We thus introduce an unrecognized cost of leaders’ transformational leadership behaviors. Our findings contribute to research on networking behavior by investigating the role of transformational leadership style, and suggest avenues for research linking social capital and leadership.     

Are there advantages to seeing leadership the same? A test of the mediating effects of LMX on the relationship between ILT congruence and employees' development

Although there has been an increased interest in implicit leadership theories (ILTs) over the last two decades, only a handful of studies have examined the effects of ILT congruence among leader-follower dyads. Just as important, this research has largely suggested few effects for ILT congruence, focused exclusively on prototype congruence, examined a limited number of potential outcomes, and has failed to examine questions about ILT congruence utilizing the most appropriate statistical approaches. We examine the effects of ILT congruence, with an explicit focus on the possibility that congruence between supervisors and their employees on both prototypes and antiprototypes impacts the LMX developed within their dyads. We predict that LMX, in turn, affects employees' opportunities to engage in developmental activities. Using a sample of 74 matched pairs of supervisors and employees and polynomial regression and response surface methodology, we found that congruence between supervisors' and employees' prototypes positively influenced LMX. We also found limited evidence that LMX explained the effects of this congruence on employees' engagement in developmental activities. Although we found no evidence of antiprototype congruence effects, supervisors who rated antiprototypical traits as characteristic of leaders had lower LMX with their employees.     

When managers become leaders: The role of manager network centralities,social power,and followers' perception of leadership

We explore how formal managers' centralities in both positive and negative networks predict followers' perceptions of their leadership. By incorporating social networks and social ledger theory with implicit leadership theories (ILTs), we hypothesize that formally assigned group leaders (managers) who have more positive advice ties and fewer negative avoidance ties are more likely to be recognized as leaders by their followers. Further, we posit that managers' informal networks bring them greater social power, an important attribute differentiating leaders from non-leaders. We conducted two survey-based studies in student and field teams to test the hypotheses. Based on nested data in both studies, we found support for our hypotheses. These results remain robust across the two studies even though they used different designs (cross-sectional versus longitudinal), different samples (field versus students) across different countries (United States versus India), and a host of control variables at both the leader and follower levels. We find that managers who are central in the advice network are socially powerful and are seen as leaders by individual followers. In contrast, managers who are avoided by followers lack informal social power are not seen as leaders. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and the ways in which our theory and results extend ILTs and social network theory.     

Ethical leadership and follower voice and performance: The role of follower identifications and entity morality beliefs

Previous studies have established the relationship between ethical leadership and a variety of positive follower outcomes. Follower organizational identification has been found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower job performance. In this research, we incorporate a second distinct and theoretically important type of social identification process, relational identification with the leader, along with organizational identification, and examine their mediating effects on follower performance and voice outcomes. Further, we bring the implicit theory of morality to the behavioral ethics literature and examine follower morality beliefs as a moderator. Using a Romanian sample of 302 followers under the supervision of 27 leaders, we found that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on follower job performance and voice (through the mediating mechanisms of both organizational and relational identifications) and that these relationships are stronger for followers who held the implicit theory that a person's moral character is fixed.     

A meta-analysis of humble leadership: Reviewing individual,team, and organizational outcomes of leader humility

Humility is a concept grounded in a self-view that something greater than oneself exists. A multitude of disciplines to date have sought to understand how humility impacts leaders, as well as the individuals, teams, and organizations they lead. Despite overlapping research questions, methodologies, and empirical contexts, studies examining leader humility have developed largely in isolation with little overlap between fields. This has created a fundamental divide between micro and macro researchers who suggest that humility is conceptualized as both a mutable behavioral state and a stable leader trait, respectively. We provide a systematic review of research on leader humility at multiple organizational levels of analysis to provide linkages across disciplinary and theoretical divides. We couple our systematic review with a meta-analysis of 212 unique studies, identifying 99 estimates for the relationships between leader humility and numerous individual, team, and organizational variables. Among all variables, we find humble leadership most strongly predicts followers’ satisfaction with the leader and the leaders’ participative decision making. We also find humble leadership does not affect their own job performance or the performance of organizations, but improves the performance of their followers and teams. Building on our results, we call for research across academic disciplines.     

Leadership and generations at work: A critical review

We present a critical review of theory, empirical research, and practical applications regarding generational differences in leadership phenomena. First, we consider the concept of generations both historically and through contemporary arguments related to leadership. Second, we outline and refute various myths surrounding the idea of generational differences in general, and critique leadership theories that have been influenced by these myths. Third, we describe the results of a literature review of primary empirical studies that have invoked the notion of generational differences to understand leadership phenomena. Finally, we argue that the lifespan developmental perspective represents a useful alternative to generational representations, as it better captures age-related dynamics that are relevant to leadership, followership, and leadership development. Ultimately, our work serves as a formal call for a moratorium to be placed upon the application of the ideas of generations and generational differences to leadership theory, research, and practice.     

Understanding the Followers of Toxic Leaders: Toxic Illusio and Personal Uncertainty

Toxic leaders are one of the main threats to the wellbeing of people in the workplace and in society in general, and followers play a critical role in constructing and maintaining toxic leaders. In this narrative review, we draw on Bourdieu's concept of illusio and incorporate it with the social and cognitive psychology approaches in an attempt to frame the dynamic system that sustains toxic leadership through continued support of the followers. More specifically, as we introduce the illusio perspective in a process‐relational context to the toxic leadership discussion, we (i) address the allure of toxic leaders as an incentive for followers to join the toxic illusio as a way to cope with their high personal uncertainty and (ii) illustrate the mechanisms and processes that motivate followers of toxic leaders to remain in the toxic illusio once they join. In this context, we also briefly discuss and differentiate between the ethical and moral dimensions of toxic leadership.     

A SOCIAL IDENTITY MODEL OF LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Research into leadership effectiveness has largely overlooked the implications of the fact that leadership processes are enacted in the context of a shared group membership, where leaders, as group members, ask followers, as group members, to exert themselves on behalf of the collective. In contrast, the social identity model of organizational leadership, proposed here, emphasizes the characteristics of the leader as a group member, and the leader’s ability to speak to followers as group members. In salient groups with which group members identify, leadership effectiveness rests on the extent to which the leader is prototypical of the group (i.e. representative of the group’s identity) and engages in group-oriented behavior (i.e. behavior perceived to benefit the group). Explicating the added value of our model and going beyond contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness, we discuss how our model extends, and may be integrated with, three major contemporary approaches to leadership effectiveness (charismatic leadership theories, Leader-Member Exchange theory, and leadership categorization theories). In addition, we outline how our model provides a viable framework to integrate future developments in research on leadership such as a growing attention to leader fairness and the role of emotions in leadership effectiveness.     

Toward a theory of spiritual leadership

A causal theory of spiritual leadership is developed within an intrinsic motivation model that incorporates vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love, theories of workplace spirituality, and spiritual survival. The purpose of spiritual leadership is to create vision and value congruence across the strategic, empowered team, and individual levels and, ultimately, to foster higher levels of organizational commitment and productivity.I first examine leadership as motivation to change and review motivation-based leadership theories. Second, I note the accelerating call for spirituality in the workplace, describe the universal human need for spiritual survival through calling and membership, and distinguish between religion and spirituality. Next, I introduce a generic definition of God as a higher power with a continuum upon which humanistic, theistic, and pantheistic definitions of God can be placed. I also review religious- and ethics-and-values-based leadership theories and conclude that, to motivate followers, leaders must get in touch with their core values and communicate them to followers through vision and personal actions to create a sense of spiritual survival through calling and membership.I then argue that spiritual leadership theory is not only inclusive of other major extant motivation-based theories of leadership, but that it is also more conceptually distinct, parsimonious, and less conceptually confounded. And, by incorporating calling and membership as two key follower needs for spiritual survival, spiritual leadership theory is inclusive of the religious- and ethics and values-based approaches to leadership. Finally, the process of organizational development and transformation through spiritual leadership is discussed. Suggestions for future research are offered.