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The leadership industry has experienced an unprecedented growth in popularity, and business management effectiveness has become synonymous with leaders’ roles. However, in this egalitarian twenty-first century little mention has been made of followership due to its negative stereotype. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of followership by presenting a “balanced” approach that views both leaders and followers as co-producers of leadership. Specific practical implications for followership development are discussed as well as barriers to create high levels of follower commitment.

A brief case study of active followership is presented for training purposes. A range of research and practitioner papers are reviewed with the aim of reigniting dialogue on followership, and to suggest a practical implication for its development.

By understanding the benefits of followership development, the author will suggest that followership and leadership skills be built as an integrated package, thus improving innovation and efficiency in organisations. Organisations need to be aware of the important role followership plays in organisational success.

Bringing followership out of the closet may help to introduce practical followership development programmes.

This paper highlights the importance for an organisation to focus in nurturing the environment to allow active followership to flourish.

Leadership research is plentiful and multifaceted yet followership, an essential component in leadership, attracts little research attention. This research paper measures followership styles in two cultural contexts: American and Rwandan. Although cultural aspects of followership have been studied to some extent, the literature in this area is lacking. Data are collected from two organizations of similar size and function, one in Rwanda, and the other in Oregon, USA. It is hypothesized that Americans’ cultural preferences influence followers to favor critical thinking and active engagement while Rwandan cultural preferences predispose followers to less critical thinking and less active engagement. Results of the research show no significant difference between the cultures on critical thinking and active engagement. However, followership type is significantly different by country. Kelley’s (1992) followership survey and the organizational contexts are probed for possible reasons that no significant differences were found between critical thinking and active engagement, while power distance is seen as the main reason for the difference in followership type. Presently little research has been dedicated to the cultural effects on followership and organizations that work internationally would benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of cultural effects on followership.

This study aims to explore the impact of remote work (RW) on millennials’ organizational commitment (OC) by addressing four research gaps identified in existing studies. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), the authors also investigate if millennials are well-suited for RW environment and how shared leadership (SL) and followership moderate the relationship between RW and millennials’ OC.

A survey was conducted involving 154 millennial employees. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression analysis were performed to investigate the moderating effect of SL and followership on the relationship between RW and millennials’ OC.

The results reveal that millennials’ OC increases with the degree of RW. Moreover, both SL and followership exhibited a moderating effect on the RW-millennials’ OC relationship, emphasizing their importance in shaping millennials’ OC.

While the effect of RW on individual-level outcomes remains controversial, this study sheds light on the positive impact based on millennials' characteristics and suggests strategies to strengthen their OC in remote working environments. However, due to the cross-sectional nature of our research, a longitudinal study would be valuable to provide deeper insights.

This study contributes to the field of organizational behavior (OB) by connecting millennials’ traits with SL and followership, offering valuable insights into strengthening their OC within the context of RW through the lens of SET. By addressing and filling the four identified research gaps, our research advances knowledge in the improvement of millennials’ OC within the RW environment.

Through his call to “reverse the lens” in leadership, Shamir (2007) helped trigger the emergence of followership theory as a new field of study in leadership research. While followership theory brings exciting new opportunities to leadership studies, it also introduces theoretical and conceptual challenges for researchers. In this chapter we address these challenges by showing how followership can be positioned fully within the leadership construct. We extend Shamir’s (2007) call for a balanced view in leadership by showing how followership theory adds new perspectives on the ways in which we can study leadership as a dynamic, fluid, relational process. The alternative views we present (e.g., position, role, identity, constructionist, and co-creation) approach leadership study from a range of paradigmatic perspectives that allow us to more fully capture the behaviors, interactions, relational dynamics, and processes through which leadership and followership are created and constructed. We conclude by reflecting on Shamir’s legacy as a scholar, and the contributions he made through his willingness to not only open his mind, but also to constructively challenge alternative perspectives and views.

For the past several decades, the field of global leadership has made noteworthy theoretical and empirical progress. The role of a global follower, however, has not been addressed to date. This chapter focuses on global followers and global followership as vital elements of a global leadership process supporting a traditional followership view that “leadership can only occur if there is followership” (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014, p. 83). Two assumptions ground the arguments: global leaders and global followers are engaged in a partnering process of global leadership, and followers and global followers have distinctive characteristics influenced by their specific environments. To explore those assumptions, we start by introducing the followership theory and relevant followership characteristics. Subsequently, we address the role of context in global leader–follower dynamics, extrapolate global followership characteristics from relevant multidisciplinary literature, and offer an example of a global leader–follower partnership. Next, we examine mentions of global followers and global followership in academic and nonacademic literature, and define a global followership construct. The conceptual framework, global followership model, research agenda, and practical implications conclude the manuscript.

The purpose of this study is to examine how construction project managers’ conflict management styles (CMSs) affect project team resilience from the perspective of social identity theory.

This study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and collected paired data from 110 construction project managers and 474 employees in China. Based on the data collected, the authors tested the proposed hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that a project manager’s cooperative CMS positively affects team resilience, and a project manager’s competitive and avoidant CMS negatively affects team resilience. Team followership plays a mediating role in this relationship. The team power distance moderates the effects of a project manager’s cooperative and avoidant CMSs on team followership.

This paper enriches the existing literature on conflict management in construction projects and have potential guiding significance and application value for team resilience management practices.

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.

Business schools, executive training programs, and best-selling books all recognize the importance of leadership, while followership has received limited attention in management training. The purpose of this paper is to present a brief questionnaire, which might be particularly useful for followership development.

A brief questionnaire is presented.

Part of the answers will establish the view that many of us are followers. This will help recognize that both followership and leadership roles are important for organizational success

It is a major challenge to bring followership out of the closet and this tool may help to introduce practical followership development programs in organizations

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the role of followership behavior on employee job satisfaction as well as the conditions that may moderate its impact.

This study uses a large n survey data from federal agencies and investigates an additive moderation model in which two situational factors, perceived supervisor support (PSS) and performance-oriented culture (POC), interact with followership behavior.

Employees high on active followership perceived greater job satisfaction when PSS was high, rather than low. On the other hand, employees high on active followership perceived greater job satisfaction when POC was low, rather than high.

This is, to the knowledge, the first empirical study based on a cross-sectional survey that tests how the effects of active followership on employee job satisfaction may vary depending on the different types of situational factors. As such, more studies are needed to validate the causal directions of the findings.

The present findings show that active engagement had greater association with job satisfaction when leader involvement was high and performance orientation was low. For highly engaged employees, leaders are encouraged to show higher degree of involvement in their work but with less emphasis on the performance orientation of the organization.

This study contributes to the broader literature in public sector leadership in two ways. First, research on the relationship between followership and job satisfaction has been sparse. Second, and most importantly, this study is the first empirical study that tests the moderating roles of situational (organizational) factors on the relationship between followership and employee attitude (job satisfaction).