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Followership

In organization studies, followership is categorized as a field of study in the area of leadership and generally refers to what the followers of leaders do. More specifically, followership refers to the behavior exhibited by followers as a result of influence or guidance from a leader. Kelley is credited with providing the seminal piece of work on followership, which is recognized as a neglected field of study. Despite the fact that followership is of central importance to leadership, research into this area remains underexplored.

Conceptual Overview

Kelley's original contribution highlights the importance of the follower to leadership and challenges the pervading assumption that organizational success can be attributed solely to the actions of leaders. He also challenges the assumed passivity of followers and argues that, in actual fact, leaders contribute no more than 20% to the success of an organization and that the actions of followers are central to the remaining 80%. To support his claims, he developed a two-dimensional taxonomy of followership. The first dimension provides a measure for how followers think, ranging from uncritical dependent thinking to critical independent thinking. The second dimension provides a measure for the degree of follower engagement in work and ranges from active to passive involvement; the active style represents full participation, while the passive style represents limited participation and constant supervision by the leader. He argues that a greater understanding of the thinking and engagement styles of followers provides a rich source of information about who is contributing to organizational success. Based on this empirical classification of follower behavior, Kelley also developed a conceptual typology that identifies five roles that are central to followership, namely those of the alienated follower, conformist follower, passive follower, effective follower, and pragmatic survivor. In doing so, he provides insight into followership that moves its definition beyond the usual terms of conformity, weakness, and passivity, and signifies the broader contribution that followers make to the success of their organizations.

In more recent times, writers have defined leadership and followership in terms of a relationship based on mutual influence between leaders and followers who act with respect to shared purposes. Such a definition highlights the reciprocal nature of the relationship between leaders and followers and resonates with social exchange theory, leader–member exchange theory, and transactional leadership theory—the latter being recognized as a theory of leadership in which the follower is of central importance.

Critical Commentary and Future Directions

As already acknowledged, research in the field of leadership focuses primarily on the leaders of organizations; followers are relegated to a subservient position and relative obscurity. However, leadership is a necessary social phenomenon, and it cannot exist without followers. More to the point, the success of leadership is dependent on the constraints and opportunities presented and enabled by followers. Those writers interested in followership have focused on what followers do, in order to better understand the leadership/follower relationship. For example, charisma has been defined in terms of followers' reactions to the leader's personality traits as well his or her strategic vision and operational expertise; the heightened emotional states of followers in given situations; and, in more recent times, feelings of empowerment for followers. Conger points out, however, that while these studies have resulted in a greater understanding of the relationships between leadership behavior and follower compliance, knowledge concerning follower dispositions and the dynamics of dependency is limited.

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