Followership: The Theoretical Foundation of a Contemporary Construct

Putting Coworkers in the Limelight: New Challenges for Communication Professionals

“…There is an emerging focus on leadership as a mutual influence process among leadership scholars. The idea of the leader as a lonely hero tend to be abandoned in favour of the idea that leadership and followership are one coin with two sides; without followers there can be no leaders (and vice versa) (Baker, 2007;Collinson, 2006;Fairhurst, 2008;Taulbert, 2008). However, we prefer the term co-workership since 'follower' and 'followership' indicate a dependent, passive and submissive role.…”

“…These changes raise new requirements for employees; it is no longer enough to solely conduct your job, you should also be socially competent, highly engaged prepared to walk an extra mile, service-minded, change-oriented, ready to adopt new values in line with your heroic view of leaders and Great Man theory, much of the leadership research has concentrated on finding the characteristics and behaviours of excellent leaders (Baker, 2007;Collinson, 2006;Crevani, Lindgren & Packendorff, 2010). Collinson (2006) argues that "studies have typically concentrated on leaders as if they were entirely separate from those they lead while followers have tended to be treated as an undifferentiated mass or collective" (p. 179).…”

“…Collinson (2006) argues that "studies have typically concentrated on leaders as if they were entirely separate from those they lead while followers have tended to be treated as an undifferentiated mass or collective" (p. 179). It is therefore no surprise that the body of literature on leadership is abundant whereas there is still not much written about followership or the relation between the two concepts (Baker, 2007;ErikssonZetterquist, 2009;Lundin & Lancaster, 1990;Tourish, 2008). This gives us a clear signal that leaders are those who are most important for the organization and its success.…”

“…Heretofore however, it is basically just leaders in formal positions that have been trained in their roles as leaders and communicators (Baker, 2007;Lippitt, 1982;Lundin & Lancaster, 1990). One common argument is that it would be too expensive to train all employees, but there also seems to be an overly optimistic assumption that co-workers will be "contaminated" or at least inspired by a communication competent manager.…”

Political Leadership in Parliament: The Role of Select Committee Chairs in the UK House of Commons

“…Baker (2007) demonstrates that both leaders and followers are roles rather than individual characteristics; that followers are active rather than passive; and that leaders and followers share common purposes rather than the former imposing purpose on the latter. Similarly, work on relational leadership theory (Uhl-Bien, 2006), leadership complexity theory (Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007), and distributed leadership (Gronn, 2002) have sought to treat leadership as an 'interactive dynamic relationship between organizational actors from which adaptive outcomes emerge' and which emphasize the importance of 'interdependence, coordination and…reciprocal influence' (Bligh, 2011, p. 427).…”