Prototypical implicit followership theories, leader support, and follower organizational citizenship behavior

Abstract

ABSTRACT How and when do leader prototypical implicit followership theories (IFTs) facilitate follower organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB)? In line with behavioural confirmation theory, we propose that leaders who have a higher level of prototypical IFTs provide their followers with more support, which subsequently facilitates follower OCB. Furthermore, we argue that leader prototypical IFTs shape both leader support and subsequent follower OCB not only independently but also in conjunction with follower prototypical IFTs. We collected survey data from 137 leader - follower dyads in China. Our preliminary results showed that the prototypical IFTs of leaders were positively related to leader support, which in turn was positively related to follower OCB; however, the sole predictive effect of leader prototypical IFTs became nonsignificant when leader-follower congruence in prototypical IFTs was included as a predictor. The results, which were obtained using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, showed that when leaders and followers held congruent prototypical IFTs, a high level of prototypical IFTs was related to higher levels of both leader support and follower OCB. Therefore, leaders’ IFTs, followers’ IFTs, and the congruence between these factors should all be taken into account in attempts to facilitate follower OCB.