Leader-follower Relationship Research Articles

Gains and Losses: Week-To-Week Changes in Leader–Follower Relationships

Although the importance of leader-follower relationships in the workplace is widely acknowledged, the impact of changes in such relationships has not been adequately examined in the literature. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory and research suggest that leader-follower relationships develop, mature, and then stabilize. Integrating recent work finding important and impactful within-individual variations in what was thought to be relatively unvarying relationships, we theorize that leader-follower relationships (like other types of linkages), are not only differentiated (varying between people), but also fluctuate across time periods (varying within people). We also discuss how people can understand their relationships better by comparing them to a relevant and proximal referent; this underlines how prior levels of LMX serve as a lens by which followers evaluate their current LMX. Across two studies, we discuss how comparing this week’s LMX to last week’s LMX can signal improvement (i.e., gains) or deterioration (i.e., losses) in the relationship, with differential implications for positive and negative affect. We also provide additional insights into LMX fluctuations by contrasting within- and between-individual variance in established and newly founded relationships and by examining those incidents that are more likely to influence LMX in a given week.

Leaders as Coaches: Towards a Code of Ethics

Building on the relational leadership model, this study investigates ethical leadership in the context of “leaders as coaches.” We used a critical incident technique to identify ethical issues that occur when leaders act as coaches in the leader-follower relationship. Findings show seven ethical issues, namely, definition ambiguity, conflict of interest, confidentiality, power imbalance, freedom to participate, boundaries and favoritism. These ethical issues take a two-edged form for leaders as coaches, given the complexity of the leader-follower relationship. The increasing prevalence of managerial coaching makes it important to pre-empt ethical issues where possible and address any that arise, in order for an organization to become or continue to be an ethical organization. A proposed code of ethics, specifically for leaders as coaches, could accompany organizational change initiatives.

Leading in the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic: A leader-member exchange perspective

This commentary paper provides a comparison of the leadership approach used in the NHS pre and during the Covid-19 pandemic from the experiences of an NHS leader through the lens of the Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory (Dansereau, Graen & Haga, 1975). LMX theory recognises the importance of the leader-follower relationship on the achievement of shared goals, performance management and delivery of outcomes. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was experienced that in the NHS, the safety, wellbeing and resilience of the employees took precedence over individual performance achievement. Patient care and safety always remained the highest priority for the NHS, but without the staff to deliver that care, the NHS would not have been able to cope with the challenges that the pandemic created. The leadership style required during this time was therefore one of compassion, kindness, support and trust. This can be associated to an authentic, paternalistic leadership style. LMX theory has been used in this commentary paper as the framework in describing how the leader-follower relationship was either developed, changed, maintained or strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemic from a first-hand account of an NHS leader. By recognising the shift in focus of the leader-follower relationship in the NHS, it can be suggested that there has been a change in the NHS culture. A call for research is made to ascertain whether the cultural change in the NHS is recognisable across the entire national institute and whether the leader-follower relationship is at the centre of this change. Additionally, a call for further research is made in relation to the development and sustainability of the relationship between leaders and followers during times of intense pressure, and connecting the emotional, social, influence to management science.

Mask-Wearing as a Partisan Issue: Social Identity and Communication of Party Norms on Social Media Among Political Elites

This study draws on the social identity approach (SIA), to examine how political elites (i.e., members of the 116th United States Congress) communicated norms about mask-wearing on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Twitter data collected in 2020, we found that Republican members of Congress were significantly less likely to promote mask-wearing than Democratic members. We also observed some variations in norm-conforming behaviors among the members of each party. For Republicans, increased loyalty to the Trump leadership was significantly associated with a lower level of mask promotion. For Democrats, we found some evidence that loyalty to the party predicted higher levels of mask promotion. On the other hand, interactions with out-group members decreased adherence to party norms for both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. These findings allow us to better understand the social–psychological effects of party membership among political elites as well as the importance of leader–follower relationships and intergroup interactions.

How are high-quality relationships created with dark leaders? An examination of leader and follower dark triad traits and leader-member exchanges

This study examines whether follower Dark Triad (DT) traits impact the quality of leader-member exchanges. Data was collected from 328 individuals who completed the Short Dark Triad instrument (SD3) for themselves and their supervisor, and the Leader-member Exchange instrument (LMX-7) to determine the quality of their relationship with their supervisor. A factorial ANOVA was performed to determine the impact of leader and follower DT traits on the quality of the leader-follower relationship. A simultaneous regression tested if the quality of the leader-follower relationship could be predicted from DT traits of follower and DT traits of leader. Results suggested that narcissistic and psychopathic DT traits of the follower, as well as the leader, did significantly impact the quality of the leader-follower relationship. Moreover, results from the regression determined 24% of the variance in the quality of a leader-follower relationship can be explained by DT traits of the leader and follower.

A Conceptual Framework of How Meeting Mindsets Shape and Are Shaped by Leader–Follower Interactions in Meetings

In this conceptual paper, we define a person's meeting mindset as the individual belief that meetings represent opportunities to realize goals falling into one of three categories: personal, relational, and collective. We propose that in alignment with their respective meeting mindsets, managers use specific leadership claiming behaviors in team meetings and express these behaviors in alignment with the meeting setting (virtual or face-to-face) and their prior experiences with their employees. Employees’ responses, however, are also influenced by their meeting mindsets, the meeting setting, and prior experiences with their managers. The interplay between managers’ leadership claiming behavior and their employees’ responses shapes leader–follower relations. Embedded in the team context, the emerging leader–follower relations impact the meaning of meetings. We outline match/mismatch combinations of manager–employee meeting mindsets and discuss the influence that a manager and employee can have on each other's meeting mindset through their behavior in a meeting. Plain Language Summary Have you ever had the experience of entering a team meeting and quickly realizing that your idea of how the meeting conversation should be approached did not align with your boss's understanding of the meeting purpose? This is indeed a common experience in meetings between managers and their employees. While we understand much about the communication dynamics that occur in meetings, we know less about what motivates people to communicate in certain ways in meetings. In this conceptual paper, we classify people's understanding of meetings as being driven by one of three purposes: [1] to strategically position and promote themselves (which reflects a personal meeting mindset), [2] to shape collaborations and to ensure reciprocation (which reflects a relational meeting mindset), or [3] to strengthen the team identity and increase the willingness to go the extra mile for the team (which reflects a collective meeting mindset). Meeting mindsets shape how people enact their leader or follower role in meetings—that is, how a manager exhibits leadership and how employees react. However, managers’ and employees’ meeting mindsets may not necessarily match, which can trigger tensions and may ultimately change the way in which managers or employees define the meaning of meetings. Our research helps managers to comprehend the reasoning behind their own and other people's meeting behavior and may promote reflection on one's leadership approach, particularly in a team meeting context. It can also help employees to grasp the power they can have in terms of actively shaping their managers’ meeting mindsets.

Revisiting emergence in emergent leadership: An integrative, multi-perspective review

We draw attention to how and why multiple perspectives on emergence can promote leadership scholarship within the broad umbrella category of emergent leadership. Tracing the derivation of emergent leadership and related concepts since 1941, we identify four empirically derived themes: Entries, or how and where definitions were introduced and adopted; Essences, identification of key components and processes; Eclipses, where certain constructs and approaches have gained prominence over others; and Erasures, where particular lines of inquiry and methodologies have been subsumed, ignored, or removed from easy access by researchers. In critically reviewing the emergent leadership literature, we apply these themes to reveal a number of flaws that inhibit emergent leadership research, including: inconsistent measures, narrow sampling frames, tautological definitions, limited theorization, and very little attention to implications for the development of leader-follower relations. Based on this analysis, and with reference to contemporary issues, we propose an agenda for future research on emergent leadership that is informed by interdisciplinary perspectives that give prominence to emergence dynamics.

Operating room nurses’ perception of professional relationships

BackgroundRelationships are the key to coordination between members within medical teams. Several studies have previously addressed the professional relationships in nursing; however, a review of literature showed that there has been little research on factors affecting the professional relationships from operating room nurses’ perspective. The present study aimed to investigate nurses’ perception of the professional relationships in operating rooms. MethodsThis was a descriptive, cross-sectional study performed in Shiraz, from 2019 to 2020.The participants were selected through census sampling, including 361 nurses in practice in theoperating rooms of university hospitals including Khalili, Namazi, Rajaee, Hafez, Dastgheyb, Faghihi, Chamran, and Hazrat Zeynab hospitals. The required data were collected using the professional relationships questionnaire. The questionnaire is valid and reliable. The S-CVI/Ave of the questionnaire was estimated as 0.92. The KMO value of the questionnaire was calculated to be 0.922. The Cronbach's alpha of the whole questionnaire was obtained as 0.88. ResultsThe mean of the operating room nurses’ total professional relationships scores was found as 136.681 ± 16.357. Additionally, on the one hand, the results show a statistically significant relationship between the professional relationships and on the other hand, the demographic variables of work experience (P < 0.001), education (P = 0.001), work shift (P < 0.001), and age (P < 0.001). The lowest score on the questionnaire (2.90 ± 0.70) belonged to the items in the fifth dimension, namely differences in professional roles and positions, some professionals’ feelings of both superiority and arrogance, and the dominance of a leader-follower relationship between doctors and nurses. ConclusionIt is recommended that operating room managers and policy-makers should address the weaknesses in the staff's professional relationships and then take some steps to eliminate them. The present study found that older staff with more experience workedbetter and this could make them good preceptors for new employees whoneed help with their orientation.

The missing link: Studying political leadership from the followers’ perspective

Recent political developments suggest that political followership has played increasingly vital roles in modern democratic politics. However, scholarship seemingly lacks proper conceptual and methodological tools for analysing why and how citizens follow their leaders, and what the role of this relationship is in personalised politics and political leadership. Addressing the research gap, this article turns to generic leadership studies for help and introduces its follower-centric models into the field of political science. This venture opens with a review and comparison of some of the different perspectives about political followers in the scholarship on political leadership and personalisation, taking account of their limitations. It then moves on to assess follower-centric models and their empirical results, focusing on observers’ perceptions about the characteristics and behaviours of leaders in the attribution of leadership. Based on these models, the article offers a balanced perspective about leader–follower relations. Recommendations for future research directions are presented in the concluding sections.

Development of a Scale to Measure Followers’ Satisfaction With Leaders Applicable in Cross-Cultural Studies

This study examined the cross-cultural performance of a new scale to measure followers' satisfaction with their leader. The scale was designed to give a generalizable measure of followers' response to their leader's behavior, one which is applicable across various leader-follower relationships and in different cultures. Using a diverse global sample of experienced followers who were familiar with their current leaders, the results supported the scale's utility. It performed well in all cultures, with good reliability and both convergent and discriminant validity. The scale offers a brief, widely applicable measure to advance the cross-cultural study of leadership.

Authentic leadership and follower trust in the leader: The effect of precariousness

Orientation: In a business context characterised by precariousness and uncertainty, the importance of trusting leader-follower relationships is becoming critical to navigate imminent challenges preventing organisational sustainability and progress. The potential negative impact of related challenges could be reduced by encouraging leaders to adopt an authentic leadership style, culminating in various positive employee and organisational outcomes.Research purpose: This study investigated the impact of authentic leadership (AL) on follower trust in the leader (TL), while considering the possible indirect influence of perceived precariousness in the form of job insecurity.Motivation for the study: Establishing a high level of trust among the followers and their leaders employed by a manufacturing organisation under operational and financial pressure might contribute to a more effective functioning of the entity.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was applied. The Authentic Leadership Inventory, Workplace Trust Survey, and Job Insecurity Scale were administered.Main findings: Authentic leadership was a significant predictor of TL. Job insecurity did not moderate the relationship between AL and TL.Practical/managerial implications: Promoting an AL style will benefit manufacturing organisations as it will elevate the trustful relationship between leaders and followers, despite precarious working conditions.Contribution/value-add: The study emphasises AL’s critical role in cultivating a trustful relationship between followers and their leaders. The non-significant influence of job insecurity on a trustful relationship in a precarious work context was also highlighted.

The fitting effect of the authentic behavior in the leader-follower relationship

The fitting effect of the authentic behavior in the leader-follower relationship

The Rise and Fading Away of Charisma. Leadership Transition and Managerial Ethics in the Post-Soviet Media Holdings

This paper examines post-communist managerial ethics during the emergence and transition of charismatic leadership in two privately owned media holdings in Russia and Kyrgyzstan. These media holdings were bootstrapped in the 1990s and 2000s by people without management experience and connections. This paper argues that Weberian charismatic leadership was a necessary leadership style to start a private business for people without links to elite networks. However, once firms establish themselves on the market, charisma fades and yields itself to a legal-rational leadership style. In particular, the paper compares and contrasts the managerial ethics issues arising from the loyalty-based leader–follower relations in the charismatic leadership phase and the legal-rational phase of a firm’s development and maturation. While the legal-rational phase brings positive changes to workload management and employees’ rights for vacation and p/maternity leave, task delegation remains an unsolved issue. Ambiguous career advancement criteria of the legal-rational phase replace rapid career progression of junior and middle managers during the charismatic phase. By examining the dynamics of managerial ethics transformation, this study adds to the literature on post-communist leadership, management and governance. Recommendations are provided for privately owned firms on how to advance managerial ethics to attract and retain qualified talent.

Leader–Follower Role Allocation for Physical Collaboration in Human Dyads

People often find themselves in situations where collaboration with others is necessary to accomplish a particular task. In such cases, a leader–follower relationship is established to coordinate a plan to achieve a common goal. This is usually accomplished through verbal communication. However, what happens when verbal communication is not possible? In this study, we observe the dynamics of a leader–follower relationship in human dyads during collaborative tasks where there is no verbal communication between partners. Using two robotic arms, we designed a collaborative experimental task in which subjects perform the task individually or coupled together through a virtual model. The results show that human partners fall into the leader–follower dynamics even when they cannot communicate verbally. We demonstrate this in two steps. First, we study how each subject in a collaboration influences task performance, and second, we evaluate whether both partners influence it equally or not using our proposed sorting method to objectively identify a leader. We also study the leader–follower dynamics by analysing the task performance of partners during their individual sessions to predict the role distribution in a dyad. Based on the results of our prediction method, we conclude that the higher-performing individual performance will assume the role of a leader in collaboration.

The Impact of Structure and Corporate Ideology on Leader–Follower Relations in the Bureaucratic Organization: A Reflection on Moral Mazes

In the wake of organizational scandals associated with corporate America servant as well as transformational leadership are seen as approaches capable of engendering a type of morality—on the part of leaders and followers—based on shared values, universal moral principles and an orientation towards a pro-social behavior serving the common good. However, recent critiques have highlighted the tendency in the relevant literature to overlook the systemic context within which leadership and followership are situated. Given this oversight this paper re-visits a classic piece of ethnography on corporate America: Robert Jackal’s Moral Mazes. Employing concepts from critical realism fused with insights from studies on management and bureaucracy we analyse the key themes from the book pertaining to the nature of the leader–follower dynamic in shareholder capitalism. The analysis highlights the role of bureaucracy and corporate ideology as key elements shaping leader–follower relationships, encouraging a type of morality associated with guarding self-interest whilst undermining relationality. The influence of the structural and cultural context in which leader–follower relations unfold draws attention to morality as relationally contingent as opposed to an ideal state.

Linking emotional intelligence to turnover intention: LMX and affective organizational commitment as serial mediators

PurposeThe present study attempts to examine the mediating effect of leader member exchange (LMX) and affective organizational commitment on the relationship between followers' emotional intelligence (EI) and their turnover intention.Design/methodology/approachUsing a cross-sectional design, survey data were obtained from 182 employees in Tunisia. Survey responses were analyzed using Model 6 in PROCESS (Hayes, 2017).FindingsAs predicted, LMX and affective organizational commitment were found to sequentially and totally mediate the causal relationship between EI and turnover intention.Research limitations/implicationsThe limitations include using a cross-sectional design, convenience sampling and self-report measures for EI, LMX, affective commitment and turnover intention.Practical implicationsOrganizations need to encourage more emotionally intelligent responses in employees which improve the quality of their leader–follower relationships. The quality of LMXs enhances the affective commitment that drives lower turnover intention.Originality/valueWhile the relationship between EI and turnover intention has been theorized, this study is one of the first to enable us to explore the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Specifically, a sequential mediation model linking EI with turnover intention through LMX and affective commitment was proposed.

A Three-Echelon Dual-Channel Supply Chain Model with Learning Effect Under the Return Policy

In today's competitive and technologically developed era, many retailers have adopted an e-channel to increase sales, in addition to the existing traditional retail channel. Although many researchers studied this issue, there is hardly any research that comprehensively considers the learning-effect and return-policy. Therefore, this research aimed to develop an imperfect production dual-channel supply chain model consisting of a supplier, a manufacturer, and a retailer. The manufacturer also has a refurbishment unit adjacent to its production hub, where it reworks all the defectives. The main objective is to maximize the supply chain profit by considering factors, such as inspection error, return policy, and learning-effect of the employees. Finally, this model is analyzed with the Leader-follower relationship strategy and an integrated approach. The research found that the integrated approach is profitable for the entire supply chain, while commodity prices can be minimized. Sensitivity analysis is also presented in this study.

Empathic organizational culture and leadership: conceptualizing the framework

PurposeThis paper aims to conceptualize and discuss empathic organizational culture and leadership along with organizational implications.Design/methodology/approachThe authors reviewed literature to conceptualize empathic organizational culture and leadership. They referred to Hofstede’s organizational culture concept and studies on empathy to explore how leader–follower relationships are influenced by a leader’s empathic disposition.FindingsOrganizational leadership is instrumental in shaping employee performance. While work design, culture, peer support and resource accessibility are discernible, leadership style, control and others are covert. Leaders’ empathic attitudes and dispositions can positively influence organizational functions for improved performance. This review suggests that organizational culture should support growth, proper functioning and effective coordination between employees for improved organizational effectiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors conducted searches in leadership and management journals to help conceptualize leaders’ empathic disposition. Future researchers may explore other bodies of literature and the cultural demographic differences in exhibiting empathic leadership and its effectiveness. Researchers can explore how empathic culture relates to job motivation, satisfaction and commitment. The authors suggest that future research may explore how employees’ and supervisors’ behaviors and interactions can create an empathic organizational culture.Practical implicationsThe authors identify the characteristics in an empathic leader to articulate the role of empathy in leadership. Alignment between person, group norms and organizational values is more important than the existence of culture.Originality/valueEmpathy is studied by researchers from various disciplines. Similarly, employee well-being has received attention from organizational researchers from many fields. However, researchers have given inadequate attention to conceptualizing an empathic organizational culture and its interrelationship with leadership. The authors offer a more positive perspective to the leader-member exchange (LMX) research by describing how leaders can sustain positive relationships with employees rather than the purely transactional exchanges that characterize LMX.

Good or Bad? The Ambivalent Leader-Follower Relationships.

Researchers have emphasized the positive and negative influences of ambivalent leader-follower relationships, but it is not clear when the ambivalent relationship is associated with good or bad influences. To answer this question, we reviewed the definition and identified 10 different types of ambivalent leader-follower relationships. Further, we demonstrate that the negative outcomes (more inflexibility, disengagement, and worse performance) can be explained by the workplace stressor perspective, and that the positive outcomes (more flexibility, engagement, and better performance) can be explained by paradox view. Finally, drawing from conservation of resources (COR) theory, we integrate workplace stressor framework and the paradox view to address when the ambivalent leader-follower relationship is beneficial or detrimental for followers. We proposed that the degree of ambivalence, support from the third party, and integrative complexity of follower will influence the possible positive or negative influences. Limitations and future directions were also discussed.

Leader pre- and procrastination, temporal resource utilization, and leader-follower relationship

With emergent attention on pre-crastination (PRE), together with a familiar and widely discussed proclivity – procrastination (PRO), a growing need is evident to examine these constructs – their definitions, conceptualizations, and manifestations of paradoxical nature, especially when these seemingly maladaptive behaviors displayed by managerial roles in organizations. Given the central role of time embedded in PRE/PRO, and the importance of temporal activities in organizational settings, the present work integrates literature in PRE and PRO, leadership, and temporal resource utilization to present a framework mapping PRE/PRO to time in four conditions: temporal resource compression, temporal resource suppression, temporal resource exploitation, and temporal resource exploration. Built on this foundation, the second half of this work proposes a multiphase process model explaining how temporal variances initiated by leaders could shape followers’ perception of, responses to, and evaluation of the leaders and leader-follower relationships. The present work thus advances the literature by infusing PRE/PRO-related temporal characteristics into leadership research, providing a perceptual framework that explains followers’ reactions, investigating the role of temporal resource utilization as salient contextual factors in altering followers’ perceptions, and offering new propositions that have the potential to provide a more complete understanding of the integrative literature and its implications for organizations.