Followership: the theoretical foundation of a contemporary construct.

This article presents the theoretical foundation of followership. The words follower and followership are increasingly used in discussions of leadership and organizations, and many think that the field of followership began in 1988 with Kelley's "In Praise of Followers." Followership research began in 1955, and literature in the social sciences discussed followers and followership for decades prior. By examining why leadership rather than followership is emphasized; discussing antecedents, early theory, and research about followership; and identifying common themes found in the literature, this article provides the foundation that has been missing in contemporary discussion of the followership construct.

Keywords: followership; leadership; leader role; follower role; relational nature of leader-follower; organizational behavior; management; authentic leadership

**********

Almost 30 years ago, Kelley's article, "In Praise of Followers, was published in Harvard Business Review (1988). It received wide attention in both academic and popular presses for its seemingly novel proposal that followers had an active role to play in organizational success: Success was not solely dependent on dynamic leaders. The idea that followers could be more than passive subordinates was echoed in the next decade by Chaleff's (1995) work about courageous followers.

These two publications by Kelley (1988) and Chaleff (1995) became the primary works on which subsequent discussions of followership were based. A small but growing body of work about followership developed into a field of its own, asserting that leadership could no longer be studied in isolation or with only a small nod to followers. Citing Kelley and Chaleff, theorists proposed behaviors, styles, and characteristics of effective followers and posited interdependency in the leader--follower relationship.

As theorists and selected researchers moved forward in their discussion of followership, few looked back across the decades preceding Kelley's (1988) work. The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical foundation for the field of followership and to examine the roots from which it developed in the United States in the 20th century management literature. By discussing why management theorists focused on leaders rather than followers, identifying the early voices of followership theory, describing followership's antecedents, and identifying the common themes found in the literature, this article acknowledges the origins of followership theory and begins to set the foundation missing in contemporary discussions of the followership construct. It also acknowledges the limited followership-centric literature in the 21st century and identifies contemporary exploration of a common followership theme by leadership theorists. It concludes by proposing further areas for research in followership.

It is important to note that the body of followership literature, distinct from what is traditionally viewed as leadership literature, is small. A search of 26 electronic databases produced approximately 480 unique citations for the period 1928 through September 2004 (Baker, 2006); approximately 50 more have been added through December 2006. About half of the citations were relevant to the field of management, and the great majority of the citations were written by American authors and about American organizations. The citations included opinion pieces as well as articles published in popular and trade magazines and academic and scholarly journals. In general, followership theory developed in the latter half of the 20th century. With limited exception, the few dissertations and articles written about followership in the first few years of the 21st century have explored facets of followership theory posited in earlier decades.

The number of leadership citations in comparable publications dwarfs the body of followership literature. Why has there been so much emphasis on leadership and so little on followership? The next part of the article examines this question.

Why Is the Focus on Leaders Rather Than Followers?

From leadership theories as early as Great Man down to the 1970s, the common view of leadership was that leaders actively led and subordinates, later called followers, passively and obediently followed. As Follett (1996) observed in 1933, her contemporaries thought that one was "either a leader or nothing of much importance" (p. 170). Why were followers ignored as the spotlight shone so brightly on leaders?

In the early days of civilization, there were no leadership theories--only leaders and their followers. Early leaders were Great Men who functioned in a preindustrial and prebureaucratic period (Daft, 1999). The leadership talents and skills that set the Great Men apart from other humans were assumed to be inborn; natural abilities were thought to be inherited, not acquired (Galton, 1900). Those who did not inherit these abilities had no chance to acquire them. The Great Men had their followers, troops, or devotees who followed in their footsteps, obeyed their directives, and faithfully mimicked their actions.

Heroic Leaders

In a similar fashion, Bums (1978) saw leadership literature as dealing with historically heroic or demonic figures, where fame was equated with importance. The followers of the heroic leaders were the "drab powerless masses" (p. 3). This was the predominant idea about leaders and followers as the United States of America transformed from a rural, agricultural economy into an urban, industrial one in the latter part of the 19th century. The business enterprises that arose then followed the model of Great Man leadership. Follett (1960) described the business leader of that era as a "masterful man carrying all before him by the sheer force of his personality" (p. 310). She painted a stark picture of the leader-follower dynamic:

Can you not remember the picture ... of the man in

the swivel chair? A trembling subordinate enters,

states his problem; snap goes the decision from the

chair. This man disappears only for another to enter.

And so it goes. The massive brain in the swivel chair

all day communicates to his followers his special

knowledge. (p. 311)

That view' continued into the 1970s when Hollander (1974) described the then-current view of followers as "nonleaders ... an essentially passive residual category" (p. 23).

Idealized Leader Overshadows Followers

Hollander (1974) argued that the primary role filled by an organizational leader was that of executive or manager who directed the activities of others. Other leader roles such as change agent, adjudicator, and problem solver were overshadowed by the director's role. He further observed that leaders were thought to "hold" a position of authority, which led to thinking of the position as a fixed, static role. The fixed leader role was idealized, and its idealization led to making a sharp and distinct difference between leader and followers. With this distinction in mind, the fixed position of leader was honored, and the role that it contained received less attention. Hollander suggested that were people to view the leader position as less fixed and more fluid, they would have a better understanding of the leader's roles and would think more about leader--follower relations rather than only about leaders.

Vanderslice (1988) similarly saw a problem in operationalizing leadership "in individualistic, static, and exclusive positional roles" (p. 683). She observed that people thought of planning, decision making, and task responsibility as the province of those who filled the leader roles and wondered if these functions could be achieved without "invoking role-defined static power differentials" (p. 683). Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) believed that their culture held a view of a heroic, romanticized leader to whom was attributed all glory or all failure. Their concept of idealized leader overshadowed the follower.

Social Change Affects Followers

Social change in the United States and elsewhere also shaped people's views of followers. Although in the early 1930s Follett discussed the interdependence of leaders and followers, the active role of followers, the situational authority of those closest to the task or problem at hand, and the win-win nature of constructive conflict, her views were lost in the milieu surrounding World War II. The world at that time embraced hierarchical, authoritarian structures that were built on a win-lose proposition that had but one purpose: to conquer an enemy. Lived in epic proportions, leadership was embodied in Great Men such as Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Hitler.

The organizations that prospered in America during and after World War II were mostly vertical organizational hierarchies (Useem, 1996). These postwar American corporations helped foster the "golden age" of prosperity within the United States (Smith & Dyer, 1996, p. 51), and the economy they led was admired and envied by "most of the rest of the world" (Kaysen, 1996, p. 3). As America achieved economic dominance in this era, corporations promised lifelong job security to employees in exchange for their loyalty, obedience, and hard work. Nothing more was asked of followers, and there was no need to examine the leader-follower relationship while economic conditions were stable. The leader's actions, not those of the followers, were instrumental to the company's success (Berg, 1998).