BUS603: Managing People

Followership research investigates "the nature and impact of followers and following in the leadership process". It emphasizes the importance of the role of the followers in organizations and how various types of followership behaviors can be observed in response to leader behaviors. Other scholars discuss how follower identities and behaviors influence and shape leadership behaviors and outcomes. Followers' and leaders' roles are not static. The static role of the "leader" and the "follower" seems unnatural because one does not lead like a lion or follow like a sheep at all times. One may lead in one and follow in another situation.

Thus, the followership research may explain how the digital followership may work in virtual context if it refuses to follow the same one-sided attitude of the leadership research that intentionally focused on the leader behavior and omitted the follower behavior as one continuum or the two sides of the one coin. Rather, by studying the leading-following "tang" between leaders and followers, it offers a more balanced understanding of the leadership process, one that involves (1) "leading-following double interacts," (2) stimulates "the construction of leader and follower identities," and takes into account the fact that (3) leading-following interactions are developed "within an environment and context that are endogenous … to the leading-following process," that (4) "the leading-following process is fluid," and (5) that the dynamic environment plays a crucial role in nurturing fluid leading-following interactions.