Leadership

http://lea.sagepub.com/

The case for transcendent followership

Miguel Pina e Cunha, Armnio Rego, Stewart Clegg and Pedro Neves
Leadership 2013 9: 87
DOI: 10.1177/1742715012447006
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://lea.sagepub.com/content/9/1/87

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Leadership can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://lea.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://lea.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations: http://lea.sagepub.com/content/9/1/87.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Feb 20, 2013

What is This?

Downloaded from lea.sagepub.com by saba muneer on October 29, 2013

Article

The case for transcendent

followership

Leadership
9(1) 87106
! The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1742715012447006
lea.sagepub.com

Miguel Pina e Cunha

Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

Armenio Rego
Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal

Stewart Clegg
Centre for Management and Organization Studies, University of Technology, Sydney, Austrialia;
Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

Pedro Neves
Nova School of Business and Economics, Portugal

Abstract
Based on the model of transcendent leadership, we suggest that subordinates need to display
competences that mirror those of their leaders and propose transcendent followership as a framework for the responsibilities of followers in contemporary organizational environments. A transcendent follower is someone who expresses competence in terms of their management of
relations with self, others and organization. Competence in the domain of self refers to being
self-aware and proactive in developing individual strengths. Competence in the domain of others
refers to the processes of interpersonal impact, in relation to leaders and peers. Competence in
the domain of organization refers to collective maintenance and change. The article offers an
integrated view of the roles and responsibilities of followers in dynamic organizational environments, presenting them as fellows rather than subordinates.
Keywords
Leadership, followership, fellowship, transcendent followers

Introduction
Accounts of organizations in terms of leadership tend to be couched in terms of the qualities
of the leader dening an era, such as the Harvard Business Review (2012) list of great
Corresponding author:
Miguel Pina e Cunha, Nova School of Business and Economics, Rua Marques de Fronteira, 20, 1099-038 Lisboa, Portugal.
Email: mpc@novasbe.pt

88

Leadership 9(1)

American leaders of the 20th century: the leader is the dominant term, reecting a historical
view strikingly similar to a view of general history as a succession of rulers and governments.
In such a view great men (and it is usually men) are taken to characterize a whole era and its
signicant events. Dening an organizational era in terms of great leaders is but one sign of
what has been termed the romance of leadership (Meindl et al., 1985). In management and
organization theory further indicators of the romance of leadership are the excessive attention paid to the characteristics, traits and styles of leaders, as well as the conspicuous absence
of attention to followers (Burns, 1978; Northouse, 2004; Yukl and Van Fleet, 1992). The
follower is taken to be a tabula rasa to be imprinted by the leader and as such, largely
irrelevant (as pointed out by Avolio et al., 2009: 434; see also Shamir, 1997).
By contrast, in line with a number of previous works (e.g. Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995;
Kupers and Weibler, 2008; Lichtenstein and Plowman, 2009; Shamir, 2007), we regard
leadership as a relational process, co-produced by leaders and followers engaged in a relation
of mutuality (Vlachoutsicos, 2011: 124). By follower we refer here to those who, in terms
of relative position in the hierarchy, occupy positions of lesser responsibility. A middle
manager is a follower when interacting with the CEO but a leader when interacting with
someone from outside the managerial ranks. Leadership and followership are thus relational
categories rather than absolutes and express their characteristics in relation. Followership
should thus be positioned in the relationship stream of leadership theories (Graen and UhlBien, 1995: 54). We contribute to the study of the process of leadership involving leaders and
followers in context, by focusing on the understudied role of followers, especially on the
importance of followers competences at multiple levels.
We explore the relevance of the concept of transcendent followership, which is derived
from the notion of transcendent leadership, advanced by Crossan, Vera and Nanjad (2008).
We directly transpose the model advanced by Crossan and her colleagues to the case of
followership. Our intention is clear: to suggest that, in dynamic environments, the roles and
responsibilities of followers become progressively akin to those of leaders and have an
importance that transcends dyadic relationships with leaders (Makela, 2009). As a result,
much of what Crossan et al. argue about leaders can actually be sustained for the case of
followers. To test this possibility, we build on Crossan et al.s ideas and raise eight propositions concerning transcendent followership.
We begin this article by considering the new roles of followers in dynamic, fast-changing
organizational environments. We join the ongoing debate about the reconsideration of the
role of followership in the process of leadership (Baker, 2007) and share with some previous
work the assumption that leader and follower should be considered in mutual relation (e.g.
Collinson, 2006). Following the three-level structure proposed by Crossan et al., we rst
examine followership competence at the level of the self, focusing on the roles of followers as
independent agents. We then address the importance of followership competence at the level
of others and organization. To conclude, we discuss implications for research and
management.

Followership as part of the process usually known as leadership

The leadership literature has produced an enormous literature on how to be a good leader.
But there is only a meager literature a very meager literature on how to be a good
follower (Kellerman, 2008: 72). Leadership theories include reference to the importance of
those led and the context in which the process takes place. Theories developed in the 1960s

Cunha et al.

89

and 1970s, such as contingency theory (Fiedler, 1967) and leadermember exchange (LMX)
theory (Dansereau et al., 1975; Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995), introduced examinations of the
role of followers in the leadership process. But, even in these cases, followers were seen as
being fundamentally important only to the extent that positioning them thus explained the
action and impact of leaders (Shamir, 2007).
Organizational members in followership positions may actually display proactive behaviours that do not conform to conventionally docile notions of followership. Followers can
self-regulate (Lord et al., 2010), be proactive (Li et al., 2010), and consistently express personal initiative (Carsten et al., 2010; Frese and Fay, 2001). In doing so, they act as organizational citizens (Organ, 1997), able to exercise upward inuence (Farmer et al., 1997;
Mowday, 1978) and play an active role in initiating organizational change (Morrison and
Phelps, 1999), a task normally associated with leadership. In summary, followers may
engage in workplace initiatives that are inuential and produce change (Campbell, 2000).
There is evidently more to the followership part of leadership processes than is usually
acknowledged by traditional, leader-centric theories of leadership. For example, formal
leaders who see their roles as facilitators of change rather than as guardians of the hierarchy
can create followers that play leadership roles (e.g. Lichtenstein and Plowman, 2009).
Followership is a dynamic complex process that takes many shapes, with participants,
roles, and inuences changing over time (Denis et al., 2001, 2010). Three key points of
dierence emerge when we consider leader/follower relations as a dynamic process: (a)
leaders and followers may substitute, neutralize, or complement each other; (b) leadership/followership may be a collective endeavour rather than something dominated by formally designated leaders; and (c) followers can act in dierent ways and display diverse
forms of inuence. We focus especially on this latter dimension: the way followers enact
their role, the impact of their choices in the process of leadership and their inuence in the
power circuitry that denes organizations in general and the leadership process in particular.

Transcendent followers
Dening terms, Kellerman (2008) wrote that followers are people who have less power,
authority, and inuence than do their superiors and who therefore, usually, but not invariably, fall into line. Followership itself is a process that entails the response of those in
subordinate positions (followers) to those in superior positions (leaders). However, followers
may also initiate leadership actions, at least if leadership is dened as a process of inuence
toward the accomplishment of goals (Houghton et al., 2003: 124). As Rost (1995: 134)
pointed out, leadership at its best is a relation founded upon mutual purposes. Kellerman
noted, in a simple zero-sum conception, that followers are gaining power and inuence
while leaders are losing power and inuence (2008: 18), whereas Nye (2008) argued that
followers have more power than ever before. While the notion of power and inuence as
things that one can possess is simplistic, because power and inuence are nothing if not
inherently relational (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009), rather than being a manifestation of
possessive individualism (Macpherson, 1962), the idea is clear enough: organizational relationships are becoming less asymmetrical. In summary, as Kellerman (2008: 25) pointed out,
this is the time of the follower.
Followers should thus be capable of articulating competing demands and transcending
multiple levels of competence by revealing independent thinking in the self domain; they
express competence in the domain of others by simultaneously caring about the leader and

90

Leadership 9(1)

stretching his/her views; they show competence in the domain of the organization by simultaneously maintaining and changing its practices. It is in this sense that followers may have
a strategic role contributing to the creation of organizations characterized by both selfdiscipline and a learning orientation. Transcendent followers are those who excel at multiple
levels in fruitful relations of self, others and organization. The relation to transcendent
leaders is evident: Crossan et al. (2008) dened transcendent leaders as those who lead
within and amongst the levels of self, others and organization (2008: 570). We consider
that organizations also need transcendent followers, people that express high levels of competence within and among the levels of self, others and organization.

Followership as the domain of self

Followers competent at the level of self have a capacity to self-manage (Manz and Sims,
1980). These followers have the means necessary to direct their own activities eectively
toward the achievement of organizational goals. Traditionally, however, notions of being
followers or employees have been associated with the practice of obedience rather than with
self-awareness and self-management.
The category of a follower is not equivalent to that of an employee. An employee is
usually expected to respond positively to incentive schemes, corporate culture and other
techniques that frame their organizational relations. A follower, by denition, is, in principle, someone free to choose to follow or not because their choice to follow or not implies
judgement of the qualities of leadership: their loyalties can shift. They are not discursively
xed, ideologically, in a compliant role, as simply employees for whom conformance is
shown, at a minimum, by being there at work. More is expected of followers than mere
presence.
Authors such as Hamel (2007) and Carney and Getz (2009) have built on the notion that,
indeed, more is demanded of employees: they have abandoned traditional modes of managing and organizing in favour of newer models in which, normatively, employees are no
longer seen as a mass of interchangeable parts but should be viewed as individuals. Hamel
sees the impact of this change as signicant, especially for companies that organize around
the assumption of worker initiative rather than around obedience. He illustrates the point
with the case of Toyota, a company that represents rst-line employees as problem-solvers
and change agents (Hamel, 2006: 74). Followers empower leaders by relationally conjoining
their projects to those of the leader and selectively adapting the leaders message to their
roles: they act as disciples, spreading the word, unless, like Judas, they turn traitor because
their followership is based on premises that are disappointed.
Where individuals no longer necessarily rely on organizations to manage their careers
(Gratton, 2004) and where the nature of the employment relationship is not unilaterally
dened for them (Rousseau, 2005), change is afoot. Some organizations are discovering new
roles for followers, positing that individuals are able to manage themselves and to remain
true to their values and beliefs sometimes even in opposition to the organization. Followers
who are competent in the domain of the self are those who think independently and try to
protect and value their human capital. As Kelley observed (1988: 144), the key to being an
eective follower is the ability to think for one-self to exercise control and independence
and to work without close supervision. Good followers are people to whom a leader can
safely delegate responsibility, people who anticipate needs at their own level of competence
and authority.

Cunha et al.

91

To remain faithful to ones open and uid identity, followership demands some degree of
self-leadership. Self-leadership is the process through which people inuence themselves to
achieve the self-direction and self-motivation needed to perform (Houghton et al., 2003:
126). Approaches to organizational development based upon self-development, such as
Kaizen (Imai, 1986), rely to some extent on the principle of self-criticism (Chia, 2003). In
order to contribute to organizational improvement, one needs to start by developing oneself,
a challenge that requires self-awareness and self-regulation. Development of self-awareness
is particularly important because emotional aspects that bubble under, below the awareness
of the participants, often inuence leadership dynamics (Lord et al., 1999). Competence at
the level of self is particularly important for organizational learning in highly competitive
environments and depends critically on characteristics such as self-awareness, independent
thinking and self-management. Facilitating learning and creativity demands the recognition
of organizational respect for employee autonomy. It is the richness of independent thinking
and the need to understand why rather than how that makes organizational learning
and creative discovery possible (Carney and Getz, 2009).
When individuals accept traditional modes of thinking and doing, they will replicate past
practices, not introducing the variation that is necessary for improvement and renewal.
Followers who excel at the level of self-management are aware of their strengths and weaknesses, have an interest in and assume responsibility for, the development of personal
competence and mastery (Kelley, 1992; Senge et al., 1994). Employees committed to selfdevelopment may harm rather than protect their ego as they step outside comfort zones,
redening boundaries and relevant boundary objects over which they have less control
(Ashforth and Black, 1996; Ashforth and Tsui, 1991). They see their role as active in the
organization and engage in conversations within themselves (Senge et al., 1994: 195). Being
responsible self-managers, they have a motive to increase the value of their human capital. In
this sense, they are no longer traditionally subordinated employees but rather emancipated
members of their organizations: they choose to engage rather than being controlled (Gratton
and Ghoshal, 2003). Competence at the level of self is therefore crucial to assess the quality
of individual contributions to the organization, to evaluate the return on ones investment in
the organization and to preserve employability.

Followership and the domain of others

We refer to the capacity to build and sustain rich, constructive relationships with peers and
leaders as the domain of others. Follower competence in the domain of others refers to the
skills involved in lateral and upward relationships. Rich relationships with peers and leaders
are a potential source of social capital (Nahapiet and Ghoshal, 1998). Followers are a crucial
part in the process of developing and sustaining social capital. To protect the organizations
exibility in dynamic environments, organizations need to create relational processes based
on trust rather than hierarchical at. Trust, as a form of social capital, decreases transaction
costs, expands behavioural repertoires and helps to build further trust (Bromiley and
Cummings, 1996; Dasgupta, 1988; Kramer, 1999), not only in subordinateleader relationships, but also in lateral relationships, as is the case of teams (Costa, 2003).
A relational view of leadership considers not only the richness of relationships between
leaders and followers (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995) but also the richness of the relationships
between followers. Constructive relationships help the organization to create spirals of positivity (Cunha et al., 2009), whereas low-trust relationships create defensiveness and

92

Leadership 9(1)

protection from others (Edmondson, 1999). The creation of organizational environments

rich in trust, while it is inuenced by leaders, is crucially aected by the capacity of peers to
manage each other in a positive way. Organizational members who express other-oriented
behaviours, such as citizenship tendencies (Grant and Mayer, 2009), acts of compassion
(Lilius et al., 2008), and gratitude (McCullough et al., 2002), display competence in the
domain of others, which also requires emotional intelligence, namely understanding
others emotions and empathy (Goleman, 1998; Wol et al., 2002), and social intelligence
(Zaccaro et al., 1991).
Followers with competence in the domain of others recognize the importance of how we
handle ourselves and each other (Goleman, 1998: 3) and have been shown to help in the
building of positive relationships with other organizational members, including leaders and
peers (Goleman, 1998; Grewal and Salovey, 2005), as well as with customers (Kernbach and
Schutte, 2005; Weng, 2008). Emotionally intelligent followers co-lead teams in the path to
the creation of social capital and sometimes counter the negative eects produced by leaders
(Druskat and Wol, 2001; Goleman and Boyatzis, 2008). In this perspective, followers must
be competent at the level of others, especially at the level of the team. Team dynamics, in
fact, have a life of their own, supplanting the leaders inuence in a relational perspective
(e.g. Kets de Vries, 2011). Good teams may be those that build on top of the leaders
strengths and neutralize the leaders weaknesses.
For organizations competing in highly dynamic environments, these types of relationships
may be crucial because, by increasing social capital, they facilitate adaptation by making the
organization more organic and resilient, characteristics that are particularly important in
fast-changing environments. Beunza and Starks (2003) ethnography of the recovery of a
lower Manhattan trading room after the 9/11 attacks showed how resilience critically
depends on strong personal attachments rather than on purely professional/functional relationships (see also how high-quality relationships facilitate resilience in Caza and Milton,
2011). This extreme case is in line with other research showing that technical competence at
the individual level is insucient to create competence at higher levels, namely at the level of
interactions (Collins, 2001).

Followership at the organizational level

Followership also manifests itself at the organizational level. Good followers have been
presented as critical for several organizational functions, including environmental scanning
(Day and Shoemaker, 2004), performing extra-role behaviors (Podsako et al., 2000),
responding to unexpected situations that may disrupt the service standards (Cunha et al.,
2009), and others with systemic relevance. Good organizational functioning may be facilitated by followers who represent themselves as organizational citizens and who express an
interest in helping the organization. Where followers show dedication to the organization it
tends to be taken positively. Numerous accounts of the importance of these behaviours can
be considered. Day and Schoemaker (2008) cite the episode of the receptionist who redirected the attention and the research of experimenters in a pharmaceutical company from a
failing scientic course to a successful one, suggesting that vigilant followers may help to
build vigilant organizations.
Followers can contribute by being proactive (Frese and Fay, 2001). Given the poor environmental record of their company, a small aggregate of employees started Ben and Jerrys
pro-environmental initiatives. Environmental concerns, which became an important

Cunha et al.

93

component of the companys identity, were in fact ignited without the approval or even the
knowledge of top managers (Mirvis, 1994). The initiative of a group of tempered radicals
(Meyerson and Scully, 1995) with strong environmental values is a further example of
proactiveness. Instead of waiting for managerial action to solve what they viewed as a
problem of awed environmental practice, these followers took the issue as their own and
made change happen.
Finally, followers can be persistent, in other words be capable of carrying on in the face of
resistance and setbacks. One of the best-known examples of persistence that had an organizational outcome was the development of Post-It Notes at 3 M. The story of the Post-It
Note shows a long process of internal venturing before the eventual launch of what became a
big hit. Consider the description of Art Fry (1987), who participated in the process: Post-It
Notes wouldnt have gotten anywhere if I had stopped with submitting the idea and hadnt
gone to the work of getting materials and making samples. The old story that invention is
10% inspiration and 90% perspiration is true and my perspiration on this project had just
begun. Stories of persistence can also be found in skunk works, unapproved projects that
are developed informally by intrapreneurs that introduce unplanned variation that may end
up benetting the organization despite authoritative resistance to unocial projects
(Gwynne, 1997).

The case for transcendent followership

Transcendent followers are those who contribute within and across each of the levels of self,
others and organization. Not all followers will reveal the capacity to be eective at the three
levels. Some followers may be skilled in developing their competences but less competent in
applying them in their relationships with others and in contributing to the organization.
Some may be competent in relating with others but less competent in terms of their selfactualization and their contribution to the organization. Others may be devoted members of
the organization but, in some way, reveal weaknesses at the level of self and others. In this
section, we discuss a number of followership competence scenarios and their impact in terms
of rm performance (the summary of the levels of follower competence can be found
in Table 1).

Followership at a single level

Followers with high self-competence and lower levels of competence with regard to others
and the organization may bring a limited organizational contribution. Ed Catmull (2008: 66),
co-founder of Pixar, observed that it is tough getting talented people to work eectively with
one another. Individually talented followers may be interested in creating value for themselves, expressing minimal concern for the rest of the organization and its members (including
their leaders), focusing on individual achievement and being overachievers.
Groups and organizations with individual talents who practice highly developed possessive individualism and thus display only a limited capacity or willingness to care about coworkers or the organization are limited in their achievements (Collins, 2001). Individual
competence, or being competent at the level of the self, may be a necessary, but not a
sucient condition for collective success. Individualistic followers (Chale, 1995), those
who tell only what they think without obtaining the support of others, may actually end
up being marginalized. The benets of competence at the level of the self may be neutralized

94

Leadership 9(1)

Table 1. Levels of follower competence.

Competence at
one level

Competence at
two levels

Competence at
three levels

Self

Others

Organization

Explanation

Competence at the level of self

() High contributions when task interdependence low
() Inferior contributions when task interdependence high
Competence at the level of others
() High contributions when execution more
relevant than strategizing
() Inferior contributions when strategizing more
relevant than execution
Competence at the level of organization
() high level of short-term performance when
execution prevails under time constraints
() low levels of long-term performance when
independence is necessary
Competence at the level of self and others
() High contributions when mobilize resources
on behalf of the organization
() Inferior contributions when mobilize
resources against the organization
Competence at the level of self and
organization
() High short-term contributions when task
interdependence low
() Inferior long-term contributions when task
interdependence high
Competence at the level of others and
organization
() High contributions when expresses
dedication
() Inferior contributions when expresses
alienation
Transcendent follower
() High contributions in the long run
() Inferior contributions when organization
favours obedience

by lack of competence at the levels of others and the organization, especially when there is a
need to bring others to join the venture.
Overachievers, however, have a destructive potential, as they tend to care too little about
others. Spreier, Fontaine and Malloy (2006) studied the process of leaders running amok and
stressed the problems associated with this approach. The same individual orientation may
apply to followers: if task interdependence is low, competence at level of self may be positive,
as interactional demands are limited. If task interdependence is high, then this competence at
the level of self may lose value when it is not combined with competence at other levels, as

Cunha et al.

95

interpersonal and process conict may neutralize individual competence (Jehn, 1997). From
this we suggest that:
Proposition 1. Followers with a high self-competence and low competences at other levels will be
associated with (a) high levels of performance when task interdependence is low and with (b) low
levels of performance when interdependence is high.

Some followers may develop a higher level of competence in the domain of others than at
the level of self and the organization. There are several reasons why a high competence at the
level of others may not be matched by equivalent competence at the levels of self and
organization. First, the need to belong may be so powerful (Leary and Baumeister, 2000),
and the desire to maintain good relationships with co-workers may be so pronounced
(Fernet et al., 2010), that a follower may put the team above personal and organizational
interests. In this case, the reasoning is that what is good for the team is good for the other
levels. Group level identication may be especially powerful in the case of self-leading teams
(Neck et al., 1996). Research shows that, in these teams, pressures to align may be very
dicult to counter (Barker, 1993). Being a good team worker is an important competence,
especially when it comes to smooth execution. However, when independence and initiative
are more valuable, this competence may lose value and harm the collective in the long run.
Good team workers may suppress independent thinking in order to protect the team from
conict. If their mission is to execute, this may be benecial. But if independence is more
relevant and task conict is recommended, they may not be able to articulate their views in
an independent way, in order not to disturb the team, self-limiting their contribution in the
process. From this we extract our second proposition:
Proposition 2. Followers with a high competence at the level of others and low competences at
other levels will be associated with (a) high levels of performance when execution is more relevant than independence and with (b) low levels of performance when independence is more
important than execution.

In some cases, followers may display high competence in managing the organization
and be low in managing the self and others because the individual in question strives to
contribute to the organization but at a personal cost as well as underestimating the
level of others. The process is well established in several organizational literatures.
The charismatic relationship, for example, may elicit a dedication to the leader and
the organization that becomes unquestioning obedience (Shamir, 1991). When this
occurs, followers feel like they are being taken care of by the leaders [and] thus
become pawns in the hands of those who have climbed to higher echelons of those
organizations (Shamir, 1991: 85). While this may be productive in the short run,
because it creates organizations that vigorously respond to the leaders visioning, it
will deprive the organization of independent thinking and limit its capacity to grow
the development of its members. When charismatic leaders create a mass of dependent
followers, they are hardly creating sustainable organizations, as history has shown
repeatedly. This leads us to our third proposition:
Proposition 3. Followers with a high competence at the level of organization and low competences at other levels will be associated with (a) high levels of short-term performance when
execution prevails and with (b) low levels of long-term performance when independence is
necessary.

96

Leadership 9(1)

Followership at two levels

Employee initiative and inuence can, in some cases, reveal high levels of competence in
managing self and others but a low level of competence in terms of managing the organization. The literature oers a number of cases that substantiate this possibility. For example,
according to LMX theory, leaders may develop dierential relationships with members of
their in-group and out-group (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). When members of the out-group
perceive themselves in this situation, one or more may assume the initiative to unite the outgroup in order to confront the leader and its in-group. The ability of any subgroup members
to devise a personal strategy and to aggregate the rest of the out-group with his/her vision
may result in a cohesive subgroup that will counter what they see as the leaders discrimination. In this case, the competence of the informal emergent leader with respect to self and
others will not necessarily lead to higher organizational performance. When this energy is
directed to a pro-organizational cause, it can be a force for change, for example to start a
valuable initiative or to counter an abusive boss (Hobman et al., 2009). However, it may
actually decrease performance given the out-groups opposition to the leaders orientation
and directives. From this we derive our next proposition:
Proposition 4. Followers with high competence in managing self and others, but low in the
competence of managing the organization will be associated with (a) high levels of performance
when they mobilize resources on behalf of the organization and (b) low levels of performance
when they mobilize resources against the organization.

Some people have high competence in managing self and organization but are low in
terms of managing others, which may be benecial for the organization in the short run but
less positive in the long run. Professional experts competent in their own domain may bring
good results that favour the organization in the short run but damage social capital as time
passes. Casciaro and Lobos (2005) gure of the competent jerk illustrates this possibility.
In this case the personal contribution may be positive in terms of individual performance but
their lack of consideration for others may impede the development of social ties and the
growth of social capital. When it happens, short-term benets will not necessarily contribute
to the sustainability of results in the long term.
A conscientious, prudent and self-disciplined employee (self) may adopt several organizational citizenship behaviours (e.g. making constructive suggestions, or communicating a
good image of the organization outside) that benet the company. However, if (s)he has not
developed relational competences for cultivating good relationships with colleagues and
leaders, (s)he can damage the teams emotional climate, cooperation and performance.
Some followers are good performers and loyal employees but they lack the social competency to relate positively with others. From this we propose:
Proposition 5. Followers with a high self and organizational competence but low in terms of
managing others will be associated with (a) high short-term performance when task interdependence is low and (b) low long-term performance, as well as short-term performance, when task
interdependence is high.

People who commit themselves to the organizations mission will potentially contribute
positively to it. Employees dedicated both to others and to the organization are often
described as good team workers and devoted organizational members. Being less competent
at the level of self is not necessarily an obstacle to being a good employee and to making a

Cunha et al.

97

positive contribution to the organization. Where the organizations leaders and managers
seek to develop a good ethical organization, dedication to others and the organization may
be positive. Follower dedication may result from personal characteristics, such as a high
degree of self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974), relational or collective identity orientation (Howell
and Shamir, 2005), and low self-concept clarity (Howell and Shamir, 2005). These individual
dispositions inuence the followers willingness to act according to situational requirements,
such as those imposed by the leader or from team and/or organizational pressures to conformity, as well as particular preferences for more personal (i.e. based on direct relationship
with the leader) or socialized (i.e. based on the status of the leader as a representative of the
organization) relations with the leader (Howell and Shamir, 2005). Nonetheless, if this dedication represents a progressive lack of consideration for ones values, goals or needs, then it
can lead to feelings of alienation that are more associated with passivity and burnout
(Maslach et al., 2001) than with work engagement. From this we derive the following
proposition:
Proposition 6. A follower with a high competence in managing others and organization but who
is low in terms of managing self may be associated with (a) high performance when expressing
dedication and with (b) low performance when expressing alienation.

Between-level conflicts
The uncritical focus of much leadership literature on organizations in terms of the explicit
interests that top management denes may lead to the conclusion that the critical level for
follower contribution is their focus on the organizational level. When followers excel in
organizational level responsibilities, rm performance is expected to be positive. However,
as we mentioned, in the long run, followers focusing on the organizational level may contribute to negative outcomes, especially when the motives and strategies proposed by leaders
and the organizational context are problematic. Moreover, competence at the level of the self
can be extremely important in cases in which tension or conict exists between levels.
Without courage and integrity (self), they may contribute to support poor decisions and
damage the organization. Responsible followers may legitimately contest goals established
by the hierarchy if these goals counter values or risk harm the organizations reputation.
They are also better able to think independently and adopt a critical attitude (Kelley, 1992)
in opposing those decisions that incubate in high cohesiveness contexts that favour groupthink, even when relationships with peers and colleagues are at stake. The idea that good
employees are those who try to reach their goals, may not hold when goal setting triggers
dysfunctional processes with the conformity of the employee (Ordonez et al., 2009), such as,
for example, unethical courses of action stimulated by pressure to attain the goal. Good
employees may be those who confront goals that contain a potential for self and organizational destruction.
Self-reference and a clear sense of personal identity characterize capable people in followership positions (Crossan et al., 2008). The personal anchors and moral compasses of
every organizational member may contribute more to the creation of healthy organizations
than the exercise of obedience to authority and a mere focus on execution. Some degree of
obedience to authority is necessary for organizations to function but, as demonstrated by
classic psychology studies, obedience to authority may become extreme (Milgram, 1974) and
harm the organization and its members as well as the wider society (Kellerman, 2004).

98

Leadership 9(1)

Considering the above, we predict that healthy, vibrant organizations will be spaces in
which people have the freedom to vent disagreements and contribute to the organizations
learning in an open, honest way, rather than spaces in which people suppress their opinions
and doubts in the name of harmony and cohesion. Better organizations are characterized by
polyphony (Kornberger et al., 2006). Neutralizing voice may be positive episodically for
those doing the silencing but it can be potentially negative for them in the long term as they
fail to learn. Both leadership (Weick, 2001) and followership may thus be viewed as the
legitimation of doubt. Research on organizational learning suggests that psychological
safety encourages learning through honest discussions (Edmondson, 1999). Obedience is a
particularly dangerous ingredient when it occurs in the context of an extreme leader and a
situation without the proper combination of checks and balances (Howell and Shamir,
2005). Considering the above, we suggest:
Proposition 7. When facing conicts between levels, followers with a high level of self-managing
competence will be associated with higher long-term organizational performance than will
followers with low levels of that competence.

Followership at the three levels

Transcendent followers who display high competence at all levels will contribute to the
enhancement of rm sustainability in dynamic environments. The notion of transcendent
followers, those that express high levels of competence in managing self, others and organization, will be associated with the highest level of rm performance, for the same reasons
that led Ghoshal and Bruch (2003) to consider purposeful action taken by individuals the
key to corporate rejuvenation. Organizational members might be personally convinced that
their activities served certain higher needs, contributed to something bigger and were important for the organization (Ghoshal and Bruch, 2003: 188) regardless of their position in the
hierarchy. These people, in other words, express a strong conviction that they are doing a job
that deserves to be done and display emotional attachment and strong personal responsibility for their work. The sense of competence in terms of self, others, and organization, may
therefore be a pre-condition for someone to feel and act as a genuine adult and independent
organizational citizen. Organizational citizens feel responsible for the organization, go
beyond task requirements and express conscientious initiative (Borman, 2004) in a consistent
way. Hence, in our nal proposition, we suggest that:
Proposition 8. Transcendent followers with high levels of competence in terms of managing self,
others and organization will be associated with higher levels of rm performance in the long run
than followers with any other combination of competencies.

Conclusions and implications

The meaning of processes such as leadership and followership is changing: the language of
authority and obedience, of supervisor and subordinate, is giving way to one of leadership/
followership, with leaders and followers being seen as partners or allies (Bennis, 1999;
Cunha et al., 2011) in search of high-quality relationships (Graen and Uhl-Bien, 1995). As
summarized by Frese and Fay (2001: 135), many managers argue nowadays that they need
active participants at work rather than passive implementers of orders from above.

Cunha et al.

99

Organizations stand or fall partly not only on the basis of how their leaders lead but also
partly on the basis of how well their followers follow (Kelley, 1988). Eective followers, in
this perspective, manage themselves well, are committed to the organization and to a purpose, principle, or person outside themselves, build their competence and denote courage,
honesty and credibility through their actions. Sustainable organizations demand transcendent leaders and transcendent followers.
We have discussed the signicant roles that followers may play in the renewal and adaptation of organizations to dynamic environments. We extended Crossan, Vera and Nanjads
(2008) analysis of transcendent leaders to people in non-leadership positions. Our discussion
suggested that followers roles go well beyond execution without interpretation. If we consider organizations as interpretive systems (Daft and Weick, 1984), then every organizational
member may potentially contribute to the interpretation of changes in the environment and
to the adaptation of the organization to these changes.
In spite of our argument in favour of a more careful consideration of the role of followers,
we do not claim that there is symmetry of inuence in terms of the ocial and sanctioned
interpretations and the resulting inuences. In the same way, we do not argue that the role of
followers is identically inuential in every organization. Further research will be needed to
clarify which factors, organizational and environmental, have an impact on the degree of
agency of followers and act as boundary conditions for the propositions suggested above.
We expect that factors both internal and external to the organization inuence the willingness and scope of follower participation.
Among environmental factors, we suggest that the level of competitive intensity (DAveni,
1995), the pace of environmental change (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997), and the level of
uncertainty (Waldman et al., 2001) may all play key roles. The higher the level of competitive
intensity, the faster the pace of environmental change and the greater environmental uncertainty, the more organizations may need the sophistication and personal initiative of their
members in followership positions. In contrast and as contingency theory has long implied,
organizations facing stable environments and competing on the basis of static eciency may
reach their goals via narrowness and repetition (Farjoun, 2010), by asking followers to
follow. Among organizational factors, we consider that organizational design (Davis
et al., 2009), the nature of bureaucracy (Adler and Borys, 1996), and the sense of collective
ownership (Pearce and Jussila, 2010) may inuence the way followers interpret their roles
and the extent to which they can be proactive. Focusing on design, we anticipate that
enabling bureaucracies provide the space that constraining ones do not and that a sense
of collective ownership provides the stimulus for people to be active rather than passive.
Our study contributes to the management literature by exploring the role of followers, a
topic still understudied and deserving of further attention. First, leadership is a relational
process and, in this sense, studying it only by considering the leaders side constitutes a
biased and incomplete view. Researchers should consider the several participants in the
leadership process rather than only the formal leader. Second, emerging forms of organization necessarily lead to a reconsideration of the nature of leadership and followership.
Community forms of organization (OMahony and Ferraro, 2007), heterarchies (Beunza
and Stark, 2003), as well as organizations structured around the principle of responsible
autonomy (Fairtlough, 2005), are examples of designs that depart from the traditional view
and re-equate the roles and responsibilities of followers.
In all these organizational forms, systems of checks and balances make sure that the
powers of leaders are limited and that followers are not expected only to obey.

100

Leadership 9(1)

These emerging organizational forms expose ways in which the traditional roles of leaders
and followers may be challenged and new roles may emerge in the future. Such a change may
be relevant for organizational researchers because, as Scott (2004: 12) points out, hierarchies
may be increasingly giving way to more decentralized and horizontal systems, particularly
among organizations in the newer industries. In this changing landscape, the careful reconsideration of the role of followers may thus be crucial for understanding leadership. New
organizational forms tend to be supportive of Warren Bennis (1999) claim that exemplary
leadership is not possible without full cooperation of followers.
With regard to managerial implications, our study reveals a number of possibilities. First,
it suggests that the role of progressive managers will in part consist of supporting transcendent followers, that is organizational members with competence at the levels of self, others
and the organization. From this perspective, transcendent leaders are those who create
conditions for their employees fully to achieve their potential as transcendent followers
and to inform their leadership in the process. Second, it suggests that follower development
is a eld as relevant as that of leadership development. There is an industry devoted to the
development of great leaders but not to the development of great followers: an analogy
would be for academies of music to focus only on conductors with little regard for the
qualities of the orchestra. Devising a strategic role for followers can be a force for transformation in organizations. Third, by analysing the leadership process from the perspective
of the follower, our discussion indicates that resistance to change may be the process through
which leaders resist the agency of followers. There is no reason to assume that leaders resist
this agency less than followers do, other than because of the naturalization of academic
views on the resistance to change that see it as a phenomenon that exclusively aects followers (Dent and Goldberg, 1999). When one looks at the leadership process from the
followers side, one may get a dierent picture. Finally, followers engagement with leadership actions is not necessarily positive for organizations. Initiative and inuence can in fact
be used to achieve goals that are not sanctioned by the organization and counter those that
are. In this regard, there is no dierence between leadership exerted by leaders and inuence
exerted by followers: each can produce either good or bad results.
Further research on transcendent followership is needed to test the propositions advanced
here. For example, the conditions that facilitate the emergence of transcendent followers as
well as those that discourage people from acting as such, require investigation. Conditions
such as time pressure and job control (Fay and Sonnentag, 2010), justice perceptions
(Colquitt et al., 2001), and identication with the organization (Ashforth and Mael, 1989)
may provide a useful insight into why people act as transcendent followers. Another possibility is to study the cross-cultural dimensions of transcendent followership. Several authors
(e.g. Avolio et al., 2009; Kellerman, 2008) note that there are dierent templates for being a
good follower. Dierent congurational contexts, diering in political or cultural constitution, may elicit dierent responses from followers (for an illustration, see the case of East
and West Germany in Frese et al., 1996) and cross-cultural studies of followership may
complement the voluminous research on cross-cultural dimensions of leadership (e.g.
House et al., 1999).
The concept of followership may be construed dierently in more advanced and newly
forming industries versus more established ones with long histories of treating leaders and
followers in a particular way (Avolio et al., 2009). The study of transcendent followers will
also require the analysis of how these organizational members transcend the boundaries
between work and non-work, namely how they link their professional and family lives.

Cunha et al.

101

Future studies should also explore how the levels of self, other and organization interact with
the societal level. Both leaders and followers contribute to social betterment, especially
where they share eorts in pursuing such endeavours. One important question is how and
in which conditions, transcendent followers are able to manage the levels of self, others and
organization when higher purposes at the societal level are at stake and may collide with self,
others, and/or organization interests. We have contributed, in summary, to a nuanced,
multi-level, understanding of follower competence, which, in our view, is far more than
merely a reection of leader competence.
Acknowledgements
Miguel Cunha acknowledges support from Nova Forum. We thank Mary Crossan, Nadim Habib and
John Hustot for the comments and suggestions. Our sincere thanks for the comments received from
the journals reviewing team.

References
Adler PS and Borys B (1996) Two types of bureaucracy: Enabling and coercive. Administrative Science
Quarterly 41: 6189.
Ashforth BE and Mael F (1989) Social identity and the organization. Academy of Management Review
14: 2039.
Ashforth SJ and Black JS (1996) Proactivity during organizational entry: The role of desire for control.
Journal of Applied Psychology 81: 199214.
Ashforth SJ and Tsui AS (1991) Self-regulation for managerial eectiveness: The role of active feedback seeking. Academy of Management Journal 34: 251280.
Avolio BJ, Walumbwa FO and Weber TJ (2009) Leadership: Current theories, research, and future
directions. Annual Review of Psychology 60: 421449.
Baker SD (2007) Followership: The theoretical foundation of a contemporary construct. Journal of
Leadership and Organizational studies 14: 5060.
Barker JR (1993) Tightening the iron cage: Concertive control in self-managing teams. Administrative
Science Quarterly 38: 400437.
Bennis W (1999) The end of leadership: Exemplary leadership is not possible without full inclusion,
initiatives, and cooperation of followers. Organizational Dynamics 28: 7179.
Beunza D and Stark D (2003) The organization of responsiveness: Innovation and recovery in the
trading rooms of Lower Manhattan. Socio-Economic Review 1: 135164.
Borman WC (2004) The concept of organizational citizenship. Current Directions in Psychological
Science 13: 238241.
Bromiley P and Cummings LL (1996) Transaction costs in organizations with trust. Research on
Negotiation in Organizations 5: 219247.
Brown SL and Eisenhardt KM (1997) The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory and
time-paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 42:
134.
Burns JM (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper and Row.
Campbell DJ (2000) The proactive employee: Managing workplace initiative. Academy of Management
Executive 14: 5266.
Carney BM and Getz I (2009) Freedom Inc. New York: Crown.
Carsten MK, Uhl-Bien M, West BJ, Patera JL and McGregor R (2010) Exploring constructions of
followership: A qualitative study. Leadership Quarterly 21: 543562.
Casciaro T and Lobo MS (2005) Competent jerks, lovable fools, and the formation of social networks.
Harvard Business Review, June: 9299.

102

Leadership 9(1)

Catmull E (2008) How Pixar fosters collective creativity. Harvard Business Review, September: 6472.
Caza BB and Milton LP (2011) Resilience at work: Building capability in the face of adversity.
In: Cameron KS and Spreitzer G (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational
Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chale I (1995) The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey Bass.
Chia R (2003) From knowledge-creation to the perfecting of action: Tao, Basho and pure experience as
the ultimate ground of knowing. Human Relations 56: 953981.
Clegg SR and Haugaard M (2009) The Sage Handbook of Power. London: Sage.
Collins J (2001) Level 5 leadership: The triumph of humility and erce resolve. Harvard Business
Review January: 6776.
Collinson D (2006) Rethinking followership: A post-structuralist analysis of follower identities.
Leadership Quarterly 17: 179189.
Colquitt JA, Conlon DE, Wesson MJ, Porter OLH and Ng KY (2001) Justice at the millennium: A
meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology
86: 425445.
Costa AC (2003) Work team trust and eectiveness. Personnel Review 32: 605622.
Crossan M, Vera D and Nanjad L (2008) Transcendent leadership: Strategic leadership in dynamic
environments. Leadership Quarterly 19: 569581.
Cunha MP, Cunha RC and Rego A (2009) Exploring the role of leader-subordinate interactions in the
construction of organizational positivity. Leadership 5: 81101.
Cunha MP, Rego A and Clegg S (2011) Beyond addiction: Hierarchy and other ways of getting
strategy done. European Management Journal 29: 491503.
Cunha MP, Rego A and Kamoche K (2009) Improvisation in service recovery. Managing Service
Quality 19: 657669.
Daft RL and Weick KE (1984) Toward a model of organizations as interpretation systems. Academy of
Management Review 9: 284295.
Dansereau F, Graen GB and Haga W (1975) A vertical dyad linkage approach to leadership in formal
organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 13: 4678.
Dasgupta P (1988) Trust as a commodity. In: Gambetta D (ed.) Trust: Making and Breaking
Cooperative Relations. New York: Basil Blackwell, pp.4972.
DAveni RA (1995) Coping with hypercompetition: Utilizing the new 7-Ss framework. Academy of
Management Executive 9(3): 4557.
Davis JP, Eisenhardt KM and Bingham CB (2009) Optimal structure, market dynamism, and the
strategy of simple rules. Administrative Science Quarterly 54: 413452.
Day GS and Schoemaker P (2004) Peripheral vision: Sensing and acting on weak signals. Long Range
Planning 37: 117121.
Day GS and Schoemaker P (2008) Are you a vigilant leader? MIT Sloan Management Review Spring:
4351.
Denis JL, Lamothe L and Langley A (2001) The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change
in pluralistic organizations. Academy of Management Journal 44: 809837.
Denis JL, Langley A and Rouleau L (2010) The practice of leadership in the messy world of organizations. Leadership 6: 6788.
Dent EB and Goldberg SG (1999) Challenging resistance to change. The Journal of Applied Behavioral
Science 35: 2541.
Druskat VU and Wol SB (2001) Building emotional intelligence of groups. Harvard Business Review,
March: 8190.
Edmondson AC (1999) Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative
Science Quarterly 44: 350383.
Fairtlough G (2005) The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible
Autonomy. Greenways, UK: Triarchy Press.

Cunha et al.

103

Farjoun M (2010) Beyond dualism: Stability and change as a duality. Academy of Management Review
35: 202225.
Farmer SM, Maslyn JM, Fedor DB and Goodman JS (1997) Putting upward inuence strategies in
context. Journal of Organizational Behavior 18(1): 1742.
Fay D and Sonnentag S (2010) A look back to move ahead: New directions for research on proactive
performance and other discretionary behaviors. Applied Psychology: An International Review 59:
120.
Fernet C, Gagne G and Austin S (2010) When does quality of relationships with coworkers predict
burnout over time? The moderating role of work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior 31:
11631180.
Fiedler FE (1967) A Theory of Leadership Eectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Frese M and Fay D (2001) Personal initiative: An active performance concept for the 21st century.
Research in Organizational Behavior 23: 133187.
Frese M, Kring W, Soose A and Zempel J (1996) Personal initiative at work: Dierences between East
and West Germany. Academy of Management Journal 39: 3763.
Fry A (1987) The post-it note: A case of intrapreneurial success. SAM Advanced Management Journal
Summer: 49.
Ghoshal S and Bruch H (2003)
The invisible underpinnings of corporate rejuvenation:
Purposeful action taking by individuals. In: Birkinshaw J, Ghoshal S, Markides C, Stopford J
and Yip G (eds) The Future of the Multinational Company. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons,
pp.179193.
Goleman D (1998) Working with Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books.
Goleman D and Boyatzis R (2008) Social intelligence and the biology of leadership. Harvard Business
Review September: 7481.
Graen GB and Uhl-Bien M (1995) Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leadermember-exchange (LMX) theory over 25 years: Applying a multi-level multi-domain perspective.
Leadership Quarterly 6: 219247.
Grant A and Mayer D (2009) Good soldiers and good actors: Prosocial and impression management
motives as interactive predictors of aliative citizenship behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology
94(4): 900912.
Gratton L (2004) The Democratic Enterprise. London: Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
Gratton L and Ghoshal S (2003) Managing personal human capital. New ethos for the volunteer
employee. European Management Journal 21(1): 110.
Grewal D and Salovey P (2005) Feeling smart: The science of emotional intelligence. American
Scientist July-August: 330339.
Gwynne P (1997) Skunkworks, 1990s-style. Research-Technology Management 40(4): 1823.
Hamel G (2006) The why, what, and how of management innovation. Harvard Business Review
February: 7284.
Hamel G (2007) The Future of Management. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Harvard Business Review (2012) Great American leaders of the twentieth century. Available at: http://
www.hbs.edu/leadership/database (accessed 1 February 2012).
Hobman EV, Restubog SL, Bordia P and Tang RL (2009) Abusive supervision in advising relationships: Investigating the role of social support. Applied Psychology: An International Review 58:
233256.
Houghton JD, Neck CP and Manz CC (2003) Self-leadership and super-leadership: The heart and art
of creating shared leadership in teams. In: Pearce CL and Conger JA (eds) Shared leadership:
Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp.123140.
House RJ, Hanges PJ, Ruiz-Quintanilla SA, Dorfman PW, Javidan M, Dickson M, Gupta V, et al.
(1999) Cultural inuences on leadership and organizations: Project GLOBE. In: Mobley WH,
Gessner MJ and Arnold V (eds) Advances in Global Leadership, vol. 1. Stamford, CT: JAI Press,
pp.171233.

104

Leadership 9(1)

Howell JM and Shamir B (2005) The role of followers in the charismatic leadership process. Academy
of Management Review 30: 96112.
Imai M (1986) Kaizen: The Key to Japans Competitive Success. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Jehn KA (1997) A qualitative analysis of conict types and dimensions in organizational groups.
Administrative Science Quarterly 42: 530557.
Kellerman B (2004) Bad Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
Kellerman B (2008) Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing Leaders. Boston
MA: Harvard Business Press.
Kelley RE (1988) In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, November-December: 142148.
Kelley RE (1992) The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Follow and
Followers who Lead Themselves. New York: Doubleday.
Kernbach S and Schutte NS (2005) The impact of service provider emotional intelligence on customer
satisfaction. Journal of Services Marketing 19(7): 438444.
Kets de Vries MFR (2011) The Hedgehog Eect: The Secrets of Building High Performance Teams. San
Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Kornberger M, Carter C and Clegg SR (2006) Rethinking the polyphonic organization: Managing as
discursive practice. Scandinavian Journal of Management 22: 330.
Kramer RM (1999) Trust and distrust in organizations: Emerging perspectives, enduring questions.
Annual Review of Psychology 50: 569598.
Kupers W and Weibler J (2008) Inter-leadership: Why and how should we think of leadership and
followership integrally? Leadership 4: 443475.
Leary RM and Baumeister RF (2000) The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory.
Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 56: 485516.
Li N, Liang J and Crant J (2010) The role of proactive personality in job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior: A relational perspective. Journal of Applied Psychology 95(2): 395404.
Lichtenstein B and Plowman DA (2009) The leadership of emergence: A complex systems leadership
theory of emergence at successive organizational levels. Leadership Quarterly 20: 617630.
Lilius JM, Worline MC, Maitlis S, Kanov J, Dutton JE and Frost P (2008) The contours and consequences of compassion at work. Journal of Organizational Behavior 29: 193218.
Lord RG, Brown DJ and Freiberg SJ (1999) Understanding the dynamics of leadership: The role of
follower self-concepts in the leader/follower relationship. Organizational Behavior and Human
Decision Processes 78: 167203.
Lord RG, Diefendor JM, Schmidt AM and Hall RJ (2010) Self-regulation at work. Annual Review of
Psychology 61: 543568.
Macpherson CB (1962) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: From Hobbes to Locke.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Makela L (2009) Representations of change within dyadic relationships between leader and follower:
Discourses of pregnant followers. Leadership 5: 171191.
Manz CC and Sims HP (1980) Self-management as a substitute for leadership: A social learning theory
perspective. Academy of Management Review 5: 361367.
Maslach C, Schaufeli WB and Leiter MP (2001) Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology 52:
397422.
McCullough ME, Emmons RA and Tsang J (2002) The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82: 112127.
Meindl JR, Ehrlich SB and Dukerich JM (1985) The romance of leadership. Administrative Science
Quarterly 30: 78102.
Meyerson D and Scully M (1995) Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change.
Organization Science 6: 585600.
Milgram S (1974) Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper and Row.
Mirvis P (1994) Environmentalism in progressive businesses. Journal of Organizational Change
Management 7: 82100.

Cunha et al.

105

Morrison EW and Phelps CC (1999) Taking charge at work: Extrarole eort to initiate workplace
change. Academy of Management Journal 42: 403419.
Mowday RT (1978) The exercise of upward inuence in organizations. Administrative Science
Quarterly 23(1): 137156.
Nahapiet J and Ghoshal S (1998) Social capital, intellectual capital and the organizational advantage.
Academy of Management Review 23: 242266.
Neck CP, Stewart GL and Manz CC (1996) Self-leadership within self-leading teams: Toward an
optimal equilibrium. Advances in Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams 3: 4366.
Northouse PG (2004) Leadership Theory and Practice. London: Sage.
Nye J (2008) The Powers to Lead. New York: Oxford University Press.
OMahony S and Ferraro F (2007) The emergence of governance in an open source community.
Academy of Management Journal 50: 10791106.
Ordonez LD, Schweitzer ME, Galinsky AD and Bazerman M (2009) Goals gone wild: The
systematic side eects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives 23:
616.
Organ DW (1997) Organizational citizenship behaviour: Its construct clean-up time. Human
Performance 10: 8597.
Pearce JL and Jussila I (2010) Collective psychological ownership within the work and organizational context. Construct introduction and elaboration. Journal of Organizational Behavior 31:
810834.
Podsako PM, MacKenzie SB, Paine JB and Bachrach JG (2000) Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research.
Journal of Management 26: 513563.
Rost JC (1995) Leadership: A discussion about ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly 5: 129142.
Rousseau DM (2005) I-deals: Idiosyncratic Deals Individuals Bargain for Themselves. New York: M.E.
Sharpe.
Scott WR (2004) Reections on a half century of organizational sociology. Annual Review of Sociology
30: 121.
Senge PM, Kleiner A, Roberts C, Ross R and Smith BJ (1994) The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. London:
Nicholas Brealey.
Shamir B (1991) The charismatic relationship: Alternative explanations and predictions. Leadership
Quarterly 2: 81104.
Shamir B (2007) From passive recipients to active co-producers. Followers roles in the leadership
process. In: Shamir B, Pillai R, Bligh MC and Uhl-Bien M (eds) Follower-Centered Perspectives on
Leadership. Greenwich, CT: Information Age, pp.ixxxxix.
Snyder M (1974) Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
30: 526537.
Spreier SW, Fontaine MH and Malloy RL (2006) Leadership run amok: The destructive potential of
overachievers. Harvard Business Review June: 7282.
Vlachoutsicos C.A. (2011) How to cultivate engaged employees. Harvard Business Review, September:
123126.
Waldman DA, Ramirez GG, House RJ and Puranam P (2001) Does leadership matter? CEO leadership attributes and protability under conditions of perceived environmental uncertainty. Academy
of Management Journal 44: 134143.
Weick KE (2001) Leadership as the legitimation of doubt. In: Bennis W, Spreitzer GM and Cummings
TG (eds) The Future of Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, pp.91102.
Weng H (2008) Does the physicians emotional intelligence matter? Impacts of the physicians emotional intelligence on the trust, patient-physician relationship, and satisfaction. Health Care
Management Review 33: 280288.
Wol SB, Pescosolido AT and Druskat VU (2002) Emotional intelligence as the basis of leadership
emergence in self-managing teams. Leadership Quarterly 13: 505522.

106

Leadership 9(1)

Yukl G and Van Fleet DD (1992) Theory and research on leadership in organizations. In: Dunnette
MD and Hough LM (eds) Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2nd edn. Palo
Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, pp.147197.
Zaccaro SJ, Gilbert JA, Thor KK and Mumford MD (1991) Leadership and social intelligence:
Linking social perspectiveness and behavioral exibility to leader eectiveness. Leadership
Quarterly 2: 317342.

Author biographies
Miguel Pina e Cunha is Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics. His research
deals with positive and negative organizing, and emergent processes in organizations, such as
improvisation, surprise and serendipity.
Armenio Rego is Assistant Professor at the Universidade de Aveiro. He has a PhD from
ISCTE and has published in journals such as Applied Psychology: An International Review,
Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Occupational Health
Psychology. His research deals with positive organizational behavior.
Stewart Clegg is Research Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Director
of the Centre for Management and Organization Studies Research, and a Visiting Professor
at Nova School of Business and Economics. His research is driven by a fascination with
power and theorizing.
Pedro Neves is Assistant Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics. His research
deals with trust and organizational change processes.