Implicit followership theories and resistance to leaders’ unethical requests: the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior

“The Exorcist”: a grounded theory on how individuals avoid unethical requests at work

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to understand how individuals seek to reduce the occurrence of unethical requests at work and the effects of such strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors built a grounded theory through semi-structured interviews with 65 individuals who worked for companies involved in the Brazilian corruption scandal called Operation Car Wash.

Findings

The interviewees reported that they use two central strategies to avoid unethical requests: explicit moral communication (directly stating that they are not willing to adhere to an unethical request) and implicit communication (expressing such a refusal through moral symbols). Both strategies signal the morality of the communicator and lead the possible proponent of an unethical request to perceive a greater probability of being reported and, thus, avoid making such an unethical request. However, while explicit moral communication affects the perceived morality of the individual who would possibly make an unethical request, implicit (symbolic) moral communication does not. As a consequence, the risks of retaliation for making a moral communication are greater in the case of explicit moral communication, entailing that implicit moral communication is more effective and safer for the individual who wants to avoid unethical requests.

Originality/value

This paper broadens the literature on business ethics and moral psychology by shifting its focus from what organizations and leaders can do to prevent unethical behavior to what leaders can actively do to protect themselves from unethical requests.

Does follower role orientation impact leader-directed outcomes? An exploration of the indirect effects of follower role orientation on influence and leader effectiveness

Follower role orientations affect how followers approach the leadership process; however, there has been little insight into how individuals use these role beliefs to influence leader outcomes, particularly through their psychological and social leader-follower relationships. This research examines how co-production, passive, and anti-authoritarian follower role orientations affect a follower's influence on their leader and leader effectiveness indirectly through psychological closeness and relationship quality. The results from two studies suggest co-production role orientation had positive effects on influence on the leader through psychological closeness and on perceived leader effectiveness through closeness and leader-member exchange. Passive role orientation was negatively related to followers' influence on the leader through reduced psychological closeness in study 1, while anti-authoritarian role beliefs were negatively related to closeness in study 2. These findings suggest that when followers believe co-production is critical to the leadership process, closeness with the leader, relationship quality, and perceived leader effectiveness improve.

Followership: a review of current and emerging research

Purpose

Over time, the role of followers within leadership discourse has gained greater status, leading to followers being acknowledged as significant actors in the leadership process. This has led to the development of follower-centric leadership studies, as well as the more emergent research area of followership, with followership research having the specific intention to find out about followers from the perspective of followers. In this paper, the authors provide a review of role-based followership approaches, and implicit leadership and followership theories as a basis to build a case for follower implicit followership theories (FIFTs) as a focus area for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a review of seminal and current role-based followership literature, with a specific focus on FIFTs and followership studies conducted within the African context.

Findings

Implicit theories have been an area of leadership research that has added much value, and as such could do the same for development of followership research. FIFTs as a research area are nascent and, as such, should continue to be explored in order to expand our understanding of followership.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first literature reviews to have a specific focus on FIFTs, as well as on followership research conducted within the African context.