Introduction
Historically, the attraction to leadership has captivated a tunnelled focus on leaders primarily, masking followership as negative, banal, boring, or leadershipâs shadow, at best. The major global and academic antecedents responsible for shaping the unsavoury connotations signifying followership portray it as incapable, ineffective, defective, ordinary, or weak (Carsten, Harms, & Uhl-Bien, 2014). Consequently, the importance of global followership has been largely overlooked, especially with regard to role modelling and mentorship.
Globally, followership research is of critical importance within organisations where these individualsâ experiences have been positioned as inferior to the dominating interest of leadership. Certainly, leaders are not solely responsible for influencing organisational members and processes; rather, workplace outcomes are determined by the collective efforts of every employee. Correspondingly, the rising influx of diversity within national and international areas commands attention to the increasing amount of intercultural interactions experienced by organisational leaders and followers alike (VanderPal & Ko, 2014). Regardless of hierarchical position, communication among employees is at the crux of workplace relationships ; because communication requires people to interact with each other, enacting followership inevitably happens in the midst of, and because of, diversity.
Dixon (2008, p. 163) emphasises, âThe role of the follower is not only to learn but to learn to teach. Followers teach their peers, new followers, and, perhaps most important, the leaderâ. Organisations thrive because they have members who are capable of engaging in teaching and modelling behaviours at all levels in the organisational hierarchy. As such, individuals perform follower roles differently, ânot all followers want to be leadersâ, and some are content to engage in both leader and follower roles without advancing positions (Baker, Stites-Doe, Mathis, & Rosenbach, 2014, p. 82). Thus, the term follower here is used to indicate a person who is not in a managerial or supervisory position based upon job title; in this role, followers have the opportunity to engage in both role modelling (that is, informal teaching) and mentoring (that is, formal teaching) behaviours. The purpose of this chapter is to connect co-cultural competence to the followership role by explicating how those who are better equipped to communicate appropriately and effectively across roles and with others who are culturally diverse are deemed as both more co-culturally competent and more effective followers. More specifically, it lays out a research roadmap including propositions to be considered and hypotheses to be tested within a framework of followership co-cultural competence.
Followership
Based on a constructionist view, followership and leadership are separate, yet complementary constructs, both being socially constructed relational processes between individuals (Uhl-Bien, Riggio, Lowe, & Carsten, 2014). Constructionist views of followership acknowledge that the way in which individuals enact a follower role depends on their unique characteristics, perceptions regarding leader and follower role orientations , ability to switch roles (that is, leaderâfollower switching), relationship with the leader, psychosocial aspects (for example, identity), and the context shaping any given experience (Carsten et al., 2014; DeRue & Ashforth, 2010; Popper, 2014; Sy & McCoy, 2014). Recently, Carsten et al. (2014) have directed attention to infusing a role-based approach with the constructionist perspective of followership, as co-constructed processes between individuals determining interactantsâ role orientation. This perspective suggests followers enact follower roles while acknowledging that the individual characteristics of a follower will play into the process of co-constructing expectations concerning organisational duties as well as the behaviours chosen while enacting a particular role.
Interestingly, role orientations are mutually influenced by communication encounters driving the co-construction of followership to solidify the interactantsâ expectations regarding role orientation for a given relationship or situation (Howell & Mendez, 2008). To elucidate, the process of socially constructing a followerâs role occurs when interactants: (a) convey their own beliefs regarding organisational responsibilities and behaviours associated with roles, (b) internalise these expectations communicated by the other, and (c) form a tailored role orientation within that specific relationship or a given situation (Carsten et al., 2014; Howell & Mendez, 2008). Subsequently, followersâ behaviours reflect these relationally established role perceptions. Although follower behaviours reflect their role perceptions, the effectiveness of enacted behaviours relies largely on personal characteristics. Importantly, this process avoids restricting organisational members to a concrete role prescription based on hierarchical rank; rather, taking a relational approach to define followership accounts for factors influencing the outcome (that is, personal characteristics, relationship, organisational context), which guide the individuals who form workplace relationships . Therefore, followership illustrates the characteristics, behaviours, and processes one engages in while interacting with others, and as a result of the role prescriptions developed in relation to the leader, in an effort to meet personal and organisational objectives to produce desired outcomes (Carsten et al., 2014; Uhl-Bien et al., 2014). However, understanding what characteristics separate a follower from an effective follower as individuals enact the behaviours associated with these roles affords the opportunity to explore the nature and processes of followership within national and global workplaces relevant to role modelling and mentorship .
It is important to differentiate between an employee and a follower as well as the difference between a follower and an effective follower. Employees are organisational members who do not possess a leadership title or role as well as choose or are forced not to enact a followership role. For example, independent consultants who are part of multilevel marketing organisations, some computer programmers, and janitorial staff may all find themselves serving as organisational employees but not necessarily be followers. At baseline, âsubordination is a requirement of hierarchical position defined by power and statusâ where all employees are subordinates; however, employees choose whether to engage in a follower role (Hinrichs & Hinrichs, 2014, p. 92). This demarcates an employee from a follower.
An effective follower is an individual enacting a follower role âwho shares in an influence relationship among leaders and other followersâ to produce desired outcomes (Adair, 2008, p. 139). When performing a follower role, there are three behavioural orientations manifesting followership roles, including: (a) an interactive orientation distinguished by behaviours serving to support and advocate the values and objectives of a leader, (b) an autonomous orientation reflecting follower tendencies to act more as independent agents from a leader, and (c) a shifting orientation, indicative of a collectivistic approach that followers demonstrate by enacting either a leadership or followership position depending on the particular role the group needs them to play (Howell & Mendez, 2008). First, followers engage in an interactive orientation on a continuum of participative role characteristics ranging from passive to active to proactive behaviours (Epitropaki, Sy, Martin, Tram-Quon, & Topakas, 2013). To elucidate, Carsten, Uhl-Bien, West, Patera, and McGregor (2010) found subtle behavioural differences between the three roles encompassing the interactive orientation, where followers who enact: (a) a passive role emphasise adherence to leader...