INTERVIEW RESPONSES
– “I have heard of leadership, and followership seems like it should mean something, but I have never heard the word before.” employee at a large corporation
– “I don’t know what followership is.” neighbor #3
– “Followership means following someone.” university student
The purpose of my research is to increase understanding of the role that follower identity, and identity construction, play in the willingness of an individual to subscribe to the authority of another, and to commit their best effort to a specified outcome.
An examination of available literature related to the leader-follower roles and identities consistently fails to determine how ‘followership’ identities are created and exhibited from the follower’s perspective. There is significant research into the roles and identities associated with ‘leadership,’ and even some scholarship describing how to improve leader-follower outcomes. But, research that evaluates followers’ roles and identities from the followers’ perspective are not as common or consistent in their findings.
followership 