![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
How and when do leader prototypical implicit followership theories (IFTs) facilitate follower organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB)? In line with behavioural confirmation theory, we propose that leaders who have a higher level of prototypical IFTs provide their followers with more support, which subsequently facilitates follower OCB. Furthermore, we argue that leader prototypical IFTs shape both leader support and subsequent follower OCB not only independently but also in conjunction with follower prototypical IFTs. We collected survey data from 137 leader - follower dyads in China. Our preliminary results showed that the prototypical IFTs of leaders were positively related to leader support, which in turn was positively related to follower OCB; however, the sole predictive effect of leader prototypical IFTs became nonsignificant when leader-follower congruence in prototypical IFTs was included as a predictor. The results, which were obtained using polynomial regression and response surface analysis, showed that when leaders and followers held congruent prototypical IFTs, a high level of prototypical IFTs was related to higher levels of both leader support and follower OCB. Therefore, leaders’ IFTs, followers’ IFTs, and the congruence between these factors should all be taken into account in attempts to facilitate follower OCB.
Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude to Dejun Tony Kong who inspired us to conduct research on IFTs from behavioral confirmation perspective.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. This research focuses on prototypical IFTs rather than ideal IFTs or anti-prototypical IFTs. a) Ideal IFTs are considered to be too extreme and closer to the periphery of the category (Junker & van Dick, Citation2014), whereas prototypical IFTs provide a more representative benchmark for the “average” follower (Sy, Citation2010) and are thus the more natural benchmark in everyday organizational situations. b) Anti-prototypical IFTs are not in line with our overarching theory (i.e., behavioural confirmation theory, which focuses on how followers’ good behaviour confirms their leaders’ positive expectations) and positive organizational scholarship.
2. We did not take into account the match between leaders’ IFTs and followers’ actual behaviours (Van Gils et al., Citation2010) with regard to shaping leader support. Leaders do not simply make their judgements based on observing followers’ behaviour (in comparison to their IFTs); they also care deeply about the motives underlying followers’ behaviours. Cheung et al. (Citation2014) suggested that leaders could perceive similar follower behaviours while nevertheless attributing these behaviours to different motives (genuine motives or instrumental motives). When leaders attribute followers’ behaviours to instrumental motives, the match between leaders’ IFTs and followers’ actual behaviours may not induce leader support successfully.
3. Although leader support (as rated by followers) might be biased by followers’ implicit leadership theories (ILTs), we did not consider the possibility that followers’ ILTs alter the link between leaders’ prototypical IFTs and leader support for two reasons. First, behavioural confirmation theory posits while perceivers rely on their implicit beliefs to control their social environment, the certainty of their beliefs determines the extent to which they are inclined to invest resources in targets in accordance with those beliefs (Swann & Ely, Citation1984). Accordingly, leaders rely on their prototypical IFTs to determine the level of support they provide to their followers; moreover, the certainty of their prototypical IFTs, which is derived from followers’ prototypical IFTs, is a critical boundary condition with regard to the link between leader prototypical IFTs and leader support. However, followers’ ILTs do not convey sufficient information for leaders to confirm their prototypical IFTs (i.e., their viewpoints concerning typical followers); those ILTs cannot ensure that leaders are certain of their prototypical IFTs. Second, according to Epitropaki and Martin (Citation2004b), ILTs include six dimensions, i.e., sensitivity, intelligence, dedication, dynamism, tyranny, and masculinity, which do not clearly include a component of support for followers.
4. The original questionnaire was originally translated by the first author into Chinese; this version was then back-translated by an expert. In the following stage, we compared the back-translated versions to the original versions until an agreement was reached that these versions were faithful to the original version. Disagreements were addressed through discussions involving a third party with academic expertise. After the entire process of translation had been completed, we sent the questionnaire to ten separate employees to elicit their suggestions, including an assessment of whether the statements were clear and accurate.