追随研究的演进及其在中国情境下的未来发展方向探索

The Evolvement and Future Directions of Followership Research in the Chinese Context

近年来组织管理研究对追随的关注日趋增多,这一新兴的研究领域在不断发展的同时,也存在着一些亟待厘清的基本问题。本文在追溯现有文献对追随现象四种不同研究取向的基础上,分析了追随研究的价值和边界,并通过系统的文献梳理,总结和归纳出四种不同的追随研究视角,即特质视角、行为视角、认知视角和动机视角。基于文献回顾与理论分析,结合中国情境下的管理实践,本文讨论和提出了未来拓展追随研究的七大方向,包括相关构念开发、前因后果探索、领导—追随双向影响、研究视角的拓展整合、领导—追随的整合性理论构建、有效追随的开发、中国文化与制度背景下的独特追随方式等。本文的分析和探索旨在为未来的追随研究指明更具成长潜力和活力的发展方向与研究路径。

As two interrelated social influence processes,both leadership and followership should be examined in order to unveil interpersonal dynamics in the workplace.However,compared with the rapid and vigorous progress of leadership research in several decades,scholarly examination on followership has been lagging behind.Leadership and followership research are basically studied separately,which prevents the development of an integrative view of leaders and followers.Until recent years,with the increasing emphasis on employee autonomy and initiative in the changing workplace,more and more attention thus has been paid to followership in the management field.Despite the substantial progress,several fundamental issues on followership still need to be addressed.For example,what is the theoretical value and significance of followership research?What are the scope and boundary of followership research?How should followership and leadership research be integrated?In fact,scholarly investigation of the followership phenomenon is not entirely new,and it has been more or less embedded in the development of leadership research.Considering the different roles of followership in the leadership research,we conclude that there are four various theoretical orientations in the current literature,namely,complete neglect,marginal attention,focused attention,and mutual influence.Although the above four orientations appear in a certain sequence with a trend of trading off and taking turns,they are concurrently evolving.In the past ten years,the last two orientations(focused attention and mutual influence)have been adopted by more and more scholars.We believe that in the current era,followership research can not only generate in-depth insights into the understudied followership phenomenon,but also develop a more complete understanding of leadership and followership.Given that companies are increasingly emphasizing employee autonomy,research on followership can also provide new and important insights into organizational development and change.In line with the four orientations,this paper reviews existing studies on followership from four perspectives,namely,the trait perspective,the behavioral perspective,the cognitive perspective,and the motivational perspective.Among them,the trait perspective examines the traits strong followers display.The behavioral perspective focuses on followers’displayed behaviors in the followership process.The cognitive perspective is largely based on implicit followership theory and the notion of followers’cognitive schema.The motivational perspective emphasizes the underlying motives of followers’different styles of followership,aiming to address the question of why they follow.Building on the above literature review and theoretical analysis,this paper proposes seven directions for promoting followership research and related management practices in the Chinese context.First,researchers should develop clear and rigorous constructs of followership,thus advancing an in-depth understanding of the essence,conceptual connotation and diversity of followership.Second,it is critical to identify the rich antecedents and consequences of followership,especially expanding the various shaping factors and influences on various subjects.Third,studies should also be conducted to uncover the mutual influences between leadership and followership,including the top-down influence of leaders on followers,the bottom-up influences of followers on leaders,and the two-way influence among leaders and followers.Fourth,scholars are also encouraged to expand and integrate different theoretical perspectives and propose new research perspectives.Fifth,followership can be further extended by developing integrative theories of leadership and followership to deepen our theoretical understanding of leadership and followership.Sixth,there is also a strong theoretical need for delving into effective followership behaviors in order to provide guidelines on how to inspire and cultivate effective followers.Finally,the unique features and dynamics of followership in the Chinese context should be probed in conjunction with Chinese cultural and social structural characteristics.Overall,building on a systematic review of followership studies,this paper aims to identify fruitful avenues of future followership research in the Chinese context.