FOLLOWERSHIP: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN BRAZIL

Informações

Código: GPR345
Divisão: GPR - Gestão de Pessoas e Relações de Trabalho
Tema de Interesse: Tema 05 - Liderança

Autores

Walmon Magalhães Leal

Resumo

Followership is a theme relatively new in academic literature and according to Bennis (2010)and Avolio, Walumbwa and Weber (2009), it has been largely neglected in the study ofleadership, maybe one of the most interesting omissions in the theory and research aboutleadership. The reverse of lens from leader to follower is something relatively new inacademic literature and particularly in Brazil, where there is not even a correct translation forthe term followership and research in academic sources reveals no publications about thetheme in Brazil (Scripnic, 2010). That is one of main justifications to start development of thetheme in Brazil through an empirical research aiming to better understand the role of thefollower. The approach selected was the followership perspective, when followers describetheir own view and perspective about their role. The main objective of this paper was toidentify how followers in Brazil describe the role of being a follower. It was used qualitativemethodology, through an exploratory research to identify how followers describe their roles.It was conducted a semi-structured interview with 14 employees from a variety of industriesin Brazil. The results revealed that followers in Brazil initially describe the role of being afollower in the majority of aspects very similar to what previous foreign literature had alreadyrevealed (Zaleznik, 1965; Kelley, 1988; Chaleff, 1995; Kellerman, 2008; Carsten et al, 2010).The compiled answers of all respondents pointed descriptions to an effective follower assomeone that is very committed, does more than expected, always proposes some new anddifferent initiative, is the first to offer as voluntary to some new initiative, keeps optimisticbesides difficulties, is loyal to the chief and always enthusiastic. All theses description is veryconsistent with effective follower characteristics previously pointed by other researchers.There were only two aspects related to effective followers’ characteristics that revealeddivergence to researched literature: a) Know how to show what they do and; b) Usually agreewith the chief. Both descriptions do not appear in literature as related to effective follower andare even contradictory to what Challeff (1995) and Kelley (1988) posit as effective followers.Given the current state of art about followership in academic literature, the lack ofinformation regarding the theme in Brazil and some initial contradiction found in thisempirical study compared to foreign literature, the present work can give its contribution,putting new lens in the leadership research and collaborate to expand knowledge aboutfollowership in a different culture than what has been studied during last decades.

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