Description
Within organizations there are leaders and there are followers; if there were no followers then leaders would not have anyone to lead. However, leadership is not one person but instead a process in which followers can affect and inhibit leaders' productivity in active ways. Thus, there is a need to study followers and their ability to impact leaders and organizations. Within academic research, the primary focus has been on leadership and what constitutes an effective leader.. Researchers recently have developed the concept of co-production of leadership beliefs (CPLBs), which are the beliefs that an individual holds that followers should partner with leaders to work together to achieve the highest levels of productivity. CPLB congruence may be successful in predicting leader and follower outcomes because CPLBs focus on how followers' roles are viewed and how followers should behave in relation to leaders in organizations to assist in the leadership process. Survey data was collected from 69 established leader-subordinate dyads within two different organizations measuring CPLBs and outcomes, including liking, relationship quality, turnover intentions, employee voice, constructive resistance, job satisfaction, and job performance. Polynomial regression with response surface modeling was utilized to test the hypotheses. Twenty-seven polynomial regressions were investigated, and three regressions had significant R_ values. Results revealed that employee voice is highest when the leader has high levels of proactive CPLBs. Additionally, LMX rated by the follower was lowest when the leader had high levels of obedience CPLBs, especially when the follower had low levels of obedience CPLBs. Similar results were found for obedience CPLBs and followers' liking of their leaders . These results suggest that the congruence of leader and follower CPLBs may not be as important as originally believed, but that leader CPLBs may be more impactful independently on follower outcomes. This was particularly the case for leaders' obedience CPLBs, which were negatively related to follower constructive resistance, employee voice, followers' liking of their leader, and follower-rated LMX. Future research should continue to clarify the importance of leader versus follower CPLBs and how they combine to predict relationship and performance outcomes.
