Public management research has recently spent growing attention to the long-neglected phenomenon of leadership in public sector organizations (Tummers & Knies, 2016; Van Wart, 2013; Vogel & Masal, 2015). While there is still a... [ view full abstract ]
Public management research has recently spent growing attention to the long-neglected phenomenon of leadership in public sector organizations (Tummers & Knies, 2016; Van Wart, 2013; Vogel & Masal, 2015). While there is still a long way to go to catch up with general leadership research with its main focus on the private sector, the provisional conclusion can be drawn that the emerging research on public leadership, as its private sector counterpart, is heavily leader-centric. This strong focus on the personality and behaviors of leaders can best be exemplified with the burgeoning literature on transformational leadership in the public sector (Caillier, 2016; Paarlberg & Lavigna, 2010; Wright & Pandey, 2010), which implies a quasi-heroic picture of highly capable und visionary leaders.
Followership is the often-overlooked flipside of leadership (Kelley, 1992; Martin, 2015). Without followers, there are no leaders. Therefore, it is important to understand how followership emerges from, and contributes to, the phenomenon of leadership (and vice versa). This paper is among the first to study followership in a public setting (Gilbert & Hyde, 1988; Jin, McDonald, & Park, 2016; Kim & Schachter, 2015). More precisely, we examine how satisfaction with leadership (Cammann, Fichman, Jenkins, & Klesh, 1983) relates to different forms of followership (i.e. active engagement and independent critical thinking; Ghislieri, Gatti, & Cortese, 2015) in a public organization.
The empirical study is conducted in the Federal Armed Forces Germany (“Bundeswehr”), which offers a field of study that is difficult to access but particularly interesting. On the one hand, the guiding principle of “Internal Leadership” (“Innere Führung”) requires engagement and voice from soldiers who are considered as “citizens in uniform” in responsibility for the civic society. On the other hand, recent internal surveys and reports in the Bundeswehr have shown that many soldiers avoid criticizing their supervisors because they fear unfavorable consequences for their careers. Such employee silence is detrimental to the adaptability and mindfulness of high reliability organizations (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999).
Based on survey data, the full paper will test hypotheses on how satisfaction with leadership relates to different types of followership behaviors and how these behaviors, in turn, relate to promotion decisions. A first wave of the survey was conducted in 2015 and a second wave is scheduled for early 2017. We draw on leadership and followership theories and consider various demographic characteristics (such as rank, age, and gender) that may additionally explain why soldiers show active engagement and independent critical thinking.
Results draw a more holistic picture of leadership in the public sector by advancing our understanding of followership as emerging from leader-follower interactions. In more practical terms, the findings have implications for leadership development and career management in the public sector in general and in the military more specifically.
