The absent follower: Identity construction within organisationally assigned leader–follower relations

Abstract

This article seeks to add to our understanding of processes of identity construction within organizationally assigned leader-follower relations through an exploration of the role of the absent, feminised follower. We situate our work within critical and psychoanalytic contributions to leader/ship and follower/ship and use Lacan's writings on identification and lack to illuminate the imaginary, failing nature of identity construction. This aims to challenge the social realist foundations of writing on leader-follower constellations in organizational life. We examine our philosophical discussion through a reflective reading of a workplace example and question the possibility of a subject's identity construction as a follower. If a subject is unable to identify him/herself as follower, he/she cannot validate others as leaders, rendering the leader-follower relationship not only fragile but phantasmic.We highlight implications of our exploration of the absence of follower/ship and endless, unfulfilled desire for leader/ship for future research and practice.

Relationship Between Middle Managers' Transformational Leadership and Effective Followership Behaviors in Organizations

“…Leadership and followership have traditionally been studied separately. However, leadership and followership occur in the same space while deriving meaning from each other (Ford & Harding, ; Schedlitzki, Edwards, & Kempster, ). Leader‐centric leadership scholars have explored the sole effects of transformational leadership on positive organizational outcomes (Zhu et al, ).…”

“…The findings of the current study have implications for how employees work within organizations. Similarities between leadership and followership behaviors may help destigmatize followership (Kellerman, ), while at the same time help employees realize that being leaders does not preclude them from being followers (Schedlitzki et al, ). Such realization may help create a cooperative environment while preventing leaders from acting in condescending ways towards their followers (Chaleff, ).…”

‘Free to Do What I Want’? Exploring the ambivalent effects of liberating leadership

“…Specifically, we integrate the critical resources of leadership analyses drawing on Lacanian concepts (Costas & Taheri, 2012; Ford & Harding, 2011; Schedlitzki, Edwards, & Kempster, 2017) which have highlighted issues of subjectivity, identification and authority that enable theorizing of the dark sides and, perhaps, even the inhumanity (Johnsen & Gudmand-Høyer, 2010) of leader–follower relations. A Lacanian perspective may provide a corrective to the positive bent of ‘post-heroic’ approaches (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009), where promises of being instrumental to the liberation and happiness of followers may obfuscate dimensions of power, domination, violence or suffering arising from the practice of leadership (Vince & Mazen, 2014).…”

“…Lacanian leadership studies largely focus on identification, stressing the inherent lack in leader identification and reflecting how subjects find emancipatory resources in such identifications (Driver, 2013). Recent studies take the followers’ perspective (Ford & Harding, 2015; Schedlitzki et al, 2017) to highlight how this impossible desire paradoxically sustains affective attachments between leaders and followers, a taboo but powerful relationship.…”

“…Thus, we moved between earlier codes and a re-reading of the texts themselves – focusing particularly on interview transcripts and instances of communication between leader and followers – to refine our theoretical constructs. Key to such interpretation is acknowledging that any account of the lived experience (conscious and unconscious) of being a follower is marked by lack (Schedlitzki et al, 2017), which implies that the analyst should attend to the ‘signifying elements that do not make sense’ (Parker, 2005,p. 168) in a text, within and across texts rather than looking to provide the unified, unproblematic truth of a phenomenon.…”