The Power of Followers That do not Follow: Investigating the Effects of Follower Resistance, Leader Implicit Followership Theories and Leader Negative Affect on the Emergence of Destructive Leader Behavior

• Published in: Journal of leadership & organizational studies Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 349 - 365
• Main Authors: Güntner, Amelie V., Klasmeier, Kai N., Klonek, Florian E., Kauffeld, Simone
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.08.2021; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Affect (Psychology); Behavior; Employee management relations; Inferences; Leaders; Leadership; Management styles; Research Design; Theory X; endogeneity; implicit followership theories; destructive leadership; follower resistance; affective events theory
• ISSN: 1548-0518; 1939-7089
• DOI: 10.1177/15480518211012408

This study focuses on follower resistance as a potential antecedent of destructive leader behavior and examines leader-related moderators and mediators to help explain the relationship between follower resistance and destructive leader behavior. Drawing from implicit followership theories, we propose that the relationship between follower resistance and destructive leader behavior is moderated by leaders’ Theory X schema. Furthermore, we build on affective events theory to hypothesize that follower resistance increases destructive leader behavior via leaders’ negative affect. We tested our hypotheses in a within-subjects online field experiment. Our study findings demonstrate that follower resistance increases destructive leader behavior and that this relationship is mediated through leaders’ negative affect and moderated by leaders’ Theory X schema. We discuss theoretical implications regarding the impact of (resistant) follower behavior on destructive leadership and offer methodological advances in terms of research design and analytical approaches to deal with endogeneity issues and derive causal inferences. Lastly, we derive practical implications for utilizing follower resistance.