Organizational Behavior (Stephen Robbins)

replaced or neutralized. Experience and training, for instance, can replace the need for a
leader’s support or ability to create structure and reduce task ambiguity. Jobs that are
inherently unambiguous and routine, provide their own feed-
back, or are intrinsically satisfying generally require less hands-
on leadership. Organizational characteristics such as explicit
formalized goals, rigid rules and procedures, and cohesive work
groups can replace formal leadership (see Exhibit 8-7). Recent
research has supported the importance of ability and intrinsic
satisfaction in considering performance outcomes.^30

Can You Be a Better Follower?

Thus far we have concentrated on how leaders must adapt their
styles to the needs of their followers. This underscores the impor-
tance of the followers’ role in the way leadership is exercised.
Only recently have we begun to recognize that in addition to
having leaders who can lead, successful organizations need fol-
lowers who can follow.^31 In fact, it’s probably fair to say that all
organizations have far more followers than leaders, so ineffec-
tive followers may be more of a handicap to an organization
than ineffective leaders. The Far Side cartoon shown in Exhibit 8-
8 gives you some indication of what can happen when someone
finally realizes that he or she is “a follower, too.”
An understanding of how to be a follower is important,
because almost all roles in an organization require one to be a fol-
lower in some settings. Obviously lower-level employees are fol-
lowers to their supervisors. But the supervisor is a follower to his
or her manager, who is a follower to the CEO. The CEO in a pub-
lic corporation is a follower to the board of directors. Even the best
leaders have to be followers sometimes.

Chapter 8Leadership 267

Characteristics of Individual

Experience/training

Professionalism

Indifference to rewards

Characteristics of Job

Highly structured task

Provides its own feedback

Intrinsically satisfying

Characteristics of Organization

Explicit formal goals

Rigid rules and procedures

Cohesive work groups

Effect on Leadership

Substitutes for task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership

Neutralizes relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for relationship-oriented leadership

Substitutes for task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for task-oriented leadership

Substitutes for relationship-oriented and task-oriented leadership

EXHIBIT 8-7 Substitutes and Neutralizers for Leadership

Source:Based on S. Kerr and J. M. Jermier, “Substitutes for Leadership: Their Meaning and Measurement,”

Organizational Behavior and Human Performance,December 1978, p. 378.

EXHIBIT 8-8

Source:THE FAR SIDE copyright 1990 & 1991 Farworks,

Inc./Dist. by Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted with

permission. All rights reserved.