臺大管理論叢第31卷第3期

48 The Influences of Leaders’ Negative Implicit Followership Theories on Employees’Work Behaviors: A DualPathway Model 1. Introduction In the social interactions between leaders and followers, neither of the parties plays a completely passive role. The two parties build and interpret not only their own roles in the social relationship but also the other party’s corresponding role in that same relationship (Carsten, Uhl-Bien, West, Patera, and McGregor, 2010). Many studies have investigated the social construction of leadership (e.g., Engle and Lord, 1997; Epitropaki and Martin, 2004) and explored how followers view and define their leaders. However, only in recent years have management scholars begun to investigate how leaders view and define their followers. One relevant research stream is implicit followership theory, which refers to leaders’ personal assumptions or prototypes regarding the traits and behaviors that characterize followers (Sy, 2010; Whiteley, Sy, and Johnson, 2012). The development of implicit followership theories (IFTs) is important for leadership research in two ways. First, extant leadership research has primarily been leader-centered leadership research, rather than follower-centered leadership research (Junker and Van Dick, 2014; Oc and Bashshur, 2013). However, to understand a holistic leadership process, researchers need to conceptualize followers as a focal element and understand followers’ roles (Sy, 2010). For example, researchers need to explore topics such as how leaders construct their perceptions of followers, and how followers interpret and respond to leaders’ behaviors (Junker and Van Dick, 2014; Oc and Bashshur, 2013; Sy, 2010). Second, the idea that management style is a function of leaders’ predisposed assumptions about followers can be traced back to McGregor’s (1960) Theory X and Theory Y (Sy, 2010). Although McGregor’s views on leadership are widely known and have been emphasized in many leadership textbooks, studies on the X and Y theories have stagnated for many years. Therefore, to advance the field’s knowledge of leadership behaviors, an imperative task for researchers is to clarify leaders’ predisposed assumptions (e.g., leaders’ IFTs) and empirically examine the effects of these assumptions. According to Sy’s (2010) classification, leaders’ IFTs can be divided into positives and negatives. Positive IFTs (PIFTs), which are also called “positive prototypes”, correspond to such traits as industry, enthusiasm, and good citizenship; likewise, Negative IFTs (NIFTs), which are also called “negative prototypes” or “antiprototypes”, correspond to such traits as conformity, insubordination, and incompetence. Sy (2010) also develops a 3-dimensional scale for PIFTs and another 3-dimensional scale for NIFTs. Several studies that use the PIFT scale reported positive influences of PIFTs on

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