Abstract:
Previous research has established that effective leadership behaviours are required for the
successful implementation of organisational restructures due to their complex nature, yet most
organisational change initiatives fail. This is attributed to organisations’ failure to consider
followers’ expectations of leader behaviours and their ability to humanise the change process.
Using implicit leadership theory, this study investigates how followers’ expectations of leader
behaviours influence follower responses during organisational restructures. The pursuit of
these insights led to the use of a qualitative research approach, involving semi-structured
interviews with 18 participants from various organisations. Using interpretive
phenomenological analysis, this study discovered that followers expect leaders to emulate
authentic and servant-leadership behaviours during organisations. Change-management
practices were expected to be characteristic of authentic leadership principles When leader
behaviours during organisational restructure aligned with this expectation, it elicited prochange
behaviours which positively influenced the change outcome. When leaders’
behaviours conflicted with these expectations, which was determined as destructive
leadership behaviours, followers responded with anti-change behaviours. These findings
present organisations with the opportunity to develop leadership behaviours and changemanagement
practices which fulfil followers’ expectations positively influencing the likelihood
of successful organisational restructures.
