Experiencing followership during global crisis: Followership in healthcare amidst COVID-19

Abstract

Investigating the lived experience of followership during the COVID-19 crisis, this study provided greater insight into the importance of followership in the leader-follower paradigm and the influence which crises have on it. Set during the global pandemic, this study harnessed the existing challenges in South African healthcare organisations, a setting of uncertainty and complexity further compounded by the crisis. The setting provided an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to followership theories and a practical understanding of the phenomenon of followership in response to crises. Notwithstanding extensive research on leadership, failures in business continue despite the presence of ‘great leadership’ in the organisation. The key to unlocking this conundrum may lie with followers. However, while followership has been a growing area of interest in the broader leadership domain, it remains a nascent field of academic study dominated by decades of leader-centric doctrine. This study used an interpretive, inductive, explanatory qualitative study design to answer how crises influence followership. This longitudinal study used interviews of senior managers, as followers, within healthcare organisations and their experiences of followership during a global crisis. The results indicate that followers’ perspectives of followership are based on a combination of motives, self-perception and relational elements in engagements with leaders. Hermeneutic phenomenological analysis illustrated that the crisis influenced these perspectives and shifted previous beliefs regarding approaches to the interaction between followers, leaders and followership construction. It was found that the crisis enhanced the independence of followers, altered their approaches to constructing followership and reframed organisational engagements. This study contributes to follower-centric perspectives in followership theory and extends the understanding of followership in the context of crises and complexity. The potential of followership to improve collaboration and execution of organisational goals is also highlighted. This study identifies the dynamic nature of followership, the antecedents to followership construction and followers' self-perceptions in response to different phases of crises with a follower-centric lens. While important in their own regard, these findings also set the stage for further investigation and validation in non-crisis or ‘post-crisis’ contexts. Finally this study noted the potential benefit of using hermeneutic phenomenology as a method for in-depth business and organisational research.