Followers’ expectations of leader behaviours and their influence on followers’ behaviours during organisational restructures

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.