Organization and Human Resources Department's Lecture

Theme：Does proactive followership have a negative impact on empowering leadership

Speaker：Ng Wei Xuan （National University of Singapore）

Time：2019-12-25 14:00

Address：Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language：English

Abstract：

Proactivity constructs (e.g., proactive personality, taking charge) are ubiquitous in the organizational literature, but none of the constructs relates specifically to the employee’s interactional style in relation to the leader. In the present research, I define a novel proactivity construct: proactive followership. I adopt a ‘reverse-the-lens’ paradigm in examining leadership by testing how proactive followership affects empowering leadership. Through examination of one archival dataset, one longitudinal study and one experience sampling study, I tested a parallel mediation model of proactive followership on empowering leadership via leader’s affect-based trust and leader’s competence-based esteem threat. Results across studies show that although proactive followership heightens the leader’s esteem threat which then weakens the leader’s empowering response, there is an overall positive effect of proactive followership on empowering leadership.

Short biography：

Ng Wei Xuan is a final-year doctoral student at the Department of Management and Organisation, National University of Singapore. She has also received Bachelor’s and Master's degrees from Psychology at the National University of Singapore. She has published in journals like Emotion and American Journal of Psychology. Jomel's research primarily focuses on understanding the emerging field of proactive followership and the outcomes of positive emotions. Her secondary research interests include job search behaviors and the overqualification phenomenon.