Supervisors: Anne Bøllingtoft & Ann-Kristina Løkke Møller
Discussants: Jakob Lauring & Pernille Smith

Abstract
Followership behaviors plays an important role for leaders’ possibilities for exercising effective leadership. Although research on followership behaviors starts to flourish, the followership literature suffers from definitional confusion on the concept of behaviors. Behaviors encompass both actions and inactions. Yet, the existing followership literature most often does not consider this. Instead, it conceptualizes behaviors merely to be actions. In addition, the existing followership literature has understood followership behaviors as being discrete categories. However, this understanding is too simplistic. Based on interview data from 41 followers working in the IT industry, this paper expands our understanding of followership behaviors. The findings provide empirical evidence that (i) followership behaviors should be understood as both actions and inactions, (ii) that followers’ inactions are driven by different motives, and (iii) that followership behaviors are more complex than what existing research has found. The paper concludes in discussing theoretical as well as practical implications.

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