For years, leading management scholars have assumed the contribution of followers is an effect rather than a cause of an organization's success. The 25 case studies and commentaries in Followership in Action from such diverse places as Canada, France, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States lend further support to this argument. Followership in Action is a highly practical and scholarly book to which leadership scholars, practitioners, and students will actively turn to better understand and apply followership theory to everyday human resource development, management, and leadership contexts. It was written with administrators, coaches, consultants, executives, human resource professionals, academic professors, and support staff fully in mind. As the study of followership further escalates into the global mainstream of leadership studies, this book offers an excellent way to more proactively engage future leaders and followers in issues that they are likely to face in various organizational settings. Its business, education, and government content will appeal to academia, corporations, non-profits, and other enterprises.

This book provides a collection of new insights on the increasingly popular topic of Followership. Leadership has been written about and studied for centuries, more often than not addressing how those in leadership roles influence their followers. This represents a very leader-centric view of the leadership phenomenon, where followers are considered as passive recipients of leaders' influence. However, peoples' attempts to exercise leadership cannot be successful if there are no other people who recognize and support their leadership. In other words, effective leadership cannot exist without some form of followership. The book offers a collection of chapters written by thought leaders on the topic of followership. Together, they provide answers to two fundamental questions: What is followership, and why do people follow? They elucidate how answers to these questions can inform management theory, practice, and education.