| “Who will lead and who will follow” has always been a hot issue in management research.Nowadays a large number of research suggest that Implicit Followership Theories(IFTs)has high correlation with this hot topic.The IFTs is defined as individuals' personal assumptions about the traits and behaviors that characterize followers.The one whose behavior fitted for the supervisor's IFTs will be marked as the effective subordinate or follower,and then their Guanxi will also be better and longer.As the Confucianist being more concentrate on the Guanxi and supervisorsubordinate fit,IFTs has a lot of theoretical and practical implications in the Chinese context.At present,the research about the IFTs mainly focus on the three aspects.Some research focus on the scale of the IFTs development both in the West and mainland.And some others focus on the relationship between the IFTs prototype and subordinates' performance and other outcomes.Besides,a part of research focus on the relationship between the congruence of the supervisor-subordinate IFTs and other outcomes like LMX and Guanxi etc.Although the research about IFTs is in blossom,this paper suggest that the research about the IFTs still has some deficiencies at present which can be illustrated from at least three aspects.Firstly,domestic IFTs scale has not been applicative generally and a lot of research suggest that the dimension of the domestic IFTs has large difference from the IFTs scale of the West.Secondly,the research statistical method for the relationship between the congruence of the supervisor-subordinate IFTs and Guanxi is imprecise.Some research confused the different dimensions as the same.And also some research considered Guanxi as one-dimension variable to measure in the mainland.However,Guanxi has at least three elements in the Chinese context.Thirdly,the mechanism of the relationship between IFTs prototype and job performance is simplex in the mainland.To fill up those research gaps,this paper presents one literature review and three empirical studies.In literature review,this chapter is rooted in the Confucianism and the previous research about followership,to explore the connotation of IFTs in Chinese context.In study one,this chapter devised the domestic IFTs scale by empirical and theoretical research method.In study two,this chapter analyzed 114 matching questionnaires by using QCA method to explore the relationship between the congruence of supervisorsubordinate IFTs-actual behaviors and Guanxi.In study three,this chapter used the domestic IFTs scale to verify the Pygmalion effect by 348 supervisor-subordinate matching questionnaires in the Chinese context.Through the above discussion,the main results of this paper are as follow: Firstly,the follower in the Chinese context is defined as the one who shares the same goal with the leader and fulfills the responsibilities related to the goal,the following target is the leader or supervisor rather than the organization.Secondly,the domestic IFTs scale has the five first-order factors includes working ability,loyal to supervisor,unity with colleagues,public deviance and hiding evil intentions.Among them,working ability,loyal to supervisor,unity with colleagues belong to the second-order factor(prototype),while public deviance and hiding evil intentions belong to the other second-order factor(unti-prototype).Thirdly,there exists the contingent path between the congruence of supervisor-subordinate IFTs-actual behaviors and Guanxi.The emotion-instrumental Guanxi may result from subordinates' intrinsic identity or impression management.The main composite of emotion-compulsory Guanxi may be the compulsory rather than the emotion.The emotion Guanxi may result in the specific condition which is like horizontal organization.The instrumental Guanxi may result from the subordinate's deception.Fourthly,this paper also find the leader self-sacrifice behavior and positive leader affect completely mediate the relationship between the IFTs prototype and job performance in the Chinese context together,while the leader positive affect's mediating effect may be greater than the leader self-sacrifice behavior.Besides,the subordinate's traditionality plays the moderator role in the relationship between the leader self-sacrifice behavior and job performance.The theoretical implication of this paper are as follow: Firstly,based on the role theory,this paper defines the connotation of IFTs in Chinese context,and devises the domestic IFTs scale by combining theoretical and empirical method,which fills up for the lack of the concept of IFTs in Chinese context and for the theoretical deficiencies of the scale construction.Secondly,this paper explores the relationship between the congruence of supervisor-subordinate IFTs-actual behaviors and Guanxi by using QCA,which fills up to the insufficiency of statistical methods in this field.Thirdly,this paper find the multiple antecedent composites of Guanxi,which fills up the traditional one-way results of the previous research.Fourthly,this paper explore the role of the traditionality to moderate the relationship between the IFTs and job performance which fills up the boundary variable of the IFTs.Fifthly,this paper based on the Affect/Affort theory to verify the relationship between the domestic IFTs prototype and job performance in the Chinese context,which fills up the simplex perspective in mainland research.The practical implication of this paper are as follow: Firstly,it is useful for Chinese supervisors and subordinates to understand the meaning of “ideal followers” and “non-ideal followers”.Secondly,it is helpful to Chinese supervisors to deal with the Guanxi by discussing the mechanism of the congruence of supervisor-subordinate IFTs-actual behaviors and Guanxi.Thirdly,it is beneficial to Chinese supervisors to carry out expectation management about subordinates and to improve the job performance. |
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