Followership's experiences of organisational leadership: A systems psychodynamic perspective

SA Journal of Industrial Psychology

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Followership's experiences of organisational leadership: A systems psychodynamic perspective
 
Creator Greyvenstein, Henk Cilliers, Frans
 
Subject Organisational behaviour A negative leadership view; idealisation of the past and blaming the present; obsession with race and gender; constantly changing identity; unfinished business and the future; cope and hope
Description Orientation: Followers’ experiences of leadership in their organisations were qualitatively explored and described from a systems psychodynamic perspective. The findings revealed a very negative view on how leadership treats followership, and that leadership is seen as inconsistent.Research purpose: The purpose of the research was to describe followership’s experiences of organisational leadership from a systems psychodynamic perspective.Motivation for the study: Organisational leadership is under tremendous pressure to perform and often under attack, especially if they do not appear to be caring and supportive. The research was planned to better understand the unconscious nature of this phenomenon.Research design, approach and method: Qualitative, descriptive research was used. Data was collected through psychodynamic Listening Posts and analysed using discourse analysis. Working hypotheses were formulated per theme and integrated into the research hypothesis.Main findings: Six themes manifested, namely a negative leadership view; idealisation of the past and blaming the present; obsession with race and gender; constantly changing identity; unfinished business and the future; and cope and hope.Practical/managerial implications: Leadership seem to focus more on business than followership issues which leads to followers feeling disregarded and de-authorised. As a result followers withhold authorisation from leadership which may be instrumental in leaderships’ difficulties to manage change and transformation effectively. Leadership development needs to incorporate the self-authorisation of leaders as well as the invitation of authorisation by leaders.Contribution/value-add: The data would be useful to leadership towards understanding, repairing and optimising their relationships and organisational impact through people.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2012-03-12
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajip.v38i2.1001
 
Source SA Journal of Industrial Psychology; Vol 38, No 2 (2012); 10 pages 2071-0763 0258-5200
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/1001/1162 https://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/1001/1216 https://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/1001/1165 https://sajip.co.za/index.php/sajip/article/view/1001/1161
 
Coverage South Africa Present Various
Rights Copyright (c) 2012 Henk Greyvenstein, Frans Cilliers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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